Çifte Medrese

Kayseri, Türkiye

The Çifte Madrasa is so named because it consists of two adjacent four-iwan buildings oriented north-south. The one to the east was founded as a medical school by Sultan Giyaseddin Keyhüsrev (1192-1197 and 1205-1211) and the other was founded as a hospital by his sister Gevher Nesibe Sultan. The complex is not only the first Seljuk madrasa in Kayseri, but also the oldest hospital in Anatolia.<br><br>The entire structure is sixty by forty meters, built of local stone, with the hospital roughly square and thirty-five meters wide and the medical school twenty-five meters wide. The hospital has a main southern portal that is not on the main axis of the courtyard. It leads into a square paved courtyard surrounded by an arcade. There is a pool in the center of the courtyard. A large iwan spans the entire width of the northern side of the court. The plan is irregular, with rooms of various sizes accessed from the arcade. A long, narrow wing of small cells lined up on two sides of a corridor is reached by a small doorway at the southwest corner of the arcade. This structure is entirely separate from the circulation of the hospital, but shares a wall with the western rooms of the court. There is a smaller entrance to the right of the main portal that opens into the eastern arcade of the hospital courtyard.<br><br>A small corridor at the northeast corner of the hospital courtyard leads to the madrasa next door, which also has an irregular plan with an arcaded courtyard, a pool and an off-axis entrance. The east side of the courtyard houses an octagonal tomb, which is an early Seljuk funerary structure. The octagon is surmounted by a pyramidal roof as seen from the outside, with a squinch-supported dome on the inside. This is most likely the tomb of Gevher Nesibe Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Kiliç Arslan (1156-1192). <br><br>Today the building continues to serve a medical function. Following a restoration in 1968, it is used by the administration of the Kayseri medical school.<br><br>Sources:<br><br>Aslanapa, Oktay. <i>Turkish art and architecture</i>, 422. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971.<br><br>Cantay, Gönül. <i>Anadolu Selcuklu ve Osmanli Darüssifalari</i>, 41-44. Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayini, 1992.<br><br>Gabriel, Albert. <i>Monuments Turcs d'Anatolie</i>, 60-62. Paris: Editions de Boccard, 1931-1934.<br><br>Ertug, Ahmet. <i>The Seljuks: a journey through Anatolian architecture</i>, 219. Istanbul: Ahmet Ertug, 1991.