Sofia Province

Neolithic pottery discovered near Chavdar

Archaeological excavations near Chavdar suggest that the region has been settled by humans as early as 7,000 years ago.[1] The earliest evidence of a mass settlement dates back to Thracian times, including tumuli (burial mounds) which remain poorly studied.[2] According to Thucydides, the areas north of Vitosha were inhabited by the Tilataei and the Treri. The Triballi were also known to have inhabited the region around Serdica.[2] The Serdi, a Celtic tribe that appeared in place of the vanished Treri and Tilataei,[3] were first mentioned in 29 BC. Roman General Marcus Licinius Crassus began his campaign against the Triballi in that year, and in 27 BC his troops captured Serdica.[2]

Felix Philipp Kanitz, the first person to study the Iskar Gorge area thoroughly, identified eight Roman castella, which he considered proof of the great strategic importance the Romans placed on the gorge. The road passing through it connected Roman lands from Thessaloniki all the way to Dacia.[2] However, up until modern times, the gorge was poorly accessible because of its rugged terrain. As a result, the inhabitants were partially isolated from the rest of the world, self-reliant, but also safe from wars and invasions.[2] Some of the population of Moesia thus found the Iskar river area an appealing safe haven later in the 5th century, when the province was threatened by Hunnic and Gothic raids.[2]

Gothic assaults were followed by large-scale settlement of South Slavs in territories south of the Danube in the early 580s AD.[4] The Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium, was incapable of defending these territories at the time. With most Byzantine troops protecting the rich Asian provinces from Arab and Persian raids, even small and disorganised Slavic attacks caused much disruption throughout Moesia.[5] The numerous Slavs gradually mixed with and assimilated the native population.[6] The area remained under Byzantine control until 809 AD, when Krum captured Serdica and massacred some 6,000 soldiers and civilians.[7] Sometime in the 10th century, construction of the Boyana Church began as well.[8]

Churches and monasteries in the area flourished during the Second Bulgarian Empire. Tsar Ivan Alexander established a ring of 14 monasteries around Sredets (formerly Serdica), with rules and organisation similar to the monastery cluster on Mount Athos, known as Sveta Gora in Bulgarian.[9] The Sveta Gora of Sofia includes temples and monasteries throughout today's Sofia Province, spanning from Plana and Vitosha Mountains in the south to Dragoman and the slopes of Stara Planina in the north. Some of these were established during the First Bulgarian Empire or generally before Ivan Alexander's rule.[9] Apart from these monasteries, a number of other, smaller temples can be traced back to the Second Empire. This includes the Saint Nicholas church in Bukovets, built by Crusaders in the 12th century.[10] Crusader presence was also attested around Bov, which is believed to have been established by an eponymous Fourth Crusade knight who became a vassal of Tsar Kaloyan.[11]

The modern territory of Sofia Province has been part of three of the four revolutionary districts during the April Uprising.

Bulgarian Prince Alexander of Battenberg observing the battles against Serb forces near Dragoman

A few years after Bulgaria's liberation in 1878, Bulgarian nationalists organised a coup in the Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia and declared its unification with the Principality of Bulgaria.[12] The Kingdom of Serbia opposed the strengthening of its rival. Serbian king Milan I declared war on Bulgaria on 14 November 1885, but the Serbian forces were decisively defeated at the Battle of Slivnitsa between 17 and 19 November.[12] Another decisive Bulgarian victory occurred at Gurgulyat, where Bulgarian soldiers and civilian volunteers fought the Serb Moravian division and prevented it from reinforcing the main Serbian force at Slivnitsa.[13]

During World War II, a number of resistance fighters were based in the area. The mainly Soviet-oriented resistance - the People's Liberation Rebel Army, PLRA - organised locally under the 1st Sofia Rebellion Operations Zone, particularly in the areas around Botevgrad and Ihtiman.[14] Anti-partisan operations by the Bulgarian government military, then part of the Axis powers, had become fierce by 1944. In January 1944, Special Operations Executive Major William Frank Thompson and another British officer, Sergeant Kenneth Scott, were parachuted with radio equipment in southern Yugoslavia; their mission was to provide liaison between the British Army and the PLRA.[15] The two joined a group of 100 ill-equipped Bulgarian partisans and entered Bulgaria in May 1944.

After some initial success, the group was ambushed, and Thompson was captured near Eleshnitsa along with a dozen Bulgarian partisans. After being shown the severed heads of other partisans on pikes, they were tortured by government troops and their paramilitary aides, the Gendarmerie.[16] Because of his Communist sympathies and fluent Bulgarian and Russian, Thompson and the other resistance fighters were executed by a firing squad.[15][17] Several villages in the area were merged after the war into what is now a single village, Thompson, named after the British officer.[18]

Total population (2011 census): 247 489

Ethnic groups (2011 census):[29] Identified themselves: 230 781 persons:

• Bulgarians: 210 974 (91,42%)
• Romani: 17 079 (7,40%)
• Others and indefinable: 2 728 (1,18%)

Ethnic groups in the province according to 2001 census:[30] 253 536 Bulgarians (92.8%),
16 748 Romani (6.1%) and 2956 others and unspecified (1.1%).

Religious adherence in the province according to 2001 census:[32]

• Мичев (Michev), Николай (Nikolay); Михайлов (Mihaylov), Цветко (Tsvetko); Вапцаров (Vaptsarov), Иван (Ivan); Кираджиев (Kiradzhiev), Светлин (Svetlin) (1980). Географски речник на България [Geographic Dictionary of Bulgaria] (in Bulgarian). София (Sofia): Наука и култура (Nauka i kultura).
• Fine, John Van Antwerp Jr. (1991) [1983]. The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472081497.
• Duychev, Ivan (2017) [1960]. Greek Sources on Bulgarian History. III. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. p. ( link). Retrieved 2018-06-29.