The earliest archaeological evidence from the Smolyan municipality's region dates from the end of the Bronze Age - c. 13 BC. During the following two millennia the antique authors perceived the Rhodopes as a sacred Thracian mountain, the birthplace of Orpheus. The researched sanctuaries (the Kom summit), mound necropolises (the village of Gela) and unique flat necropolis (the village of Stoikite) date from that era.

C. 4-5 AD was the time when the Rhodope Thracians were converted to Christianity, to which testify many early basilicas (c. 7-9), and the Bulgarian nationality was in the process of forming in the region.

After the fall of the Bulgarian kingdom under Ottoman rule, The Middle Rhodope area was granted with a sultan's decree from 1519 to the court physician Aha Chelebi, for which reason that lands were known as Ahachelebi. The settlement was mentioned with the name Ezerovo in Ottoman documents from c. 17, and later was renamed to Bashmakla. Later on the transcription of the name changed it to Pashmakla or Pashmakli. That name was preserved up to 1934.

On 17 January 1878 the Cossack cavalry brigade of General Cherevin entered triumphantly the town. Seven months later the Berlin Treaty (01.08. 1978) liquidated the Bulgaria of the San Stefano Treaty.

The Smolyan region remained within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire up to 1912. 34 years after the National Liberation of Bulgaria, during the First Balkan War of 1912, the region was liberated. The 21st Sredna Gora infantry regiment under the command of Colonel Vladimir Serafimov liberated the town of Smolyan on 13 October 1912, and on 21 October the battles on the Kavgajik summit (now Srednogorets) were led, which determined the victorious end of the military operations in the region.