Moksha

The Mokshas are one of the two Mordvinic peoples of the Volga region, speaking Moksha, a Volgaic language of the Uralic family, in the basin of the Moksha River. Their ancestors emerged from the breakup of the Volga Finnic groups around 1200 BC.

In 1236 and 1237 the Mongols defeated the Mordvinic peoples at the Black Forest. The Mokshan ruler Puresh was forced to join Batu's western campaign, where he and many of his men perished in 1241 after a failed attempt to defect at Legnica.

Their country became the Mukhsha Ulus of the Golden Horde, whose town of Mukhsha struck coins well into the fourteenth century. As the Horde weakened and Muscovy expanded, the Moksha lands passed under Russian rule between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the people paid yasak, were gradually Christianized, and partly resettled eastward.