A wartime vow that built a mosque in Soviet Russia

ZELENODOLSK, Russia (MNTV) — The city of Zelenodolsk, near Kazan in Russia’s Tatarstan region, now has several mosques, but during the Soviet era it had none. The story of its first — the Tarikhi Mosque — begins with a vow made in a wartime trench, the outlet zpravda.ru reported.

Kiyamutdin Mukhutdinov, born in 1903 in the Chistopol district, learned to read Arabic and could translate the Quran into Tatar. 

After his father was persecuted under Soviet repression, the family moved to Zelenodolsk in 1935. When the Second World War reached the Soviet Union, Mukhutdinov was called to the front in the winter of 1941. 

There, in a frozen trench, he vowed that if he returned alive he would devote himself to building a mosque. He came home in 1944 after a severe concussion.

Years later, as his home was slated for demolition and the family resettled, the Mukhutdinovs’ modest apartment quietly became a prayer house where elderly residents gathered each Friday. 

As numbers grew, a council of elders began petitioning officials, enduring pressure and interrogations. 

In 1979 they won permission to buy a house and open a prayer hall — on the strict condition that it have no minaret.

Residents raised funds however they could, and the mosque was built; Soviet inspectors auditing it for economic crimes found every board bought by proper invoice.

Mukhutdinov served there until his death in 1986. 

Today the Tarikhi Mosque has a minaret, and the adhan — the Islamic call to prayer — sounds from it, a reminder, the account says, of the persistence of faith through decades of official atheism.