Meshchera Gorodok

Cities of Khazaria. Kromos Estatium
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     The khazar cities here include not only those cities that were built by the khazar architects, but also those that were built before the arrival of the khazars, were used by the khazars for their needs and tasks for a long time.
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Meshchera Gorodok **
     In the correspondence of the embassy and letters of the Grand Ducal and Royal Meshchera Gorodok are also called Andreev Gorodok, Ondreev Gorodok and Kamenny Gorodok or only Meshchera.
     This town was built by Andrey Bogolyubsky, and, as was customary in those days, the Prince who built the new city called it by his own name. This was at the end of the 12th century, as it is written in the chronicle. It was an outpost of the Vladimir Principality.
     They laid the town somewhere in the southern borders of the Meshchera-land, possibly at the confluence of the rivers Pra, Gus and Kolpi. There used to be a small settlement of artisans who called their place Meshchera, and now they moved to the posad people at Andreev Gorodok. But, having moved there, they did not stop calling their city Meschera.
     Meshchera-Andreev town historians move from place to place, but most often, according to legends, scientists roamed along the trade route on the left bank of the Kolp and Gus rivers. This road connected Vladimir with Gorodets Meshchersky. Near Meshchera-Andreev town, according to the correspondence of the embassy, there were pastures for keeping kasimov horses.
     Archaeologists put the town in Meshchera on Tolstik under river, which meant an elevated, steep coast, a steep cape. There is a floodplain in 33 kilometers from Kasimov with a terrace over the Oka, and nearby there is the village of Tolstikovo, which is mentioned in the Scribal books of 1564. The bed of the Oka in this place the locals call Vertyach sand. There was a stone Ford and Tolstikov's ferry, now the Nun's ferry. According to local archaeologists, this was a convenient place to control trade and any movement in the very Borderlands of Rus.
     No one has been studying this ancient settlement since Soviet times. And whether this is a settlement that could be correlated with the chronicle-legendary Meshchera-Andreev town?
     In 1239, the mongols besieged Meshchera-Andreev town, dispersed the meshcher and posad people, the fortress of Ondreev town was burned, all the good after them was taken by the posads and those who were from the villages. The successors of the Vladimir princes, who laid the Meshchera-Andreev town, the Moscow princes, despite the pressure of the Horde, moving south, did not bother to restore the Meshchera outpost, and founded Shatsk.
     However, the fugitives from the Horde liked the place, and they revived Meshchera-Andreev town. They were supported by the Prince Shirin, who in 1298 was brought out of the hordes of Tartars, sat in Meshchera and there was born his son Beklemek. In his honor, he put a new town on the old place of Andreev, which he called Meshchera Gorodok, because he was called Prince Meshchersky.
     According to the lineage of princes Meshchersky, Beklemish, in honor of his baptism, built a temple of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the Meshcher town, where Beklemish at that time sat in his residence.
     In 1376, the town of Meshchera could not withstand the siege of the tatar Horde and was taken, burned again, and the rest, as always happened in Rus in such cases, was completed by the locals.
     Since then, Meshchera-Andreev town temporarily disappears from historical records, but is mentioned in correspondence at least once a century.
     This rare periodicity was due to the fact that this truly Russian Ghost town, being constantly attacked by the hordes and the steppe people, was revived again after a while, which can be attributed to the fact that it was on an important path called the Crimean road by the old people, and there was also stone material for the work of artisans.
     In 1508, Meshchera-Andreev Gorodok asks the Nogai Khan Ah-Kurt for himself, addressing Tsar Vasily the Third. In the request of the Khan, the town is mentioned as built of stone, which is why it was called Stone town in some lists. Even today, St Andrew's Hillfort still has stone foundations. At that time, most of the towns were made of wood. Limestone stone was brought from Kasimov to Andreev Gorodok, and this business was quite time-consuming and was possible only by the Prince's order.
     In 1515, Meshchera-Gorodok was again, for the third time destroyed by the tatras, possibly from Crimea. At the request of the Azov ambassador, who was then in charge of Meshchera Gorodok, Tsar Vasily the Third did not answer, or did not have time to answer.
     The places where the Andreev fortress of Meshchera Gorodok was set up were known for the presence of local partisans who attacked the tatar voivodes with carts in which they carried the loot in the south of Rus to the Horde. And they did not disdain their own merchants either.
     In local historical stories, there are rumors that Peter the Great also dabbled in partisanship in these parts. He dressed in a partisan frock coat, joined a detachment, and learned brigandage, which experience he later applied in the war with the svei and in St. Petersburg taught the police officers and circumambulars how to fight robbers.
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