Dospat

Dospat lies high in the Rhodope Mountains of southern Bulgaria, in the valley of the River Dospat. The town was probably founded by Despot Alexius Slav in the twelfth or thirteenth century, and its name is thought to come from his title. This traditional account ties the settlement to a frontier world of Balkan local rulers, mountain routes and dispersed communities. Its relatively high setting made the surrounding landscape as important as the town itself: elevated pasture, wooded ridges and valleys directed movement toward smaller settlements.

The Rhodope country passed under Ottoman rule in the late fourteenth century. In the following centuries many of its Bulgarian-speaking villagers adopted Islam while keeping their language and mountain way of life, and the highland communities lived by sheep and cattle herding, small fields, charcoal and timber. Dospat was therefore a mountain settlement of herders and foresters, set among forests of beech and spruce and reached by narrow tracks linking it with the Rhodope villages and the plains beyond.