The Märcani Mosque was built between 1766 and 1770 and became the first mosque to be built in Kazan since Ivan the Terrible's 1552 conquest of Kazan. Permission to build the mosque was personally granted by Empress Catherine the Great. The mosque was built in the traditional Tatar style of a building with a central minaret on the roof. Also known as the First Congressional Mosque, it is now named after the Tatar theologian and historian Şihabetdin Märcani, who served as the mosque's imam in the mid-19th century. This was the only mosque in Kazan not to be closed during the Soviet period.