The image of Syuyumbike is familiar to every inhabitant of modern Tatarstan from childhood. Little girls, future keepers of the home, want to be like her, and boys see in her the ideal of female beauty, inner harmony and unwavering devotion to their people. Many legends are associated with her name, each of which shows the character of the last queen of the Kazan Khanate from a new perspective, revealing other boundaries of her devotion and love.

The exhibition “Artists of Tatarstan: the image of Syuyumbike - the last queen of the Kazan Khanate on the eve of the 500th anniversary of her birth” opened at the Khazine National Art Gallery, timed to the Day of the Republic of Tatarstan from the collection of the State Museum fine arts Of the Republic of Tatarstan and the paintings of artists of Tatarstan, will allow you to discover the legendary image of Syuyumbike in a new perspective, to see it through the eyes of artists, to be transported for a moment to the Kazan Khanate of 1535-51, "with your own eyes" to see how Ivan the Terrible captured the capital there were Kazan defenders and how beautiful and sophisticated their spouses were.

The date of birth of the queen is not known for certain; according to some information, she was born around 1516. Syuyumbike is the daughter of the Nogai Khan Yusuf Bey, the great-great-granddaughter of the founder of the Nogai Horde Idegei. She lived in Khan's Kazan in 1535-1551. The fate of the queen became a symbol of the golden age of the historical past of the Tatar people. Her image is fanned with symbolism, legends, myths and traditions, with it are associated ideas about the true beauty of a Tatar woman, about motherhood and love for the Fatherland.

The image of Queen Syuyumbike is not only in pictures, it is in the soul of our people, ”Razil Valeev, Chairman of the Committee of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan for Education, Culture, Science and National Issues, addressed the audience at the opening of the exhibition. - He is revered everywhere. Syuyumbike is known and revered in any Tatar family. She is known all over the world, and every Turkic people reveres her as their own. The spirit of the queen, her image is inexhaustible. She is not just clever and beautiful, Syuyumbike is a symbol of the Tatar people.

Turhan Dilmach, Consul General of the Republic of Turkey in Kazan, also said that the image of the Kazan queen is known throughout the world. In his address to the guests of the exhibition, he noted that countless poetic and man-made monuments are dedicated to the last queen of the Kazan Khanate.

The legend about the last Kazan queen is passed down from generation to generation among the people. There lived a beauty in Kazan - Queen Syuyumbike. She was so pretty that if she went out to the balcony, then for a month he tried to hide behind the clouds, and in the daytime even the sun dimmed in front of her beauty. News of her extraordinary beauty reached Ivan the Terrible, and he sent messengers with an offer of marriage. But the proud queen rejected him.

In anger, he gathered a huge army and moved against Kazan, wishing to conquer the beauty by force, and when the whole city was surrounded by Russian troops, Queen Syuyumbike, seeing the futility of further resistance, set Ivan the Terrible a condition: she would marry if he could build the most high tower in the city.

Ivan the Terrible agreed, gathered all the builders and, under pain of death, ordered them to carry out the order. The first day passed - the first tier was built, the second - the second. By the end of the seventh day, all construction was completed. The wedding feast began. Syuyumbike asked permission to look at native city from the height of the tower. The king could not deny her this innocent desire. She went up to the upper platform, said goodbye to her people and threw herself down on the sharp stones. This is the legend that any resident of Kazan will tell you.

In fact, the fate of the queen is much more tragic than the legends describe. Syuyumbike was the daughter of the Nogai Murza Yusuf, she was married to the Kazan Khan Janali. She managed to live with him for only 2 years, when her husband was killed during the coup, and Syuyumbike became the fifth wife of Safa-Girey, who was much older than her. Having lived with him for 14 years, Syuyumbike was widowed again.

