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The Kazan Kremlin
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
"We arrived in a large city belonging to the Russian Tsar. It is called Kazan and it has more than fifty thousand Christian inhabitants. In the city there is a multitude of churches with so many big bells that it is impossible to sleep on the eve of religious festivals. ... All houses of the city are made of wood, but it has a large and strong citadel with stone walls; it contains a sufficient number of troops, which stand guard at night -just like in Spain, Italy or Flanders."
In 1636, accompanying the Schleswig-Holstein embassy to Persia, the German traveler Adam Oleary (who has left us the first known sketch of the Kazan Kremlin, although it was not very true to life) once again witnessed the fact that the Kazan Kremlin continued to fulfill its military and stately functions:
"This city, similar to all cities along the Volga river, is rounded with wooden walls, with towers, and its houses are also of wood, but the Kremlin of that city is adequately protected by its thick stone walls, cannon and soldiers. The Great Duke placed in the Kremlin not only a military commander, but also a special deputy so that both of them would govern the inhabitants and judge among them."
The Dutch adventurer Jan Streiss, who visited Kazan in 1669, added to Oleary's observations his own curious remarks showing that even at the end of the 17th century Kazan remained one of the main centres of international commerce on the Volga river:
"The Kremlin is surrounded by a wide stone wall, protected by cannons and soldiers. Round the Kremlin, the Kazanka river flows and makes it especially unassailable, as it is not possible to reroute this flow. In the city, one finds a lot of foodstuffs, as everywhere in this country. Every day a great number of Crimean merchants arrive at the market with great loads of goods. ... In the city of Kazan there live the Russians and the Tatars who obey the governor-general; the Kremlin is guarded exclusively by Russians, and no Tatar is allowed access to it under the threat of capital punishment. In the Kremlin, there resides a special military commander who presides over military affairs, and the governor-general manages the civic ones."
As the boundaries of the Russian state continued to expand south and eastward, the Kazan Kremlin gradually lost its military purpose, yet its administrative function was strengthened - a fact reflected in its interior architectural design which proceeded to lose its Tatar appearance as it was replaced by Russian and West European features. The Tatar inhabitants of Kazan still had no right to be in the Kremlin even at the beginning of the 18th century. Another Scot, John Bell, who visited Kazan in 1715, left us the following interesting observation:<<back next>> Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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