Sultanhanı and Obruk Han
Built by the Seljuk Alaeddin Keykubat in 1229, Sultanhanı was Anatolia’s largest caravanserai. The entrance is still magnificent and carries faint echoes of Byzantine architecture. Obruk Han is equally impressive, if considerably less well known.
The Seljuks built nearly 100 caravanserais along the Silk Road, which started in Xian in China, traversed Anatolia and ended in İstanbul. These structures were sited using a rough calculation that camels could cover about 30 to 40 kilometers a day. The Sarıhan on the Avanos-Kayseri road and the Ağzıkarahan on the Aksaray-Nevşehir road are beautiful example of the caravanserais typical of this region.
The huge Sultanhanı is still in extremely good condition. As you enter, there is a market area to the immediate right, and accommodation, and kitchens and bathrooms on the left. The beautiful stable, with its majestic entrance, is reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral. A masjid (Muslim chapel) stands in the middle of the courtyard.
Perhaps the most impressive of all Anatolian caravanserais is the ruined 13th-century Obruk Han on the road from Sultanhanı to Konya; thirty-six kilometers from Sultanhanı, take a rough road on the right and you will enter a world of surprises. The carevanserai was built using materials from an old Byzantine church and the walls are covered with crosses and Greek inscriptions. It has unusual crenellations over its otherwise plain entrance. There is a breath-taking 30-meter-deep crater lake to the rear.
For a brief moment, you feel as if you have stepped into a surrealist painting; then suddenly you hear the call to prayer from the mosque nearby. Obruk Hanı is a symbol of timelessness. As I was leaving, two sisters, Hatice and Zeynep looked straight into my camera. I did what I had to and froze time again by capturing their stare…
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