Kasımiye Medrese

The medrese is located southwest of the city centre of old Mardin.[1] The altitude of the Kasımiye is about 975 metres (3,199 ft).

The first patron of the medrese was İsa Bey of the Artuqid dynasty, an Anatolian beylik. However, he was killed in a battle against the Karakoyunlu in 1407, before the building was fully constructed. The construction was resumed after the city fell to the Aqqoyunlu Turkmens. Kasım, a son of Akkoyunlu sultan Mu'izz-al-Din, is credited with completing the medrese[2] and it was opened in 1469.

In 1924, all medreses in Turkey were closed down within a general attack on religious life and a top-down attempt to secularise society.

The main building is rectangular. The entrance through an ornamented portal is from the south. In the courtyard there is a pool. The water source is a funnel in the wall that represents birth. The water from the pool drains through a narrow slit that represents death and sırat (in Islamic belief a narrow bridge on hell which leads to paradise) . The classrooms surround the pool. The classroom doors are kept deliberately low to ensure students would bow reverently before their teachers as they entered.

On the north of the iwan there is the reproduction of an elephant clock designed by Cezeri,[3] a Muslim engineer who lived in the early period of the Artuklu Beylik.