On one side is the great mosque, called the Masjid-i-Jāmi`, as are those of Delhi and Agra, because it was built to hold the immense crowd attending a Jum`a, or Friday service. The front is a vast recessed portal covered with arabesques in faience; its gates give access to a courtyard spacious enough to contain 10,000 worshippers,[712] surrounded by a vaulted cloister. Near it is the Minār Kalān, or Great Minār, a round tower 36 feet at the base, and tapering upwards to a height of 210. The whole surface is covered with beautiful designs in carved brick, which show that it dates from Bokhārā’s golden age. From the summit criminals were precipitated into the market-place beneath; but access to it is now forbidden, lest curious visitors should pry into the scores of courtyards which it commands. Opposite to the city mosque is the Madrasa Mīr-i-`Arab, a stately college with a tall recessed gateway, which ranks first among the 103 of which Bokhārā boasts. The entrance is through a door on the left, which opens on a vaulted corridor leading to a quadrangle surrounded by a double tier of cells, called _hujrats_, in which the pupils reside. Each has its bed-place on a dais spread with carpets and pillows, and niches in the wall for his books and clothes. Here the more promising lads from the elementary schools spend fifteen or twenty years in mastering the legal and religious system of Islām. This education is so alien to all that is associated with the process in Western countries, and its results are so far-reaching, that a description of its mysteries will interest those who aim at reading aright the signs of the times in Central Asia. Primary schools are to be found in every Bokhāran village, and they abound in the capital. They may be known from afar by the hum of childish voices, which resounds from morn till dewy eve in the narrow sunless streets. The course of teaching embraces the Koran, the _Farz-i-`Ayn_, and other books of a religious tendency, written in Tājikī, a dialect of Persian, and Turkī, the language of the Uzbegs. Those who wish to pursue their studies further pass into the Madrasas, which are maintained from the rents of great landed estates assigned to them by rulers of past ages. The curriculum here embraces theology, Arabic, law, and “worldly wisdom.”[713]