IMPRESSIONS OF ISTANBUL BY DR. TODOR YANKOV – THE FIRST BULGARIAN TRAVELLER TO THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL
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Date
2025
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Plovdiv University Press
Abstract
Regardless of whether it is called Constantinople, Istanbul or Tsarigrad, the global city on the Bosphorus has always occupied an important place in Bulgarian political and spiritual history. The first travelogue in Bulgarian literature about this city appeared in the pages of a magazine only at the end of the 19th century, and very little is known about its author, Dr. Todor Yankov, today. This paper attempts to understand the reasons for the late appearance of the first travelogue; it examines three works – by Petko Slaveykov, Ivan Bogorov and Dimitar Mollov – about Istanbul, which may be taken to function as preludes to Impressions of Istanbul. The research offers a biographical and creative portrait of the educationalist, politician, publicist and writer Todor Yankov while outlining the compositional features of his travelogue about the imperial capital. The author of the travelogue was a representative of the first post-independence generation, which also determines his different attitude towards both the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage in it; he carries the consciousness of a Bulgarian European pushed away from the narrow dimensions of the strictly domestic.
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travelogue, Istanbul, Petko Slaveykov, Ivan Bogorov, Dimitar Mollov, Dr. Todor Yankov