Khan was proclaimed the young son of Syuyumbike - Utyamysh-Girey. Syuyumbike became the actual ruler. The time of her reign is the difficult years of the last years of the kingdom. As a result of a palace coup, the tsarina and her son were handed over to the Moscow tsar. According to the testimony of contemporaries, the queen flatly refused to accept the Christian religion, she was separated from her son and given to the wife of Kasimov khan Shah Ali. Her son was baptized under the name Alexander and died at the age of 20.

Ilmira Gafiyatullina, Kazan

500 years ago, a girl was born in the Nogai Horde, who was to become the queen of the Kazan Khanate. The exact date of her birth is unknown, as is the date of her death. Its fate is closely connected with the fall of the Kazan Khanate, taken by the troops of Ivan the Terrible on October 2, 1552. One of the most popular legends says that Ivan IV himself was passionately in love with the mistress. What is true in the history of Syuyumbike, and what is fiction, tells "AiF-Kazan".

Legend of the tower

Tower Syuyumbike. Photo: AiF / Julia Shigareva

Everyone who comes to Kazan is shown the Syuyumbike tower, which has recently been crowned with a Muslim crescent. And they tell a beautiful legend that Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who fell in love with the Kazan ruler, took the city, and then decided to forcibly marry her, but she set him a condition: they say, build a high tower in seven days. "Easy!" - the tsar allegedly answered, and a week later the tower was ready, and the Kazan ruler, under the pretext of inspecting the building, climbed to the very top and, so as not to get the unloved, jumped down ...

The tale, of course, is beautiful, but in reality Syuyumbike was taken to the territory of the Moscow state as an honorary hostage a year before the capture of Kazan, at that time Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich was a little over 20, while the regent of the Kazan throne was 35. At that time it was a serious age difference, therefore, most likely, yesterday's young man could not have any ardent feelings for such a mature woman. And the tower itself was built presumably at the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries, that is, a hundred years after the conquest of the Kazan Khanate, and in the famous drawing of Adam Olearius, who visited Kazan in 1638, it is absent. Historians are still arguing about when it was erected and what this building originally served as a khan's mosque, minaret or watchtower. By the way, this is one of the few "falling" towers in the world - the deviation from the axis is 1.98 m.

Her name was Syuyumbike

This is how the artist Ildar Zaripov imagines Syuyumbike. Photo: Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

In fact, the khanshu's name was Xiuyun. "Bike" in translation means madam. The regent deserved this honorable addition to her name due to the fact that she never forgot about the common people, in particular about the peasants, she always tried to understand their problems and significantly reduced, speaking modern language, their "tax burden". Until the twentieth century, it was called differently: Syuyumbika, Sumbeki, Syuyunbeka. The spelling established in the XX century is Syuyumbike.

"Nice face and smart"

The famous "Kazan chronicler" (a historical story, created, according to various sources, in 1564-1566 or between 1626 and 1640 and telling about the conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible in 1552 - ed.) Describes the appearance of the regent of the Kazan throne as follows: ... that queen was very good-looking and smart, so she was not equal in Kazan in beauty among women and girls, and in Moscow among Russians - daughters and wives of boyars and princely ones. " However, it can be assumed that the beauty of Syuyumbike had a somewhat exotic character - even for Kazan residents. It is enough to look at archival or modern photographs of the Nogai - the descendants of the inhabitants of the once formidable nomadic Nogai Horde, the great-great-granddaughter of the founder of which Edigei and the daughter of the powerful bek Yusuf was Syuyumbike. An accurate description of the growth and build of the Kazan queen has not survived, but presumably she was slender and had a regal bearing. But her skin, like all Nogais, probably had a darker shade than that of the Volzhans, and her eyes were more eastern than that of the natives of the Kazan region.

Three times married

Syuyumbike was married three times and all three times her husband was chosen. For the first time she was married to the Kazan Khan Dzhana-Ali at the age of 12. It was a dynastic marriage for the sake of a political counterbalance between the Nogai Horde, the Kazan and Crimean khanates. Two years later, Jana-Ali was killed, and the girl was married to Khan Safa-Girey, who, as the chronicles say, was her beloved husband. Moreover, she was his fifth wife. It was after the death of Safa-Girey that Syuyumbike ascended the khan's throne, becoming regent with a minor son. The third time she was married by force after the fall of the khanate - for the Kaimov khan Shah-Ali, (brother of Jana-Ali), which, by the way, was not happy with the husband himself.

