What is of value for you?  A taste of ripened-on-a-branch berry? A view of sunsetting rays enveloping stalks of golden wheat? A last model of the phone? Mother’s unconditional love? A house with state-of-the-art appliances? A heart-warming gathering?  A memory collected by generations and shared ? A discovery of something novel? An expensive watch? Effortless consumption? Effortful unique expertise?  

A value depends on many factors, the most powerful of which are the social norms of the times that dictate the preferences. The value is valuable only when it is valued, the wise person said once. For us, the precious and valuable is:

• experiencing sacred aşure – a-once-a-year treat meant to be shared in the month of Muharram – in a company of a welcoming Turkish family that know how to appreciate time spent together.

• feeling of shared joys and pains of immigration, when visiting Kazan Tatar Cultural Home in Eskişehir, Turkiye

• learning that a shchibureq is a Kirim Tatar specialty. The word comes from Turkic “çi böreq” meaning a deep-fried small pie (böreq) with not-cooked-before-frying (çi) grounded beef. The best shchibureq is made in Eskişehir – the city that has embraced the Tatar (Kazan and Kirim) culture as well as other Turkic people’s. It carried a torch of a Turkic Capital of Culture in 2013. Kazan, Tatarstan, Rossiyan Federation, followed the suit a year later, in 2014.

• bringing attention to the current state of the craft of shchiteq-making. Once valuable and profit-making, expertise of shchiteq-making is, now, in hands of a small number of aging masters. Reported by M.A. Rylov on the pages of “Volzhskiy Vestnik” newspaper of 1886, roughly estimated 500+ shchiteq-making experts in Kazan metro area traded their skills along with 2000+ shchiteq ornamental patterns stitchers. There were more than 10 big factories that processed soft and fragrant leather (bulgari/saffian/yuft) and produced hand-stitched shchiteqler along with myriad of independent shchiteq ostalar with annual sales grossing over 5 mln. rubles (~107 mln. dollars today). Shchiteqler were sold throughout Asia, Europe and America. After political upheaval and establishment of USSR (Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics), the profit-making shchiteqler producing businesses, along with other enterprises were nationalised and dwindled due to the lack of demand and competition. Attention to native handicrafts were tried to be channeled in 1920ies by establishment of government-owned artisan artels with not much success. After 1960ies, the efforts of creating two state plants in Arshcha and Kazan (Spartak) to manufacture simplified versions of shchiteqler yielded some results, and for ~35 years they kept a centuries-old unique craft alive. Both entities did not to make it during turmoil of USSR collapse. A legacy of Arshcha footwear plant is now carried by two small privately-owned companies “Sahtian” and “Shchiteq”. As of 2026, only 2-5 independent shchiteq-making masters practice their trade, mostly, on “on&off” basis, by requests. “Sahtian” and “Shchiteq” employ few shchiteq-makers to make a number of shchiteqler to keep a small inventory on the market. 

Keeping a tab on the values that are valued is a must, so appreciation of an effortful human involvement – hand-made, heart-felt, brain-created – has a potential for a long run! Wishing that exceptional skills-set of shchiteq-making is not extinct in 2126 and is valued as much as 250 years prior. So future generations have a chance to experience the warmth of experts’ hands while wearing shchiteqler. So belonging to a manual effortful material centuries-old legacy of the Tatar shchiteqler is even deeper than it is for us, in 2026, experiencing a historic diversity of shchiteqler behind the glass in a museum.