Mokhcha

Mokhcha, also known as Mukhsha, was a town of the Golden Horde on the upper Moksha, near the later settlement of Narovchat. It stood in a region inhabited by Mordvin communities and became the centre of a northern ulus. Archaeological remains reveal brick buildings, baths and Muslim mausoleums, evidence of a substantial town beyond the great Volga cities of the south.

Coins were struck at Mukhsha from 1313 to 1367. During the struggles that divided the Horde, the town was seized by the beg Taghay in 1362. It was apparently devastated by Timur's forces in 1395 and declined in the early fifteenth century. Its ruins remained beneath the later settlement, preserving traces of the buildings and burials of a frontier centre of the Horde.