The Terter or Terteroba ( Bulgarian and russian: Тертер-оба, Тертровичи) was a

Cuman–Kipchak The name Cumania originated as the Latin exonym for the Cuman–Kipchak confederation, which was a tribal confederation in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe, between the 10th and 13th centuries. The confederation was dominated by two ...

tribe or clan that took refuge in Hungary and then Bulgaria in the mid-13th century and may have produced the

Terter dynasty The House of Terter ( bg, Тертер), also Terterids or Terterovtsi (Тертеровци), was a Bulgarian noble and royal house of Cuman origin,István Vásáry (2005) ''Cumans and Tatars'', Cambridge University Press, p. 2 a branch of the C ...

that eventually ruled Bulgaria. According to Peter Golden, '' Terter'' is derived from a tributary of the Kura River in the

Southern Caucasus The South Caucasus, also known as Transcaucasia or the Transcaucasus, is a geographical region on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, straddling the southern Caucasus Mountains. The South Caucasus roughly corresponds to modern Arm ...

. In the Russian annals, they were known as Ter'trobiči. In Arabic, they may have been called ''Durut''. It has been claimed that ''khan''

Köten Köten (russian: Котян, hu, Kötöny, ar, Kutan, later Jonas; 1205–1241) was a Cuman–Kipchak chieftain (''khan'') and military commander active in the mid-13th century. He forged an important alliance with the Kievan Rus' against the ...

( 1223–39) belonged to the Terter. During the Mongol invasion, the surviving Cuman–Kipchak tribes sought refuge in the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coronation of the Hungarian monarch, c ...

(1238). These adopted Christianity in return for protection. According to Hungarian sources, these tribes included the Chertan, Ulasoba, Burcoba (Burčeviči), Kolaba (Kolabiči) and Terteroba, the latter which was Köten's family. According to Plamen Pavlov the Terter dynasty was a branch of the Terteroba who had settled in Bulgaria as part of the second wave of Cuman migration, coming from the

after 1241.

References

{{reflist Cumans Turkic peoples of Europe 13th century in Bulgaria 13th century in Hungary