thumb|The [[Izadkhast Caravanserai|Izadkhast caravanserai (early 17th century), Fars province, Iran]]

A caravanserai (or caravansary; ) was an inn that provided lodging for travelers, merchants, and caravans. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe, most notably the Silk Road. In the countryside, they were typically built at intervals equivalent to a day's journey along important roads, where they served as a kind of staging post. Urban versions of caravanserais were historically common in cities, where they could serve as inns, depots, and venues for conducting business.

The buildings were most commonly rectangular structures with one protected entrance. Inside, a central courtyard was surrounded by an array of rooms on one or more levels.

Terms and etymology

thumb|The [[Ganjali Khan Complex|Ganjali Khan Caravanserai (1598), in Kerman, Iran]]

Caravanserai

Caravanserai (), is the Persian compound word variant combining kārvān "caravan" with -sarāy "palace", "building with enclosed courts". Here "caravan" means a group of traders, pilgrims, and travelers, engaged in long-distance travel. The word is also rendered as caravansary, caravansaray, caravanseray, caravansara, and caravansarai.

Khan

thumb|[[Khan As'ad Pasha, a caravanserai built in 1752 in Damascus, Syria]]

The word khan () derives from a clipping of . or to any caravanserai in general, including those built in the countryside and along desert routes. It came into more common usage under the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire.

The word comes from ; or fonda in Spanish. In the cities of this region such buildings were also frequently used as housing for artisan workshops. The word became the common Arabic word for Hotel.

Wikala

thumb|The [[Wikala of Al-Ghuri|Wikala of Sultan al-Ghuri (1504–05), one of the best-preserved examples in Cairo]]

The Arabic word wikala (), sometimes spelled wakala or wekala, is a term used in Egypt for an urban caravanserai which housed merchants and their goods and served as a center for trade, storage, transactions and other commercial activity. The term khan was also frequently used for this type of building in Egypt.

Katra

Kāṭrā () is the name given to the caravanserais built by the Mughal Empire in Bengal. The Bara Katra () and Chhota Katra () refers to two magnificent Mughal katras in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

History

The origin of rural caravanserais are ancient. One early antecedent has been found in the remains of an Urartian site from the 8th or 9th century BCE uncovered in western Iran, near the mountain pass between Urmia and Oshnavieh. The Achaemenid Empire (6th to 4th centuries BCE) built staging posts or relay stations for communications along its major roads. The later Byzantine Empire also maintained staging posts along its major roads.]]

In the Islamic period (seventh century and after), the use of caravanserais intensified. They continued to be built under successor dynasties, although few notable examples have survived from the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods in the Middle East. They grew in number during the rule of Sher Shah Suri (). Under the Mughals, the sultans commissioned the construction of further caravanserais and encouraged their entourage to do the same, mainly from the 16th to late 18th centuries. Their concept and designs were adapted from Iranian examples. Many major religious complexes in the Ottoman and Mamluk empires, for example, either included a caravanserai building (like in the külliye of the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul) or drew revenues from one in the area (such as the Wikala al-Ghuri in Cairo, which was built to contribute revenues for the nearby complex of Sultan al-Ghuri).

Architecture

General

thumb|A sample [[floor plan of a Safavid Empire-era caravanserai in Karaj, Iran]]

Typically, a caravanserai was a building with a square or rectangular floor plan, with a single entrance wide enough to permit large or heavily laden beasts such as camels to enter. It had a central courtyard, almost always open to the sky, which was surrounded by a number of identical animal stalls, bays, and chambers to accommodate merchants and their servants, animals, and merchandise.

Caravanserais provided water for human and animal consumption as well as for washing and ritual purification (wudu and ghusl), provided by a fountain or well in the courtyard and sometimes by attached public baths (hammams).

The later Ottomans continued to build caravanserais but their patronage was focused on urban centres, where they were built alongside other commercial structures such as arastas (market streets) and bedestens (central market halls) in the middle of the city. The caravanserais themselves consist of courtyards surrounded by two or more levels of domed rooms fronted by arcaded galleries.

In Safavid Iran, caravanserais had a standard layout for the most part: a rectangular courtyard surrounded by a gallery of vaulted openings (iwans) and rooms on one or two levels. At the middle of each of side was a larger central iwan, repeating the four-iwan plan common in Iranian architecture. Rural caravanserais often had rounded towers at their corners and an imposing entrance portal. In the later Safavid period (17th century), more complex layouts appeared, such as those with an octagonal floor plan instead of rectangular.

File:20180110 Sultanhani 4496 (40093350601).jpg|Roofed hall attached to the Sultan Han near Aksaray, Turkey (13th century), a feature of some Anatolian Seljuk caravanserais

File:Granada Corral del Carbón 16-03-2011 17-29-46 16-03-2011 17-29-46.JPG|Entrance of the Corral del Carbón, a former urban caravanserai in Granada, Spain (14th century, Nasrid period)

File:Wikala-sabil-kuttab of Qaitbay 03.jpg|Entrance of the Wikala of Sultan Qaytbay in Cairo, Egypt (1477, Mamluk period)

File:Bursa, Turkey (4505709750).jpg|Courtyard of the Koza Han in Bursa, Turkey (1491, Ottoman period) ; the domed building is a small mosque

File:Tash Rabat.JPG|Tash Rabat caravanserai in Kyrgyzstan

File:Aleppo Khan al-Jumruk 9159.jpg|Interior façade of a gate from the courtyard of Khan al-Jumruk in Aleppo, Syria (1574)

File:AminAbad94 (2).jpg|Caravanserai of Aminabad, with an octagonal layout (17th century, Safavid period)

File:Górny Karawanseraj - Szeki.jpg|Shaki Caravanserai in Azerbaijan (19th century)

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See also

  • List of caravanserais
  • Ribat, early Muslim frontier fort, later caravanserai or Sufi retreat
  • Jumeirah Archaeological Site has the foundations of a 10th century example
  • Caravan city
  • Coaching inn

References

Further reading

  • Branning, Katharine. 2018. turkishhan.org, The Seljuk Han in Anatolia. New York, USA.
  • Cytryn-Silverman, Katia. 2010. The Road Inns (Khans) in Bilad al-Sham. BAR (British Archaeological Reports), Oxford.
  • Erdmann, Kurt, Erdmann, Hanna. 1961. Das anatolische Karavansaray des 13. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. Berlin: Mann, 1976,
  • Hillenbrand, Robert. 1994. Islamic Architecture: Form, function and meaning. New York: Columbia University Press. (see Chapter VI for an in depth overview of the caravanserai).
  • Kiani, Mohammad Yusef. 1976. Caravansaries in Khorasan Road. Reprinted from: Traditions Architecturales en Iran, Tehran, No. 2 & 3, 1976.
  • Schutyser, Tom. 2012. Caravanserai: Traces, Places, Dialogue in the Middle East. Milan: 5 Continents Editions,
  • Yavuz, Aysil Tükel. 1997. The Concepts that Shape Anatolian Seljuq Caravansara. In: Gülru Necipoglu (ed). 1997. Muqarnas XIV: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 80–95. [archnet.org/library/pubdownloader/pdf/8967/doc/DPC1304.pdf Available online as a PDF document, 1.98 MB]
  • Shah Abbasi Caravanserai, Tishineh
  • Caravansara Pictures
  • Consideratcaravanserai.net, Texts and photos on research on caravanserais and travel journeys in Middle East and Central Asia.
  • Caravanserais (Kervansaray) in Turkey
  • The Seljuk Han in Anatolia
  • Persian Caravanserai, UNESCO application