Uncomplaining sacrifice

Legends often present Syuyumbike as a “lady of a sad image,” stoically enduring all the blows and vicissitudes of fate. In fact, according to the data that have come down to us, the future ruler from childhood had a strong character and was wayward. In particular, the following case is known: when the regent received the news that the Russians had built the fortress city of Sviyazhsk in the very center of her state, then, according to the Kazan Chronicler, “like a fierce lioness” she began to call her subjects to war, promising to enlist help from their relatives in the Nogai Horde, as well as from the Crimean and Astrakhan khanates. However, then the subjects did not listen to her, deciding that they simply did not have enough strength for armed resistance to Moscow, and subsequently gave the ruler to the Russian state. Her favorite, the Crimean oglan Koschak, was also captured. Some sources claim that he, once an associate of her second husband, Khan Safa-Girey, was in a romantic relationship with the ruler, others that he was her only ally.

Painting "Farewell to Syuyumbike" (2001) F. Khalikov. Photo: State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan

A legend has survived: when they decided to marry Syuyumbike to a Russian protege, Khan Shah-Ali, to conclude peace with Moscow, she sent him food and a shirt as a gift. However, suspecting a trick, the cunning khan first fed his dog with this food, and ordered the servant who fell into disfavor to put on the shirt, after which both the animal and the person died.

The former husbands of Syuyumbike, by the way, died under rather strange circumstances: the first unloved husband of Jan-Ali was killed after the deposition, moreover, the history did not retain the details of the death, and the beloved - Safa-Girey - in his prime: he allegedly slipped and hit his head when he washed in the bath.

Portrait with son

Everyone who is interested in the fate of Syuyumbike knows her old portrait, in which she is allegedly depicted together with her son, Utyamysh-Girey. Sometimes the title of the work is attributed to: "in a Russian prison," although, as you know, neither the captive regent herself nor her offspring was ever held in any prison.

We know this pictorial composition thanks to the brush of the artist Dementyev, who seems to have copied the work from an earlier, almost lifetime original. However, some historians seriously doubt that her son is depicted in the portrait next to the Kazan ruler. And there are good reasons for this - the child is wearing women's clothing, women's jewelry. There are suggestions that the canvas depicts the daughter of Syuyumbike's first husband, Khan Jana-Ali, whom she raised after the death of her father.

It is known that the legendary ruler had no love with this khan, as well as children.

The only woman on the khan throne

Quite often, Syuyumbike is credited with the fact that she was the only woman in the medieval Muslim world in whose hands the highest state power was concentrated. What seriously distinguishes the Kazan Khanate and the Kazan Tatars in general from other eastern peoples, where this was simply impossible. In fact, the relatively liberal customs of Kazan in gender issues can be evidenced by the fact that Syuyumbike was not the only woman who occupied the khan's throne. And if our heroine was in power as a regent for about three years (from 1549 to 1551), then almost the same was the regent of her first husband Dzhana-Ali (he came to the Kazan throne as a teenager) - Khanbike Kovgorshad, daughter of Khan Ibrahim and not the less famous khanshi Nur-Soltan.

Tormented by a tyrant husband

Portrait of Syuyumbike by sculptor Baki Urmanche. Photo: GMII IZO RT

Talking about the sad fate of the Kazan ruler, they often say that it was extremely difficult for her to be married to the unloved Shah-Ali, and that her third husband almost plunged her into the hell of domestic violence. Interestingly, similar rumors were spread during the life of Syuyumbike, when her father, Nogai Bek Yusuf, was informed that the new husband cut off his daughter's nose and ears. The indignant bek wrote a letter to Ivan the Terrible, and he wrote a letter to Shah-Ali. As a result, a whole delegation from the Nogai Horde arrived in the Russian lands to learn about the state of Syuyumbike, and the ambassadors were personally convinced that the woman was alive and well.

