The decline
After Ivailo was dethroned and met his death the boyars put on the throne Georgi Terter (1280— 1293) – the first of the Terterid dynasty which ruled until 1323. Those were decades of territorial fragmentation and hegemony of Tatar agents in the government of the state. The Byzantine Empire gradually grew weaker and became economically dependent on the Italian republics Venice and Genoa.
Meanwhile, Serbia marked the highest point in its medieval development and under the reign of Stefan Doushan many Bulgarian and Byzantine lands fell in its confines. Of all Terterids only Todor Svetoslav (1300-1321) was able for a time to put an end to the intestine struggles and achieve a settlement with the Tatar Khans. But the splitting among the boyars, in one hand, and among the Balkan peoples, in another, continued…
Dynasty of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom
The third dynasty of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, the Shishmanids, ruled from 1323 to 1393. Its founder, King Michail Shishman (1323- 1330), waged wars against Serbia and Byzantium with the aim to recover Macedonia and Thrace – but lost the battle of Velbuzhd against the Serbs in 1330 and died of his wounds. The next year Ivan Alexander (1331-1371) came to the throne and succeeded to achieve a relative stability both of the state and of its foreign relations Tours Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the processes of feudal separation were irreversible and different independent estates gradually took shape in the region of Dobmdja under the rule of the brothers Balik, Todor and Dobrotitsa, in the Rhodopes and the Aegean, in Macedonia…
In 1355 king Ivan Alexander chose the Vidin region as his kingdom and entrusted its government to his first son, Ivan Sratsimir. The Turnovo region was given the same statute and was entrusted to the second son, Ivan Shishman (1371-1396). During the Shishmanid dynasty Bulgaria saw a renewal of the splendid traditions of Byzantine culture, and literature, painting and sculpture flourished. But, already dismembered, the kingdom could not long withstand the rising Ottoman Empire…
Trips And Tours 