Kazan has its own leaning tower. It is called Soyembika Tower and the deviation of its tip is over 6 feet or 1.98 meters. The exact date of the construction of Soyembika Tower is a subject of dispute. Some date it back to the 16th and 17th century while others date its construction to the early 16th century when Kazan was a capital of the independent kingdom. It is named after Tatar queen Soyembika. Some claim that the queen herself erected it in 1549 in honor of her husband Safa- Girey who died in 1549. Others claim that Soyembika threw herself from the tower during siege, afraid that tsar Ivan will force her to marry him. Another urban legend claims that a giant sphere on top of the needle kept some secret documents. This even forced the governor of Kazan to take it off the tower and inspect it. It proved to be empty, but rusted holes convinced locals that there were in fact some papers, but they were lost in the course of history.
The tower is located inside the Kazan Kremlin, away from the fortress
walls, and due to its position, it carried the function of a sentinel
(watchdog) fortress tower. From its top, a wide view of the Kazanka,
Volga and surroundings opens.
The foundation of the tower rests
on oak piles. The walls are brick, with lime mortar. In the lower tier,
a through passage was arranged to the Oberkomendant's (later governor's)
yard, covered with swing gates.
The tower consists of seven
tiers: the first three tiers are square quarters of different heights
and have open galleries; the next two are octagonal (octagonal); two
more - a faceted brick tent and a watchtower; the last is a green spire
crowned with a gilded "apple" on which rests a crescent moon (before
1918 - a double-headed eagle).
The edges of all tiers are
decorated with spatulas or thin brick rollers. On the western and
eastern facades, the pylons of the lower tier have 2 attached columns of
the Corinthian order, crossed in the middle of the height by "typically
Russian horizontal rollers".
The earliest mention of the tower in written sources dates back to
May 9, 1703, when it was depicted by the Dutch traveler Cornelis de
Bruyne in a panoramic sketch of Kazan, made by him while traveling along
the Volga to Persia.
There is also a mention in 1777, when it was
marked on the plan of the Kremlin as "a tower with a spitz above the
gate."
In later sources, the tower was called differently: in
1799-1804 (?) - “the dilapidated church of the Presentation of the
Mother of God with it is a special tower ...”, 1804 - “a tower with a
high spoke with an entrance in which the church ...”, 1804 - "... a
tower with a front-spoke ...", in 1812-1816 - "a tower of Asian
Architecture", 1815 - "ancient tower", 1815 - "... a high tower, also a
precious remnant of Kazan antiquity ...", 1818 - "commandan tower",
about 1825 - "of the same Asian Architecture [tower] ...", 1829 - "an
old tower, called Tatar, of Gothic architecture. It is believed that it
was part of the observation Palace of the Tatar Queen Sumbeki.
For the first time in literature, the romantic name "Syuyumbike Tower"
("Sumbekin Tower") appears in 1832 in the fourth issue of the Kazan
magazine "Zavolzhsky Ant", in chapter X of the essay "Kazan". Gradually
it becomes common.
In the Tatar language, the name "Soembika
manarasy" was skalked in the 19th century from the Russian name
"Syuyumbike tower". Initially, in the Tatar language, the tower was
called Khan macete manarasi (that is, the Khan's minaret), which
reflected the historical memory of the Khan's mosque and its minaret
that once stood nearby.
Construction
The time of the construction of the tower is not
documented. In this regard, the dating of the tower is debatable: the
main part of modern scientists dates the tower to the 17th-18th
centuries, and only a few attribute the construction of the tower to the
second half of the 16th century. Some researchers have speculated about
an earlier age of the building (at least its foundation). This issue is
currently still debatable and requires a more detailed study of
historical material.
Versions about the construction of the tower
in the Russian period
In the authoritative work "Kazan in the
monuments of history and culture", published under the editorship of S.
S. Aidarov, A. Kh. Khalikov, M. Kh. Khasanov, I. N. Aleev, the tower is
tentatively dated to 1645-1650. In the academic edition of the History
of Kazan, A. Kh. Khalikov and S. Kh. Alishev argue that the Syuyumbike
tower was built in the middle of the 17th century on the site of the
Khan’s tower that existed there:
The remains of the “great tower,”
notes Kurbsky, “the hedgehog stood on the mountain in front of the
gates,” were archaeologically recorded in the excavations of 1977, they
go under the modern Syuyumbike tower, traditionally placed as a
sentinel, in the same place, but already in the middle of the 17th
century.
— History of Kazan, 1988.
Hypotheses about the
construction of the tower earlier than the second half of the 17th
century are not confirmed by the oldest images of Kazan made by
travelers who visited it. On the earliest image of Kazan (from the book
of Olearius, who visited the city in 1638), the Syuyumbike tower is
missing. The Syuyumbike Tower is also not represented on the "Drawing of
Kazan" of the 17th century, on the views of Kazan from the monograph
"Northern and Eastern Tartaria" of 1692 by the Amsterdammer Nikolaas
Witsen. In this regard, the construction of the tower before 1692 is
extremely unlikely.
The construction of the tower at the turn of
the 17th and 18th centuries is indicated by the composition “octagon on
a quadrangle” (which spread in the Russian kingdom after the annexation
of the left-bank Ukraine) and other architectural features: the presence
in the first tier of order elements - columns on the pedestals, the
widths of the enclosing parapets, as well as the characteristic the form
of window openings with low arches, characteristic of the Moscow
Baroque. The unusually sharp shape of the tent and the stepped
composition of the tower have architectural analogues in the tent tops
of the towers of the Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery, the building of the
Zemsky order, as well as the Borovitskaya and Beklemishevskaya towers of
the Moscow Kremlin (tents of the 1680s).
