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51-518: Jankent is located on the left bank of the lower Syr Darya , about 25 kilometres (16 mi) southwest from the town of Kazaly (formerly Kazalinsk), in the Kazaly district of Kyzylorda province in Kazakhstan. Today, it is a scheduled monument marked by the ruins of walls which are up to 7 metres (23 ft) high in places and enclose an area of 16 hectares (40 acres) in the dried-out river delta of

102-407: A rab' , a low-income rental apartment complex, which was situated on the upper floors while the merchant accommodations occupied the lower floors. While making the best use of limited space in a crowded city, this provided the building with two sources of revenue which were managed through the waqf system. Alphabetically, not taking article (al-, el-, etc.) into consideration. "The whole of

153-691: A caravanserai building (like in the külliye of the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul) or drew revenues from one in the area (such as the Wikala al-Ghuri in Cairo, which was built to contribute revenues for the nearby complex of Sultan al-Ghuri ). Most typically a caravanserai was a building with a square or rectangular walled exterior, with a single portal wide enough to permit large or heavily laden beasts such as camels to enter. The courtyard

204-458: A clipping of Middle Persian : 𐭡𐭩𐭲𐭠 , romanized:  xānag , lit.   'house'. It could refer to an urban caravanserai built within a town or a city or to any caravanserai in general, including those built in the countryside and along desert routes. In Turkish the word is rendered as han . The same word was used in Bosnian and Bulgarian, having arrived through

255-536: A common feature not only along the Silk Road, but also along the Achaemenid Empire 's Royal Road , a 2,500-kilometre-long (1,600 mi) ancient highway that stretched from Sardis to Susa according to Herodotus : "Now the true account of the road in question is the following: Royal stations exist along its whole length, and excellent caravanserais; and throughout, it traverses an inhabited tract, and

306-466: A depth of more than 8 metres (26 ft) from the current top of the citadel wall. Radiocarbon dates from this trench produced a range of (cal.) AD 786/923 to 961/1095. The extension of the trench at the top of the citadel wall since 2012 has uncovered semi-circular towers on the wall. In 2019, a 9th/10th century pottery vessel from the outside of the northern base of the citadel wall was found to contain three eggs with Arabic writing on them. Fieldwork in

357-627: A fountain or a sabil/sebil . They kept fodder for animals and had shops for travellers where they could acquire new supplies. Some shops bought goods from the travelling merchants. Many caravanserais were equipped with small mosques, such as the elevated examples in the Seljuk and Ottoman caravanserais in Turkey. In Cairo, starting in the Burji Mamluk period, wikala s (urban caravanserais) were frequently several stories tall and often included

408-890: A number of okelle s delineating the Place des Consuls (the main square of Alexandria's European quarter), which served as consular mansions, a European-style hotel, and a stock exchange, among other functions. Kāṭrā ( Bengali : কাটরা ) is the name given to the caravanserais built by the Mughal Empire in Bengal . The Bara Katra (Bengali: বড় কাটরা , romanized:  Baṛa Kāṭrā , lit.   'Great Caravanserai') and Chhota Katra (Bengali: ছোট কাটরা , romanized:  Chōṭa kāṭrā , lit.   'Small Caravanserai') refers to two magnificent Mughal katras in Dhaka , Bangladesh . Caravanserais were

459-485: A street, and a possible metal workshop, all dated to the 9th/10th centuries on the basis of coin finds. Later excavations in this area since 2011 have been carried out to a greater depth, revealing several building phases of earlier date. At the junction of the citadel wall and northern town wall (Trench P2), occupation layers with complex stratification were found by the Russian-Kazakh-German team down to

510-432: Is funduq which has a director living there with a company of horse and foot. After sunset or nightfall the director comes to the funduq with his secretary and writes down the names of all the travellers who will pass the night there, seals it and locks the door of the funduq . In the morning he and his secretary come and call everybody by name and write down a record. He sends someone with the travellers to conduct them to

