The Laurentian Chronicle reports s.a. 1210 a military expedition of certain Kuzma Ratshich, a mechenosha (‘sword-bearer’) of Great Prince Vsevolod ‘the Big Nest’ of Vladimir. Kuzma raided certain Tepra , which is unkonown. Following some of the later (16th-century) chroniclers, scholars most often understand Tepra as River Pra, a tributary of the Oka. However, this identification is not based on any linguistic or historical grounds. The author points at another mention of Tepra : in one of the lists of peoples in the introductory part of the Rus Primary Chronicle in the version of the early 15th-century Trinity Chronicle where it is listed prior to Perm . Also, the author points at four villages in the Upper Volga Basin (in the modern Kostroma, Yaroslavl, and Tver regions) which are called either Tepra or Teperskoe . It is suggested to treat the expedition of 1210 as an element of the gradual colonization of lands beyond the Volga by the princes of Vladimir in the late 12th and the early 13th century.
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