ancient cities

114 Castells, Manuel
normally include buildings with specific religious
(mosque), education (madrasah), and charitable
functions such as the public kitchen (imaret).
Ibu Batutah, the famous Arab traveler of the
fourteenth century who journeyed from his home in
Morocco to India and China and back, noted caranvanserai
along the route from Baghdad to
Mecca, founded in the eighth century by the wife of
Ha - ru - n al-Rashı - d, the fifth Abbasid caliph. The
Seljik sultan 'Ala - ' al-Dı - n Kayquba - d (1220–1237),
renowned for the rich architectural legacy and
court culture that flourished under his reign, constructed
many caravanserai along roads linking the
Anatolian capital to important trade routes. At the
peak advance of the Ottoman Empire under
Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–1566), a number
of subcapitals emerged, including Bursa in Asia and
Edirne in Europe. Both cities had remarkable vaqufs
with mosques, bazaars, madrasahs, imarets, and
the caravanserai to accommodate traders, pilgrims,
and an increasing number of visitors. The Sokollu
Mehmed Pasha Complex on the main highway
between the two Ottoman capitals of Istanbul and
Edirne included a caravanserai, bathhouse, mosque,
madrasah, and market streets built in 1549 by the
architect Sinan (and extended as a palace with private
apartments for the sultan’s use in 1569).
Whereas some of these caravanserai remain protected
in full architectural grandeur, many in the
Balkans and in the East were destroyed, and memory
of these urban institutions remains only in old
documents, maps, and contemporary records. Many
surviving caravanserai have important architectural
merit, with construction following the Saracenic
style, and elaborate decoration on the gateway
structures. Some historic caravanserai have been
preserved as tourist sites (such as the caravanserai
of Sa‘d al-Saltaneh in Qazvin [Iran] and Khan
al-Umdan in Acre) while others have been converted
into hotels for the contemporary traveler
(including the caravanserai of Shah Abbas in
Sfahan). The Rustem Pasa caravanserai in Edirne,
partially destroyed in an earthquake, was reconstructed
for modern use as a tourist hotel, although
this adaptive reuse was judged unsuccessful due to
limitations in the earlier design. In 2007 the director
of the Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts, and Tourism
department in Kerman Province (Iran) announced
plans to convert the historic Vakil caravanserai,
built by Mohammad Ismaeil Kahn Vakil-ol Molk,
ruler of Kerman in the seventeenth century, to a
five-star hotel featuring rooms decorated to represent
different historical periods in Iranian history.
Modern hotels across the Middle East sometimes
replicate the basic design features of the original, as
have resort hotels in other regions of the world.
See also Bazaar; Islamic City
Further Readings
Milan Prodanovic
Ciolek, T. Matthew. 2006. “Old World Trade Routes
Project (OWTRAD): A Catalogue of Georeferenced
Caravanserais/Khans.” Retrieved April 9, 2009 (http://
www.ciolek.com/OWTRAD/caravanseraiscatalogue-00.html).
Erdmann, Kurt and Hanna Erdmann. 1961. Das
anatolische Karavansary des 13. Jahrhunderts. 3 vols.
Berlin, Germany: Mann.
Hillebrand, Robert. 1994. Islamic Architecture: Form,
Function, and Meaning. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Sims, Eleanor. 1978. “Trade and Travel: Markets and
Caravanserais.” In Architecture of the Islamic World:
Its History and Social Meaning, edited by G. Mitchell.
London: Thames and Hudson.
Ca s t E l l s, Ma n u E l
Manuel Castells, born in 1942, is a distinguished
representative of the late-twentieth-century progressive
European intellectual. Of Catalan origin,
having fled the Franco dictatorship, he was trained
as a professional sociologist in France and taught
for more than a decade at the University of Paris
(Nanterre) between the 1960s and the 1970s, with
more short-term academic appointments in pre-
Pinochet Chile and in Montreal, Quebec. In the
late 1970s, Castells moved to the United States,
where he is still a professor of communication,
technology, and sociology at the University of
Southern California, after having taught city and
regional planning at the University of California
at Berkeley from 1979 to 1993, where he is now
professor emeritus. In recent years he also obtained
a research professorship in his native country at
the Open University of Catalonia.
What is typical of Manuel Castells, as a latetwentieth-century
intellectual whose perspectives