ASAN (ASEN). – Name of a Bulgarian dynasty (1186–1258) begun by the three brothers A.: Giovanni, Pietro, and Giovanni, who founded the Second Bulgarian Empire (1186–1396) by raising the Vlachs and Bulgarians, with the aid of the Cumans, against Byzantium. Although the name appears to be Cuman (Turkic), the A. family was Vlach (Romanian), at least in language. The kingdom of the Bulgarians and the 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 in order to unite with Rome, which granted the A. the title of king and a primate in their capital, Tirnovo. This union took place under Giovanni, or Ioannitza or Kalojan (1196–1207), while the Fourth Crusade was conquering Constantinople (1204). But when the Latins rejected the alliance in 1205, Giovanni I A. defeated Baldwin, the first Latin basileus. The union with the Roman see continued only with difficulty, until the second A., Giovanni II (1218–41), who eventually broke the ties with Rome (1237), abandoning the Hungarian-Latin alliance for the Greek one, and perhaps also drawing the Romanians north of the Danube into separation from Rome, 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).