Yaroslavl Principality

a principality in northeastern Rus’ from the 13th to 15th centuries.

The Yaroslavl Principality was formed in 1218 when the Rostov Principality was divided up among the sons of Prince Kon-stantin Vsevolodovich. It included the lands on both sides of the Volga and such tributaries as the Mologa, Iukhota, and Kurba rivers, as well as the lands along the lower course of the Sheksna. In 1294 it passed to the Smolensk prince Fedor Rostislavich, the founder of a new dynasty.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the Yaroslavl principality broke up into appanage principalities. In the late 14th century it was drawn within the political sphere of influence of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which absorbed several parts of the principality over a period beginning in the first third of the 15th century. The Yaroslavl Principality lost all political independence, and it ceased to exist in 1463, although some princes of Yaroslavl retained the rights of appanage princes in the late 15th and the first half of the 16th centuries.