Turkic, Roman, or Iranian?

Abstract

The original, shorter, version of this paper [see below n. 26] on the so-called six great boilades known from the Bulgar(ian) early medieval past (after the 890s) as ‘bolyars’ (cf. also the late Rus’ rendering as ‘boyars’) was published in 2002 but only in Bulgarian. That is why an English version with some addenda is proposed in the hope that colleagues might comment on it, elucidating important details concerning this institution. Thus, the paper intends to identify analogies with ancient and early medieval Iranian and (East) Roman/Byzantine statehood. However, similarities may prove to be purely formal rather than of a genetic (or causal) nature and, therefore, should not lead to final conclusions, especially in the absence of further unambiguous information coming from primary sources.