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The Tilla Kari madrasa was commissioned a decade after the adjacent Shir Dar madrasa (1619-1636) by the same patron, Shaybanid feudal general, Alchin Yalantush Bahadur between 1646-60. Once part of the complex built by Timur's wife, Tuman-Aka in the fourteenth century, the site had housed the Mirzoi caravan sarai. Built originally as a theological seminary, this madrasa with its large prayer hall soon became Samarkand's congregational mosque with the collapse of the Bibi Khanum Mosque (b. 1399) and the dismantling of Alikeh Kukeltash Mosque (1439-40). Source: Archnetexterior, courtyard iwan, 1987