ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some frequently used words describing and orienting the feeling of patriotism, defined as a set of attachments to places and people, in the mid-nineteenth century. It examines briefly some notable figures in the Bulgar movement and their particular patriotic feelings as expressed by themselves and seen by contemporaries. The Bulgar dignitaries were overjoyed – interestingly, not so much because Bulgar students would be for the first time admitted to the school, but because the term Bulgar milleti had been mentioned in a sultanic decree. Judging by the memoirs of some of the Bulgar leadership in Istanbul, the turn of the 1870s brought a profound shift in the common mood. According to Hristo Stambolski's memoirs, in the summer of 1858, a group of Istanbullu Bulgar dignitaries petitioned the grand vizier to have 15–20 Bulgar students admitted to the Imperial Medical School in Istanbul.
