Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/579



fidence. In desert places the khan is more properly called karwan-serai,—the original of our caravansary. The karwan-serai is usually much larger than the city khan; often, indeed, its dimensions are such that it can give shelter to hundreds of animals, their burdens, caravaneers, and the merchants who accompany their wares while in transit. This distinction between khan and karwan-serai I believe to be theoretically correct, but it does not hold good in Turkey, where the term khan is applied to all hostelries, whether in the country or the city.

The plan of the karwan-serai is virtually the same in all cases, namely, a spacious tetragonal court enclosed by dead, doorless, and windowless walls, in which there is but one opening for ingress and egress in the shape of a lofty portal archway, which on occasion is very pretentious and imposing, as may be seen from the accompanying picture of Sultan Khan. Such a karwan-serai is practically, and was intended to be, a fortress to protect travellers from marauding but wingless night-hawks. It is always of one story, whereas the city khan has two stories.

On entering the portal of such a one-storied karwan-serai we find ourselves within a roofless and, because of the uses for which it was intended, spacious court, round whose four sides runs an arcade forming a series of isolated apartments of considerable size. Each of these apartments is surrounded on three sides by dead walls, but the fourth side, which faces the great court, is open. In these arcade recesses the travellers cook, eat, and sleep by the side of their most valuable wares. Completely hidden from view behind these arcades are spacious stables, intended for the shelter of animals in rainy or cold weather, but when the weather is fine the animals are tied to hitching-rings in the court. Four doorways lead to these stables, one at each corner of the court. The stables