Babr: What beast is the symbol of Irkutsk?
On the Irkutsk coat of arms, we can see an outlandish animal with webbed paws and long whiskers. Its tail is bushy and erect and is holding a sable in its teeth. Obviously, it is a fierce wild animal!
According to the modern official description of the coat of arms, “in a silver field there is a babr running through the green grass to the left side of the shield and having a sable in its jaws”. What?
Irkutsk coat of arms with a tiger.
Originally, Irkutsk's coat of arms featured a running tiger with a sable in its teeth. Although Amur tigers live further east, they could technically reach these places. And, in the old days, the inhabitants of Siberia called any such dangerous wildcats ‘babrs’: tigers, panthers and leopards. The sable in its teeth, meanwhile, symbolized the city’s fur trade.
Irkutsk coat of arms, 1878.
Irkutsk was founded in 1661 and it is noted that the coat of arms with a tiger-babr was approved by Empress Catherine the Great in 1790. However, a century later, under Alexander II, when the coats of arms of the Russian Empire were being re-approved, unknown officials in St. Petersburg decided that there was a typo in the description. Not ‘babr’, but ‘bobr’ (beaver in Russian)! The two words differ just in one letter. True, it was not clear why it needed a sable in its mouth, because beavers do not hunt them. At that time, however, more than 40 provinces' coats of arms were being re-approved at once, so, in a hurry, no one specified what the ‘babr’ was.
Modern Irkutsk coat of arms.
The artists, in turn, tried to correct the coat of arms: they removed the tiger's stripes, added webbing to its paws and a "beaver" tail, but left the sable. And the description now mentioned ‘bobr’ (‘beaver’).
The ‘babr’ name only returned in the mid-1990s, but the former fantastic beast remained on the coat of arms. And they even put a monument to it in the city center.
A monument to babr in Irkutsk.
