Kadom

Kadom stands on the Moksha River east of Ryazan. Flooding altered its location during the fifteenth century: inhabitants abandoned Old Kadom and established a new settlement on sandy hills six kilometres downstream. The Nogai route, also known as the Ordobazar road, passed through this country, giving the riverside settlement a place on a route toward the steppe.

In the middle of the fifteenth century Kadom and its district were granted to the Kazan prince Qasim, and the town remained within the Kasimov Khanate until the end of the seventeenth century. A wooden kremlin built on the hill now called Ascension or Cathedral Hill in the sixteenth century survived into the eighteenth. Kadom was captured by Polish forces during the Time of Troubles. In 1779 it became a district town of the Tambov vicegerency, although it lost that district status in 1796. Its local history thus includes both adaptation to a flood-prone river and successive changes in frontier government.