Fate of the first city stone mosque founded in the 18th century has long been discussed in Petropavlovsk. An auto repair shop, a hotel, a café and a sauna are now located in the territory of the cult facility. The Muslim community feels indignant about it: how can one take a bath and barbecue at a place that was used for praying before? According to the owner of the land plot, he purchased the land plot legally, and the building is of no architectural merit. CABAR.asia interviewed both parties.
The history of the stone mosque of Petropavlovsk dates back to 1772, when Russian empress Catherine II issued a decree on construction of mosques along the Orenburg fortified line in Verkhneuralsk, Orenburg, Petropavlovsk, and Troitsk fortress. The fortified line was required to fight the common enemy, i.e. the Junggars.
The public treasury allocated five thousand roubles to build the stone two-minaret mosque in Petropavlovsk. However, this money was not enough, and local cattle merchant Kasym invested the remaining sum. The mosque was named after him, Kasimovskaya. Moreover, the merchant donated his own buildings adjacent to the mosque, where madrasah for boys from Muslim families was set up.
In 1801, lightning struck the mosque, and the building cracked almost down to the foundation. The mosque was rebuilt after 1820. According to local historians, a wooden mosque was erected on the foundation. It burned in fire of 1849, when two thirds of Petropavlovsk were destroyed. The city was rebuilt, and by the 20th century Petropavlovsk had three wooden and six stone mosques, including Kasimovskaya.
The mosques did not last long after the 1917 revolution. In 1920, the compulsory condition for operation was the official registration of a religious community. By the end of that year, mosques were seized from religious communities with the following explanation, “Due to the absence of community and executive body, failure to perform repair works, failure to pay taxes and dues.”
Numerous complaints of the religious could not stop the process. Worship services in Kasimovskaya mosque were held until 1926, and all mosques were closed in Petropavlovsk by 1938.
Buildings of mosques were either destroyed, or adapted to commercial needs. The Kasimovskaya mosque was left without the minaret. The building was used as a shag tobacco factory and a fish factory. In the 90s, the building was returned to the Muslim community.
According to Nurmakhamat Ismagilov, mullah in charge (in Kazakh, namazkhan) of the mosque ‘Din Muhammad’, the believers gathered rarely and not long in the building, which used to be the Kasimovskaya mosque: only for a Friday prayer in summer. It was difficult to breathe in the premises because the nearby smoker was activated right during the prayer. Smoke penetrated through crevices and one could stay there only with open doors.
The Kasimovskaya mosque could not be used properly, so the city administration handed over another building to the Muslim community. The land plot of the Kasimovskaya mosque and what was left from the mosque itself were sold by authorities to private owners.
First, garages emerged there, and the café, hotel, auto repair shop and the sauna were built in the 2000s. The Muslim community was outraged with the sauna built on the foundation of the former mosque.
Is restoration possible?
According to Artur Ryazapov, expert-member of the town-planning board, and a direct descendant of settlers who moved to build the town in the 1790s, construction of the sauna on the mosque site has sparked outrage of the Muslim community. Repeated talks have been held with the entrepreneur, but they have led nowhere.
“In 2020, before the pandemic, Kumar Aksakalov, akim of the region, wanted to make a good gateway to the town. His plan was to sell the mosque to entrepreneurs (any – Editor’s note) for further restoration so that tourists could come and see how our town emerged. But restoration of the historical image of Petropavlovsk stopped at the through street, where house fronts were improved, new asphalt was laid down and small parks were set up,” Artur Ryazapov said.
It is possible to restore the building of the first stone mosque, Ryazapov said. Despite the dilapidated central part of the building, and the fact that the walls and the roof are below the original level, there are still the foundation, the wall, where the minaret was erected, the wall with the mihrab, a niche that indicates the direction of Mecca.
“The metal siding panels should be removed, and the architectural look should be restored according to the existing photos and drawings. Moreover, we have had such a precedent. The museum of Islamic culture has been restored from the abandoned warehouse at Kirov factory. We have the same situation here,” Ryazapov said.
He also paid attention to the fact that northern mosques differ from other mosques in Central Asia.
“In North Kazakhstan, we have our own architecture and our own colour set – white green. When time comes, I would like to see not only the restored image, but also the colour palette and floral patterns, which are permitted by the Islamic culture,” the expert-member of the town-planning board said.
A representative of the land plot owner, who refused to provide his personal data, said that the sauna on the site of former mosque has been disputed for a long time. He recalled a case when two old men visited them to buy out the territory and erect the mosque. But they failed to reach an agreement.
“We have reviewed all related documents and found out that the building was of no official architectural merit and was deregistered (as a monument of architecture – Editor’s note) a long time ago. We did not do it, it has happened before us,” the speaker said.
He noted that when the enterprise purchased the land plot, it had garages there, and the building of the former mosque was destroyed almost completely. The place where the sauna is now located had some foundation and a fragment of the wall almost one and a half metres wide.
“If you want it, buy it and do whatever you want to do there. We are now selling this territory. It can be purchased either in whole, or in parts. We used to do business earnestly, and now we just rent it out, and if there’s a buyer, we may make a deal,” the owner’s representative said.
According to him, the estimated value of the territory with all the structures inside is nearly half a billion Kazakh tenge (over 1 million dollars).