Çay Medresesi

Çay Medresesi is a Seljuk-era madrasa in the town of Çay in Afyonkarahisar province, central Turkey, built in 1278 during the late Anatolian Seljuk period. It is also known locally as Çay Taş Medresesi, the "stone madrasa of Çay," and as the Yusuf bin Yakup Medresesi, a name tied to the patron credited with its founding. Like other madrasas of its era, it was raised in cut stone with a monumental carved entrance portal opening onto a courtyard plan originally intended for religious and legal instruction. As the classical madrasa system changed under later Ottoman rule, the building's teaching function faded and it was adapted for use as a mosque, a conversion common to many thirteenth-century Seljuk madrasas across Anatolia. The structure survives today as one of the notable examples of Seljuk religious and educational architecture in the Afyonkarahisar region, valued for its stonework and its place within the broader group of madrasas built across central Anatolia in the second half of the 13th century.