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Why the Balkans?

WHAT ARE THE BALKANS?

The most southeastern European peninsula is called the Balkan Peninsula. The name was first introduced by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808. Nowadays the area is known as the Balkans or Southeastern Europe.

Geographically speaking the Peninsula is surrounded by the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the Mediterranean Sea including its subdivisions: the Adriatic, the Ionian, the Libyan, and the Aegean Seas. Its northern continental border is still debated but one of the common theories suggest it follows the nearly parallel line of the rivers: the Danube – Sava – Krka – Vipava – Isonzo/Soča. The northern geographical border lies between the Danube Delta (Romania and Ukraine) and the estuary of Isonzo/Soča (Italy), which mark the most eastern and respectively the most western points of the Peninsula. The southernmost point of the continental Balkan area is Cape Mattapan in Greece. Its highest peak is Musala (2925 m) in the Rila Mountains (Bulgaria). The Peninsula is surrounded by the biggest Mediterranean archipelagos: the Greek in the south and the Croatian in the west including a couple thousand islands the biggest of which is Crete (Greece).

This relatively triangular territory accommodates on approx. 550 000 sq. km, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, most of Croatia and Serbia, parts of Romania, Slovenia, Turkey, and even Italy and Ukraine. However, politically, culturally, and historically speaking, the term Balkan generally refers to the first 12 countries.

The area has very diverse landscapes representing nearly all typical European landscapes including high snowy mountain peaks, deep river valleys, fertile plains, steppes, mini desserts, forests and beautiful shores of any kind.

Natural diversity mirrors the cultural diversity of the Peninsula. For millennia the Balkans have been a contact zone between the Mediterranean, Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia and the Near East. Here historians can find in retrospect arguably any social phenomenon that ever existed in Europe over the last 2000 years. Languages spoken here belong to all major linguistic families in Europe (Slavic, Germanic, Romance, Turkic plus Albanian, Greek and Armenian). Three major Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam and almost all of their denominations have been coexisting for centuries. Nearly the entire Balkan area was under the rule of the Roman Empire in the 1st to 5th centuries, under the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire in the 5th to 6th c. and 11th -12th c. and under the Ottoman Empire from the 15th to 17th c. However, a strong historical footprint in the medieval period (7th through 17th centuries) was left by the medieval Frankish and Bulgarian Empires, Serbian kingdom (an Empire between 1340 and 1371), Croatian and Hungarian kingdoms, Venetian, Genoese and Ragusan (Dubrovnik) republics, the crusader states including the Latin Empire, the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldova and the Mongol Golden Horde. The modern history of the Balkans is regarded as a result of the political chess game between the great powers and liberation/independent movements of Balkan peoples inspired by nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

All this makes Southeastern Europe a unique showroom of Europe's history and geography.   

   

SOME FACTS WHICH EXPLAIN WHY WE WORK HERE AND WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THE REGION:
  • 1.6 million year old human remains found in Kozarnika cave, Bulgaria are among the oldest human remains in Europe found to date. This is evidence of early human migrations to the rest of Europe through the Balkans.
  • 7th millennium BCE – Europe’s first Neolithic farmers migrated to the Balkans from the Near East and settled here.
  • 6th millennium BCE – the Great Flood in the Black Sea zone. Many scholars associate it with the Biblical flood.
  • 5th millennium BCE – Balkan Chalcolithic civilization turned, for the first time in human history, metal processing into an industry and built Europe's first proto-towns.
  • The following ancient people developed their civilizations in the Balkan region: Minoans and Ancient Greeks, Macedonians, Illyrians and Thracians, Celts and Romans as well as different Hellenic, Albanian, Germanic, Iranic, Slavic, Armenian, Romance, Jewish and Turkic peoples and communities make the history and culture of Balkans complex and interesting.
TODAY WE DISCOVER THE REMAINS OF MANY CIVILIZATIONS THAT ONCE EXISTED IN THE BALKAN TERRITORY. SOME OF THE MOST POPULAR ARE:
  • The Minoan civilization;
  • The Ancient Greek civilization with the world's oldest democratic state of Athens;
  • Hellenistic civilizations and the Empire of Alexander the Great;
  • Roman civilization and Empire;
  • The East European civilization of the Byzantine Empire, medieval and modern Bulgaria – homeland of the Cyrillic alphabet, medieval and modern Serbia and Montenegro; principalities of Wallachia, Moldova and modern Romania as well as modern North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovian etc.;
  • West European civilization and the Kingdoms of Croatia and Hungary, the Balkan Crusaders' states and the Latin Empire, Venetian, Ragusan and Genoese republics as well as Austro-Hungary and Italy;
  • Islamic civilization of the Arab caliphate, the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovian etc.;
  • Hebrew civilization of Judean, Sepharadic and Ashkenazi Jews.
  • In the course of history parts of the Balkans were conquered for shorter periods by mighty neighbors such as Achaemenid Persia and the Mongol Empires.
THE PENINSULA IS HOME TO THREE WORLD RELIGIONS:
  • Since the 1st century CE, Christianity (brought by apostles Paul and Andrew) and Judaism (brought by Jewish communities from different parts of Roman Empire most of whom arrived here in the 15th and 16th centuries after prosecutions from Western Europe).
  • Arabs tried unsuccessfully to invade the Balkans several times in the period from the 7th to 10th centuries and despite some of their possessions in the Greek archipelago they did not leave a sustainable cultural imprint in the area. Since the 14th century, Islam brought by Ottoman Turks has become a major part of the Balkan cultural landscape.
  • Today, the majority of Balkan people are Christian Orthodox. Here are the episcopal sees of four Christian Orthodox patriarchates (Ecumenical, Bulgarian, Serbian and Romanian).
  • Croatia and Slovenia are the Peninsula’s traditional Catholic countries, though Catholic communities as well as evangelist communities are spread throughout the region.
  • Beside the majority of Muslim Sunni Turks, Albanians and Bosnians in the Balkans live also vital Shia communities.
FAMOUS NAMES FROM THE BALKANS YOU MAY ASSOCIATE WITH FACTS YOU KNOW FROM HISTORY

Achilles – a Greek hero from the Trojan War.

Orpheus – legendary Thracian musician, poet, prophet and king.

Alexander the Great (336-323 BCE) – king of Macedonia who established the mighty Macedonian Empire.

Ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Aristotle and Plato.

Spartacus – Roman gladiator of Thracian origin, who led the major slave uprising against Rome.

Roman and Byzantine emperors like Diocletian, Constantine the Great and Justinian were born in the Balkan provinces of Roman Empire.

Emperor Simeon of Bulgaria (893-927) – the first Tsar.

Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) - the greatest among all Ottoman sultans.

Nikola Tesla - Serbian and US inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Mother Teresa - Roman Catholic Religious Sister and world renowned missionary from Skopje, North Macedonia.

   

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