| Where is the Tatar Kazan? The Englishman Helmersen,
already mentioned in our book, wrote of Kazan in 1833:
"The beautiful buildings in the new taste, the old
churches, the fortress and the mosques with their
graceful minarets adorn it and give it variety ."
Travellers and guests of Kazan were not struck so much by
the upper town, which did not differ essentially from
other important provincial cities of the Empire, as by
the lower town, which stretshes along the shore of Lake
Kaban and both banks of the Bulak Canal. Historically, the
Bulak Canal formed the boundary between the Russian and
Tatar parts of Kazan, although this dividing line became
less clear-cut in the last century when Tatar trade and
industry developed as they were freed from the main bonds
and obstacles.But the real life of the Tatar population
of Kazan was lived in the areas beyond the Bulak Canal
and the Kaban and other lakes, where the Old Tatar and
New Tatar settlements were located. The history of the Old Tatar Settlement begins shortly after the fall of Kazan, when some Tatars who had proved thier loyalty were allowed to settle near the city on the low-lying shore of Lake Kaban, beyond the marshes. The name of the lake is another of Kazan's secrets. It is said that olden times the Bolgar Khan Kaban built a palace and laid out beautiful gardens on its shores. According to another story, when Kazan was taken, the Khan's treasury was hidden in the lake. Whether true or not, this Kazan fable prompted Gabdulla Tukay to write in his long satrical poem, The Hay Market or New Kisekbash : When the troops from Moscow
appeared, The lake, or rather the series of connected lakes, the Near, Middle and Far Kaban, was itself a treasure of Kazan, even without the hoard sunk in its depths. From olden times Kaban supplied clean water for drinking and other needs, and served for the transport of goods by boat to the city's trading quarters; much later, it was used by the ferries of the famous Oscar Pettsold Brewery. The lake also provided water for the famous leather and soap manufacturers of Kazan. On its shores during the four-hundred-year separate existence of the Tatar Settlements, a remarkable semi-urban, semi-rural style of the life evolved: here lived merchants and mullahs, craftsmen working in leather and copper, gold and silver, scholars, tradespeople and peasants, for in past centuries the broad ploughed fields came right up to the Tatar town. Most of the buildings were timber structures in the distinctive national style of wooden architecture, but in the last century, as Tatar crafts, industries and trade prospered, detached houses, madrasahs and mosques began to be built in stone. It was here that the ancient culture and traditions of the tragic civilisation were maintained, thanks in great part to widespread education that preserved the faith and historical memory. The well-known historian of Kazan, Professor K. Fuks of Kazan University, who closely observed the life of the Tatar settlements, wrote: "For every visitor, without doubt, it is stange to find in the Kazan Tatars, generally speaking, a people more educated than others, even Europeans. A Tatar who does not know to read or write is held in contempt by his fellows and is not respected as a citizen." Fuks' house was in the area beyond the Bulak Canal, in the very centre of the Tatar life of the city, so that the conclusion which he drew in 1844 on the basis of his its daily observationand research is well-founded: "Every nation has its good and bad side. The same goes for the Tatars; these people, who have been subjugated for two hundred years and are now scattered among the Russians, have succeeded amazingly well in preserving their customs, their morals and pride, as though they were living separately." |
| Foreign visitors have also left their observation on
the everyday life of the Tatar settlements. "The
Tatars are Muhammedans", the English traveller
Joseph Bellings noted in 1803, "and outwardly and
inwardly their houses are very tidy." But it should
not be thought that the Tatar history of Kazan was
written only by foreign travellers, professors of Kazan
University and members of its Geographical and
Ethnographical Society. Tatars scholars themselves, with
a careful eye to posterity, recorded the history of every
house worthy of attention and every mosque built within
the confines of Kazan. Most of these houses and mosques
are no more, so that present and future generations of
Kazanians owe a great debt of gratitude to city
historians such as Kayum Nasyri, Shigabetdin Mardzhani,
Khadi Atlasi and many others, whose books and manuscripts
have recently become acccesible to all. Thanks to their
enthusiastic and tireless work and the recoerds of
eyewitnesses, there is a wonderful opportunity to restore
to it's former glory the Tatar part of Kazan, which has
been disfigured in this century by tactless architectural
developments and thoughtless Soviet construction. This
work has already begun in earnest with the restoration of
the old city mosques, but ahead lie the tasks of
reconstructing the residential and trading parts of the
Tatar settlements and returning to Lake Kaban its former
cleanliness and beauty. The restoration of the areas
beyond the lake and the Bulak Canal, the cradles and
hearths of contemporary Tatar culture, has been entered
into the plans for the renaissance of Kazan. The
realisation of these plans will be aided, of cource, by
the architectural landmarks that, having survived
unscathed all the persecutions, fires and revolutions,