As archeological and
architectural studies carried out in 1941-1944, 1947-1948, 1953-1954 and
1976-1978 showed, the foundation of the tower goes almost two meters
deep and cuts only the upper layers of the cultural deposits of Kazan -
the first (upper, dating from XX-XVIII centuries) and the second (lower,
Russian, dated from the 17th - second half of the 16th centuries), but
in some places also the third (middle, Kazan-Khan, first half of the
16th - second half of the 15th centuries).
The building horizon of
the tower is also located in the second layer, indicating the time of
its construction - not earlier than the second half of the 17th - early
18th centuries.
- "What, tower, in your name?", 1990
The
general dryness and strictness of the decoration makes it possible to
assume a later dating of the construction of the tower - up to the
1730s, when a double-headed eagle was installed on the tower. In favor
of the version that the tower was built only in the 18th century, the
fact that this building first appears on the plan of the city of Kazan
only in 1717-1718, that is, already in the time of Peter the Great. So,
S. Sanachin, based on the analysis of cartographic and written sources,
determines the time of construction of the tower in 1694-1718.
Professor of architecture Niyaz Khalit (who oversaw the construction of
the Kul-Sharif mosque in the Kremlin) believes that the tower was
founded by the Petrine government to monitor the movements of the enemy
after the rebellious Bashkirs approached Kazan at a distance of 30 km
and there was a real threat of taking the city. The watch tower was
built on the highest point of the city, possibly using fragments of a
minaret that previously stood on this site, which at one time also
served as an observation post. From the upper tier of the tower, in good
weather, a territory with a radius of 50 km (up to Sviyazhsk) is
visible. The weakness of the foundation (less than 1.5 meters) indicates
the haste of the builders, which led to its inclination. In general, the
arrangement of the commandant's house, the gate of which was the tower,
is associated with the formation in 1708 of the vast Kazan province.
Assumptions about the existence of the tower in the Khan period
The local historian, professor of the Kazan Imperial University N.P.
Zagoskin was inclined to the version of the tower’s appearance in the
Khan’s period. The researcher of the early 20th century, N. A. Spassky,
believed that the lower tiers of the tower were buildings of the khan
period, and the rest was erected in the 18th century during the
transformation of the former Nur-Ali mosque into a church. Supporters of
the version of the existence of the tower in the Khan's period suggest
that the tower was originally associated with the Khan's mosque or with
the Nur-Ali (Muraleeva) mosque, possibly performing the function of a
minaret.
Pommel
The installation of a double-headed eagle on
the tower dates back to 1730. Since, according to the legends of the
Kazan Tatars, important documents related to Tatar history and culture
were allegedly enclosed in the ball (“apple”) of the top of the tower,
in the 19th century it was removed and examined.
In February
1918, at the initiative of the Central Muslim Commissariat (the
Commissariat for Muslim Affairs of Inner Russia under the People's
Commissariat for National Affairs), decrees of the Council of People's
Commissars were signed on the return to Muslims of monuments of national
history and culture - the Syuyumbike Tower in Kazan and the caravanserai
in Orenburg. The telegram on the transfer of the Syuyumbike tower,
signed by M. Vakhitov, was announced by Y. S. Sheinkman at the general
meeting of the Kazan Council. The Pravda newspaper of March 14, 1918
reported on the solemn transfer of the tower to the Muslim population of
Kazan. At the same time, the Russian emblem on it was replaced with a
silver crescent. In the 1930s, in connection with the anti-religious
state policy, the crescent was removed from the tower.
In 1993,
at the request of the Tatar public, a gilded crescent was again
installed on the top of the tower - due to the fact that it "is used as
a minaret for reading the azan during the memorial prayer in honor of
the victims of 1552."
Tower leaning
In January 2021, the head of the Tatarstan Committee for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Ivan Gushchin, said that the deviation of the Syuyumbike tower from the vertical axis is a critical two meters. According to him, the committee organized monthly monitoring using modern ground-based laser scanning technologies.
There are several legends around the origin of the tower that play on
its popular name, but do not have any scientific justification:
The
tower was built by the Kazan queen Syuyumbike to perpetuate the memory
of her beloved wife Safa Giray after his death in 1549.
The seven
tiers of the tower symbolize the seven days during which it was erected
by Ivan Vasilyevich after the capture of Kazan in 1552. The initiator of
the construction is called the same Syuyumbike, which dropped from the
seventh tier. Different versions give different reasons for her act. For
example, tourists are told that the Russian Tsar supposedly offered to
marry her.
The tower was rebuilt from the minaret of the Khan's
mosque, erected by order of Syuyumbike.
These urban legends, one way
or another, go back to the romantic stories of the 19th century, noted
in many of the then guidebooks around Kazan.
At the same time,
there was a legend among the Tatar population of Kazan that some
documents of the Khan's period were stored in a gilded ball mounted on
the spire of the tower. At the request of the Tatar community, the
governor of Kazan ordered the ball to be removed and studied. There were
no documents inside, however, according to eyewitnesses, the ball was
rusted and full of holes, which made it easier to lose the documents, if
they were there.
Alexey Shchusev played with the silhouette of the Syuyumbike tower in
the form of one of the towers of the Kazansky railway station in Moscow.
The Syuyumbike Tower is significant for the plot of the film “O.K.
Treasures”, where the main characters, in search of a clue to the secret
of the treasures, make their way inside the tower as well. For close-ups
with the participation of the film's characters, a full-size fragment of
the Syuyumbike tower was rebuilt in the Moscow pavilion.