Arda ( bg, Арда) is a village in

Smolyan Municipality Smolyan ( bg, Смолян) is a town and ski resort in the south of Bulgaria near the border with Greece. It is the administrative and industrial centre of the homonymous Smolyan Province. The town is built along the valley of Cherna ("Black" ...

, located in the Smolyan Province of southern

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

. It is located 173.424 km from

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

and the village covers an area of 17.928 km². As of 2007, the village had a population of 314 people. The village is located 30 km south of Smolyan. The village is recorded in records of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

indicating 13 soldiers in the army were from the village. A census of 1912-1913 indicated a population of 200. Some of the inhabitants of the village are

Pomaks Pomaks ( bg, Помаци, Pomatsi; el, Πομάκοι, Pomáki; tr, Pomaklar) are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims inhabiting northwestern Turkey, Bulgaria and northeastern Greece. The c. 220,000 strong ethno-confessional minority in Bulgaria is ...

and follow Islam as their main religion, others are

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism. Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or " canonical ...

Bulgarians Bulgarians ( bg, българи, Bǎlgari, ) are a nation and South Slavic ethnic group native to Bulgaria and the rest of Southeast Europe. Etymology Bulgarians derive their ethnonym from the Bulgars. Their name is not completely unders ...

. Annually the Ilinden festival takes place every summer. Near the village of Arda, in the neighbourhoods of Gudevitsa and Lagat (birthplace of folk singer

Valya Balkanska Valya Mladenova Balkanska ( bg, Валя Младенова Балканска; born 8 January 1942) is a Bulgarian folk music singer from the Rhodope Mountains known locally for her wide repertoire of Balkan folk songs, but in the West mainly fo ...

) there are springs from one of the largest Bulgarian rivers, the

Arda Arda or ARDA may refer to: Places *Arda (Maritsa), a river in Bulgaria and Greece * Arda (Italy), a river in Italy *Arda (Douro), a river in Portugal * Arda, Bulgaria, a village in southern Bulgaria * Arda, County Fermanagh, a townland in County ...

, from which the village takes its name. In this neighbourhood is also a church, built in 1882.

Notable people

(1942–), Bulgarian folk singer *

Vasil Angelov Vasil Tomov Angelov ( bg, Васил Томов Ангелов; March 12, 1882 – August 23, 1953) was a Bulgarian military officer and a revolutionary, a worker of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO). Biography ...

(1882–1953), Bulgarian revolutionary and military person *

Dicho Uzunov Omniscriptum Publishing Group, formerly known as VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, is a German publishing group headquartered in Riga, Latvia. Founded in 2002 in Düsseldorf, its book production is based on print-to-order technology. The company publi ...

(1921–), Bulgarian military person *

Asen Vasilev Asen Vaskov Vasilev ( bg, Асен Васков Василев; born 9 September 1977) is a Bulgarian politician, economist, and entrepreneur who is the current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance since 13 December 2021. He is the co-l ...

(1909–1987), carver, folk artist

References

Villages in Smolyan Province {{Smolyan-geo-stub