Historic Persian caravanserais: Climatic effects and syntactic configuration

Ancient trading routes such as Silk Road necessitate places for short term accommodation, rest and security for caravans including travellers, traders, merchandise and pack animals. These places, which are strategically located in different regions along the trading routes throughout Asia, are called caravanserais. Caravanserais are basically composed of three different functional sections; among these sections, the common gathering area that is in the form of a courtyard is usually open and located centrally. As the location and shape of this courtyard forms the architectural typology, the other sections are the spaces reserved for guests' accommodation and service areas, which are both surrounding the common courtyard area. This paper deals with caravanserais built in different regions of Persia (ancient Iran) during the significant period between 17^t and 19 centuries. Within this period, during the first half of the 17^t century most of caravanserais, bridges, bazaars and roads were built and restored in order to upgrade the Silk Road to improve the commercial prosperity of the Empire. However, since Persian Empire had a vast amount of land expanded from Caspian Sea to Persian Gulf, it was obvious that caravanserais had to be built according to the constraints of four different climatic zones. Therefore, this paper focuses on the syntactic configuration of the above mentioned spaces and the effects of climatic aspects. The hypothesis of this paper suggests that climate affects the design of public, private and service based spaces and these differences lead to the genotypes of Persian caravanserais. Functional zones of the caravanserais strictly separate the accommodation from the service areas such as storage, cooking, bathrooms, administration and security. However, common spaces may serve both for service functions, social gatherings, trading and even shelter for pack animals. The configuration, position, size and enclosure of these spaces differ according to climate. Therefore, syntactical analyses applied to five caravanserais which are located in four different climate zones in Persia from Safavid to Qajar period, present data of depth levels, integration, circularity and compactness within these spaces. This study is not only a syntactic discussion regarding varieties of caravanserais in different climatic regions in relation to their configuration, but it also explores syntactic components such as design geometry and perceptive qualities. In this research, by focusing on relations between the three main components of caravanserai space and the climatic parameters we determined that technical development in forms of structural composition and the effects of climate change morphology and spatial quality.