Chiprovtsi
Chiprovtsi is a small town in northwestern Bulgaria, administratively part of Montana Province. It lies on the shores of the river Ogosta in the western Balkan Mountains, very close to the Bulgarian-Serbian border. A town of about 2,000 inhabitants, Chiprovtsi is the administrative centre of Chiprovtsi Municipality that also covers nine nearby villages.
Chiprovtsi is thought to have been founded in the Late Middle Ages as a mining and metalsmithing centre. Attracting German ore miners who introduced Roman Catholicism to the area, the town grew in importance as a cultural, economic, and religious centre of the Bulgarian Catholics and the entire Bulgarian northwest during the first few centuries of Ottoman rule. The apogee of this upsurge was the anti-Ottoman Chiprovtsi Uprising of 1688. After the suppression of the uprising, some of the town's population fled to Habsburg-ruled lands; those unable to flee were killed or enslaved by the Ottomans.
Deserted for about 30 years, the town was repopulated by Eastern Orthodox Bulgarians, beginning in the 1720s. It was following this new settlement that Chiprovtsi became a major centre of the Bulgarian carpet industry. Other traditional industries have been stock breeding, agriculture and fur trade. Today, Chiprovtsi municipality experiences a declining population and above-average unemployment. However, the development of alternative tourism help to sustain the economy.
Name
According to linguist Ivan Duridanov, Chiprovtsi's original name was Kipurovets. The current form gradually emerged through a sound shift and a syncope. The name is of Slavic origin, but may be linked to the archaic Greek loanword kipos, a word also borrowed by Serbian. Some researchers derive the toponym from the personal name Kipra or Kipro, implying beauty and sprightliness. Another popular hypothesis, although rejected by Duridanov, links the name to Latin cuprum due to the numerous copper deposits and mines in the region in Ancient Roman times.The name was first mentioned in a western source, namely a Latin document of 1565, as Chiprovatz. Similar forms such as Chipurovatz, Chiprouvatz, Chiprovotzii, Chiprovtzi, Kiprovazo, Chiprovatzium, Kiprovetz and Kiprovtzi have been used throughout the 16th–17th centuries. The attested Serbo-Croatian pronunciation of the suffix as opposed to standard Bulgarian is explained with the influence of the so-called "Illyrian language", a Dalmatian form of Croatian language used by the Franciscan clerics in the town in the 17th century.
The town has been conventionally divided into several neighbourhoods ; most are named according to the profession and social status of their residents. In 1888, D. Marinov recorded the existence of the Srebril or Srebrana, Kyurkchiyska, Pazarska, Tabashka, Partsal and Trap neighbourhoods. The existence of a Saksonska neighbourhood was also attested until the 17th century. Another actively used pair of toponyms is Dolni kray and Gorni kray, referring to the town neighbourhoods closer to the river or the mountain respectively.
Chiprovtsi Point and Chiprovtsi Islets in Rugged Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica are named after Chiprovtsi.
Geography
Chiprovtsi is situated in a small valley at the foot of the Chiprovtsi Mountain, a high northern branch of the western Balkan Mountains. The Chiprovtsi Mountain forms the border between Bulgaria and the neighbouring Serbia. It is long and features several peaks around, including Midzhur, Martinova Chuka, Golyama Chuka, Kopren, Tri Chuki and Vrazha Glava. The Ogosta River, a right tributary of the Danube, originates from the Chiprovtsi Mountain and flows northeast through the Danubian Plain to join the Danube in Vratsa Province. Just northeast of the town is another mountain, Shiroka Planina, a branch of the Fore-Balkan Mountains. The region is rich in metal and mineral deposits.Demographics
On 31 July 2005, Chiprovtsi's population was 2,375 people — 1,167 men and 1,208 women. By June 2008, the town's population had declined to 2,122.History
Antiquity and Middle Ages
It is known that the area around Chiprovtsi has been inhabited since the time of the Thracians and later the Roman Empire, when the local metal deposits were exploited. According to historian V. Velkov, the valley of the Ogosta was inhabited by Thracians since the early 1st millennium BC. According to ancient accounts, the area was populated by the Thracian tribe of the Triballi or a related group of Thracians. The Romans conquered what is today the Bulgarian northwest after 29 BC and consolidated their authority in the region under Emperor Trajan. There are remains of Roman fortifications around Chiprovtsi, such as the Latin Fortress ruins in the Kula area, where coins dating to the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus have been unearthed, and the Big Ruins south of the town. The gold, silver, lead, copper and iron mines brought sizable revenue to the Romans, who took good care to protect these from barbarian attacks.With the arrival of the Seven Slavic tribes and the Bulgars in the 6th–7th century and the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire in 680 in the former lands of the Eastern Roman Empire, the entire region was soon incorporated into the Bulgarian realm. After a period of renewed Byzantine rule in 1018–1185, it was part of the Second Bulgarian Empire until its conquest by the Ottomans in the late 14th or early 15th century.
