Caravanserai

A caravanserai, kervansaray in Turkish, is a lodging building on caravan routes where merchants, travellers, animals and cargo could spend the night in safety. Its thick outer walls, few openings and single monumental entrance give it a closed, defensible mass. Alongside these roadside buildings, towns had similar inns, known as hans.

Plan and parts

A number of Anatolian Seljuk caravanserais have two main parts: an open courtyard section suited to summer and a covered hall used in winter. Around the courtyard run arcades, rooms and stables. The covered hall is usually divided into aisles roofed by vaults on piers, with a higher and wider central aisle, sometimes with a dome or light opening where the axes cross.

• Portal: the most richly worked part of the mass.
• Courtyard and arcades: space for loading, rest and animals.
• Prayer room: in some examples a kiosk mosque raised on arches in the courtyard.
• Covered winter hall: a vaulted hall divided into aisles.
• Bath, kitchen and stores.
• Towers and buttresses: masses supporting the outer walls.

Load path and construction

In the covered hall the vaults push sideways on the piers and outer walls; thick walls and tower or buttress masses on the outside take that thrust. Rubble-filled walls faced with cut stone are common.

Caravanserais in surveys and restoration

Many caravanserais stand in rural areas and were left unused for long periods; collapsed vaults, missing facing stones and root damage are frequent. At this scale, laser scanning saves a great deal of survey time.