561-657: Is a river in Central Asia . The name, which is Persian , literally means Syr Sea or Syr River . It originates in the Tian Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan and eastern Uzbekistan and flows for 2,256.25 kilometres (1,401.97 mi) west and north-west through Uzbekistan, Sughd province of Tajikistan, and southern Kazakhstan to the northern remnants of the Aral Sea . It is the northern and eastern of

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612-472: Is a term found frequently in historic Cairo for an urban caravanserai which housed merchants and their goods and served as a center for trade, storage, transactions and other commercial activity. The word wikala means roughly "agency" in Arabic , in this case a commercial agency, which may also have been a reference to the customs offices that could be located here to deal with imported goods. The term khan

663-498: Is also rendered as caravansary , caravansaray , caravanseray , caravansara , and caravansarai . In scholarly sources, it is often used as an umbrella term for multiple related types of commercial buildings similar to inns or hostels, whereas the actual instances of such buildings had a variety of names depending on the region and the local language. However, the term was typically preferred for rural inns built along roads outside of city walls. The word khan ( خان ) derives from

714-466: Is briefly mentioned, but not documented, in a summary report by the Almaty and Pavlodar teams. Since 2011, a team from Moscow State University has applied several non-destructive survey techniques to large parts of the site. The results show that the citadel interior was probably located on a natural elevation. There was a regular lay-out and dense arrangement of buildings across much of the western half of

765-744: Is free from danger." Other significant urban caravanserais were built along the Grand Trunk Road in the Indian subcontinent , especially in the region of Mughal Delhi and Bengal Subah . Throughout most of the Islamic period (seventh century and after), caravanserais were a common type of structure both in the rural countryside and in dense urban centers across the Middle East , North Africa , and Ottoman Europe. A number of 12th to 13th-century caravanserais or han s were built throughout

816-716: Is frequently used for historic inns around the Maghreb . The word comes from Koinē Greek : πανδοκεῖον , romanized:  welcoming all; an inn ; it appears as Hebrew : פונדק , romanized :  pundaq , fundaco in Venice , fondaco in Genoa and alhóndiga or fonda in Spanish. In the cities of this region such buildings were also frequently used as housing for artisan workshops. The Arabic word wikala ( وكالة ), sometimes spelled wakala or wekala ,

867-703: The Anabasis Alexandri . On the shores of the Syr Darya, Alexander placed a garrison in the City of Cyrus ( Cyropolis in Greek), which he then renamed after himself Alexandria Eschate —"Alexandria the furthest"—in 329 BC. For most of its history since at least the Muslim conquest of Central Asia in the 7th to 8th centuries AD, the name of this city (in present-day Tajikistan ) has been Khujand . In

918-472: The Islamic world , and were often called other names such as khan , wikala , or funduq . Caravanserai ( Persian : کاروانسرای , romanized :  kārvānsarāy ), is the Persian compound word variant combining kārvān " caravan " with -sarāy "palace", "building with enclosed courts". Here "caravan" means a group of traders, pilgrims or other travellers, engaged in long-distance travel. The word

969-784: The Kipchaks and Kimeks of the Kimek Kaganate , destroyed the Oghuz polity in the 12th century. Around that time, Selçuk Bey and his Kınık tribe headed to Persia to found their own Muslim state which would eventually become the Great Seljuq Empire . Syr Darya The Syr Darya / ˌ s ɪər ˈ d ɑːr j ə / SEER - DAR -yə , historically known as the Jaxartes ( / dʒ æ k ˈ s ɑːr t iː z / jak- SAR -teez , Ancient Greek : Ἰαξάρτης ),

1020-750: The Ottoman conquest . In addition to Turkish and Persian, the term was widely used in Arabic as well, and examples of such buildings are found throughout the Middle East from as early as the Umayyad Caliphate . The term han is also used in Romanian being adopted from Ottoman Turkish. The term funduq ( Arabic : فندق ; sometimes spelled foundouk or fondouk from the French transliteration)

