The Museum of Ethnography's travelling exhibition in Carev Brod, Bulgaria

The travelling exhibition of the Museum of Ethnography was presented in Carev brod after Vetovo. The event took place after the Tatar spring festival of Tepres, for which Bahtisen Kaya, an enthusiastic representative of the local Tatar community, organised a day-long programme. He considered it particularly important that the Tatars of Shumen County should be able to present themselves, as it is little known even to members of the Tatar community that there are Tatars living in the southernmost part of Dobruja.

According to the local narrative, after the Crimean War, the Ottoman Empire deliberately settled the Tatars in this area - not only in Carev brod, but also in ten other villages in the surrounding area. Nearby, Midhat Pasha, the governor of the Danube vilayet, founded the largest stud farm in the Balkans, called 'Kabiyuk', where horses were bred for the imperial army. The Tatars were renowned for their knowledge of horse breeding and husbandry, so it was only natural that they were entrusted with this task.

At the beginning of the 20th century, new ethnic groups arrived in the village: Ferdinand I, Tsar of Bulgaria, a ruler from the House of Wettin, settled German settlers from the Banat and Bulgarians from the Banat. This created the unique situation that at the beginning of the century the village had both a German and a Tatar school. This clearly shows that these two ethnic communities were the most dominant groups in the village during this period. The former settlement of the Germans also led to the establishment of a Benedictine convent for women, which is still in operation today. The ethnic composition of the village is still diverse, with Tatars, Turks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Bulgarians and Germans from Banat. The village has a Tatar mosque and both Orthodox and Catholic churches.

Two years ago, when I first visited the village with my colleague Gabriella Paréj, Mrs Bahtisen donated items from her own dowry chest to the Museum of Ethnography. This time, she exhibited her own and her collected objects as part of the international cultural project Crimean Tatar Studies.

 As mentioned earlier, and as this exhibition in particular illustrated, the efforts of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine to rediscover and reconstruct their traditions are an inspiration for communities in the diaspora. A round table discussion following the exhibition presented the main results of three years of research in Bulgaria.

Author and pictures : Vivien Zatykó