Bulgaria marks Monday Ilinden - the Day of St. Elijah or Iliya and the Name Day of Iliya, Iliyan and Iliyana.

Elijah or Iliya was a prophet in Israel in the 9th century BC. According to the Books of Kings, Elijah raised the dead, brought fire down from the sky, and ascended into heaven in a chariot.

Elijah is also a figure in various folkloric traditions. In Bulgaria, he is known as "Iliya the Thunderer" and in folklore is held responsible for summer storms, hail, rain, thunder and dew.

Icons usually picture him riding in a gold-plated chariot, with four white horses in harness.

There is also the wide-spread superstition in Bulgaria that the Black Sea takes people on Ilinden and swimmers should stay away from the waters to avoid the danger of drowning.

The life-guards are on the highest alert this Monday, the head of the Life-Guard Services in the coastal city of Burgas informed, adding the superstition had proven to be quite true over the years.

In 2008, four people drowned on 2 August (Ilinden according to the Gregorian Calendar) near the most southern Bulgarian beach - Silistar.

July 20 is also the 106th anniversary of the legendary Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising against the division of the country, even though in Bulgaria it is commemorated on August 2, the day the rebellion broke, according to the Gregorian Calendar.

The Uprizing was an organized revolt against the Ottoman Empire prepared and carried out by the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee The 1878 Berlin Congress preceded the rebellion.

The uprising took place in the Bitola vilayet and the northeastern part of Adrianople vilayet - parts of the regions of Macedonia and Thrace. The rebellion in the Bitola vilayet was proclaimed on 2 August (Gregorian Calendar, which corresponds to 20 July of the Julian Calendar) 1903, Ilinden in Bulgarian and Macedonian or St. Elias' Day, the celebration of the ascension of the Prophet Elijah to Heaven. The Adrianople vilayet joined the uprising on 19 August 1903, the Transfiguration or Preobrazhenie in Bulgarian.

Although the rebellion in both regions initially was successful, the intervention of Turkish regular army led to the dissolution of the rebels' detachments.

By the time the rebellion had started, many of its most promising potential leaders, including Goce Delchev, had already been killed, and the effort was quashed within eleven days. The survivors managed to maintain a semi-successful guerilla campaign against the Turks for the next few years, but its greater effect was that it persuaded the European powers to attempt to convince the Ottoman sultan that he must take a more conciliatory note toward his Christian subjects in Europe.

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