The main entrance to the court of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha
A medresseh is a theological school and law school combined, since in Islam the teachings of the Prophet, as embodied in the Koran and the traditions, form not only the rule of life but the law of the land. It is only recently that a difference has been recognised between the Sheriat or sacred law and the civil law, but their boundaries are still indistinct, and for many men the same door leads to legal or to spiritual preferment. I have said so much about tombs and tiles and other matters that I have left myself no room to speak of medressehs—or schools of other kinds, or libraries, or caravansaries, or baths, or hospitals, or soup-kitchens, or any other of the charitable institutions that cluster around a mosque yard. We are wont to imagine that philanthropy was invented in the West, and that the institutional church is a peculiarly modern development. But before America was discovered institutional mosques flourished in Stamboul and all over Asia Minor, and continue to do so to this day. Almost no mosque, indeed, has not some philanthropy connected with it. They are administered, mosques and dependencies and all, by a separate and very important department of government called the Ministry of the Erkaf—of Pious Foundations.
The court of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha
Doorway in the medresseh of Feïzoullah Effendi
The interior of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha