As an avid reader and student of history, my stay in Bulgaria has rekindled my interest in the Balkan region and made me appreciate the essential role it played in European history. Most Western travellers visiting Bulgaria for the first time will confess their ignorance about this country. Some may even admit to not knowing the proper hemisphere of its location. If their experience is anything like mine, departing the plane, I quickly found my misplaced and preconceived notions to be in rapid retreat.

While doing research for a book on Christian history, the volumes of material often took me to this region. Reading about this area let me imagine the leaders, the battles and the extreme hardships of the people. As I walk the landscape today, it inspires my thoughts and allows me to recall epochs of the past, escape the constraints of time and envisage events that unfolded all around. While driving through the countryside, an abundance of ruins can transform the entire landscape back to antiquity. A quick blink of the eye and yesterday can become today, if you only know how to see.

Like the unrolling of a scroll revealing hidden secrets, recent discoveries in the tombs are disclosing the tales of antiquity which transpired this land between Greece and Italy. I believe many Westerners need to re-discover this region. As I have now realised, Bulgaria is not only lacking notoriety for the contemporary traveller, but it remains almost unmentioned in historical archives as well.

Any historian knows Bulgaria's location has necessitated its people to be of unequalled dynamic resilience, a factor which alone warrants heroic applause between the pages of world narratives. This is a worthy praise that I have not often found. Investigations will show that raw courage throughout the millennia has always been in abundant supply. Being positioned at the clashing point for Europe, Africa and Asia, it was destined to birth countless peoples, cultures and civilisations. Every great nation has been through here, including China. Epic tales from its past teeming with bravery, patriotism, triumphs and tragedies are today being uncovered; overcoming tragedy is always the seed and the recipe for brilliant romance. Its proximity eliminating all but the strongest, it has endured yet, still, just the whisper of the word Bulgaria in the pages of history one rarely hears.

What was not mentioned
Let me point out a few examples from Sir Edward Creasy, a famous military historian often quoted for accuracy, who knew the importance of classic and world-changing events. He cites the accounts of earlier "peoples like the Dorians who migrated from coastal Greece northward", there being no mention of present-day Bulgaria. His history records the brilliance of Philip II and Alexander of Macedonia as they "formed a united Greece before marching on to Persia".

Incidentally, what people (Thracians rarely mentioned) were included in Alexander's army capable of crushing Darius III in three decisive battles? (The Battle of Arbela is one of the 15 most important battles, according to Sir Edward Creasy.) Other chronologies do mention the Thracians [of course, they had no letters (a point still being debated)], but typically only when recounting the tale of Spartacus (characterised as a "great organiser and warrior due to his training in the arena"). (This alone is an example of a supreme admonishment to a Thracian.)

Creasy characterises the greatness of Caesar marching from "Italy in pursuit of Pompey at Pharsalus (another one of the 15 most important battles) into Greece" as though he somehow seemed to have bypassed this entire yet-as-named country.

There was a hugely significant Gothic "revolt in Lower Moesia which led to the massacre of Valens' legions in Adrianapole (one of the 15 most important battles), severely weakening the defences of the Roman Empire along the Danube". This vacuum was soon exploited by Attila, as he "sacked and ravaged 100s of towns north of Constantinople" (Bulgaria) before "marching north into what is now France" (not to be named for another 200 years) for a battle at Chalons-sur-Marne (one of the 15 most important battles). (As a sidebar, France was founded by the Franks who were Teutonic German.)

If you follow the travels of the Crusaders, they "left parts of France and travelled down through Moesia before reaching Constantinople, and then on to Outremer". (No mention of the hostels or stop overs at Moesian Sofia or Plovdiv.) Similar examples of written history go on and on.

To be sure, the Western historians, such as Creasy, fully comprehended the significance of the area and understood its proximity as a crossroads and major trade route. These writers collectively appreciate the classic antiquities, having an undying love affair with that part of history defining our past. The events in this area are well chronicled, and the leaders marching through have all been romanticised, but the fabric of the people has been unjustly overlooked.

The romance of the region is not to be found in the books of the West. The character of the individual that prevailed and allowed the leaders to preserve the region is hardly recorded. The trespassing armies and the crossing caravans were the possessors of the latest discoveries and the newest knowledge, with disease and destruction often the stowaway. Whether trading silk or depositing the plague, this land is a testimony of resilience and change, of hardship and courage. Had historians respected and embraced the contributions of the people, they would have kindly called them by name.

There has never been a shortage of Western writers keen to lionise and canonise their own people, places and events. Without argument, there have been many whom are deserving and worthy of these honours. Bulgaria, being strategically positioned at these crossroads, was often a civilisation in conflict for identity and self-preservation. Its resistance to extinction superseded any self-adulation by playwrights. Its heroes, and there were many, just never made the pages of Edward Gibbon.

The concerns for basic needs were more important than the architecture of the theatre. Even Shakespeare would agree that what one has on his table comes before poetry. But alas "it must be the winter of our discontent", because Shakespeare, the exalted symbol of Western literature, also neglected Bulgaria. The people were omitted from the pages of the respected writers and eventually forgotten in the minds of the world.

It continues today as you see the puzzled expression on the face of a fellow traveller when you tell them you are going to Bulgaria. "Is that in Europe?" they ask. The exalted reply should be, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose."

What it was
The absence of accuracy in literature must not omit Bulgaria from its true destiny. This consequence of the Bulgarian presence in a place of colliding cultures was significant and should become more fully appreciated. The inhabitants were the oldest and first Europeans, with their beginnings being of Thracian successes both militarily and economically. Earliest civilisations were developed along the Black Sea as long ago as 8000 BCE. It is clear they traded all over the Mediterranean and as far away as India. They became renowned horsemen and metallurgists (weaponry), two ingredients needed for fierce and capable warriors. Herodotus mentions them as being the most numerous people in Europe, and Homer tells of them occupying the left flank in the battle of Troy. It is believed that King Priam gave up his second most prized possession, a golden treasure made from Thrace for the return of his most prized possession, the body of his son Hector.

In 330 BCE, they were restrained and merged with the Macedonians by Alexander the Great. Thracians, therefore, played an instrumental part in the future of the world as Alexander spread his legacy of Hellenistic society into Persia and all of its provinces. The Hellenistic rule was a mixture of Greek, Macedonian and Thracian culture, comprising a blend of learning, warfare and organisational skills.

Alexander's subjugation of Bactria and his marriage to a princess there firmly cemented Macedonian presence north of the Caspian. This was instrumental when the civilisation known as the Bulgars (many names from ancient Bactria and present Bulgaria are similarly related) about 600 years later returned with Macedonian organisation, commerce and battle skills as they merged with a Slavic tribe migrating southward. The Slavs were known for bravery, fidelity, equal treatment for women and their love of free institutions.

This most uncommon merger peacefully descended into the region south of the Danube, and in the name of Christianity created the beginnings of the oldest country in Europe, Bulgaria. These elements embodied the character of the people possessing a region wanted by unfriendly neighbours for the next 1500 years. Their existence has demonstrated a collective repudiation of barbaric intrusions (more than 53 separate tribes invaded) and later Muslim invasions (their prevention of the Saracens entering Europe has been overshadowed by the battle of Tours, one of the 15 most important battles). These two battles were almost simultaneously waged in Bulgaria and in Gaul.

The significance
The Thomas Carlyle Great Man Theory, frequently a bedrock of Western writers, has sometimes proven hollow to me, because events are typically, but not always, more significant than the men participating. Quite often, the great event tends to shrink in importance with time as the romance of the Western pen has the yearning to invent the iconic leader. Charles Martel (The Hammer) in Gaul at the Battle of Tours (he did not have his own army) saving Europe from the infidels gave the survivors such a feeling of "liberte, egalite, fraternite" that the very similar battle in Bulgaria for the champion of the Crescent and the Cross is lost only to locals.

This alone is proof of magnificence in shame. The comparisons between the two battles here would take too much space. Suffice it to say the Saracens in Bulgaria were not divided and driven by the spoils of war, maybe four times as strong, well disciplined and sufficiently supplied with ample lines from both sea and land back into Byzantium. Both events forever altered the map of Europe. They both also rescued Christendom from Islam, saving her relics from antiquity and preserving her future in the West. One side of Europe has been overlooked, passed over, and almost forgotten in this endeavour.

While touring the Varna Museum of History, my colleague, researcher and part-time archaeologist Kremena Ivanova and I were discussing this subject. She quickly rattled off the names of Bulgarian heroes, such as Vassil Levski and Hristo Botev, neither of whom registered in my memory. I was then convinced of the misconceptions of some of the literature of the past. Europe owes a debt of gratitude to the ancestors of Bulgaria who managed to hang on to this strategic piece of the world. Though continually sullied by the encroachments of her neighbours, she has persevered with splendour as the breakwater to the West. With undeniable greatness rarely more commonplace in any other race, they helped to preserve Christianity and the civilisation of Europe.

European writers need to re-discover the past of Bulgaria for her deserved future in the world. She will be given her importance in the pages of antiquity and obtain her prominence on the travel maps of today. In fact, as Sir Edward Creasy once said: "The more we test their importance, the more we will be led to estimate it." Not surprisingly, he was speaking of the French. I hope the world will re-discover Bulgaria as I have. Only then will the romance of the pen begin to notice a truly heroic and beautiful part of the world.