Of course, deprived of power and settled in the wilderness, the Kazan Tsarina asked her father to take her to her, Ivan the Terrible and her brothers asked about this, but the Tsar was adamant. In a letter to one of the brothers, he justified his decision as follows: "And you yourself know, his daughter Syuyunbek how much rude she did to us in Kazan, and how God gave it to us, and we dashingly forgot our father for your friendship, and you for".

At the same time, Moscow's ally Kasimov Khan Shah-Ali, as mentioned above, was himself not happy with the marriage with the deposed regent, agreeing to it solely under pressure from Moscow. The Russian state went to similar measures in order to keep the power ambitions of the Kazan tsarina under control, especially since the Mother See was already tired of the fact that the policy in Kazan for decades was built according to the following algorithm: peace was concluded with Moscow, as a result of the coup, the pro-Crimean party came to power, the beating of Russian merchants and ambassadors, and then a campaign to Russian lands for booty and slaves.

As soon as Syuyumbike was brought to her newly made husband, he immediately ordered to send her away. According to the hypothesis of local historian Anatoly Shekin, last years Kazan mistress passed in a place near the modern village of Vilya (Nizhny Novgorod region), where the khansha lived under the care of her “personal bodyguard” Churai-Batyr. Subsequently, the village of Churaevka appeared on this place, which now does not exist. It is characteristic that there was no place for the ashes of his wife in the Shah-Ali mausoleum. But scientists discovered an unknown tombstone in it, so historians do not exclude that Syuyumbike was still buried there.

Of course, the last years of Syuyumbike cannot be called happy. The royal personage lived in an open wilderness, far from both her second homeland - Kazan, where she ascended to the top of the political Olympus, and the historical one - the steppes of the Nogai Horde. In addition to power, she was also deprived of her only son, who was taken away to be raised at the royal court in Moscow. The boy was baptized under the name Alexander and lived only twenty years, for nine years outliving his mother, who died of melancholy, abandoned and forgotten by everyone. Everyone, except her people, who have laid down beautiful legends about her.

Until the end of the year, the Khazine gallery in the Kazan Kremlin hosts an exhibition "Artists of Tatarstan: the image of Syuyumbike ..." from the collection of the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan and paintings by artists of Tatarstan. For the first time, it presents the legendary image of Syuyumbike in a single exhibition space.

But the queen nevertheless began to show an ever stronger interest in Orthodoxy. Matvey and Lukan taught her to read in Church Slavonic and gave her books.

This is a painting by a contemporary artist.

She was especially impressed by the legends about the Holy Mother of God, therefore, even during the life of her husband, Syyumbeki built a chapel in her honor. Matvey, who was also an icon painter, painted the image of the Mother of God on an oak board, and Syuyumbike ordered that her halo be gilded.

Volga Bulgaria bordered on the eastern part of Russia, the capital of which is now Moscow. There, since 1533, Prince Ivan was in power, who wanted to expand his possessions. In June 1552, he attacked with his troops on the Volga Bulgaria, captured the villages around the capital and devastated the country. A month later he reached Kazan and laid siege to it.

The Bulgarians lived a peaceful life and their army was small - no more than 5-6 thousand people, and the army of Prince Ivan was 60 thousand. But he was able to conquer Kazan only after a month's siege, after which he gave it up for plunder and destruction. The library and the buildings of the Kazan Kremlin were burned to the ground. The loot of Prince Ivan was 16 ships stuffed with gold, precious stones, carpets, tapestries. A golden crown was also captured, on which there were 10 diamonds, a mother-of-pearl throne with gilding, a scepter with five huge rubies.

Prince Ivan sat on this throne, put a crown on his head, left hand took a scepter, crossed himself with his right hand and declared himself the king of All Russia and Bulgaria. One of his confidants advised him to take the name Grozny, which belonged to the glorious Bulgarian khan Krum. He agreed with the proposal.

