Talk:Foundation of Moldavia/Sandbox
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The foundation of Moldavia – traditionally known as descălecat ("dismounting") in Romanian – is linked by the earliest Moldavian chronicles with a legendary hunt, which ended with the movement of the Vlach (Romanian) leader Dragoș and his people from Maramureș to the region of the Moldova River in the 1350s. Moldavia developed in the lands between the Carpathian Mountains and the Dniester River, which had been dominated by nomadic Turkic peoples – the Pechenegs, Ouzes and Cumans – from around 900. During the same period, the number of archaeological sites decreased: there are about 300 sites from the 9th and 10th centuries, but only about 35 sites dated to the 12th and 13th centuries. The neighboring Principality of Halych and Kingdom of Hungary started to expand their authority over parts of the territory from around 1150, but the Golden Horde took control of the lands east of the Carpathians in the 1240s. The Mongols promoted international commerce, and an important trade road developed along the Dniester. The circulation of Hungarian and Bohemian coins shows that there were also close economic contacts between the basin of the Moldova and Central Europe in the early 14th century.
In addition to the dominant Turkic population, medieval chronicles and documents mentioned other peoples who lived between the Carpathians and the Dniester, including the Ulichians and the Tivercians in the 9th century, and the Brodniki and the Alans in the 13th century. According to a scholarly theory, the Blökumenn or Blakumen, mentioned in Scandinavian sources written in the 11th and 13th centuries, were actually Vlachs who lived in the same territory. The Vlachs' presence in that territory is well-documented from the 1160s. Their local polities were first mentioned in the 13th century: the Mongols defeated the Qara-Ulagh, or Black Vlachs, in 1241, and the Vlachs invaded Halych in the late 1270s. The Vlachs came to Maramureș during the reign of one "King Vladislaus of Hungary" to fight against the Mongols, according to the Moldo-Russian Chronicle.
Both Poland and Hungary took advantage of the decline of the Golden Horde and started a new expansion in the 1340s. After a Hungarian army defeated the Mongols in 1345, new forts were built east of the Carpathians. Royal charters, chronicles and place names show that Hungarian and Saxon colonists settled in the region. Dragoș took possession of the lands along the Moldova with the approval of Louis I of Hungary, but the Vlachs rebelled against Louis I's rule already in the late 1350s. Dragoș was succeeded by his son, Sas, but Sas's son was expelled from Moldavia by a former voivode of Maramureș, Bogdan, in the early 1360s. Bogdan, who resisted Louis I's attempts to restore Hungarian suzerainty for several years, was the first independent ruler of Moldavia. The earliest Moldavian silver and bronze coins were minted in 1377. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople acknowledged the Metropolitan See of Moldavia, after years of negotiations, in 1401.