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Kazan, Russia (Capital)

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Kazan, Russia (Government)

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KAZAN (called by the Cheremisses Ozon ), a town of eastern Russia, capital of the government of the same name, situated in 55° 48' N. and 49° 26" E., on the river Kazanka, 3 m. from the Volga, which however reaches the city when it overflows its banks every spring. Kazan lies 650 m. E. from Moscow by rail and 253 E. of Nizhniy-Novgorod by the Volga. Pop. (1883), 140,726; (1900), 143 ,707, all Russians except for some 20,000 Tatars. The most striking feature of the city is the kreml or citadel, founded in 1437, which crowns a low hill on the N.W. Within its wall, capped with five towers, it contains several churches, amongst them the cathedral of the Annunciation, founded in 1562 by Gury, the first archbishop of Kazan, Kazan being an archiepiscopal see of the Orthodox Greek Church. Other buildings in the kreml are a magnificent monastery, built in 1556; an arsenal; the modern castle in which the governor resides; and the red brick Suyumbeka tower, 246 ft. high, which is an object of great veneration to the Tatars as the reputed burial-place of one of their saints. A little E. of the kreml is the Bogoroditski convent, built in 1579 for the reception of the Black Virgin of Kazan, a miracle-working image transferred to Moscow in 1612, and in St Petersburg since 1710. Kazan is the intellectual capital of eastern Russia, and an important seat of Oriental scholarship. Its university, founded in 1804, is attended by nearly l000 students. Attached to it are an excellent library of 220,000 vols., an astronomical observatory, a botanical garden and various museums. The ecclesiastical academy, founded in 1846, contains the old library of the Solovetsk (Solovki) monastery, which is of importance for the history of Russian religious sects. The city is adorned with bronze statues of Tsar Alexander II., set up facing the kreml in 1895, and of the poet G. R. Derzhavin (1743-1816); also with a monument commemorating the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. The central parts of the city consist principally of small one-storeyed houses, surrounded by gardens, and are inhabited chiefly by Russians, while some 20,000 Tatars dwell in the suburbs. Kazan is, further, the intellectual centre of the Russian Mahommedans, who have here their more important schools and their printing-presses. Between the city and the Volga is the Admiralty suburb, where Peter the Great had his Caspian fleet built for his campaigns against Persia. The more important manufactures are leather goods, soap, wax candles, sacred images, cloth, cottons, spirits and bells. A considerable trade is carried on with eastern Russia, and with Turkestan and Persia. Previous to the 13th century, the present government of Kazan formed part of the territory of the Bulgarians, the ruins of whose ancient capital, Bolgari or Bolgary, lie 60 m. S. of Kazan. The city of Kazan itself stood, down to the 13th century, 30 m. to the N.E., where traces of it can still be seen. In 1438 Ulugh Mahommed (or Ulu Makhmet), khan of the Golden Horde of the Mongols, founded, on the ruins of the Bulgarian state, the kingdom of Kazan, which in its turn was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible of Russia in 1552 and its territory annexed to Russia. In 1774 the city was laid waste by the rebel Pugachev. It has suffered repeatedly from fires, especially in 1815 and 1825. The Kazan Tatars, from having lived so long amongst Russians and Finnish tribes, have lost a good many of the characteristic features of their Tatar (Mongol) ancestry, and bear now the stamp of a distinct ethnographic type. They are found also in the neighbouring governments of Vyatka, Ufa, Orenburg, Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk, Tambov 4,nd Nizhniy-Novgorod. They are intelligent and enterprising, and are engaged principally in trade.

See Pineghin's Kazan Old and New (in Russian); VelyaminovZernov's Kasirnov Tsars (3 vols., St Petersburg, 1863-1866); Zarinsky's Sketches of Old Kazan (Kazan, 1877); Trofimov's Siege of Kazan in 1552 (Kazan, 1890); Firsov's books on the history of the native population (Kazan, 1864 and 1869); and Shpilevski, on the antiquities of the town and government, in Izvestia i Zapiski of the Kazan University (1877). A bibliography of the Oriental books published in the city is printed in Bulletins of the St Petersburg Academy (1867). Compare also L. Leger's " Kazan et les tartares," in Bibl. Univ. de Geneve (1874). (P. A. K.; J. T. BE.) Kazerun, a district and town of the province of Fars in Persia. The district is situated between Shiraz and Bushire. In its centre is the Kazerun Valley with a direction N.W. to S.E., a fertile plain 30 m. long and 7 to 8 m. broad, bounded S.E. by the Parishan Lake (8 m. long, 3 m. broad) N.W. by the Boshavir River, with the ruins of the old city of Beh-Shahpur (Beshaver, Boshavir, also, short, Shapur) and Sassanian basreliefs on its banks. There also, in a cave, is a statue of Shapur. The remainder of the district is mostly hilly country intersected by numerous streams, plains and hills being covered with zizyphus, wild almond and oak. The district is divided into two divisions: town and villages, the latter being called Kuh i Marreh and again subdivided into (1) Pusht i Kuh; (2) Yarruk; (3) Shakan. It has forty-six villages and a population of about 15,000; it produces rice of excellent quality, cotton, tobacco and opium, but very little corn, and bread made of the flour of acorns is a staple of food in many villages. Wild almonds are exported.

Kazerun, the chief place of the district, is an unwalled town situated in the midst of the central plain, in 2 9° 37' N., 5 1 ° 43' E. at an elevation of 2800 ft., 70 m. from Shiraz, and 96 m. from Bushire. It has a population of about 8000, and is divided into four quarters separated by open spaces. Adjoining it on the W. is the famous Nazar garden, with noble avenues of orange trees planted by a former governor, Hajji Ali Kuli Khan, in 1767. A couple of miles N. of the city behind a low range of hills are the imposing ruins of a marble building said to stand over the grave of Sheik Amin ed din Mahommed b. Zia ed din Mas`ud, who died A.H. 740 (A.D. 1 339). S.E. of the city on a hugh mound are ruins of buildings with underground chambers, popularly known as Kal`eh i Gabr, " castle of the fire-worshippers."