Soyembika Tower

Soyembika Tower - Dominating the Skyline

Soyembika Tower, also known as Khan’s Mosque is perhaps one of the most familiar attractions and architectural symbol of Kazan. The Soyembika Tower at one stage used to be one of the alleged leaning towers due to its height. The Tower was leaning approximately 194 cm but with a variety of stabilization methods being used during the 1930s and 1990s, they were able to straighten it.

The exact date of when the Soyembika Tower was built is not really known. It is thought by some scholars that the Tower was constructed during a period in Russia when tiered towers were popular, around the 17th and 18th century. If this is so then it is very likely that similar towers of the Moscow Kremlin motivated the design.

Legend has it that the tower was put up as far back as a century ago by Ivan the Terrible’s artisans in only a week. The towers name comes allegedly from the Kazan Queen Soyembika who supposedly built it as a tomb for her husband Safagaray. Legend has it she apparently climbed to the highest tier and threw herself down from the tower while some believe that she was poisoned in a Russian prison, but no actual information was actually written or recorded about her death.

Some go as far as saying that the tower is the only existing construction from pre-Russian Tatar castle. If it were true that the structure really reflects some of the original features of Tatar architecture, then the design would have some influence over the Kremlin towers in Moscow. In the early twentieth century an architect by the name of Aleksey Shchusev built a similar structure in the Kazan Railway Station of Moscow. Those that support the theory that the tower was built before Russian Tatar’s time, point out that structures of similar stature of that time were from Central Asia, which was culturally and politically associated with the ruined Khanate of Kazan.

At the top of the tower it is crowned with a Muslim crescent, but before during the Imperial period it was topped with a double-headed eagle, which was later replaced with a red star by the Bolsheviks.