The stones of the Ertokuş Medresesi were carried from the ruins of Agrai (Atabey) and Seleukeia Sidera (Bayat); the Seljuk frontier commander Mübarizeddin Ertokuş founded it in 1224, in the reign of Alaaddin Keykubat I.
It belongs to the closed type of medrese, with an outer courtyard, an inner courtyard, a tomb and student cells. The cells are on the ground floor, each under a dome. In the inner courtyard a pool lies beneath a dome that is open at the centre and rests on half arches carried by four marble columns.
There is no decoration inside at all, so the effect of the space comes from the architecture alone. The portal and its side niches are worked more plainly than on later Seljuk medreses, enlivened by a few carved borders, and the stone mihrab is one of the rare surviving examples of its kind in Anatolian Seljuk building. The Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü has restored the medrese.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Isparta as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 1.9 °C in January to 23.5 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (86 mm) and lightest in August (14 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