form an integral part of Tatar civilisation. The history of the Tatar part of Kazan is peopled with merchant and industrial dynasties, families of teachers, mullahs and master craftsmen, officials, poets and writers, soliders and sometimes even Kazan chiefs of police. Some of the Tatar merchants achieved a status that allowed them to own houses and in the upper part of the city and their wealth enabled them to engage in charitable works: the printing of books, and the building and maintainence of schools and mosques. At the end of the nineteenth century, Kazan , became one of the leading centres of the dzhadidizm movement of religious renewal and enlightenment, and served as an example for the whole Muslim world. Tatar scholars, philosophers and politicians were well-known far beyond the bounds of the Russian Empire, and their works sometimes played a leading role in the national revival of a number of Muslim states. Thanks to Tatar writers and educators, the city of Kazan became to cradle of unprecedented cultural progres in the Muslim East in the fields of education, the national theatre and professional musical activity. The professional drama troupe Sayar (Traveller) performed continuously from 1911 on the premises of the Eastern Club, establiched in 1907. Its director and one of its leading actors was G. Kareev. The repertory of the Traveller Theatre included the plays of the Schiller, Ostrovsky, Gogol, the classic works by the fathers of Tatar drama G. Kamal and K. Tinchurin, and the plays of the F. Bournash, M. Fayzi, Sh.Kamal and G. Kulahmetov. The members of the first Tatar theatre company included F. Ilskaya and S. Gizatullina-Volzhskaya, the first actresses of the whole Muslim world, to whom the most famous poets of the Kazan dedicated rapturous verses. The new Tatar Academic Theatre now stands on the shore of the Lake Kaban, opposite the modest, two-storey building of the Eastern Club, where its remarkable history began. The theatre is always filled to capacity, and its is very difficult to get in to performances of the Tatar classics. In this modern building above the broad, smooth expance of the lake, international congress of tatars have been held in recent years, attended by representatives of the Tatar communities of the USA, Japan, Australia, Finland, Germany, Turkey and other countries. The place where the theatre originated, at the beginning of the century bore the name Evangeliskaya (Evangelist) Square and was flanked by arcades of shops. Here, at the beginning of the Old Tatar Settlement, not far from the ancient Mardzhani Mosque and the Mardzhania Madrasah, where Moskovskaya and Evangelicheskaya streets met, the spacious avenue known as the Tatarstan Prospect has recently taken shape, its buildings displaying extensive use of Tatar architectural and decorative elements.This square separated two mainparts of the enchanted capital: the areas beyond Lake Kaban and the Bulak Canal, each of which has an interesting history. The old apartment house on the corner of the square has a little tower with a weather-vane depicting the winged serpent Zilant. This building from 1886 with its long, severe facade is especially dear to all who preserve a love of the native culture. This is the former Hotel Bolgar, not far from the Hay Market (Sennaya) Mosque, which had shops and the office of the democratic Magarif (Enlightenment) publishing house on the ground floor, while the upper floor was divided into apartments where the young Tatar intelligentsia of our stormy century often met. Here lived one of the well-known Tatar actors and directors of the beginning of the century, V. Murtazin-Imansky, the founder of the Bashkir professional. Another resident was the Tatar revolutionary Mullanur Vakhitov. A bronze monument to Vakhitov now stands beside the Finance and Economy Institute, on a hill in the upper part of the city. His dedicated life, full of bright, sometimes over-idealistic, expectations, ended tragically in 1918 when he was shot by the Kazan Kremlin walls. He had been the leader at the crushing defeat of the so-called "Repyblic beyond the Bulak", the desperate attempt in 1917 to create an autonomous Tatar state that was cruelly supressed by the Bolsheviks. Vakhitov failed to realise that both the plan to found a Volga-Ural state of Idel-Ural and the project of the Tatar-Bashkir republic, of which the idealistic commissar dreamed, were equally unacceptable to the central Bolshevik authorities. It is hard to pass judgement on events in such harsh times. Not many people in Kazan know that Vakhitov lived for a while in the "Bolgar Rooms", dear to the Kazanians because the great poet Gabdulla Tukay lived and worked there, on the first floor, from 1907 until his premature death in 1913. |
| Tukay, a poet of genius and an eternal orphan, was
doomed in his short life to experience all the bitterness
of homelessness and human misunderstanding. His
personality and works reflect the finest qualities of the
Tatar people: directness, truthfulness, selflessness,
generosity and greatness of soul. His penetrating poems,
written in a living, clear and moving language, convey
the orphan state of the Tatar people, its lofty yearning
and sorrows. Many of Tukay's poems have been set to old
melodies and have become folk songs. Besides creating a
new literary language that was close to the people, in
the tragic poems and his long satirical poetic works, he
held up to the Tatars a mirror of their true nature and
true destiny. To Kazan he dedicated his most exalted,
nostalgic, and also most violent and indignant lines.
Always in the thick of contemporary events, Tukay never
flattered or idealised the people, but judged them, as he
judged himself , by the highest standards. The life of
Tukay is the tragedy of solitary genius; even those who
understood him best did not grasp the magnitude of his
talent. Having achieved an incredible amount in the last seven years of his life, Tukay perished from consumption when only twenty-seven. In the words of a contemporary: "He was accompanied to the place where 'truth is buried' by a huge crowd, and none of the Kazan Tatars had ever seen such an honoured funeral". The art of Tukay is one of the pinnacles not only of the thousand-year-long poetic tradition of the Tatars, but world poetry, which he loved so passionately and translated prolifically into his native language. Like most geniuses, Tukay was valued fully only after his early death. Kazan remembers and cherishes everything connected with his life and work. Every year on 26 April, his birthday, poetry readings are held at the foot of the monuments to Tukay near the shore of Kaban and beside the opera theatre. In the heart of the Old Tatar Settlement, on Yunus Square, stands a beautiful two-storey detached house with little towers and spires, built at the end of the nineteenth century by the merchant Apakov for his daughter, who married the son of the legendary Imam Shamil, leader of the long, but eventually unsuccessful liberation struggle of the Caucasus peoples against tsarist Russia. In this building, known as the Shamil House, is located the Tukay Museum. Manuscripts and editions of Tukay's works published in his lifetime are also kept in other museums and library archives of the grateful city of Kazan. Ekaterininskaya (Catherine) Street, down which the poet walked so often to the various publishing houses, now bears the name Tukayevskaya. The notable buildings in this street include one, raised at the end of the eighteenth century, which huosed the Muhammadia, the most important madrasah of imperial Russia. Over the years, many outstanding figures of Tatar culture studied there: G. Kamal, the dramatist and founder of the Tatar theatre; F. Aamirkhan, the writer friend of Tukay; the dramatist and actor K. Tinchurin; and S. Gabuashi, one of the earliest Tatar composers, the creator of the first Tatar opera Saniya and of the music for many performances of the Tatar theatre. The director of the madrasah was remarkable scholar and religious reformer, G. Barudi, one of the reformers of the Tatar education system. The Muhammadia Madrasah forms a single architectural ensemble with the nearby Galeev Mosque, the Krasnaya Usmanov Mosque and the old residences of Tatar aristocrats and merchants. Not far from the Muhammadia there are other educational establishments from earlier times: the Mardzhania and Muzaffaria madrasahs, and the Tatar Teachers' School. This school, also on Tykay Street, was the first secular educational establishment for Tatars, who were taught in the Russian language. It was opened in 1876 at the proposal and with the aid of V. Radlov, the well-known Turcologist and later academician, who at the time was inspector of the Tatar, Bashkir and Kirgiz schools. The first director of the school was M. Makhmudov, a tireless propagator of Russian culture among the Tatars, followed by the writer and historian Akhmerov. The scholar and educator Kayum Nasyri taught there for some time, but left the school, after falling out with Radlov over the method of teaching the Russian language. Many outstanding Tatar intellectuals graduated from the tatar Teachers' School. In the cultural sence, Kazan always struck a balance between Europe and Asia: the life-style of a provincial capital combined with the traditional mode of existence, resulted in a fascinating synthesis unique to Kazan. Naturally , the architectural regulations of the time also affected the construction of Kazan 's stone mosques from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, which were built, as a rule, where old wooden mosques had stood. Although only a few og the mosques have survived , they display a surprising variety of architecture.
Other mosques that have been preserved in Kazan are the Burnaev (1872), the Iske Tash (Old Stone) Mosque (1830-1840), the Kizil (Red) Mosque (1867) and the Zyagyar (Pale Blue) Mosque (1810-1815). The last two also lost their minarets in the Thirties, about the same time as the mosque was built on the opposite shore of the Lake Kaban in honour of the millennium of the acceptance of Islam in the Volga area. |
© 1995-2008 Kazan State University
The
most beautiful of Kazan's mosques, and one of the
loveliest and most gracious in the whole of the Muslim
East, is the Azimov, which has been standing in the
middle of the settlement since 1887. Its slender minaret,
51 meters high, and the rectangular building are lavishly
decorated in the most refined taste with stone carving
and ceramics. The forms and contours of the mosque are
wonderfully harmonious, giving it an airy grace and
exquisite proportions. The manner in which it came to be
built tells much about the Kazan of that time. Its site,
in what was then the soap-makers' district, was
previously occupied by a modest wooden structure, without
a minaret, from 1804. In 1851 the merchant Mustafa
Azimov, who, like many of the Kazan Tatars of that time,
had been to Mecca and therefore bore the name hadji,
raised another mosque in its place, still wooden but with
a minaret. When Hadji Mustafa died, his son, Murtaza
Azimov, completed the work, gave it the finishing
touches, broadened and improved the streets close to it
and finally, in 1886, donated the funds for the grand
stone mosque which still stands in Kazan. Murtaza Azimov
himself managed only once to take part in the Friday
prayers after the opening of the mosque in 1887. He died
before the following Friday, but the memory of the two
generatons of philanthropists has been preserved in the
name of the mosque for more than a century.