Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
capital letters.) Between this building and the northern minaret is a
very pretty courtyard called the Sahaflar Çarşısı, or the Market of the
Secondhand Book Sellers, in which we will linger on our next stroll
through the city.
Almost opposite the north minaret stands the extremely impressive
imaret of the külliye. The imaret, in addition to serving as a public
kitchen, seems also to have been used as a kervansaray. The various
rooms of the imaret line three sides of the courtyard (now roofed
in), with the fourth side containing the monumental entrance-portal.
The first room on the right housed an olive-press, the second was
a grain storeroom, and the third, in the right-hand corner, was the
bakery, equipped with two huge ovens. The large domed chamber at
the far end of the courtyard was the kitchen and dining room. The
even larger domed structure beside it, forming the left third of the
complex, served as a stable for the horses and camels of the travellers
who were guests at the imaret, while the chamber between the stable
and the courtyard was used as a dormitory. The imaret was converted
into a library by Sultan Abdül Hamit II in 1882; it now houses the
State Library (Devlet Kütüphanesi). The library is an important one
of 120,000 volumes and more than 7,000 manuscripts and the imaret
makes a fine home for it.
The medrese of Beyazit's külliye is at the far west end of the square.
It is of the standard form; the hücres, or cells, where the students lived
and studied, are ranged around four sides of a porticoed courtyard,
while the dershane, or lecture-hall, is opposite the entrance portal.
This building has also been converted into a library, that of the
Municipality (Belediye Kütüphanesi); unfortunately the restoration
and conversion were rather badly done, a lot of cement having been
used instead of stone and the portico having been very crudely glassed
in. Nevertheless, the proportions of the building are so good and the
garden in the courtyard so attractive that the general efect is still
quite charming.
The medrese is now used to house the Museum of Calligraphic
Art. The collections of the museum are organized into various
sections; these are: Cufic Kurans, treatises and manuscripts and
panels in Indian and Moroccan scripts; Nakshi Kurans and wooden
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