Museum of Wooden Artefacts & Stone Carving

On the western side of the Alaaddin Tepesi ring road is the İnce Minare Medresesi (Seminary of the Slender Minaret), now the Museum of Wooden Artefacts & Stone Carving. This religious school was built in 1264 for Sahip Ata, a powerful Seljuk vizier, who may have been trying to outdo the patron of the Karatay Medresesi, built only seven years earlier.

The extraordinarily elaborate doorway, with bands of Arabic inscription running all round it, is far more impressive than the small building behind it. The octagonal minaret in turquoise relief is over 600 years old and gave the seminary its popular name. If it looks a bit short, this is because the top was sliced off by lightning in 1901.

Inside, many of the carvings in wood and stone feature motifs similar to those used in tiles and ceramics. You'll quickly see that the Seljuks didn't heed Islam's traditional prohibition of human and animal images: there are plenty of images of birds (the Seljuk double-headed eagle, for example), men and women, lions and leopards. The eyvan in particular contains two delightful carvings of Seljuk angels with distinctly Mongol features. The Ahşap Eserler Bölümü (Carved Wood Section) contains some intricately worked wooden doors.