KAZAN, or KASAN. Capital of the Russian government of the same name (q.v.), situated on the Kazanka. 195 miles east of Nizhni-Novgorod (Slap: Russia, G 3). At the northern end of the city is situated the Kremlin. It con tains the sixteenth-century cathedral with the image of the Virgin Mother of Kazan, held in high veneration by all orthodox Russians; a monastery; an orphan asylum,' as well as an arsenal; and the palace of the Governor. The town proper is divided into several quarters, Of which two are inhabited by Tatars. Kazan pos sesses a large number of churches, monasteries, mosques, synagogues, and monuments. Among them is a truncated pyramid built in 1812-23 to commemorate the capture of the city in 1552. The University of Kazan, founded in 1804 by Alexander I., has four faculties and an attend ance of 850. There are attached to it an obser vatory, a botanical garden, an ethnographical museum, and a library of 150,000 volumes, in cluding many Mongol and Tatar manuscripts. There are in Kazan, besides two theological semi naries. a teachers' seminary, a military school, and a theatre.
The manufacturing industries are of consider able importance. Leather (especially Russian leather), soap. textiles. iron and steel, and wooden articles are manufactured on an extensive scale. There is also some ship-building. Kazan is an important centre in the commerce between European and Asiatic Russia. The annual trade is estimated at over $30.000,000. The city pos sesses a stock exchange and electric railways. is the seat of an archbishop, and of many Moham medan dignitaries. Population, in 1897, 131.508, including about 30.000 Tatars. The original town of Kazan was founded in the thirteenth cen tury, about thirty miles northeast of the present town. It was destroyed by the Russians in 1399, and rebuilt on the present site by the Khan of the Golden Horde in 1437. It soon became the capital of the Tatar Khanate of Kazan. In 1552 the Russians under Ivan the Terrible took the town after a bloody siege, and its fall put an end to the kbanate.