Queen Syuyumbike became his prisoner. Tsar Ivan was fascinated by her beauty and wanted her to become his wife.

Another painting by a contemporary artist.

And this is a sculptural image.

Syuyumbike agreed on one condition that a 30-meter tower would be built in the place where her husband was buried. "

Third note of the translator: Russian Wikipedia (can you trust her?) Writes that she and her son were betrayed by the Murzas, who handed her over to Tsar Ivan the Terrible. But Tsar Ivan the Terrible conquered not the Kazan kingdom, as we are accustomed to believe, but the Bulgarian kingdom.

And the Bulgarian text continues the story further: “Only Bulgarian builders could have built such a tower, which the queen wanted. Tsar Ivan gathered the most experienced builders of the conquered kingdom, promised them half a kilogram of gold and 5 kg of silver each, if they erected the tower in 2 months.

The tower was ready in a month and a half, and Tsar Ivan the Terrible introduced Syuyumbike into it.

But when they reached the very top of the tower, the queen threw herself down from there. So she remained faithful to her husband and people: she died, but did not become a slave. A very angry Ivan the Terrible ordered to burn the tower to the ground, but when it was set on fire, a rain cloud appeared in the sky and extinguished the flame. Lightning flashed, and one of them almost struck the king himself. Ivan the Terrible took this as a sign of God and left Kazan, but before that he determined the place where a chapel in honor of Syuyumbike, which he called Lyuba, was to be erected, as well as a large temple, in the underground of which she was to be buried.

Translator's fourth note: The history that was created in Russia suggests that a year and a half after the capture, Syuyumbike was married to the Kasimov khan, in whose city she died.

And the Bulgarian version of the story continues: “In 1561, a Bulgarian boy in the ruins of a city that had not yet been restored, discovered an icon of the Holy Mother of God, written by priest Matthew. Despite the fact that he was a Muslim, he took her to a Christian temple. The bishop cleaned it and found the date of manufacture on the back side of the icon - 1541. When the icon was placed on the altar, the crown of the Virgin was lit up with a dazzling light.

The boy who brought the icon to the church was deaf and dumb, but from that time he began to speak and hear. The icon was declared miraculous and by order of the Patriarch of All Russia it was transferred to Moscow. When the Poles attacked Russia in the 17th century, Russian soldiers took it to Arkhangelovden (the day of St. Michael the Archangel - November 8) so that the icon would intercede for the capital. The Poles were driven out.

The icon was placed in the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed. In 1941, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and almost reached Moscow. Stalin, who, although he was once a seminarian, considered himself an atheist. But in December 1941, he ordered to deliver the icon of the Kazan Holy Mother of God on an armored train to the front. The priests, guarded by special units, carried it through the trenches so that all officers and soldiers could venerate it. After three days soviet troops launched a counterattack and threw the Germans back 100-120 km from Moscow.

After the victory, Stalin forgot about this incident. The Soviet Union, ravaged by the war, needed funds for reconstruction. By order of Stalin, the icon was sold to the Vatican for $ 50 million. She was placed in the Sistine Chapel, but she did not attract much attention.

John Paul II, becoming the first Slavic pope, saw her and took her to his chambers. According to the recollections of the pope's personal secretary, when he was wounded in 1981, the holy father ordered him to be brought to the icon every day and prayed for hours in front of her for his recovery. After recovering, he announced that he owed his health to this icon. After his death in 2004, the Russian oligarch Svechovsky entered into a deal with the Vatican to transfer the icon of Russia for a sum of 200 thousand dollars. It was installed in the Arkhangelsk Monastery on the outskirts of Pechorsk. But the Kazan tycoon Anatoly, who was of Bulgarian descent, paid 300 thousand dollars to buy it from the monastery.

