Archaeologists to Resume Excavations of Medieval Bulgarian Fortress Urvich, St. Iliya Monastery near Sofia
The Urvich Fortress is where the forces of the already feudally partitioned Second Bulgarian Empire repulsed the invading Ottoman Turks in 1371 AD postponing the Ottoman conquest of Sredets (Sofia) by nearly 15 years. Photo: Urvich.com
A team led by Bulgarian archaeologist Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov is starting on June 2, 2015, its scheduled excavations of the Urvich Fortress, which dates back to the medieval Bulgarian Empire, and its monastery named after St. Iliya (St. Elijah).
Ovcharov says that the St. Iliya Monastery should be unearthed in full by the end of 2015, reports the Bulgarian daily Novinar.
He points that the Urvich Fortress defended the medieval city of Sredets, today’s Bulgarian capital Sofia, from the attacks of the invading Ottoman Turks at the end of the 14th century AD.
Urvich was first excavated in 1958 by Bulgarian archaeologist Prof. Dimitar Ovcharov, the father of Nikolay Ovcharov, who discovered part of the fortress wall and fortress tower, and then again at the end of the 1970s when part of a medieval church with impressive murals was found.
Large-scale excavations of the Urvich Fortress were only undertaken at the beginning of the 21st century by Nikolay Ovcharov and Ass. Prof. Boni Petrunova (presently serving as a Deputy Minister of Culture), and have been conducted with funding from Sofia Municipality in the past 5 years.
In addition to the late medieval monastery, the archaeologists are set to continue their work on the excavations of the Urvich Fortress itself, where, according to Ovcharov, there will be work “for the [Bulgarian archaeology] students and their professors for generations to come”.
So far, the excavations have revealed a total of 1,200 square meters from the fortress where in 1371 AD for the forces of the already feudally partitioned Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD) for the first time faced the invading Ottoman Turks and repulsed them, postponing the conquest of Sofia by 15 years (it was ultimately conquered by the Ottomans in 1385 AD).
The Urvich Fortress was also captured by the Turks eventually but its monastery was preserved, and rebuilt in the 15th-17th century.
“I have never unearthed a better preserved monastery,” says archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov.
In December 2014, Ovcharov unveiled finds from the 2014 excavations of the Urvich Fortress, including a14th century AD gold coin from India.
Background Infonotes:
The Fortress of Urvich is located some 20 km southeast of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. The medieval fortress there was built in the 9th-10th century by the First Bulgarian Empire, possibly as early as the reign of Khan (or kanas) Krum (r. 803-814 AD) who first conquered Sofia for Bulgaria in 805 AD, and was lated developed during the reign of Tsar Ivan Asen II (r. 1218-1241 AD). It was first excavated in 1969 by Prof. Dimitar Ovcharov, father of Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov. Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov has resumed the excavations there in recent years. The Urvich archaeological site bears marks from different time periods – from the Roman Empire in the late Antiquity, Byzantium, the First Bulgarian Empire (680-1018 AD) and the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD) to the Ottoman Empire. In Bulgarian culture and national memory it is mostly known as a site of heroic resistance against the Ottoman Turkish invaders in the second half of the 14th century by some of the last state leaders of medieval Bulgaria, defending the strategically vital city of Sredets (today’s Sofia).
As the Second Bulgarian Empire was being conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th century (Sofia was conquered in 1385 AD), the Urvich fortress was set on fire but was later rebuilt and used by the Ottoman Turkish invaders; the local monastery was also restored. The archaeological excavations at Urvich have unearthed murals from the St. Iliya (St. Elijah) Church and St. Iliya Monastery, and some of the frescoes have been shown to the public. It has also been emphasized that there is information about the monastery at Urvich in the first History of Bulgaria, the Slavic-Bulgarian History, compiled by the Bulgarian monk Paisiy Hilendarski in 1762 AD, which was the book that essentially laid the foundations of the modern-day Bulgarian nation leading to the so called period of Bulgarian National Revival (late 18th-19th century). There is evidence that the St. Iliya Church at the Urvich Monastery was restored in the 15-17th century.
Back in 2011, Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov unveiled 18 gold coins found at Urvich which were minted by medieval Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander (r. 1331-1371). They are believed to have been part of a legendary medieval Bulgarian treasure – “treasure of the Shishman Dynasty”, which ruled Bulgaria from the ascension of Tsar Ivan Alexander to the throne in 1331 AD to the demise of his sons – Tsar Ivan Shishman (r. 1371-1395) and Tsar Ivan Sratsimir (r. 1371-1396) in the hands of the Ottoman Turks. It is believed that sometime in 1371-1372 AD the last Tsar of Bulgaria Proper, Ivan Shishman, buried his treasure at the fortress of Urvich where his forces made a stand against the invading Ottoman Turkish forces fighting fierce battles during the 1370s and 1380s. The archaeologists believe that Tsar Ivan Shishman’s treasure really existed but that most of it has been snatched by treasure-hunters and that the 18 gold coins found at Urvich are everything that is left of it.
