A caravanserai (or caravansary; )) was an inn that provided lodging for travelers, merchants, and caravans. They were present throughout much of the Islamic world. Depending on the region and period, they were called by a variety of names including khan, funduq and wikala. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the network of 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 Stage station. 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. In addition to lodgings for people, they often included space to accommodate horses, camels, and other Pack animal, as well as storage rooms for merchandise.Sims, Eleanor. 1978. Trade and Travel: Markets and Caravansary.' In: Michell, George. (ed.). 1978. Architecture of the Islamic World – Its History and Social Meaning. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 101.
From Persian, the word passed into common usage in Arabic () and Turkish (). Examples of such buildings are found throughout the Middle East from as early as the Umayyad Caliphate. The same word was used in Bosnian language, Albanian, Romanian and Bulgarian, having arrived through the Ottoman conquest.
The word comes from ; it appears as , fundaco in Venice, fondaco in Genoa and alhóndiga or fonda in Spanish. In the cities of this region such buildings were also frequently used as housing for artisan workshops.
In the Indian subcontinent, caravanserais are found along the historic trade route known as the Grand Trunk Road. The oldest clear mention of a caravanserai in historical documents is the one commissioned by Muhammad ibn Tughluq, the Delhi Sultanate (), which was built between Delhi and Daulatabad Fort. They grew in number during the rule of Sher Shah Suri (). Under the Mughal Empire, 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.
Urban versions of caravanserais were commonly built in the hearts of major cities. They provided lodging for merchants, in particular for foreign merchants who needed a place to stay when doing business in the city. They also served as depots for their merchandise and as venues for conducting transactions. In addition to accommodation and storage, caravanserais could include other amenities such as a hammam (bathhouse) and a prayer room or mosque.
Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Muslim traveler, described the function of a caravanserai in the region of China:
In many parts of the Muslim world, caravanserais also provided revenues that were used to fund charitable or religious functions or buildings. This was characteristic of urban caravanserais. These revenues and functions were managed through a waqf, a protected agreement which gave certain buildings and revenues the status of mortmain endowments guaranteed under Sharia.Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. 2007. Cairo of the Mamluks: A History of Architecture and its Culture. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Many major religious complexes in the Ottoman Empire 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).
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 (). They kept fodder for animals and had shops for travellers where they could acquire new supplies. Some shops bought goods from the travelling merchants. Many caravanserais were equipped with small mosques, such as the elevated prayer rooms in the center of Seljuk and Ottoman caravanserais in Turkey.
The urban caravanserais of the Levant, from the late Middle Ages onward, were of typical layout but built with local decoration such as ablaq masonry and carved stone details. Their street façades often had alcoves for hosting shops. Some were quite large and formed part of a larger complex of amenities, as in the Khan al-Jumruk in Aleppo. In Cairo, starting in the Burji dynasty period, wikalas were frequently several stories tall and often included a rab', a low-income rental apartment complex, that was situated on the upper floors while the merchant accommodations occupied the lower floors. This made the best use of limited space in a crowded city and provided the building with two sources of revenue that were managed through the waqf system.
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 Bedesten (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 (Iwan) 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. In the Indian subcontinent, caravanserais were drawn from Iranian designs but adapted to local needs. They usually had a symmetrical floor plan with two major gateways. A mosque, often consisting of a three-domed hall, was commonly built into the west side of the building.
In the far west of the Islamic world, comprising present-day Morocco and Spain, urban caravanserais were multi-story buildings with a central courtyard. Though they could have elaborate entrance portals and ornate wooden ceilings in their vestibules, the interior could be relatively austere.
Architecture
General
Variations
See also
Further reading
External links
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Shah Abbasi Caravanserai, Tishineh
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