KASIMOV  , a

town of Russia, in the government of Ryazan, on the Oka river, in 540 56' N. and 410 3' E., 75 M . E.N.E. of Ryazan . Pop . (1897), 13,545, of whom about l000 were Tatars . It is famed for its tanneries and leather goods, sheepskins and post-horse bells . Founded in 1152, it was formerly known as Meshcherski Gorodets . In the 15th century it became the capital of a Tatar khanate, subject to Moscow, and so remained until 1667 . The town possesses a cathedral, and a mosque supposed to have been built by Kasim, founder of the Tatar principality . Near the mosque stands a mausoleum built by Shah-Ali in 1555• Lying on the direct road from Astrakhan to Moscow and Nizhniy-Novgorod, Kasiinov is a place of some trade, and has a large annual fair in July . The waiters in the best hotels of St Peters-burg are mostly Kasimov Tatars . See Veliaminov-Zernov, The Kasimov Tsars (St Petersburg, 1863-1866) . ' KASSA (Germ .

Kaschau;

Lat . Cassovia), the capital of the county of Abauj-Torna, in Hungary, 170 M . N.E. of Budapest by rail . Pop . (1900), 35,856 . Kassa is one of the oldest and handsomest towns of Hungary, and is pleasantly situated on the right bank of the Hernad . It is surrounded on three sides by hills covered with forests and vineyards, and opens to the S.E. to-wards a pretty valley watered by the Hernad and the Tarcza . Kassa consists of the inner town, which was the former old town surrounded with walls, and of three suburbs separated from it by a broad glacis . The most remarkable building, considered the grandest masterpiece of architecture in Hungary, is the Gothic cathedral of St Elizabeth . Begun about 1270 by Stephen V., it was continued (1342-1382) by Queen Elizabeth, wife of Charles I., and her son Louis I., and finished about 1468, in the reign of Matthias I . (Corvinus) . The interior was transformed in the 18th century to the Renaissance style, and the whole church thoroughly restored in 1877-1896 .

The church of St

Michael and the Franciscan or garrison church date from the 13th century . The royal law academy, founded in 1659, and sanctioned by golden bull of King Leopold I. in 166o, has an extensive library; there are also a museum, a Roman Catholic upper gymnasium and seminary for priests, and other schools and benevolent institutions . Kassa is the see of a Roman Catholic bishopric . It is the chief political and commercial town of Upper Hungary, and the principal entrepot for the commerce between Hungary and Galicia . Its most important manufactures are tobacco, machinery, iron, furniture, textiles and milling . About 3 M . N.W. of the town are the baths of Banks, with alkaline and ferruginous springs, and about 12 m . N.E. lies R5.nk-Herlein, with an intermittent chalybeate spring . About 20 m . W. of Kassa lies the famous Premonstratensian abbey of Jasz6, founded in the 12th century . The abbey contains a rich library and valuable archives . In the neighbourhood is a fine stalactite grotto, which often served as a place of refuge to the inhabitants in war time .

Kassa was created a town and granted

special privileges by Bela IV. in 1235, and was raised to the rank of a royal free town by Stephen V. in 1270 . In 1290 it was surrounded with walls . The subsequent history presents a long record of revolts, sieges and disastrous conflagrations . In 1430 the plague carried off a great number of the inhabitants . In 1458 the right of minting money according to the pattern and value of the Buda coinage was granted to the municipality by King Matthias I . The bishopric was established in 1804 . In the revolutionary war of 1848-49 the Hungarians were twice defeated before the walls of Kassa by the Austrians under General Schlick, and the town was held successively by the Austrians, Hungarians and Russians .