Amasysa Dar al-Shifa

The Amasya Dar al-Shifa, also known as the İlhanlı Darüşşifası or Bimarhane, is a fourteenth-century hospital and medical school complex in the city of Amasya in northern Turkey, built during the period of Ilkhanid Mongol influence over Anatolia. It combined the functions of a dar al-shifa, a hospital, with those of a madrasa for training physicians, and its stone entrance portal carries carved reliefs typical of the charitable religious architecture of the period. The institution is remembered in particular for its approach to treating mental illness, which, according to long-standing tradition associated with the building, drew on music and the sound of flowing water alongside other therapies, part of a broader pattern of music-based treatment used in hospitals across the medieval Islamic world. Today the complex houses the Şerefeddin Sabuncuoğlu Medicine Museum, named for the fifteenth-century Amasya-born Ottoman surgeon known for his illustrated surgical treatises, and its exhibits are devoted to the history of medicine and surgery in the Islamic world.