The Berlin treaty creates the autonomous province…

The Berlin treaty creates the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia with its capital at Philippopoli (Plovdiv), subject to the sultan but with a Christian governor appointed by the Sublime Porte with the approval of the Great Powers.

The province encompasses the territory between the Balkan Mountains, the Rhodope Mountains and Strandzha Mountain, a region known to all its inhabitants—Bulgarians, Greeks and Ottoman Turks—as Northern Thrace.

The artificial name Eastern Rumelia had been given to the province on the insistence of the British delegates to the Congress of Berlin.

Some twenty Pomak (Muslims speaking Bulgarian as their mother tongue) villages in the Rhodope Mountains refuse to recognize Eastern Rumelian authority and form the so called Pomak Republic.