Revolutionary Petar Kiprilov

Petar (Peyo) Dimitrov Kiprilov was born in the village of Pirok in 1851, or 1850. He was a Bulgarian teacher, priest and revolutionary from Eastern Thrace. He began his career as a teacher in Pirok and later in the village of Sarmashik.

In 1871 he met Vasil Levski during Levski's visit to Sarmashik, where Levski attended his engagement celebration. Kiprilov helped build the committee networks of the Internal Revolutionary Organisation and was arrested, tortured and tried during the April Uprising.

After the Russo-Turkish War in 1878, Kiprilov organised and took two groups of volunteers to Sliven for the new Bulgarian army. In the spring of 1878, Petko Slaveykov and the voivode Panayot Hitov came to the village of Podvis, where they assembled the villagers and addressed them in support of the cause; Kiprilov organised and signed a protest against the decisions of the Congress of Berlin.

In 1879 he was ordained a priest by the ecclesiastical deputy in Edirne, Bishop Synesius of Stobi. He later joined the activities of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation in 1896 and met Gotse Delchev during the latter's tour of the Strandzha region in 1900.

He helped prepare the Preobrazhenie Uprising and was arrested in 1903, when he was sentenced to 101 years of rigorous imprisonment. In prison he compiled a list of 437 imprisoned revolutionaries from the Adrianople Revolutionary District. He was amnestied in 1904.

After the Balkan Wars he emigrated to Bulgaria and settled in the village of Vresovo and later in Aytos, where he died in 1937. He served as a priest in several churches and is remembered in the song "Пеюте учителчето, сармашичкото даскалче" (Peyo the Little Teacher, the Schoolmaster of Sarmashik), which refugees from Pirok brought to Bulgaria.