The travel notes of Prof. Yordan Ivanov from his first trip around Macedonia in 1906 – 1908

THE TRAVEL NOTES OF PROF. YORDAN IVANOV FROM HIS FIRST TRIP AROUND MACEDONIA IN 1906 – 1908 

 Georgi Minczew 

 (Summary) 

The Archiv of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences contains several notebooks and a typewritten text in which the famous Bulgarian scholar, Prof. Yordan Ivanov, described his impressions of his first trip to Macedonia, when he was collecting materials for his future book Bulgarian Antiquities around Macedonia. These notes have not been published until now. 

They obviously served Y. Ivanov in the preparation of his monograph, but at the same time they differ from its scientific style. The notes also contain factual material, but it is secondary to the personal impressions of the author’s encounters with ordinary people, to his reflections on the political situation in the Ottoman Empire after the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903, to poetic descriptions of nature landmarks, etc. 

The said manuscript materials from the archive constitute a special kind of scholarly travelogue, an artistic description of unknown but also familiar lands. In 1906, the Bulgarian scholar visited the ‘unknown’ Macedonia for the first time; but she was at the same time ‘familiar’: known from stories about the family history of Y. Ivanov, whose roots were from the Kratovo district. Attached to the article is the transcript of the first notebook, describing Prof. Y. Ivanov’s impressions from his trip from Vrancha to Thessalonica and Athos in October 1906 – January 1907. 

 Keywords: Yordan Ivanov, Macedonia, travel notes, scholarly trave logue, ‘Bulgarian Antiquities around Macedonia’.