Zilant

Zilant is the winged serpent-dragon of Kazan in Tatarstan, the king of snakes in the city's founding legends and the crowned black dragon on Kazan's coat of arms since the 18th century.

The Name

Zilant is usually explained as a Russian form of the Tatar word yılan, "snake." In Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan on the Volga, the name belongs to a winged serpent who is both a legendary monster and the city's proud emblem.

The Legends

Several founding legends tell of Zilant, and they do not all agree. In a commonly told version, the hill where Kazan's kremlin now stands was once crawling with snakes, ruled by a great winged serpent king. The settlers who wanted to build there piled straw and brush around the hill and set it on fire, killing the snakes. The serpent king escaped and flew away to a nearby hill, and in some versions it went on troubling the people from there. That hill became known as Zilant Hill (Zilantova Gora). After Ivan the Terrible captured Kazan in 1552, a Russian Orthodox monastery, the Zilantov Monastery, was founded at the foot of that hill and later rebuilt on top of it.

Other tellings make Zilant less of a villain, a powerful creature tied to the place who became its guardian. These folk legends were mostly written down in the 19th century, and they show a mix of Tatar and Russian traditions.

Zilant on Kazan's Coat of Arms

A winged serpent appears as the emblem of Kazan on Russian state seals from the late 16th century, after the conquest of the Kazan Khanate. In 1730 the emblem was described for the banners of the Kazan Regiment as a black serpent wearing the gold crown of Kazan, with red wings, on a white shield. Catherine the Great approved the arms of Kazan Governorate in 1781. Heraldic writers have called the creature a dragon, a wyvern, or even a basilisk, and its shape (two legs, wings, and a long curling tail) is closest to the heraldic wyvern. Zilant still appears on the arms and flag of Kazan today.

Appearance

On the arms, Zilant is black with red wings and a red tongue, walks on two legs, and wears a golden crown. The folk legends mostly describe a huge winged snake. Fire-breathing is not part of the traditional image.

Legacy

Zilant is everywhere in modern Kazan, from public sculptures to souvenirs and local emblems. It is one of the few dragons in Europe whose heraldic role has survived without a break into the present day. For other city dragons, see Dragons Across Cultures.

Related

• Zmey Gorynych: Zmey Gorynych is the many-headed, fire-breathing dragon of Russian epic songs and fairy tales, best known for kidnapping a princess of Kyiv and being defeated by the hero Dobrynya Nikitich.
• Wawel Dragon: The Wawel Dragon (Smok Wawelski) is the legendary dragon of Kraków's Wawel Hill, killed, in the best-known version, when it ate a carcass stuffed with burning sulfur and drank from the Vistula River until it burst.
• Lindwurm of Klagenfurt: The Lindwurm of Klagenfurt is the winged dragon of a Carinthian founding legend, said to have lived in the marshes by Lake Wörthersee until brave men caught it with a baited hook, and pictured on the city's famous 16th-century fountain.
• Basilisk: The basilisk is a legendary "king of serpents" from Roman natural history and medieval bestiaries, a small crowned snake so venomous that its glance, breath, or touch could kill.
• Wyverns
• Dragons Across Cultures
• Basilisk

Sources and Further Reading

• N. A. Soboleva, Rossiiskaia gorodskaia i oblastnaia geral'dika XVIII–XIX vv. (Nauka, 1981)
• Tatarskaia entsiklopediia, 6 vols. (Institut Tatarskoi entsiklopedii, 2002–2014)

Cite this entry: “Zilant,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/zilant.