Tervel (, ) is a town in northeastern

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

, part of

Dobrich Province Dobrich Province (, , 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 Silist ...

. It is the administrative centre of

Tervel Municipality Tervel Municipality () is a municipality ('' obshtina'') in Dobrich Province, Northeastern Bulgaria, located in Southern Dobruja geographical region, about 30 km south of Danube river. It is named after its administrative centre, the town of ...

, which lies in the westernmost part of the province. As of December 2009, the town had a population of 6,667.Bulgarian National Statistical Institute - towns in 2009
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History

The old

Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish (, ; ) was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. ...

name of the town was ''Kurtbunar'' ("well of the wolves"): the village was first mentioned in Ottoman tax registers of 1673, although the area has been inhabited continuously since antiquity by the

Getae The Getae or Getai ( or , also Getans) were a large nation who inhabited the regions to either side of the Lower Danube in what is today northern Bulgaria and southern Romania, throughout much of Classical Antiquity. The main source of informa ...

tribe of

Thracians The Thracians (; ; ) were an Indo-European languages, Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Southeast Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied the area that today is shared betwee ...

, then the

Slavs The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and ...

and the

Bulgars The Bulgars (also Bulghars, Bulgari, Bolgars, Bolghars, Bolgari, Proto-Bulgarians) were Turkic peoples, Turkic Nomad, semi-nomadic warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region between the 5th and 7th centu ...

, and constituted a part of the Bulgarian Empire during most of the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

. In 1878, Kurtbunar became part of the newly liberated

Principality of Bulgaria The Principality of Bulgaria () was a vassal state under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. It was established by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. After the Russo-Turkish War ended with a Russian victory, the Treaty of San Stefano was signed ...

and it was promoted to a district centre of

Silistra Silistra ( ; ; or ) is a town in Northeastern Bulgaria. The town lies on the southern bank of the lower Danube river, and is also the part of the Romanian border where it stops following the Danube. Silistra is the administrative center of the ...

County on 26 July 1882. The village was part of

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

along with all of

Southern Dobruja Southern Dobruja or South Dobruja ( or simply , ; or , ), also the Quadrilateral (), is an area of north-eastern Bulgaria comprising Dobrich and Silistra provinces, part of the historical region of Dobruja. It has an area of 7,412 square km an ...

between 1913 and 1940, and the name was rendered as ''Curtbunar''. It was also a district centre of

Durostor County Durostor County was a county (''județ'') of the Kingdom of Romania, in Southern Dobruja, with the seat at Dârstor. The county was located in the south-eastern part of Greater Romania, in the southern Dobrogea region, known as Cadrilater. Current ...

under Romanian rule. The modern Bulgarian name honours

Tervel of Bulgaria Caesar Tervel (), also called Tarvel, Terval, or Terbelis in Byzantine Empire, Byzantine sources, was the ruler Caesar (title), Caesar of History of Bulgaria, Bulgaria during the First Bulgarian Empire at the beginning of the 8th century. In 705 ...

, a successful eighth-century Bulgarian monarch. The former village was proclaimed a town in January 1960. Tervel has a museum opened in 1986. It features an

ethnographic Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

collection, an art gallery and an archaeological exposition, including a 3,500-year-old

human skeleton The human skeleton is the internal framework of the human body. It is composed of around 270 bones at birth – this total decreases to around 206 bones by adulthood after some bones get fused together. The bone mass in the skeleton makes up ab ...

References

Towns in Bulgaria Populated places in Dobrich Province {{Dobrich-geo-stub