Битолската плоча е фалсификат(ова додуша го пишувам зошто читав некои наши гости од Источна Бугарија како викаат дека тоа не е точно.). Инаку еве го писмото на Лант:
[quote]"In 1956 a marble block serving as part of the threshold of a sixteenth-century mosque in Bitola was discovered to contain a badly worn Slavonic inscription. The text clearly must have spilled over to a lost block on the left, and to one or more blocks at the top. Yet the twelve preserved lines refer to ”John, autocrat of the bulgars„ and, later, ”son of Aron.„
The historian and paleographer Vladimir Moshin published the text (in Makedonski jazik, 1966), with a bold series of conjectures and emendations arguing that the inscription included reference to Samuel's defeat in 1014 and had been set up by Ivan Vladislav, Samuel's nephew (ruled 1015-1018). The Zaimovs confidently ”restore„ most of the text, including dates, and proceed to take their wish thoughts as incontrovertible proof of a number of historical events otherwise unknown.
Unfortunately there is no even remotely reliable set of criteria for dating early South Slavic Cyrillic, and epigraphic material is sparse and extremely controversial. I must respectfully disagree with Moshin's estimate that this text fits in the early eleventh century. Zaimov's paleographic and linguistic arguments are inaccurate and naive.
One basic point: Moshin clearly records the fact that the date he confidently reconstructs as 6522 (1014) has been worn away (”datata e izlizhana„; p.39 in Slovenska pismenost, ed P.Ilievski, Ohrid, 1966). Indeed it does not show up in any published photographs (note that Zaimov's plate 2 has been doctored in an unspecified manner, and plate 3 is frankly drawing), nor is it found in a latex mold made by Professor Ihor Sevchenko od Dumbarton Oaks. Assuming that this spot does contain a date, one can grant the 6 and the final 2, and a vertical line with a partial crosspiece that could be F(500) but looks much more like ps (700), and is followed by a space wide enough even for M (40). If one then conjectures the numbers as 6742, the date would be 1234. This fits beautifully with the ortography and language, and identifies Ivan as Asen II, who gained power over Macedonia in 1230. Yet it also demolished the inctricate historical explanations elaborated by the Zaimovs and generally diminishes the light that this inscription allegedly throws on an obscure period of Macedonian and Bulgarian history. The crucial questions remains open.
Horace G Lunt
Harvard University ”
(„Slavic Review, 31,2, 1972)
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