Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Shopi" in English language version.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Ethnography has long established that every ethnographic group, even every single village, considers its dialect, manners and customs "true" and "pure", while those of the neighbours, of the rest — even when they are "our people" — still are neither as "true", nor as "pure". In the Shopi villages you will hear that the Shopi are the true and most pure Bulgarians, while the inhabitants of the mountains around Turnovo will claim that theirs is the land of true Bulgarians from time immemorial, etc.
The Upper Mccsian dialect is also called the Shopsko narechie or dialect of the Shopi. Jireček says that these Shopi differ very much in language, dress, and habits from the other Bulgarians, who regard them as simple folk. Their name he connects with the old Thracian tribe of the Sapsei.
The loci of this commentary are two well-studied Bulgarian villages, Dragalevtsy and Bistritsa, on the western flank of Mount Vitosha.3 Geographically they are a mere eight kilometers apart. Ethnically their base populations are similar, identified by other Bulgarians as Shopi. Shopi are a recognized and distinct sub-group within the relative homogeneity of Bulgaria at large. Being Shop continues to imply conservatism, despite proximity to Sofia. Our concern is with the ethnography of communication in these two village communities. Both experience considerable influences of urbanization, from students and ...
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)The inhabitants of one group of villages near Sofia, the so-called Shopi, were popularly supposed to be descendants of the Pechenegs.
internally by distinctions of dialect and religion, so that the Orthodox Shopi, peasants dwelling in the hills surrounding Bulgaria's capital of Sofia, are alleged to be descendants of the Pecheneg Turks who invaded the Balkans in the 10th ...
By A. Belitch and T. Georgevitch To the east of the Serbo-Bulgarian frontier, in Western Bulgaria, extends a zone still peopled to-day by a population of Serb origin, presenting a mixed Serbo-Bulgar type, and known under the name of " Chopi " (Shopi). The Serbian ethnographical element left in Bulgaria by the political frontier established at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, maintains itself in its fundamental characteristics, as far as the line joining up Bregovo, Koula, Belogratchik, and Iskretz, and proceeding thence towards Radomir and to the east of Kustendil; to the east of that limit the Serb population, blended with the Bulgar element, reaches the banks of the Isker and the line which links it to Ihtiman.
The Pechenegs still survive in Bulgaria, in the plain of Sofia, and are known as 'Sops'. The Oxford historian C. A. Macartney studied these 'Sops' in the 1920s, and reported that they were despised by the other inhabitants of Bulgaria for their stupidity and bestiality, and dreaded for their savagery. They are a singularly repellent race, short-legged, yellow-skinned, with slanting eyes and projecting cheek-bones. Their villages are generally filthy, but the women's costumes show a barbaric profusion of gold lace.
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