43°15′N 27°0′E / 43.250°N 27.000°E
Shumen Province (Bulgarian: Област Шумен, transliterated Oblast Shumen, former name Shumen okrug) is a province in northeastern Bulgaria named after its main city Shumen. It is divided into ten municipalities with a total population, as of December 2009, of 194,090 inhabitants.
Pliska (Bulgarian: Плиска [ˈpliskɐ], Old Bulgarian: Пльсковъ, romanized: Plĭskovŭ) was the first capital of the First Bulgarian Empire during the Middle Ages and is now a small town in Shumen Province, on the Ludogorie plateau of the Danubian Plain, 20 km northeast of the provincial capital, Shumen.
Pliska was the first capital of Bulgaria. According to legend, it was founded by Asparuh of Bulgaria in the late 7th century; this legend is archaeologically unsubstantiated. The site was originally an encampment, with the first tent-shaped buildings at Pliska of uncertain date. No evidence exists of a settlement before the 9th century, and claims that the site dates from Late Antiquity have been contested.
The modern Veliki Preslav or Great Preslav (Bulgarian: Велики Преслав, pronounced [vɛˈliki prɛˈsɫaf]), former Preslav (Bulgarian: Преслав; until 1993), is a city and the seat of government of the Veliki Preslav Municipality (Great Preslav Municipality, new Bulgarian: obshtina), which in turn is part of Shumen Province, Bulgaria. Veliki Preslav is situated at an altitude of 132 m (92 m above sea level).
A former village, it assumed the name of the medieval capital in 1878 and became a town in 1883. As of December 2009, it had a population of 8,951.
Veliki Preslav Municipality (Bulgarian: Община Велики Преслав; former Preslav Municipality, Bulgarian: Община Преслав) is a municipality (obshtina) in Shumen Province, Northeastern Bulgaria, located in the area of the so-called Fore-Balkan north of the eastern part of the Stara planina mountains. It is named after its administrative centre, the town of Veliki Preslav, which was one of the ancient capitals of Bulgaria.
The municipality embraces a territory of 277.65 km (107.20 sq mi) with a population of 15,292 inhabitants, as of December 2009.
Novi Pazar (Bulgarian: Нови пазар, "new marketplace") is a town in Shumen Province, northeastern Bulgaria, located in a hollow between the Shumen, Ludogorie and Provadiya plateaus, on the banks of the Kriva Reka ("twisting river"). It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Novi Pazar Municipality. As of December 2009, the town had a population of 12,673.
Bulgarian Turks (Bulgarian: български турци; Turkish: Bulgaristan Türkleri) are ethnic Turkish people from Bulgaria. According to the 2021 census, there were 508,375 Bulgarians of Turkish descent, roughly 8.4% of the population, making them the country's largest ethnic minority. Bulgarian Turks also comprise the largest single population of Turks in the Balkans. They primarily live in the southern province of Kardzhali and the northeastern provinces of Shumen, Silistra, Razgrad and Targovishte. There is also a diaspora outside Bulgaria in countries such as Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Romania, the most significant of which are the Bulgarian Turks in Turkey.
Bulgarian Turks are the descendants of Turkish settlers who entered the region after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, as well as Bulgarian converts to Islam who became Turkified during the centuries of Ottoman rule. However, it has also been suggested that some Turks living today in Bulgaria may be direct ethnic descendants of earlier medieval Pecheneg, Oghuz, and Cuman Turkic tribes. According to local tradition, following a resettlement policy Karamanid Turks (mainly from the Konya Vilayet, Nevşehir Vilayet and Niğde Vilayet of the Karaman Province) were settled mainly in the Kardzhali area by the sultans Mehmed the Conqueror, Selim and Mahmud II. The Turkish community became an ethnic minority when the Principality of Bulgaria was established after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. This community is of Turkish ethnic consciousness and differs from the majority Bulgarian ethnicity and the rest of the Bulgarian nation by its own language, religion, culture, customs, and traditions.
43°35′N 28°0′E / 43.583°N 28.000°E
Dobrich Province (Bulgarian: Област Добрич, Oblast Dobrich, former name Dobrich okrug) is a province in northeastern Bulgaria, part of Southern Dobruja geographical region. It is bounded on the east by the Black Sea, on the south by Varna Province, on the west by Shumen and Silistra provinces, and on the north by Romania. It is divided into eight municipalities. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 186,016.The province was part of Romania between 1913 and 1940.
Islam in Bulgaria is a minority religion and the second largest religion in the country after Christianity. According to the 2021 Census, the total number of Muslims in Bulgaria stood at 638,708 corresponding to 9.8% of the population. Ethnically, Muslims in Bulgaria are Turks, Bulgarians and Roma, living mainly in parts of northeastern Bulgaria (mainly in Razgrad, Targovishte, Shumen and Silistra Provinces) and in the Rhodope Mountains (mainly in Kardzhali Province and Smolyan Province).
Shumen (Bulgarian: Шумен, also romanized as Shoumen or Šumen, pronounced [ˈʃumɛn], Turkish: Şumnu) is the tenth-largest city in Bulgaria and the administrative and economic capital of Shumen Province.