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Plate 15 from Die Bulgaren in ihren historischen, ethnographischen und politischen Grenzen by Ishirkoff & Zlatarski Index no. 0048:0015
Schafarik's Ethnological Map (1842)  —  Slovanský Zeměvid

The green-bordered text below is is the English version of the explanatory text, from the page facing the map. Another page on this site gives the full text in German, English, French, and Bulgarian.

15. – Schafarik's Ethnological Map (1842).

Paul Josef Schafarik, (1795-1861) of Bohemian nationality, is the first Slavic scientist who designed a map of the ethnological frontiers of the slavic nations. The map reproduced here in fac-simile has been taken from his ethnographical map "Slovansky Zemevid" published in Prague in 1842. We print here only that part concerning the Balkan peninsula – exactly on the same scale as the original.

Schafarik has not travelled in the Balkan peninsula, but he was always in communication with the inhabitants of the Balkan countries, he knew well the history, the language, the literature, and the antiquities of the Slavic peoples, and – which here is of the utmost importance – he knew thoroughly the Servian language and the boundaries of the Servian race, for he was a professor at the Servian Lyceum of Nowi-Sad (Hungary) for a period of 14 years.

He left the Lyceum in 1835 and settled down at Prague. There he devoted himself to the study of the Slavs and of slavic antiquities, which studies he had already commenced, according to his biographer, at the Lyceum. (La Grande Encyclopédie, vol. 29.)

Schafarik's map does not go into details; his merit, however, consists in his being the first who very exactly delimited the Bulgarians from their neigbours – the Servians, Rumanians, Greeks, and Albanians. According to Schafarik nearly the whole of Macedonia, the region of Nisch, the whole of Dobrudja, and even a part of to-day's Russian Bessarabia are territories inhabited by Bulgarians.

Keywords: SlavsSchafarik

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