The Oka river was the homeland of the Eastern Slavic
Vyatichi tribe. By the 5th century the land around the Oka river was inhabited by different Slavic tribes. The Baltic tribe of
Galindians also lived in the western part of the Oka basin. Turkic tribes also inhabited the Oka area. The Oka river was also inhabited by Vikings and other peoples from Scandinavia. Artifacts of Scandinavian origin were found along the Oka–Volga route. There is no consensus opinion where the name Oka originated from. It could, however, be
cognate with
Sanskrit ओघ
ogha, meaning 'stream' or 'current'. From the Mongol conquest until about 1633, the Oka was the last line of defense against steppe raiders. Later
Zasechnaya cherta, a chain of fortification lines, was created to protect
Grand Duchy of Moscow and later the
Tsardom of Russia from the
Crimean-Nogai Raids. It was south of the original line along the Oka. The river gave its name to the
Upper Oka Principalities, situated upstream from
Tarusa. In 1221 Grand Duke
Yuri II of Vladimir founded
Nizhny Novgorod, later to become one of largest Russian cities, to protect the Oka's confluence with the Volga. The
Qasim Khanate, a Muslim polity, occupied the middle reaches of the Oka (around the city of
Kasimov) in the 15th and 16th centuries. Before the construction of the railways in the mid-19th century and the building of the
Moscow Canal in the 1930s, the Oka, along with its tributary
Moskva, served as an important transportation route connecting
Moscow with the Volga. Due to the Oka's and Moskva's meandering courses, travel was not particularly fast: for example, it took
Cornelis de Bruijn around 10 days to sail from Moscow down these two rivers to Nizhny Novgorod in 1703. Traveling upstream may have been even slower, as the boats had to be pulled by
burlaks. == Landmarks ==