The road inns (Khāns) in Bilād al-Shām
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The road inns (Khāns) in Bilād al-Shām
(BAR international series, 2130)
Archaeopress, 2010
- : pbk
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-177) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The term khan can refer to urban and rural hostelries, relay stations of the Mamluk royal mail, fortresses, farmhouses, warehouses, and others. This multiplicity of meanings naturally complicates a study that aims at analysing only one of these functions-in this case the rural hostelries. The first comprehensive study on Near Eastern inns (Die Karawanserai im vorderen Orient) was published by K. Muller in 1920. Since then relatively few works have been dedicated to the subject of en route architecture in the Islamic lands and the road inns in particular. This study focuses mainly on an integrated survey of historical and archaeological evidence, presented in three sections, dealing respectively with issues of terminology, patronage, and architecture. These discussions relate to the gazetteer of surveyed buildings, presented in chapter 5. The danger lies in the inclusion of invalid samples in the research environment. Chapter 2 aims to avoid taking misinterpreted structures into consideration by establishing clear parameters before commencing a proper classification of the structures. Chapter 3 deals with the period and region under discussion. Against the background of patronage, this chapter treats the probable reasons, as well as patterns, for a relative boom in the construction of such monuments. Chapter 4 summarises the main architectural issues of the khans of Syria, both in the course of the archaeological survey undertaken between 1998 and 2002. The Gazetteer in chapter 5 approaches the same issues, i.e., architecture, history and patronage, but treats each site separately. It combines field, library and archival work, and aims at a comprehensive corpus of Mamluk khans in the southwest of Greater Syria. This work is intended to be part of a long-term study of the inns of Greater Syria, encompassing sites dating from early Islamic to Ottoman times and dealing, among others, with their architectural and functional transformations.
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