The Mustansiriyya Madrasa

The Mustansiriyya madrasa at Baghdad, completed in 631 AH (1234 CE), was founded by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir billah and was among the greatest institutions of learning of the medieval Muslim world. It was a purpose-built college on a grand scale: a great rectangular complex set around a vast open brick courtyard, with tall vaulted iwans opening on each side and ranges of small student cells in two storeys behind richly patterned brickwork, one long front rising directly from the bank of the Tigris that ran through the caliphal capital. It was famous as the first madrasa endowed to teach all four schools of Sunni law, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali, together under one roof, with stipends, lodging, food and medical care provided for the students and masters from its endowment (waqf), alongside teaching in the Qur'an, hadith, medicine and the other sciences. It held a large library and, by the report of the sources, an ingenious mechanical water-clock at its gate that marked the hours of prayer and study. The Mustansiriyya was raised in the last decades of Abbasid Baghdad, only about a generation before the Mongol armies under Hulagu sacked the city and ended the caliphate in 1258, so that it stands as a high point of Sunni learning and patronage on the very eve of that catastrophe; remarkably, the building itself survived the sack and still stands by the Tigris. This scene depicts the college in its days as a living institution: the great brick courtyard and its iwans, the student cells, the library and the water-clock, on the bank of the river in the heart of Baghdad. In keeping with the project's ethics any figures are kept anonymous and at a distance.