page_title: Blagoevgrad
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Blagoevgrad / History
caption_attribution_description: Petition to Gordianus III from the inhabitants of Scaptopara (modern Blagoevgrad) AE 1892, 0040=AE 1994, 1552=AE 1995, 1373 Deutsch: Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg HD044445
context_page_description: Blagoevgrad is а town in Southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Municipality and of Blagoevgrad Province, with a population of 70,881 inhabitants. It lies on the banks of the Blagoevgradska Bistritsa River.
  The town 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, 101 kilometres 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.
  Blagoevgrad is home to two universities, the South-West University "Neofit Rilski" and the American University in Bulgaria. The town hosts also the "Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Humanitarian High School", the former Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki moved from Thessaloniki to Blagoevgrad in 1913.
context_section_description: 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.
  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.
  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. A chitalishte was founded in 1866 and 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.
  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.
  In March 1943, during World War II, the Bulgarian Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (KEV) established at Gorna Dzhumaya (modern Blagoevgrad) a transit camp for Jews deported from Bulgaria during the Holocaust. The Jews had been arrested in the new "Belomora Oblast" in Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Bulgarian-annexed Pirot in Yugoslavia. The camp consisted of a tobacco warehouse and some school buildings, under the command of KEV official Ivan Tepavski, where inmates were imprisoned and malnourished for 11–12 days before being taken to Lom, embarked for Vienna, and finally exterminated at Treblinka.
caption: Petition to Roman Emperor Gordian III from the inhabitants of ancient Scaptopara
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