1300 years of Bulgaria in Шумен, Šumen, or Shumen

Шумен, Šumen or otherwise known as Shumen is the tenth largest city in Bulgaria. We only mention this because we are in the habit of rehashing old posts, we mean clarifying things we said in older posts. All of our posts are credible and new material and we would never pander to our most popular posts to drive revenues, we mean readership. But alas, we mentioned the statue of 1300 years of Bulgaria and its cubism structure in a post about a little known American-German artist named Lyonel Feininger.

We mentioned the statue because it is what we think of ourselves. But, in reality it is a long tradition of Bulgarian art, see from the Icon of St. Theodor there in the picture that cubism has existed for much longer than we thought in Bulgaria. Never mind that the depreciation of the work of art is largely responsible for the squarish patterns on the parchment. We shall give credit to Bulgaria to being a precursor to cubism.

The monument was built in 1981 to commemorate the 1300 years of time passage since the formation of the first Bulgarian Empire. This empire was founded when the Bulgars, a Turkic and Scythian people group teamed up with seven South Slavic tribes. They became a force to reckon with and crushed their way into Pannonia, battle against the Arabs in defense of Constantinople and then had their own successes against the power of the city of Constantine. At the height of their power they possessed lands in Balkans and into northern Greece, parts of modern day Turkey and northern lands into Hungary and of course, Bulgaria.

The Golden age was during the reign of Simeon the Great (893 - 927 A.D.). Simeon went to war with and defeated powerful groups like the Serbs, the Magyars and the might of Constantinople. While the Christianization of Bulgaria had taken place earlier, under Simeon many Christian works were copied into Slavic languages, paving the way for the Christianization of Eastern Europe. Simeon the Great has been compared to Charlemagne, the French Historian Alfred Nicolas Rambaud wrote, "Simeon was the Bulgarian Charlemagne, but he was better educated than our Charles the Great and much greater than him".

Sadly after Simeon passed away the power of Bulgaria waned and a resurgent and rather put out Constantinople pushed back. The complete fall of the First Empire of Bulgaria occurred when the Byzantine Empire defeated the Bulgarians at the Battle of Kleidion in 1014. Basil II or Basil Bulgaroktonos (Bulgar killer in Greek) line the Bulgarian army in rows of 100. He killed 99 of the Bulgarians and blinded the eye of the remaining 1. Upon seeing the decimation of his army, the last ruler of the first Empire of Bulgaria, Samuil had a heart attack and died.

So, why was the statue placed in the city Shumen? Shumen was the capital of Simeon the Great's Bulgaria. It was eventually taken by the Ottoman Turks and was a minor city for nearly 400 years. Then the Russians tried to wrest it from the hands of the Ottomans three times, all unsuccessfully. Then in the early 19th century Shumen became a place for Bulgarian nationalistic tendencies. At the end of the 19th century Shumen fell to Russia and became a part of the Principality of Bulgaria, which would become the Kingdom of Bulgaria, which would become the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and then finally, the modern Republic of Bulgaria.

The Monument of 1300 Years of Bulgaria is a huge artistic achievement. It is also the only statue to tell the entire history of a nation from its founding to the present day. Obviously, Mount Rushmore is entirely lacking when put into context.