The
caravanserais were handed over to private investors for a span of 20 years under contracts for restoration, maintenance and operation, said Hossain Khajehbid-Derakhti who heads the province's ICHTO.
From Spain to China, it created a network of open markets and
caravanserais that fulfilled the necessities of traders organised in caravans (guild of traders).
The
caravanserai is situated on the Silk Road, which used to be the main trade route between Europe and Asia.
"
Caravanserai in the Levant," a selection of Schutyser's black-and-white photographs currently on exhibit at the Art Lounge gallery, documents his four-month-long road trip through Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
For her two novels, "Life is a
Caravanserai with two Doors, through one of which I came, and through one of which I left," and "The Bridge of the Golden Horn," she has received among other awards the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize (1991), the International Book of the Year Prize of the Times Literary Supplement (1994) and the Chamisso Prize (1999).
But in the late nineteenth century it was an important city, a thriving
caravanserai and meeting place for the Arab slave and ivory traders, hungry white explorers and missionaries, the Wasukuma and the Wanyamwezi with their king Fundi Kira.
As an architect he is understandably concerned about the area's old Turkish houses, remnants of its ancient wails, its neglected hans (
caravanserai), its churches and historic texture, but he also warms to Galata's cosmopolitan past when Galata was a meeting point for dozens of different nationalities.
The Abbasi Hotel is an opulent, if careworn, establishment that was an old
caravanserai con verted into a hotel just six decades ago.
As an example, the Symphony Style Hotel in Kuwait is a vibrantly colourful hotel representing the kaleidoscopic vision of Italian fashion designer Rita Missoni, while the Souq Waqif Boutique Hotels in Doha give a contemporary interpretation of Arabian interiors reminiscent of a
caravanserai.
