SLIVEN  , SLIvN0 or formerly SELIMNIA (Turk . Islimye), a

town of Bulgaria, in Eastern Rumelia, at the southern foot of the Balkan Mountains, 105 m . E.N.E. of Philippopolis and near the southern entrance of the defile known as the Iron Gate . Pop . (1906), 25,049 . There are numerous mosques in the town, but the greater part of the Turkish population emigrated after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 . Sliven contains the government factory, founded in 1834, for the manufacture of military clothing; it is the chief centre in Bulgaria for the rough and fine homespuns known as abet and shayak, and its wine is locally celebrated . Extensive mulberry orchards.have been planted in connexion with the silk industry . Sliven, the Stlifanos of the Byzantine writers, owed its former strategic importance to its position on one of the trans-Balkan highways to Adrianople and the south . In the middle ages it was a subject of dispute between Byzantium and Bulgaria . After its capture by the Turks (1388) it was one of the voinik towns which remained exempt from taxes and were allowed to elect their own voivode; but these privileges were lost in the loth century . In 1829 Sliven was occupied by the Russian army under Rudiger and Gorchakov .