History of Plovdiv Berlin which divided the newly liberated country into several parts. It separated the autonomous region of Eastern Rumelia from Bulgaria and Plovdiv became its capital. In three month the Ottoman Empire created an Organization Chart (Constitution) of the province and appointed a governor. At the time, it had a population of about 33,500, of which 45% were Bulgarians, 25% Greeks, 21% Turks, 6% Jews and 3% Armenians, a situation that changed rapidly in the following decades. In the spring of 1885 Zahari Stoyanov formed the Secret Bulgarian Central Revolutionary Committee in the city which actively conducted propaganda for the unification
Church of the Holy Mother of God, Plovdiv 10 January 1860 the bishop of Plovdiv Paisius held a service in Bulgarian language and publicly announced that his congregation denounced the Greek Patriarch of Istanbul which became a great scandal and Plovdiv became the most radical center for the struggle of the autonomy of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. On 30 April Paisius organized a Church and People's counsel in which the citizens were also represented in order to discuss the church question. Plovdiv sent a delegation to the Ottoman government asking officially for an autonomous Church. That Counsel was held annually until 1870 when the Bulgarian Exarchate was recognized