Mizar – the Tatar Cemetery in Kruszyniany

On the edge of Kruszyniany, above the valley of the Nietupa river, behind a stone wall stretches the mizar – a Muslim cemetery founded by the Tatar community in the second half of the 17th century. It is one of the oldest traces of Tatar settlement in Poland, lying beside the country's oldest surviving wooden Tatar mosque.

Tatars in the service of the Commonwealth

The cemetery's history is tied to the privilege of Jan III Sobieski of 12 March 1679, by which the king granted the Tatars, among other estates, Kruszyniany and neighbouring villages. The Lipkas received this reward for their military service in the wars against the Ottoman Empire; among those who settled in Kruszyniany was Colonel Samuel Murza Krzeczowski, who had saved the king's life at the Battle of Parkany.

Gravestones from three centuries

The cemetery covers 0.6 hectares. The oldest gravestone with a legible inscription dates from 1699, while the inscriptions on older stones have already worn away. The 19th-century mazars take the form of pyramids, columns and polished slabs, some decorated with rich ornament. The village also produced kitabs, manuscripts of religious and customary content; one of them was copied in 1792 by Jusuf Heliaszewicz.

The mizar lies near the mosque first mentioned in 1717; the present wooden building was probably erected in the second half of the 18th or the first half of the 19th century. The village lies in the commune of Krynki in the Sokółka county, on the small Nietupa river.