The Kazan Kremlin

The Kazan Kremlin, a magnificent architectural ensemble bearting traces of many centuries of building activity, is enclosed by high, white stone walls with characteristic loop-holes and thirteen hippedroofed towers. The most remarkable building of the Kremlin (kermen=fortress in Tatar)) is the Suyumbika Tower, seven storeys and 58 metres high. Its distinctive profile, visible from all sides, is balanced by the contours of the Spassky (Saviour) Tower wich stands at the opposite end of the Kremlin. The city-fortress was formerly surrounded by water on three sides: the River Kazanka formed the northern boundary, to the east lay three lakes, and to the west was an artificial waterway, the Bulak Canal, constructed long ago by Tatar builders to join the Kazanka with Lake Kaban. This canal served both defence and navigation needs: goods from the Volga and Kazanka could be brought right up to the walls of the city. In medieval times the Kremlin ramparts were constructed of oak beams, while the buildings inside were of both wood and stone.

Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the time of the conquest of the city, 30,000 people lived within the walls of the citadel, which then had approximately the same boundaries as today. A number of the entrance and trading quarter towers have not survived; the rest were reconstructed when the Kremlin ramparts were rebuilt in stone (1556-58). The Kazan Kremlin was jast as impressive in olden times. A Russian chronicler, describing the capture of Kazan, recounts how Ivan the Terrible was astonished at "the unusual beauty of the walls of the fortress of the city". The English traveller Jenkinson wrote in his memoirs in 1558: "Kazan is a beautiful city, built in the Russian and Tatar style, with a strong castle, standing on a high hill".

Starting in 1556, Russian stonemaisons, under the direction of the architects I. Shiriay and P. Yakovlev, rebuilt the Kremlin walls and towers in the Pskov style, adding a few new towers, including the Spassky, which now serves at the official entrance to the territory of the Kremlin. The Russians, as already mentioned, first destroyed and dismantled virtually all the structures of the Kremlin that were connected with the Muslim History of Kazan.

The brightest architectural jewel, standing out from the whole ensemble , is the Suyumbika Tower, the spiritual symbol and pride of Kazan. There are many legends and hypotheses connected with this tower, whose architecture has a pronounced oriental flavour. It takes its name from the last queen of Kazan, Suyumbika, who, legend has it, threw herself from the top after Kazan had been taken by the Muscovite troops. The official versoin of the origin of the tower is that it was raised in the seventeenth century by Russian buildres as a watch-tower for military purposes. The Tatar version attributes its origin to Bolgar builders and traces the source of its architectural perfection to the brick structures of the pre-Russian period of Kazan's history. If the tower was indeed built by Russians as a watch-tower, one may well ask why, since the Kazan region was at peace at the time, the popular uprisings having been suppressed, and there was, in any case, a high bell-tower next to the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral. The consrtuction of another watch-tower, and one of obviously Muslim type at that, would have been both superfluous and very expensive. Moreover, the Tatar people, who are possessed of a good historical memory and to this day honour the Bolgar ruins of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, treat this tower with a reverence that would hardly be possible if it had been built, historically relatively recently, by Russians. None of the Tatar versions of the origin of the Suyumbika Tower offers any explanation as to why it escaped the fate of the other architectural marvels of Kazan after the city fell, why it, was not destroyed by the conquerors. There is, however, one hypothesis with answers this question and many others.

In the years when the exiled Muhammad Amin lived in Moscow, he witnessed the rebuilding of the Moscow Kremlin, directed by Aristotle Fioravanti, the great Italian architect from Bologna. It is easy to imagine that the young and ambtious Khan, seeing how the glory of Moscow was being embodied in stone, became envious of the grand structures of the Moscow Kremlin, and during his reign in Kazan he might well have asked Ivan III to send the Italian architect so that he could commemorate in a similar manner the historic peace treaty between Moscow and Kazan. Research shows that the builder of Suyumbika, whose architectural features are reminiscent of the Calvaria of San Stefano and the towers of the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, could have been the , by then elderly Aristotle Fioravanti or one of his associates. In favour of this hypothesis is the size of the bricks used to build the tower, which exactly tallies with the standard introduced by Fiovaranti when he arrived in Moscow, and differs considerably from the Russian standard adopted at the end of the sixteenth century under Boris Godunov. This fact alone shows that tower could not have been raised by Russian builders in the seventeenth century. Moreover, the chemical composition of the bricks is identical with that of the bricks of Bolgar buildings. It thus seems probable that the Suyumbika Tower was designed by an Italian architect and built by local Tatar craftsmen between1486 and 1490, and that after the conquest of Kazan it was preserved by Ivan the Terrible because it served not only as a convenent watch-tower, but also as symbol that the Muscovite troops of Ivan III had already taken Kazan while helping Muhammad Amin to gain control in the fifteenth century. If this hypothesis is accepted, it shows again the level of Kazan's civilisation, which was influenced not only by the spirit of the Muslim Renaissance, but also by the European Renaissance. The name of the tower also lends weight to this hypothesis, since Italian towers were built not only for military and ceremonial purposes, but also for living in. The large Suyumbika Tower rose above the entrance to the area of the khan's palace and could well have served as a residence for the queen. Incidentally, it is interesting that the tower is leaning (its deviation from the axis is now almost one and a half metres) and that the possible builder, Aristotle Fioravanti, became well known in his homeland of Italy for righting leaning towers! In any case. the Suyumbika Tower is one more closely guarded secret of the enchanted capital, buried in the history of the Kazan Kremlin.

On the Kazanka side, close to the Suyumbika Tower, is the Palace Church, built on the foundation of the medieval Muraleev Mosque. Alongside is the Governor's Palace, now the residence of the President of the Republic, which was erected in the nineteeth century. On this part of the Kremlin is the complex of buildings housing government offices and the consistory court, all of wich occupy the site of the former khan's palace, later, the sovereign's or supreme commander's residence. Entry into the Kremlin from the Kazanka side is through the Tainitskaya (Muraleev) Tower, which commands a broad panorama of stretches of the Great Volga, the bridges over the Kazanka and the quarters of the city across the river.