Thus, in 2005 the icon returned to the place where it was created: it is located in the Kazan Church of the Holy Mother of God, not far from the Syuyumbike tower, from which the last queen of Volga Bulgaria threw herself. Now this territory is called Tatarstan, but most of the people living there recognize themselves as Bulgarians. "

Russia has its own leaning tower and it is located in the capital of Tatarstan. This is the Syuyumbike watchtower. The spire of the structure deviates from the vertical by 1.98 meters. Historians still argue about the period of construction, agreeing that it was built between 1645-1650. The tower is located in the northern part of the Kazan Kremlin. The total height of the building is 58 meters.

Tower Syuyumbike

The tower is a unique symbiosis of Tatar and Russian architecture of the XIV-XVII centuries. The structure resembles the Borovitskaya and Spasskaya towers of the Moscow Kremlin, but with eastern elements. They appear in the steeple, through gates, semi-oval windows and graceful semi-columns on the front side. Visitors to the capital of Tatarstan can see a similar architecture in Moscow at the Kazansky railway station, which the architect Shchusev built in exact accordance with the leaning tower.

• The foundation of the tower was oak piles, which over the centuries sank to a depth of over 2 meters. The walls are built of bricks and mortar, and the edges are decorated with brick rollers. The structure has 7 tiers, the first 3 of which are square, and the rest are octagons.
• In the “cubes” of the first tiers of different heights, there are gulbis typical for Russian architecture. The "eye sockets" of the gulbis were used to inspect the adjacent territory.
• The next 2 tiers - "eights" - were built for a reason: firstly, with such masonry from the same amount of materials, the building is built in height by 20% more, and secondly, it is less susceptible to the influence of winds that are invariably present at height.
• Further, a cone-shaped tier was erected, on which a watchtower is located.
• Crowns this whole complex structure a green spire with a Muslim crescent.

Construction history

If everything is clear and clear with architecture, then the history of construction raises many questions among scientists. This is due to the fact that during the capture of the city, the annals of the times of the Kazan Khanate were irretrievably lost, and later documents burned down in 1701 during the fire of Moscow. It is only established for certain that during the reign of Peter I, the tower was already on the city plan in 1717. Thus, the upper limit of the age of the structure is established. There are several theories regarding construction time:

• Until 1552, during the period of the Khanate, another watchtower stood on the site of the building, which was completed and slightly changed.
• Between 1645-1650 - based on archaeological studies of soil layers.
• Between 1694-1718 according to the analysis of cartographic data and characteristic elements of the Moscow Baroque.

Thanks to the travel scientist Adam Olearius, you can also outline the lower bound for the estimated date of construction in 1638. That year he visited Kazan and made sketches of the capital, on which no similar buildings were found.

The history of construction is full of mysteries: it is officially unknown who, when and by whose order the building was erected, but the name hides even more secrets.

Queen Syuyumbike

Throughout the history of the Kazan Khanate, a woman once stood at the head of the state - the queen-regent Syuyuk, forced to rule for her young son after the death of her husband. The dynasty of the queen, like her biography, was worthy - so, her great-great-grandfather was the founder of the Nogai Horde, Edigi, and her father was the Nogai biy Yusuf. Suyuk got married three times, and all her husbands were the rulers of the Kazan Khanate.

The reign of Syuyuk was remembered by the people for the abolition of a number of taxes for merchants, peasants and artisans. In gratitude for the relief of the tax burden, she was nicknamed "beloved mistress", translated from Tatar - Syuyumbike. And not only the Kremlin sentry structure was named after her, but also many streets in various cities and villages. However, such a story is not so poetic, the legend is more interesting.

Tower Legends

Many legends and stories are associated with the building:

• First story. Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible heard about the beauty of the Kazan regent and decided to marry her. The queen was against, and then the king threatened to raze the khanate to the ground and kill all the inhabitants. Syuyumbike agreed for the sake of her people, but on the wedding night she threw herself down from the new building and died.
• The second story. The tower was erected after the capture of Kazan in 1552 by order of Ivan the Terrible, but at the request of the Tatar queen. It took seven days to build it, one tier for each, and after the completion of the construction, the queen of the captured khanate threw herself down from it.
• Third story. The structure was built by order of Syuyuk in memory of her second deceased husband, Safa-Girey.

