THE CARAVANSERAI Met, Animals Rested, and Stables to House Caravanserais Were Located All Along the Silk Road, a Trade Route Small Bazaars Were Set up Livestock

The Courtyard Providing for Animals WHERE WORLDS AND IDEAS CONNECT: In many caravanserais, the Most caravanserais courtyard was the hub had space set aside of activity. Here people on the first floor for THE CARAVANSERAI met, animals rested, and stables to house Caravanserais were located all along the Silk Road, a trade route small bazaars were set up livestock. Large where merchants could open spaces in the that spanned from Turkey to China. These caravanserais served trade their goods. The courtyard allowed two main functions: to provide travelers with a safe place to rest, scene was filled with an horses and camels rest and to house a marketplace where merchants could sell and trade amazing array of sights, and water. There were sounds, and scents. The also storerooms where their goods. Buildings were generally situated within one day’s courtyard often housed hay and feed were travel of each other. Caravanserais were often built by either a a fountain or large well to kept. provide water. local government or a private citizen, and had a caretaker who oversaw day-to-day activities.

Rooms Security On the second level, Many of the small rooms were caravanserais had available for travelers fortified walls and to spend the night. If outposts that might they were lucky, their house soldiers or rooms had a small guards to protect window for light and the compound from Storage air. There might be a bandits who roamed Located at various small place to build a the roads. Some Limited Entrances points on the fire for heat. vital communication Visitors found there ground floor were a centers; caravanserais was only one way in and number of storage in northern India one way out in many spaces for grain, supplied messenger caravanserais. A large foodstuffs, hay, and horses that traveled wooden gate marked even merchandise. to larger cities with the entrance. This gate important news. needed to be wide and Samarkand tall enough to allow the Dunhuang Jiayaguan Beijing heavily laden horses and camels to get through. Constantinople Kashgar Antioch Tehran Lanzhou Xi’an Tyr Herat

Alexandria Bagdad

The Marketplace The focal point of any caravanserai was the The Travelers marketplace. Its location It was rare that a merchant could vary from site to site. or caravan would travel Sometimes it was located in a Mecca the entire trade route. Locations of documented corner where merchants could Instead, caravans would caravanserai ruins today set up their wares on tables or journey a specific segment Silk Road on the ground. Some locations of the route where they had a separate area attached would stop and rest at the to the caravanserai where stalls caravanserais to trade and/ or tables were used. or replenish supplies.