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The area of today's town of Samokov in the antiquity is inhabited by the Thracians. They are considered skilled miners and metallurgists, and have been mentioned many times by ancient authors. Archaeological research in the Samokov region revealed active metallurgical activity, mostly from the middle of the 1st millennium BC, later the Roman period and the Middle Ages.

It is believed that during the 13th-14th centuries Sassi - European metallurgists from the Seventh Squadron, who built their own drawings, the heaters / the autochthonous / processing facilities, were preserved. For the Ottoman period, the chroniclers Kodja Hussein, Saaddin, Idris Bitlisi, Evlia Chelebi and others provide information about the settlement and the developed iron-mining.

The name Samokov appears in the Rudar Law of Serbian despot Stefan Lazarevich from 1412-1417 when he is a Turkish vassal In many Ottoman-Turkish documents the name can be seen as Ivlaicho Samokov and Vlaichov Samokov In the XVI century Venetian and Austrian diplomats mention Samokov as a big city with advanced iron-mining.

The significance of Samokov as a center of ironmongery is growing further after the Turks defeated under Vienna (1683). According to a farmer from 1508 in the Rila Mountain there was 11 Samokov. In the following centuries there are reports of more than 50 such facilities.

The name of the city is inextricably linked to the huge mechanical hammers - self-made. The glory of Samokov spread outside the European continent. Since then, even a unit of measure - "a Samokov scale" - has emerged.

Samokov had functioned until the end of the 19th century and the iron obtained was sought because of its quality.