The truth, however, turned out to be much sadder. After the capture of Kazan by Ivan IV the Terrible, the Murza bought off the treasury, the princess and her son, who were transported to Russian Empire and baptized. Syuyuk did not become the wife of the Russian tsar. However, this is why the beauty and mystery of the falling structure does not diminish at all. The reason for the slope of the building is of no less interest to architects and scientists. On the basis of the studies carried out, it is assumed that the building began to lean to the east side due to an elementary mistake during construction almost immediately after its completion.

The tilt was discovered and action taken only in 1930. A rigid frame, elements of which can be seen on the first tier, stopped the fall and helped preserve the object of the cultural heritage of the Russian Federation in its original form, so that you can personally admire its magnificence.

Tour to the tower

You can look at the falling tower, as well as take a picture against its background, on the territory of the Kazan Kremlin. The beautiful architectural structure delights tourists not only during the day, but also at night, when it lights up with bright light with the help of powerful searchlights. On the territory of the Kremlin you can buy souvenirs depicting one of the main attractions of the capital of Tatarstan.

Tower Syuyumbike is located on the territory of the Kazan Kremlin complex and is one of the main attractions of Kazan. Its popularity is due to interesting story and legends, as well as the fact that she is falling. Interesting Facts about the history of the creation of the Syuyumbike tower in Kazan.

Syuyumbike tower (Kazan): history of creation

Historians to this day argue about the time of its construction and we are not talking about exact date, but about the historical era. According to one of the versions, it was built during the heyday of the Kazan Khanate, by the XII-XV centuries, when it was a sentinel and was called the Kazan minaret.

If you follow this version, then it is the only surviving monument of Tatar architecture of those times in Kazan.

There is also an opinion that it was built after the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, who gave the order to erect the structure in seven days. It was because of the haste that the foundation was made shallow, which explains the continuing slope.
Recent excavations show that construction took place in the 17th century. At the same time, some facts testify to its construction in the XI-XV centuries. Therefore, some scientists have put forward the assumption that a wooden tower was originally built on this site, and later it was rebuilt into a stone one. In the place where the old foundation is missing, the building tilts.

Most historians are still of the opinion that tower Syuyumbike was built in the 17th century.

Syuyumbike Tower: architecture

The height of the structure is 58 meters, and the slope is almost two meters. And although it leaned less than the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, it is two meters taller than it. Unlike her foundation Syuyumbike did not strengthen until the deviation from the vertical was 1.5 meters.

Syuyumbike Tower (Kazan) has seven tiers:

• The first is the widest, it is a tier with an arch in the middle.
• The second tier, like the first, has a quadrangular shape, but is smaller in height and width.
• The third tier is built similarly to the second, but has small windows.
• The fourth and fifth tiers are octagonal.
• The sixth and seventh tiers are the watchtower.

A green spire with a crescent is installed at the top of the structure.

Suyumbike Tower: Legend

The name Syuyumbike is a compound - Syuyum in Old Tatar means beloved, and bike means mistress. The name Syuyumbike is translated "beloved queen" of the Kazan people in the 16th century. Indeed, Syuyumbike was a beautiful and noble educated woman, the widow of a khan who was killed in the struggle for the throne.

There are several legends about the name:
The most popular legend "Syuyumbike tower" says that Tsar Ivan the Terrible, after the capture of Kazan, wanted the Queen Syuyumbike to marry him. In case of her refusal, the king could punish the entire Tatar people. To save her people from troubles, the tsarina accepted the offer of Ivan the Terrible, but put forward the condition that the seven-tiered tower would be built in seven days. When her wish was fulfilled, she went upstairs and threw herself to the ground. Since then, the tower has been named after her.