Рязанские владения в верховьях Дона «въ верхъ Дону Дубокъ» и Донской путь XIV–XV вв.

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The article is devoted to the insufficiently studied issue of the significance and place of the river route along the Don River in the political and economic history of Rus’ in the 14th — 16th centuries. After the 1237–1240 Mongol invasion the traditional river route that connected the lands of Rus’ with the Black Sea region and Byzantium along the Dnieper River fell into decay and was replaced by the Don route. At the mouth of the Don, the Venetian Tana, one of the largest centers of international trade in Eastern Europe, functioned. Navigation along the Don began in the southern lands bordering the steppe of the Grand Duchy of Ryazan. Written sources have preserved the description of two routes through the lands of Ryazan to the Don, one of them is almost entirely riverine, through the upper reaches of the right tributaries of the Oka River to the upper reaches of the left tributary of the Don, the Voronezh River. It is described in the documents of Russia’s foreign relations with Turkey at the beginning of the 16th century. The second route involved overcoming the 140-kilometer distance from the Oka to the upper reaches of the Don by land, and Metropolitan Pimen used it to travel to Constantinople in 1389 A numerous church delegation and an armed detachment were accompanied by heavy ships put on wheels, lowered into the Don at the confluence of the Mokraya Tabola River. At the mouth of the latter there are two large complexes of settlements of the 13th — 14th centuries, which belonged to the Ryazan principality. Apparently, this is the city «to the top of the Don Dubok» belonging to Ryazan, a transshipment point for trade along the Don, known from written sources.