ABSTRACT
A paper dealing with minorities and foreigners in a medieval society must begin with the concept of the ‘other’ developed and followed within its structure. Unfortunately, the evidence for such a concept in medieval Bulgarian society is not so apparent and definitely not abundant. The aim of the present article, however, is not to decide this very complex problem. Rather it undertakes the modest task of providing an overview of the contribution of ‘others’ to the social and spatial appearance of medieval Bulgarian towns in the light of the available written and archaeological data. Thus our observations are presented within the broader framework of the findings of a number of Bulgarian scholars studying this particular issue over the last hundred years.
