A vaulted passage leads from the west side of the courtyard into the attached medrese, or theological school, which can also be entered from outside by a gatevvay located in the central axis of the building. On the left side of the passage leading in from the courtyard is the entrance to the domed türbe, or tomb, of İshak Bey, who died in 1388. The türbe door is flanked by two pairs of double "knotted" columns of a red and yellovv breccia. They are undoubtedly Byzantine in origin, as is the fluted column on the left at the entrance from the passage into the central courtyard of the two-stoned medrese. The south side of the courtyard opens into the main eyvan, or vaulted chamber (eyvans are somelimes domed). This is flanked by two other vaulted chambers, the western one having collapsed. The student cells open off the west side of the courtyard in two stories.
One block to the east of the Ulu Cami we see the Muradiye Camii. This is the most splendid of ali the mosques in Manisa, built in 1583-86 for Murat IH, who served here as provincial gov-ernor before becoming sultan in 1574. The mosque was designed by Sinan, but the actual construction was carried out by the archi-tect Mehmet Ağa, who would later build the famous Blue Mosque in istanbul. The Muradiye is preceded by a fıve-bay portico car­ried by two columns of Proconnesian marble and four of granite, with the two fluted minarets rising from the corners of the build­ing behind the porch. On each side of the building there is an arcade with a shed roof carried on four square marble piers.
The square central area of the prayer hail is covered by a dome eleven meters in diameter resting on spherical pendentives. Around the central square are grouped three abutting rectangular bays, one forming the mihrab apse and the other two flanking the main prayer room, ali of them covered by vaults in the form of three planes meeting in groins. The mihrab niche is splendidly deco-rated with stalactite carvings and the mimber is a fine work in gilded and painted marble. The royal lodge is the gallery in the southeast corner, resting on ogive arches supported by two marble columns and the walls, the carved and painted ceiling beneath it being one of the finest works of its kind in Turkey. There is also a gallery över the main entrance resting on multifoliate arches car­ried on four square piers, as well as two smaller galleries över the northeast and northvvest doors.
The külliye, or pious foundation, of the Muradiye also included an imaret, or soup kitchen, and two medreses, one of vvhich shared the courtyard of the mosque. The medrese around the courtyard of the mosque has vanished, but the other one survives, along with the imaret. The surviving medrese, vvhich is just to the east of the mosque, novv serves as the Manisa Ethnographical Museum. The imaret, the next building to the east, houses the Archaeological Museum. The Archaeological Museum has antiquities from various
sites in Lydia, most notably Sardis, and also sculptures from Mag-nesia ad Sipylum dating from the Roman and Byzantine periods.
Across the intersection to the northvvest of the Muradiye we see Sultan Camii, another of the imperial Ottoman mosques of Manisa. Tis was built in 1522 by Süleyman the Magnificent in honor of his mother, the Valide Sultan (Queen Mother) Hazize Hatun, a wife of Selim I (r. 1512-20). The mosque is preceded by a five-bay porch supported by tali columns with stalactite capitals. The two minarets rise from the northeast and northwest corners of the building. The entrance to the mosque is flanked by two prayer niches with exceptionally fine frames of moulded stucco. The cen-tral area of the prayer room is covered by a dome with an octago-nal drum resting on a square base in the center, with two bays on either side covered by smaller and lovver domes. The külliye also includes a medrese, a hamam, and a darüşşifa, or hospital, which included a tımarhane, or insane asylum.
We now walk northeast from Sultan Camii along Çarşı Bulvarı, at the far end of vvhich we pass on our right the old Manisa Bazaar. Then at the next intersection vve come to the Hatuniye