1071-775: The Seljuk Empire , many examples of which have survived across Turkey today (e.g. the large Sultan Han in Aksaray Province ) as well as in Iran (e.g. the Ribat of Sharaf in Khorasan province ). Urban versions of caravanserais also became important centers of economic activity in cities across these different regions of the Muslim world, often concentrated near the main bazaar areas, with many examples still standing in

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1122-823: The Sogdian dialect that had emerged from the Saka language group. When the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great reached the Jaxartes in 329 BC, after travelling through Bactria and Sogdia without encountering any opposition, they met with the first instances of native resistance to their presence. In October 329 BC the Macedonians fought the Battle of Jaxartes against the Saka , killing some 1,200 combatants including

1173-802: The Tian Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan and eastern Uzbekistan —the Naryn River and the Kara Darya which come together in the Uzbek part of the Fergana Valley —and flows for some 2,212 kilometres (1,374 mi) west and north-west through Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan to the remains of the Aral Sea. The Syr Darya drains an area of over 800,000 square kilometres (310,000 sq mi), but no more than 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 sq mi) actually contribute significant flow to

1224-650: The University of Tübingen (Germany); and the Margulan Institute of Archaeology, Kazakh Ministry of Education and Science (MON), later its commercial branch ‘Archaeological Expertise’ (Almaty, Kazakhstan), with Pavlodar State University (Kazakhstan). In the centre of the town, essential discoveries in Trench P1 included a built-up area (living quarters) with a lay-out in Central Asian style along

1275-635: The 17th and early 18th century, but the Khanate of Kokand rebuilt many in the 19th century, primarily along the Upper and Middle Syr Darya. Massive expansion of irrigation canals in Middle and Lower Syr Darya during the Soviet period to water cotton and rice fields caused ecological damage to the area. The amount of water taken from the river was such that in some periods of the year, no water at all reached

1326-764: The 1991 fall of the Soviet Union , this system disintegrated and the Central Asian nations have failed to reinstate it. Inadequate infrastructure, poor water-management, and outdated irrigation methods all exacerbate the issue. In 2012, the Syrdarya–Turkestan State Regional Natural Park was opened in the Kazakhstan, in hopes of protecting the river plain ecosystems, archaeological sites, and historical-cultural monuments, as well as plants and animal species, some of which are rare or endangered. The river rises in two headstreams in

1377-624: The Aral Sea. The Amu Darya in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan faced a similar situation. The uranium concentration of the stream water is increased in Tajikistan with values of 43 μg/L and 12 μg/L; the WHO guideline value for drinking water of 30 μg/L is partly exceeded. The main input of uranium occurs upstream in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Caravanserai A caravanserai (or caravansary ; / k ær ə ˈ v æ n s ə ˌ r aɪ / )

1428-661: The Great . The Greek name hearkens back to the Old Persian name Yakhsha Arta ("True Pearl"), perhaps a reference to the color of its glacially-fed water. More evidence for the Persian etymology comes from the river's Turkic name up to the time of the Arab conquest, the Yinçü , or "Pearl river", from Middle Chinese 眞珠 * t͡ɕiɪn-t͡ɕɨo . Tang Chinese also recorded this name as Yaosha River 藥殺水 ( MC : * jɨɐk-ʃˠɛt ) and later Ye River 葉河 (MC: * jiɛp ). The current local name of

1479-420: The Muslim world, caravanserais also provided revenues that were used to fund charitable or religious functions or buildings. These revenues and functions were managed through a waqf , a protected agreement which gave certain buildings and revenues the status of mortmain endowments guaranteed under Islamic law . Many major religious complexes in the Ottoman and Mamluk empires, for example, either included

1530-457: The Syr-Darya. Visible elements of the lay-out include: a broadly rectangular wall circuit orientated east-west, given a T-shaped appearance by an eastern ‘cross-bar’; a regular lay-out in the western half of the interior; gates in the eastern and western walls; a separately enclosed ‘citadel’ in the north-western corner; a semicircular annexe attached to the northern wall; and a low mound outside

