Imperial School of Medicine (Ottoman Empire)

The Imperial Military School of Medicine,^[1] or the Imperial School of Medicine (Ottoman Turkish: مَكْتَبِ طبیە شاهانە, Turkish: Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Şahane, French: École Impériale de Médicine) was a school of medicine in Ottoman Constantinople. The school has changed locations several times. The well-known building in the Üsküdar district of Istanbul is a collaboration by Levantine architect Alexandre Vallaury and Raimondo D'Aronco in the Ottoman Revivalist architectural style, incorporating Ottoman and Seljuk design features. It was built between 1893 and 1903. It currently houses the University of Health Sciences campus at Haydarpaşa.

Originally commissioned by Sultan Mahmud II in 1827 to be operated by the military, it was the empire's first medical school,^[2] modeled on those in the West.^[3] Ottoman Muslims did not often study abroad, and most of the faculty's founding staff were religious minorities from non-Muslim Ottoman families. Their foreign language skills and study at European institutions laid the foundation for the establishment of medicine in the Ottoman Empire.^{[citation needed]}