The presence of the German ore miners, known locally as sasi, cannot be accurately dated. Some researchers estimate their arrival in Chiprovtsi to be in the mid-14th century, the time of the last Bulgarian emperors, while others claim they reached the town during the early Ottoman rule of Bulgaria. Their exact number and place of origin are also vague, although the German miners were widely recruited as specialists in medieval Wallachia, Transylvania and Serbia. In Chiprovtsi, they are thought to have arrived as a single group of about 50–60 people with their families. They were probably recruited through special contracts and likely received some privileges compared to the native Bulgarian population. In Chiprovtsi's mines, they served as technicians and overseers, contributing to the technological progress of mining in the region. They were, however, gradually assimilated by the local Bulgarians by the mid-15th century, as indicated by German names with Slavic suffixes in the population registers. The Germans left behind the name of one of the neighbourhoods, still known as the "Saxon" neighbourhood in the 17th century, and Roman Catholicism as the dominant religion in the town.
In the second half of the 14th century, a certain number of Bosnian Croats and Ragusan merchants arrived in Chiprovtsi and its surroundings, accompanied by some Franciscan clerics from Catholic Franciscan province of Silver Bosnia. According to the research of Croatian historian Vitomir Belaj, the Catholic Franciscans had arrived from medieval Bosnia in western Bulgaria at the time of Bosnian vicar Bartul Alvernski, who himself originated from Italy, in 1366. Among the newcoming settlers there were some noblemen as well. According to Belaj, these included members of the Parchevich family, the ancestral house of the Peyachevich family.
Early Ottoman rule
As the Ottomans subjugated the Balkans in the 14th–15th centuries, they valued the Chiprovtsi mines for their military and civil needs and sought to renew the ore extraction that had been interrupted by warfare. Renewed exploitation of the local deposits is thought to have commenced by the late 15th century; a note of 1479 mentions that the mines "in Bosnia, Herzegovina and other places" had been rented.The town of Chiprovtsi and several of the surrounding villages were administratively organized as a hass, or a private possession of the sultan's royal family and later of the sultan's mother. The special status of the area meant that the local Christians would not be subject to the usual discriminatory laws, but would have to pay an annual tribute of silver to the sultan. Later on, the estate was organized as a waqf, a land devoted for Muslim religious or charitable purposes. Chiprovtsi and the region were inhabited exclusively by Christians and they had the privilege to perform their rituals in public without discrimination. The only Turkish person in the town was the sultan's representative and no Turks were allowed to settle there, as the local Bulgarians enjoyed self-government to a certain degree and were administered by an elected council of eminent Bulgarian residents. A fragment of the area's pre-Ottoman Bulgarian administrative division may have also been preserved, as it is referred to under the Slavic name voivodeship in some documents.
| Year | Population | Source |
| 1577 | 2,000 | anonymous |
| 1585 | 300 families | Ottoman account |
| 1624 | 2,600 | Pietro Masarechi |
| 1640 | 4,430 | Bakshev |
| 1647 | 4,000 | Bakshev |
| 1649 | 3,800 | Bakshev |
| 1653 | 3,660 | Bakshev |
| 1658 | 3,640 | Bakshev |
| 1666 | 550 families | Ottoman account |
| 1667 | 4,140 | Bakshev |
| 1670 | 4,140 | Bakshev |
| 1679 | 4,270 | Knezhevich |
By the 1520s, Chiprovtsi was still a minor centre of mining activity compared to other places in the empire. In that period, it brought a revenue of 47,553 akçe, as compared to Kratovo's 100,000 and Srebrenica's 477,000. The Catholic miners are known to have arrived by that time, as the Catholic Church of Saint Mary had been built around 1487, but it was not until the years after the 1520s that Chiprovtsi attracted more colonists and turned into one of the Ottoman Empire's leading mining centres. By 1528, Chiprovtsi had a mint and was manufacturing silver coins. In 1585, the miners were forced to work night and day and had to pay increased taxes, leading to protests and the danger that they may migrate. By the time, Chiprovtsi was already providing a revenue of 1,400,000 akçe, making it one of the empire's prime mining and metalworking regions.
In the mid-16th century, Chiprovtsi began to attract the attention of Catholic officials from Rome. In 1565, the archbishop of Antivari Ambrosius arrived in the town as an apostolic visitor. In 1592–1595, the Bosnian Croat cleric Peter Solinat and a group of Franciscans established a Catholic mission in the town. In 1601, Solinat was appointed bishop of Sofia with his seat in Chiprovtsi by Pope Clement VIII. He chose to reside in Chiprovtsi because Sofia's Catholic population was limited to a handful of Ragusan merchant families.