A Carpathian principality split into three modern maps
Moldavia—Romanian Moldova or Țara Moldovei—was a historical Eastern European principality between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester. Its west is now Romania, its east the Republic of Moldova, and northern and southeastern strips belong to Ukraine; the old state lasted from the 14th century until its 1859 union with Wallachia created modern Romania.
At various times the principality took in Bessarabia with the Budjak, all of Bukovina, Hertsa and, for a spell, Pokuttya. It began autonomous and later lived under Ottoman overlordship. For a short while it was called Bogdania after its founder Bogdan I, and Ottoman writers kept that echo with Boğdan and Kara-Boğdan, Black Bogdania. Germans say Moldau and Hungarians Moldva.
The name comes from the Moldova River, whose own origin is murky. Dimitrie Cantemir, writing in 1714–1716, told of Dragoș chasing a star-marked aurochs with a hound named Molda that drowned in an unknown river. Other theories point to Gothic mulda, dust, or to a Slavic possessive ending, and a boyar called Alexa Moldaowicz appears in a 1334 document. Coins struck by Saxon moneyers call the land Molderland. A 5th-century Christian cemetery has been excavated at Mihălășeni in Botoșani county.
Vlach herders captured the future Byzantine emperor Andronikos I Komnenos in the area in 1164. Louis I of Hungary sent Dragoș in 1353 to guard the Siret against the Golden Horde, creating a vassal march around Baia. In 1359 Bogdan of Cuhea, another Maramureș voivode at odds with the Hungarian king, crossed the mountains and broke free. The court moved from Baia to Siret, then Suceava, and finally in 1565 to Iași. Petru II became a vassal of Poland’s Władysław II on 26 September 1387, and Roman I took Cetatea Albă in 1392, giving the state a Black Sea port.
Alexander I, enthroned in 1400, sent troops to fight for Poland at Grunwald. Stephen the Great, ruling from 1457, crushed the Ottomans at Vaslui in 1475 and beat a Polish army in the Cosmin Forest in 1497, yet lost Chilia and Cetatea Albă in 1484 and accepted Ottoman suzerainty in 1498.
Source: Moldavia