1581-595: The earliest settlement at this site was founded in the 7th century by a displaced population of the Dzhetyasar culture further upriver. This coincided with the beginnings of trading activities along the early medieval branch of the Northern Silk Road running through this region. The enclosed town of Jankent was then built in the 9th or 10th century, some time after the arrival of the Turkic Oghuz on

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1632-474: The east gate suggesting an external structure. Arab geographers of the 10th century ( Al-Masudi , Al-Idrisi ) mention a town of the Oghuz called Jengi-Kent, two sources ( Ibn Rustah and Ibn Hawqal ) even call it the seat of the Oghuz Yabgu (khan of second rank). As early as the 1920s, the orientalist V.V. Bartold identified Jankent as the site of the historical Jengi-Kent. The town is also identified as

1683-551: The finds collected during this visit, the director of the expedition, S.P. Tolstov, dated Jankent to the 1st – 11th centuries AD. Two other members of the expedition, N.I. Igonin and B.V. Andrianov, drew up an improved plan of Jankent in 1963. Systematic excavations have been carried out at Jankent since 2005 by various teams, mainly the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences (IEA RAN, Moscow) with Korkyt Ata State University of Kyzylorda (Kazakhstan) and

1734-408: The historic areas of Damascus , Aleppo , Cairo , Istanbul , Fes , etc. Ibn Battuta , a 14th-century Muslim traveler, described the function of a caravenserai in the region of China: China is the safest and best country for the traveller. A man travels for nine months alone with great wealth and has nothing to fear. What is responsible for this is that in every post station in their country

1785-526: The home town of the Kazakh cultural hero, Korkyt Ata, the reputed inventor of the traditional two-stringed lute ( kobyz ). Jankent was first mentioned by Russian army topographers in the early 19th century, and visited in 1867 by the orientalist P. Lerkh. In 1946, a team of the Chorasmian Expedition surveyed the site and photographed it from the air. On the basis of the lay-out of the site and

1836-404: The inside of the northern wall is not an 'estate' (as originally thought), but a massive clay platform; and the substantial structure outside the east gate, hypothesized to be the remains of a caravanserai , are a natural island in a (now dry) river bed dating to before the beginnings of settlement at Dzhankent. On the basis of their findings since 2011, the Russian-Kazakh-German team suggest that

1887-456: The interior of the citadel (Trench P3) by the Almaty and Pavlodar teams has reportedly uncovered only two layers of 9th/10th century date, the lower one of which produced building remains and a street. Lack of detailed publication precludes an independent verification of these claims. A trench in the kink of the southern town wall (Trench P5) proved that the T-shaped lay-out of the wall circuit

1938-427: The interior, in contrast to larger building complexes ('estates') in a loose arrangement in the eastern half. The annexe attached to the northern town wall proved to be completely empty. In 2019, a Moscow geomorphology-pedology team carried out mechanical coring on a grid across the site. Preliminary results include deep stratification of cultural layers several metres down found in most cores; the large regular feature on

1989-454: The leader of the nomads. Alexander was forced to retire south to deal with a revolt in Sogdia . Alexander was wounded in the fighting that ensued and the native tribes took to attacking the Macedonian garrisons stationed in their towns. As the revolt against Alexander intensified it spread through Sogdia, plunging it into two years of warfare, the intensity of which surpassed any other conflict of

2040-782: The mid-19th century, during the Russian conquest of Turkestan , the Russian Empire introduced steam navigation to the Syr Darya, initially from Fort Raim but with an important river port at Kazalinsk ( Kazaly ) from 1847 to 1882, when service ceased. During the Soviet era, a resource-sharing system was instituted in which Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan shared water originating from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers with Kazakhstan , Turkmenistan , and Uzbekistan in summer. In return, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan received Kazakh, Turkmen, and Uzbek coal, gas, and electricity in winter. After

