MADRA'SAH (Ar., school, from darasa, to study). The name given by Mohammedans to their colleges or institutions of higher education. In the first centuries of the Hegira there were no separate buildings for educational purposes; elementary and advanced inst ruetion were both given in the mosques themselves or in annexes, and were largely of a desultory and voluntary character. In the eleventh century Nizan-el Molk, under the Sultan Alp Arslan, is said to have founded the first college or madrasah, and the custom spread rapidly to every part of the Mohammedan world, Each of the four ortho dox sects established colleges in the principal cities for the teaching of its tenets. Those of Bagdad at once became famous, and, soon after, those of Cairo (under Saladin). of Damascus (where over thirty existed) , of Cordova, Seville, Malaga, and Granada in Spain, and of many cities in North Africa (Fez, Kula, eta.), Turkes tan, and Persia (Ispahan• Shiraz). Later, there are said to have been'as many as five hundred colleges in Constantinople.
Sometimes these colleges were of a general character, teaching the doctrines of all four orthodox sects, as regards theology and juris prudence, with the related or prop.pdeutic sub jects of grammar, exegesis of the Koran, tradi tions, rhetoric, logic, ethics, as well as such subjects as pure literature, medicine, mathe matics, physics, and philosophy. There was a regular staff attached to each, divided ordinarily into three classes: the cadi or judge, the mudar ris or professor, and the katib or reader. They
received a salary from the endowment of the college, which was administered by a body of trustees; such property was called trakf. A cer tain number of regular students were also sup ported from this endowment, both teachers and students living in the college buildings. Beside a large lecture hall and several smaller ones, a hospital and operating rooms, a library, dor mitories, kitchen and refectory, there were large and small special buildings, particularly mauso leums and a mosque for religious devotions. Sometimes there were observatories and botani cal gardens.
hardly any large Mohammedan city is without several such madrasah groups of buildings, usu ally of the late mediaeval period. For the study of architecture they are almost as important as the mosques (q.v.). In fact, they usually include both mosques and minarets and sometimes the mosque forms the centre and key of the group of buildings. The magnificent so-called mosque of Sultan Basan at Cairo (fourteenth century) is really a college with a mosque attached to it; so is that of Kalafin. Others at Cairo are those of Khawand-el-Baraka, of Knit Bey, of Sultans Ilarkuk and Muayyed. If in these and many other cases the buildings of the college proper are subordinate to the mosque, there are others where it is not so. The madrusah of Sultan Hussein at Ispahan, built around an immense court, with a double gallery of arcades, is espe cially magnificent.