Blue Mosque (Kazan)

The Blue Mosque, also known as the Fourth Cathedral Mosque (Zängär mächet in Tatar), is a working mosque in Kazan and a monument of early 19th-century Tatar religious architecture. It stands in the Old Tatar Sloboda on Sary Sadykova Street, close to Yunusovskaya Square, and is one of the main historic mosques of the capital of Tatarstan.

History

A parish is recorded on this site from 1778, when a small wooden mosque stood here. In 1815 the old building was moved to the village of Suyksu, and over the next four years, by 1819, a stone mosque went up in its place. The construction was paid for by the Kazan merchant Akhmet Aitov-Zamanov. The architect's name has not survived; the building follows early classicism.

In 1864 the merchant G. B. Mustakimov extended the mosque by three windows along the facade and surrounded it with a fence designed by the architect P. I. Romanov. In 1907 the merchant G. A. Ishmuratov enlarged the mihrab section and the storeroom.

The mosque was closed in 1932, and its minaret was taken down in the 1930s. The building was turned into communal flats and remained housing for decades. It was returned to believers in 1993, and the restoration, including the minaret, was completed in 2009.

Name and architecture

The name comes from the colour of its walls, which were originally painted a soft blue. That is how the townspeople remembered it, although officially it was Kazan's Fourth Cathedral Mosque.

It is a two-storey, two-hall congregational mosque with the minaret set directly on the roof, as is usual in Tatar architecture. The minaret has three octagonal tiers. Restrained classicist facades are combined with the traditional layout of a Muslim place of worship; the extensions of the 19th and early 20th centuries changed the volume but not the overall look. The mosque is a protected heritage site.

Getting there

The Blue Mosque is at 8/19 Sary Sadykova Street, Kazan. The nearest public transport stops are Yunusovskaya Ploshchad and Ulitsa Tatarstan. A visit fits well into a walk around the Old Tatar Sloboda, with its merchant houses and other historic mosques.