Conquest

With the aid of our Almighty Lord Jesus Christ and the prayers of the Mother of God … our pious Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vasilievich, crowned by God, Autocrat of all Rus', fought against the infidels, defeated them finally and captured the Tsar of Kazan' Edigai-Mahmet. And the pious Tsar and Grand Prince ordered his regiment to sing an anthem under his banner, to give thanks to God for the victory; and at the same time ordered a life-giving cross to be placed and a church to be built, with the uncreated image of our Lord Jesus Christ, where the Tatar colours had stood during the battle.

On 2 (15) October 1552, Russian and allied Tatar troops stormed what was left of the Kazan Kremlin after a short siege. As the chronicle reported, the tsar ordered the surviving male defenders of the city except for the Khan to be put to death as traitors, and the remaining buildings were symbolically consecrated and Christianized. Already the contemporary Russian chroniclers understood the conquest of Kazan and the subsequent incorporation of the Khanate into Muscovite body politic as an unprecedented incident and a turning point in history: for the first time Moscow's Grand Prince conquered and annexed a sovereign, military power and economically developed neighbouring Muslim state.