In St Petersburg, a city of many cultures and faiths, a mosque is not something special. What is unique, however, is the building's oriental architecture, as if transported to the Neva from faraway Samarkand in Uzbekistan. It is one of the northernmost shrines of the followers of Islam. With its blue dome topped by a golden crescent moon, it has been a dominant feature of the skyline in this part of the city for more than a century because of its scale and colour. The co-author of the design and builder of the mosque was a Polish Tatar, Stefan Kryczyński.

St. Petersburg's Muslims

Muslims, mainly Tatars, have been present in St Petersburg since its very beginnings, more than 300 years ago. The Kazan Governorate was one of the main sources of construction labour. The first Tatar yurts and bazaars (the so-called Tatar Sloboda) stood near the city's oldest building, the Petropavlovsk Fortress. Many Muslims settled permanently in St Petersburg. They engaged in trade, ran eateries and served in the tsarist army. At the end of the 18th century, after the Tsar's annexation of the Crimean Khanate and the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean and Polish-Lithuanian Tatars found themselves within the empire's borders. After Russia's seizure of large areas of Central Asia in the 19th century, the local population also began to flock to the capital St Petersburg.

Efforts for a mosque

For more than 200 years, St Petersburg's Muslims had no real temple. They prayed in small "home" mosques, at which schools - madrassas - were established, or in rooms set aside in barracks. Efforts to build a temple began in earnest at the beginning of the 20th century. A building committee was formed in 1905. The emir of Bukhara, Sajjid Abd al-Ahad Khan (1880-1944), was the patron of the entire project , having purchased two adjacent plots of land at 5-7 Kronverk Prospect on Petrograd Street and donated them to the Muslim community.

At the time, it was a prestigious site due to the nearby newly opened Troitsky Bridge. The location of the mosque was therefore met with accusations of infringing on the historical character of the oldest part of St Petersburg, due to its close proximity to two Orthodox churches and Peter I's house. The patronage of the Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Peter Stoylpin, was invoked and this proved successful.

Finally, after Nicholas II's approval to build the mosque, a competition for the design of the building was announced in November 1907. The mosque was to be in the 'Eastern style ': austere on the inside, richly decorated on the outside, with a dome and at least one minaret, and with the mihrab facing south, i.e. towards Mecca. Out of 45 entries, three designs were deemed the best: Nikolai Vasiliev (1875-1958) and two Polish architects Marian Lalewicz (1876-1944) and Marian Peretiatkowicz (1872-1916) .

The winning implementation project

It seems that Vasiliev's design was chosen because it best combined Eastern exoticism with Northern monumentalism and Islamic traditions with elements of St Petersburg Art Nouveau architecture . At the same time, the competition committee appreciated that he modelled his design on the architecture of Central Asia recently annexed by Russia. A key role was played by the fact that the winning design was modelled on the Gur-i Mir mausoleum in Samarkand, built in 1405 for Tamerlan . The design included two minarets and a semi-elliptical dome on a high drum and a representative portal (peshtak) with ceramic cladding.

The development of the final design , which differed from the competition design , and its implementation were entrusted to the emperor's court architect Alexander von Gauguin (1856-1914) and the civil engineer Stefan Kryczynski (1874-1923) , a member of the St Petersburg Muslim community, descended from Polish Tatars . He was also a good acquaintance of the Emir of Bukhara. Differences between the designs included the addition of a separate entrance for women and changes to the proportions and details of the facades.

The construction of the mosque and its architecture

Earthworks began in August 1909. The ceremonial laying of the foundation stone took place on 3 February 1910 with the Emir of Bukhari in attendance. When the reinforced concrete structure of the building was ready at the end of the year, the walls, dome and minarets were clad in stone, followed by the fluted (grooved) dome and portals with ceramic tiles. The first prayers in the still unfinished mosque were held on 21 February 1913, the three-hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. Due to the outbreak of the First World War and the Bolshevik coup, work slowed down considerably. Construction was not fully completed until 30 April 1920, already under Bolshevik rule. The dates of the laying of the foundation stone and completion of the work can be seen in the framing of the main portal.

The temple is built on a rectangular plan measuring 45 x 32 m, with a 39 m high dome and 48 m cylindrical minarets. It can accommodate five thousand worshippers, including women, for whom a separate gallery is provided. The composition of the main, i.e. western, façade (facing Prospekt), as well as the body itself, are - unlike the Samarkand buildings - asymmetrical, in keeping with the spirit of Art Nouveau .

The decorative principle of the façade is the contrast between the dark grey granite slabs and the blue-coloured ceramic portals, dome and finial of the minarets. The ceramic covering, covering an area of 1,500 square metres, was created with craftsmen from Central Asia, using the medieval mosaic technique. The facades are decorated with quotations from the Koran. A special feature of the St Petersburg mosque is the natural lighting - there are 16 windows in the drum of the dome, while there are no window openings in the Asian original. In contrast to the exterior design, the interior of the mosque is modest, even austere, with only the majolica (ceramic) decoration of the mihrab standing out. A small two-storey building was erected in the courtyard, including a boiler room and an ablution room (now an office).

Fate of the mosque in Soviet times

In 1937, arrests were made among the Muslim clergy. The Soviet authorities nationalised the mosque and gradually confiscated its equipment . The Koran from 1236 was taken to the Museum of the History of Religions. A potato store was set up in the basement. The mosque was closed down in September 1940. During the Stalin era, the Muslim community's long-standing efforts to have the temple returned were unsuccessful.

The mosque was successfully recovered in January 1956. , thanks to support from Muslim countries. It was in disastrous condition, not only because of the harsh climate, which was very different from that of Samarkand, but above all because of shoddy renovations and a tram line running right next to it. Ceramic decoration and even granite slabs were falling off as a result of the vibrations. In 1968, the mosque was officially declared a monument by the authorities. A golden crescent again crowned the dome in 1995. The conservation and reconstruction work dragged on until 2003, the celebration of the tricentenary of St Petersburg.

Stefan Kryczyński - architect, builder of the mosque

The Tatar ancestors of the co-creator of the mosque, architect Stefan Kryczyński (1874-1923) , fought at Grunwald on the side of the Polish-Lithuanian army. He himself was born in the Kaskievičy estate in the Oshmyany district (modern Belarus). After graduating from the Institute of Civil Engineers in St Petersburg, he worked successively in various architectural and construction offices, among others as the chief architect of the Special Corps of Border Guards until 1917. He designed more than twenty buildings in and around the city on the Neva River, including the Cathedral of the Fyodorovsky Icon of the Mother of God, the house of the painter-cartoonist Pavel Shcherbov in Gatchin and for the court, reminiscent of an old Russian monastery, the so-called "Fyodorovsky gorodokok". Fyodorovsky gorodok in Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin), as well as the neo-classical house of the Emir of Buchara (pr. Kamennoostrovsky 44), where he himself lived from 1915 to 1923. He also worked in Kuban, Georgia and Serbia, among other places. He successfully participated in architectural competitions on many occasions, and from 1921 taught at the Institute of Civil Engineers .

He died in Petrograd . He was buried in the Literary Bridges of the Volkov cemetery.