The origin of the name Kazan is uncertain. The most accepted legends derive it from the Bulgar Turkic (and also modern Tatar) word qazan, which means 'boiler' or 'cauldron'. One legend claims that the city was named after the river Kazanka, which was named after the son of a Bulgarian governor dropped a copper cauldron into it. Other local legends claim that the city was named for the resemblance of the hill on which it sits to an upturned cauldron.
History
There is a long-running dispute as to whether Kazan was founded by the Muslim Volga Bulgars in the early Middle Ages or by the Tatars of the Golden Horde in the mid-15th century, as written records before the latter period are sparse. If there was a Bulgar city on the site, estimates of the date of its foundation range from the early 11th century to the late 13th century (see Iske Qazan). It was a border post between Volga Bulgaria and two Finnic tribes, the Mari and the Udmurt. Another vexatious question is where the citadel was built originally. Archaeological explorations have produced evidence of urban settlement in three parts of the modern city: in the Kremlin; in Bi?balta at the site of the modern Zilantaw monastery; and near the Qaban lake. The oldest of these seems to be the Kremlin.
If Kazan existed in the 11th and 12th centuries, it could have been a stop on a Volga trade route from Scandinavia to Baghdad. It was a trade center, and possibly a major city for Bulgar settlers in the Kazan region, although their capital was further south at the city of Bol?ar.
After the Mongols devastated the Bol?ar and Bil�r areas in the 13th century, migrants resettled Kazan. Kazan became a center of a duchy which was a dependency of the Golden Horde. Two centuries later, in the 1430s, Hordian Tatars (such as Ghiasetdin of Kazan) usurped power from its Bolghar dynasty.
Some Tatars also went to Lithuania, brought by Vytautas the Great.
In 1438, after the destruction of
