Bulgarians in Serbia

The vast majority of them live in the southeastern part of the country that borders Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

Before the Ottoman conquest, the borders of the region frequently shifted between Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian rulers.

According to some authors during the Ottoman rule, the majority of native Torlakian Slavic population did not have a distinct national consciousness in the ethnic sense.

[3] The first known literary monument, influenced by Torlakian dialects is the Manuscript from Temska Monastery from 1762, in which its author, the Monk Kiril Zhivkovich from Pirot, considered his language as: "simple Bulgarian".

According to Ottoman statistics during the Tanzimat the greater part of the population up to the Sanjak of Niš was treated as Bulgarian.

Unveiling of the monument of Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski in Bosilegrad
Ethnological map by Professor Constant Desjardins (1787‒1876). This map bears the title „Serbia and the districts in which Serbian language is spoken". It was issued in Belgrade in 1853. The author states that his map had been put together according to Serbian authors.