The Nizamiya Madrasa at Baghdad

Extract

MR. GUY LE STRANGE, in his Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphs—which is likely to remain for long the standard work on Baghdad's topography—in discussing the site of the Niẓámíya madrasa, puts it in the southern part of the city, between the Bábu 'l-Azaj quarter and the Bábu 'l-Baṣalíya, now known as the Bábu 'l-Sharqí. The argument for this site rests chiefly—though there are other references which seem to support it—on an ambiguous passage in Yáqút's Mu‘jamu ’l Buldán, dealing with the Tutushí foundations built by Khamartagín, a slave of the Sultan Alp Arslán's younger son Táju'l-Dawla Tutush. These foundations are “a bazaar near the Niẓámíya madrasa, called the ‘Tutushí estate’, a madrasa called ‘Tutushiya’ near it, for members of Hanafite sect, and a hospital, also known as the ‘Tutushí’ in the Bábu 'l Azaj (quarter)”. Equally vague and obscure is another passage in which Yáqút refers to the Niẓámíya madrasa. It comes during his description of the locality of the Qurayya quarter on the west bank of the Tigris, “opposite,” he says, “to the lane leading down to the river from the Niẓámíya madrasa bazaar.”