Muravsky Trail

Muravsky Trail or Murava Route (Russian: Муравский шлях, Ukrainian: Муравський шлях) was an important trade route and according to the Russian historiography a favourite invasion route of the Crimean Tatars during the Russo-Crimean Wars of the 16th and early 17th centuries. As described in the Book to the Great Chart of Muscovy (1627), the route went north from the Tatar fortress of Or Qapı (Perekop), the gateway of the Crimean peninsula, east of the Dnieper to the Russian fortress of Tula, 193 km south of Moscow.

To avoid major river crossings, the route followed the high ground between the basins of the Dnieper and Don, making an almost straight line from the Dnieper bend to Tula. It ran mostly through thinly populated tallgrass steppe country ('Muravá' is an old Slavic word for prairie or grassland) avoiding forests, marshes and river crossings. Apart from the main route, there were number of branches and bypaths, of which the Kalmius Trail and the Izyum Trail were by far the most important.

Between 1500 and 1550 there were 43 Tatars' raids using this trail. In the wake of the Russo-Crimean War (1571), it became increasingly clear that only a defense line south of the main zasechnaya cherta would put an end to annual incursions. Such a chain of eleven forts and obstructions, the "Belgorod Defense Line", was constructed at the behest of Boris Godunov, including, among other fortified settlements, the towns of Livny (1586), Voronezh (1586), Kursk (1587, rebuilt), Yelets (1592, rebuilt), Stary Oskol (1593), Valuyki (1593) and Belgorod (1596, rebuilt).

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