The İske Taş () or Iske Tash Mosque, also the Old Stone Mosque (via tt-Cyrl, Иске Таш мәчет, translit=İske Taş mäçet, russian: Старокаменная мечеть, мечеть Иске-Таш, ''Starokamennaya, Iske-Tash'') or the Mosque of the Old Stone (via tt-Cyrl, Иске Таш мәчете, translit=İske Taş mäçete),
/ref> formerly known as ''The Ninth Cathedral Mosque'', ''The Big Stone Mosque'', is a mosque in

Kazan Kazan ( ; rus, Казань, p=kɐˈzanʲ; tt-Cyrl, Казан, ''Qazan'', IPA: ɑzan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka rivers, covering a ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

History

According to the old legend, it was erected on the place of a

communal grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as gravey ...

of the fighting men who defended Kazan in 1552. The grave was marked by a ''big old stone'' (''zur iske taş''), which has been preserved in front of the east facade of the mosque for many years after its erection. The mosque was built in 1802 with donations of merchant Ğabdulla Ütämişev. The

qibla The qibla ( ar, قِبْلَة, links=no, lit=direction, translit=qiblah) is the direction towards the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer for the s ...

of the mosque was set by Ghabdennasir Qursawi. In 1830 it was reconstructed according to the project of Alexander Schmidt. The mosque's façades were rebuilt in classicism traditions. Their strictness is accentuated by the minaret with three tiers set on a thick cross wall between the praying rooms. The minarets' shape is associated with the minarets in the ancient towns

Bolghar Bolghar ( tt-Cyrl, Болгар, cv, Пăлхар) was intermittently the capital of Volga Bulgaria from the 8th to the 15th centuries, along with Bilyar and Nur-Suvar. It was situated on the bank of the Volga River, about 30 km downstream ...

and Kasimov. The mosque is two-storied, has two halls, the minaret is placed in the center of gable roof. In the 19th century the imams were from Amirkhan family. The mosque was closed according to the decision of Central Executive Committee of

Tatar ASSR The Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (russian: Татарская Автономная Советская Социалистическая Республика; tt-Cyrl, Татарстан Автономияле Совет Соци� ...

at the end of the 1930s. It was used as a school and then as storage during the Soviet rule. In 1994 it was returned to the believers.

References

External links

Russian mosques
{{Mosques in Russia Mosques in Kazan Religious buildings and structures completed in 1802 Closed mosques in the Soviet Union Mosques in Russia Mosques in Europe Cultural heritage monuments of federal significance in Tatarstan

History

See also

References

External links