Tsar
Tsar (/zɑːr, sɑːr/ or /tsɑːr/; also spelled czar, tzar, or csar; Bulgarian: цар, romanized: tsar; Serbian: цар / car; Russian: царь, romanized: tsar) was a title used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word caesar,[2] which was intended to mean emperor in the European medieval sense of the term—a ruler with the same rank as a Roman emperor, holding it by the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch)—but was usually considered by Western Europeans to be equivalent to "king".[3][4] It lends its name to a system of government, tsarist autocracy or tsarism.
For other uses, see Tsar (disambiguation) and Csar (disambiguation).Tsar and its variants were the official titles in the First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018), Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), the Kingdom of Bulgaria (1908–1946), the Serbian Empire (1346–1371), and the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721). The first ruler to adopt the title tsar was Simeon I of Bulgaria.[5] Simeon II, the last tsar of Bulgaria, is the last person to hold this title.
Meaning in Slavic languages[edit]
The title tsar is derived from the Latin title for the Roman emperors, caesar.[2] The Greek equivalent of the Latin word imperator was the title autokrator. The term basileus was another term for the same position, but it was used differently depending on whether it was in a contemporary political context or in a historical or Biblical context.