Bulgaria’s Stara Planina named a whole peninsula by accident
The Balkan Mountains run about 560 kilometres from Vrashka Chuka on the Bulgaria–Serbia border east to the Black Sea, dividing Black Sea and Aegean drainages along much of their crest. An Ottoman-era label—possibly from Persian for a lofty house—later baptized southeastern Europe itself.
From Vrashka Chuka the range first heads south-east along the Serbian border, then swings east across Bulgaria and ends at Cape Emine on the Black Sea, splitting the country into northern and southern halves. Its summit, Botev Peak, stands 2,376 metres high. Through the central and eastern stretches the crest separates rivers bound for the Black Sea from those draining to the Aegean. The one major breach is the narrow Iskar Gorge, a few miles north of Sofia.
Limestone karst riddles the mountains with caves: Ledenika, Saeva dupka, Bacho Kiro and Magura, whose paintings are the most important and extensive post-Palaeolithic cave art in Europe. In the west stand the Belogradchik Rocks. Protected areas include Central Balkan National Park, with sheer cliffs and the Balkans' tallest waterfalls, as well as Vrachanski Balkan, Bulgarka and Sinite Kamani. Edelweiss grows at Kozyata stena, and most of Europe's big mammals live here, among them brown bears, wolves, boar, chamois and deer.
The names stack up through history. Ancient and medieval writers called the range Haemus, probably from a Thracian word for ridge, and Cape Emine preserves the variant Aemon. Greek storytellers offered two origins: King Haemus and Queen Rhodope were turned into mountains for calling themselves Zeus and Hera, or the name came from haima, blood, after Typhon's blood soaked the land when Zeus deflected the mountains he hurled. Other names include the Slavonic Matorni gori and Turkish Kocabalkan.
Bulgarians and Serbs call the range Stara planina, old mountain, a form first recorded by Antun Vrančić in the early sixteenth century. The name Balkan is usually credited to the Ottomans, though it may go back to a Persian phrase for a high or proud house; in archaic Bulgarian it simply meant mountain. The word survives in Turkmenistan's Balkan Mountains and Balkan Province, and from this range it spread to the whole peninsula.
Source: Balkan Mountains
