Alla Kouli Khan madrasa

The Alla Kouli Khan Madrasa, completed in 1834 on the orders of the eponymous Khan of Khiva, sits within Ichan Qala — the fully intact mud-brick fortress city that became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990. It was built directly adjacent to an existing caravanserai complex, a deliberate arrangement that allowed the Khan to fund the school's operations from the revenues of passing merchants. The madrasa's main portal is clad in turquoise and cobalt-blue majolica tilework, considered among the finest examples of 19th-century Central Asian ornamental craft. Visitors pass through the main iwan into a quiet courtyard surrounded by two tiers of student cells, a spatial sequence that still conveys the rhythms of Quranic study life under the Khanate.