The Great Bulgarian

On the banks of the full-flowing Volga, thirty kilometers below the mouth of the Kama, there is one of the remarkable monuments of our cultural heritage - the Bulgarian settlement - the capital of one of the earliest state associations of Eastern Europe.

The city of Bolgar was the political, economic and cultural center of Volga-Kama Bulgaria. Here was the khan’s rate, coins were minted, crafts developed.

Originated from the early X century. Due to its convenient geographical location, Bulgaria is turning into an international trade center. The shopping suburb of Bolgar Aga-Bazar is often visited by merchants from Russia and Central Asia, Iran, Byzantium and distant China.

Over time, the city of Bolgar was built up and flourished, the Khan’s Palace and the Cathedral Mosque towered in the center. Scientists and poets worked here. History has preserved the names of such outstanding people as the poet Kul Gali, the scholar-historian Yaqub ibn-Nugman, the philosopher Hamid al-Bulgari. Widespread literacy among the population shows inscriptions on fragments of ceramics, jewelry and stone.

But the peaceful development of the Bulgarian people, which reached its heyday at the turn of the XII - XIII centuries, was interrupted by the Mongol invasion. “Taking the glorious Great City of Bulgaria, beating with weapons from the elder to the unun, and to the child, and taking a lot of goods, and burning their city with fire and the whole land of captivity,” says the Russian chronicle of the events of 1236.

Modern Bolgar is a vast settlement surrounded by a rampart and a moat more than five kilometers long, where architectural monuments of the XIII - XIV centuries are located, such as the Cathedral Mosque, the Eastern and Northern Mausoleums, the Khan's Shrine, the Small Minaret, the Black Chamber, the White Chamber, the Khan's Bath and numerous archaeological sites.