BOLGARI or BOLGARY, an area in the Autonomous Tatar S.S.R. south of Kazan, 4m. from the left bank of the Volga, 3' N., 48° 5' E. It consists of the ruins of the supposed ancient capital of the Bulgarians from the 5th to the 15th cen turies, with walls, towers and numerous kurgans or burial mounds which have Arabic (1 2 2 2-1341) , Armenian (557, 984 and 986) and also Turki inscriptions. The tombs contained weapons, imple ments, utensils and silver and copper coins, bearing inscriptions, some in Arabic and others in Kufic (a kind of epigraph Arabic). Antiquities from Bolgari are preserved in museums in Kazan, Moscow and Leningrad. The city was destroyed by the Mongols in 1238 and again by Tamerlane in the 14th century; afterwards it became the capital of the Khans of the Mongol Golden Horde. In the 15th century it became part of the Kazan principality. The ruins were discovered in the time of Peter the Great and described by Pallas and Humboldt. Ibn Haukal (the Arab geog rapher) states that it had io,000 inhabitants in his time (end of the loth century).
See Ibn Fadhlan, Nachrichten fiber die Wolga Bulgaren (Ger. trans. by Fran, St. Petersburg, 1832).