Blagoevgrad ( ) is а town in Southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Municipality and of Blagoevgrad Province. With a population of almost inhabitants, it is the economic and cultural centre of Southwestern Bulgaria. It is located in the valley of the Struma River at the foot of the Rila Mountains, south of Sofia, close to the border with North Macedonia.
Blagoevgrad features a pedestrian downtown, with preserved 19th-century architecture and numerous restaurants, cafés, coffee shops, and boutiques. It is home to two universities, the South-West University "Neofit Rilski" and the American University in Bulgaria. The town also hosts the "Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Humanitarian High School". The former Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki moved from Thessaloniki to Blagoevgrad (then Gorna Dzhumaya) in 1913.
Name
In Ottoman times the town was known as Yukarı Cuma in Turkish or Gorna Dzhumaya in Bulgarian (a partial translation of the Ottoman name). The name Gorna Dzhumaya (Горна Джума; "Upper Dzhumaya") distinguished the town from Dolna Dzhumaya (Долна Джумая; "Lower Dzhumaya", "Cuma-i Zir" in Turkish) to the south. The second is called today Irakleia, and is in Greece. The Aromanian language still uses this name to refer to the city, as it is known in the language as . In comparison, Irakleia ("Lower Dzhumaya") is known as .
The town was renamed Blagoevgrad in 1950, after the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party founder Dimitar Blagoev, who was an immigrant from Ottoman Macedonia.
History
Antiquity
A Hellenistic settlement called Scaptopara (market town in Thracian, Σκαπτοπάρα in Greek) emerged on the site of ancient Thracian settlement around 300 BC and was later incorporated into the Roman Empire with the rest of Thrace in 48 AD. The settlement was known for its hot springs supplying thermae. During the Crisis of the Third Century, the Scaptoparans wrote a petition to the emperor Gordian III, whose Latin and Koine Greek text is preserved in an inscription discovered there in 1868, and dated 238 AD. The petition complained about the conduct of soldiers and visitors to the baths and that appeals to the governor of the province of Thrace had failed; the emperor's reply, also inscribed, disclaimed responsibility and again referred the citizens to the governor for redress. The inscription has since been lost. Subsequently, the area was part of the eastern half of the late antique Roman Empire which later became known as the Byzantine Empire.
Ottoman Empire
Although the history of the settlement in the Middle Ages is unknown, during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans it became a Muslim-majority town called Cuma-ı Bala, meaning Upper Juma in Persian and Ottoman Turkish.
In the middle of the 17th century, the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi passed by here and wrote that the town of Orta Jumaa had 200 tiled houses, a large mosque with many worshippers and 80 souks and many mineral springs.
A Bulgarian quarter called Varosha was formed during the Bulgarian National Revival, with many of its typical houses and the Church of the Presentation of the Mother of God from 1844 being preserved to this day. In the 1830s, the French geologist Ami Boué passed by here and described Dzhumaya as a town of 3,000 to 4,000 inhabitants, where a hereditary voivode lived. The mosques prove that there were many Turks and Pomaks along with the Bulgarians. The streets are paved and very irregular. According to him, the Bulgarians call the town Shuma (from "shuma" - forest). Victor Grigorovich visited the town in 1845. A chitalishte was founded in 1866. Bulgarian scholar Georgi Strezov visited the town in 1891. According to him, there were 1200 houses.
Modern History
In 1900, according to Vasil Kanchov the population of the town numbered 6440 people, of whom 1250 were Bulgarians, 4500 Turks, 250 Vlachs, 200 Roma, 180 Jews and 60 Greeks. During that time most of the Turks lived in the town and the Bulgarians lived in the surrounding villages. Many refugees from Greek and Vardar Macedonia arrived in the town in the subsequent decades.
The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 saw the annexation of the area Ottoman rule and its integration in the Bulgarian state in the Treaty of Constantinople. Before the Balkan Wars, Cuma-ı Bala was bounded as kaza to Serez sandjak in Selanik vilayet.