Nurulla Mosque

Nurulla Mosque stands on Moskovskaya Street in the Old Tatar Settlement, on the site of the former Sennoy (Hay) Market, and is also known to Kazan locals as the Yunusov Mosque, the Sennaya Mosque, or the Seventh Cathedral Mosque. It is one of the mid-nineteenth-century monuments of religious architecture marking the transition from the old forms of Tatar building to a new stage.

The building was erected in 1845–1849 to a design by the architect Alexander Loman, with construction itself carried out by the architect Alexander Peske. The funds for the building were left in his will by the first-guild Kazan merchant Gubaidulla Yunusov, and the work was completed by his sons, the commerce councillors Ibrahim and Ishak Yunusov. The block surrounding the mosque is lined with the single-story former shops of the Sennoy Market, which today serve as the parish’s utility buildings.

The two-story building is arranged as an elongated octagon with a dome over the prayer hall; the oval interior space is divided by arches into several sections. The walls are left unplastered, and the decoration is completed with arabesque ornament and stained-glass windows. It was with this building that Kazan began its shift toward a new type of mosque — one with a free-standing, ground-based minaret at the end of the building rather than one built into the roof. The three-tiered cylindrical minaret, with a spiral staircase inside, stands in front of the façade and is joined to the hall by a covered gallery through a pointed arch; researchers classify the building’s style as belonging to the national-romantic strand of eclecticism, with references to medieval Bulgar and Middle Eastern architecture.

From 1890 to 1908 the mosque’s imam-khatib was Gabdulla Apanaev, a public figure and publisher of the Tatar newspaper Azat. The republican Central Executive Committee decided to close the mosque on 16 November 1929, after which the minaret was dismantled; until the early 1990s the building was occupied by residential apartments and various offices. In 1981, still in Soviet times, the building was recognized as an architectural monument of republican significance.

The building was returned to believers in 1992, when it also received its present name, ‘Nurulla.’ The restoration and rebuilding of the minaret in 1990–1995 was carried out by the architect Rustem Bilalov: the interior received a turquoise dome and colored stained glass, and the minaret’s ringing vertical once again became a landmark of the neighborhood.

Today Nurulla Mosque is an active parish and one of the architectural accents of the Old Tatar Settlement, drawing both worshippers and tourists interested in the history of Kazan’s Tatar community. The combination of monumental arcades, a tiled dome, and a slender minaret makes it stand out even amid the dense historic development of Moskovskaya Street.