Bagayevskaya

Bagayevskaya lies on the lower Don, upstream from its broad delta and the Sea of Azov. A Cossack settlement called Bagay is associated with a record of 1648, a date later treated as its foundation. The river and its branches provided fishing grounds and a route through the steppe, while Don Cossack communities guarded and contested the approaches to Ottoman Azak farther downstream. The settlement belongs to a landscape of floodplain meadows, river islands and open grassland.