ASAN (ASEN). - Name of a Bulgarian dynasty (1186-1258) begun by the three brothers A.: John, Peter and John, who founded the second Bulgarian empire (1186-1396) by raising the Vlachs and Bulgarians against Byzantium with the help of the Cumans. Although the name seems Cuman (Turkish), the A. family was Vlach (Romanian) at least in language. The kingdom of the Bulgarians and Vlachs restored the ancient Bulgarian empire at the time of the Third Crusade, to which they proposed an alliance against the Byzantines. Indeed they broke away from their Church to unite with Rome, which granted the A. the title of king and a primate in their capital of Tirnovo. This union took place under John, or Ioannitza or Kalojan (1196-1207), while the Fourth Crusade was conquering Constantinople (1204). But since the Latins rejected the alliance in 1205, John I A. defeated Baldwin, the first Latin basilèus. The union with the Roman see barely lasted, until the second A., John II (1218-41), who ended by breaking the ties with Rome (1237), abandoning the Hungarian-Latin alliance for the Greek one, and perhaps also dragging into the separation from Rome the Romanians north of the Danube, whose principalities were about to arise at the end of the century. The A. dynasty died out in the struggles against the Greeks and Serbs with Kaliman II (1257-58).
Bibliography
Frédéric Tailliez