2091-406: The next post station and he brings back a certificate from the director of the funduq confirming that they have all arrived. If he does not do this he is answerable for them. This is the procedure in every post station in their country from Sin al-Sin to Khan Baliq. In them is everything the traveller needs by way of provisions, especially hens and geese. Sheep are rare among them. In many parts of

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2142-453: The polity, being located on the intersection of the Northern Silk Road with the north-south caravan route from the Volga region to Khorezm . The town was abandoned some time between the 12th and 14th century AD for unknown reasons, perhaps because of a shift of the river channels in the Syr-Darya delta, a change in trading patterns, or because of political developments. Other Turkic peoples,

2193-707: The river flows from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan is, at 300 m (980 ft) above sea level, the lowest elevation in Tajikistan. The second part of the name ( darya , دریا ) means "lake" or "sea" in Persian and "river" in the Central Asian Persian . The current name dates only from the 18th century. The earliest recorded name was Jaxartes or Iaxartes ( Ἰαξάρτης ) in Ancient Greek , consist of two morpheme Iaxa and artes , found in several sources, including those relating to Alexander

2244-434: The river, Syr ( Sïr ), does not appear before the 16th century. In the 17th century, Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan, historian and ruler of Khiva , called the Aral Sea the "Sea of Sïr," or Sïr Tengizi . The important evidence is the etymology of the name of the Syr-Darya River mentioned by the Ancient authors – '''Yaksart''', established by V. A. Livshits (2003: 10). It means ‘'''flowing’, ‘streaming’.''' The word belongs to

2295-631: The river: indeed, two of the largest rivers in its basin, the Talas and the Chu , dry up before reaching it. Its annual flow is a very modest 37 cubic kilometres (30,000,000  acre⋅ft ) per year—half that of its sister river, the Amu Darya . Along its course, the Syr Darya irrigates the most productive agricultural regions in all of Central Asia , together with the towns of Kokand , Khujand , Kyzylorda and Turkestan . Various local governments throughout history have built and maintained an extensive system of canals . These canals are of central importance in this arid region. Many fell into disuse in

2346-427: The steppes north of the Syr-darya. The town population may have been mixed as the material culture found at the site derives from three different cultural components: Oghuz nomads, sedentary Dzhetyasar culture, and Khorezmian civilization. In the 10th and 11th centuries, the town was the capital of the Oguz Yabgu State , and most likely it also functioned as a trading and craft centre for the largely nomadic population of

2397-415: The two main rivers in the endorheic basin of the Aral Sea, the other being the Amu Darya (Jayhun, also known by its classical name the Oxus ). In the Soviet era, extensive irrigation projects were constructed around both rivers, diverting their water into farmland and causing, during the post-Soviet era, the virtual disappearance of the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth-largest lake. The point at which

2448-426: Was a roadside inn where travelers ( caravaners ) could rest and recover from the day's journey. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe , most notably the Silk Road . Often located along rural roads in the countryside, urban versions of caravanserais were also historically common in cities throughout

2499-450: Was almost always open to the sky, and the inside walls of the enclosure were outfitted with a number of identical animal stalls , bays, niches or chambers to accommodate merchants and their servants, animals, and merchandise. Caravanserais provided water for human and animal consumption, washing and ritual purification such as wudu and ghusl . Sometimes they had elaborate public baths ( hammams ), or other attached amenities such as

2550-421: Was also frequently used for this type of building in Egypt. The term okelle or okalle , the Italianized rendering of the Arabic word wikala , is used for a type of large urban buildings in 19th century Egypt, specifically in Alexandria . Here, the older Egyptian wikala was reinterpreted in an Italianate style by the Italian architect Francesco Mancini . Directed by Muhammad Ali , he designed and built

2601-406: Was part of the original design, similar to earlier enclosures further south in the neighbouring civilization of Khorezm ( Chorasmia , Khwarazm ). Settlement layers with 7th/8th century pottery were found here under the base of the town wall, confirmed by radiocarbon dates for this trench ranging from (cal.) AD 674/799 to 906/1057. An earlier trench (P4) in the corresponding kink in the northern wall

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