The Descendant of Shishmanids – A Real or Imaginary Participant in the First Tarnovo Uprising of 1598

Abstract

In Bulgarian historiography a thesis has been maintained that during the First Tarnovo Uprising, which broke out in 1598, the inhabitants of the old Bulgarian capital of Tarnovo had proclaimed an imaginary descendant of the Shishman dynasty under the name of Shishman III as a tsar. In other cases, this person is identified with Theodore Balina. This article aims to prove that these conclusions are not based on any scientific evidence, but are a the result of a series of misunderstandings and errors that have been reproduced to our own day.