Evdir Han

The Evdir Han (also Korkuteli Han) is a rare caravan company north of Antalya in the province of the same name in southern Turkey.

Location

The Evdir Han is located in Döşemealtı County, about 20 kilometres northwest of the city centre of the provincial capital at the village of Düzlerçamı, one kilometre northeast of the present-day E 87 highway from Antalya to Denizli. It is the first Han on the road that connected Antalya with Konya, the capital of the Sultanate of Rum Seljuks. It is followed by the Kırkg Han, about 15 kilometres north of the Kırkg Han.

The history

The German-American expert on Islamic art Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl traveled to Anatolia in the 1920s and collected material on Seldschuk architecture. He reports on a construction inscription he found in 1931 at the school of the nearby village Yeşilbayirköy. In it Sultan Izz Ad-Din Kai Kaus I. is referred to as the builder of the caravansery. Accordingly, the construction is dated to his reign from 1211 to 1220. Kai Kaus's predecessor Kai Chosrau I. had conquered Antalya in 1207 for the Seldzhuk, on which a series of Karavan stations was established on the connecting route to Konya.

Construction

The Han has a considerable floor area of 45.3 × 78.8 meters, making it the third largest of the Seljuk Han in Turkey, after the Sultanhanı at Aksaray and the eponymous Han at Kayseri. This suggests that it is probably one of the six so-called Sultan Han whose construction was directly commissioned by the ruler.

The entrance is oriented southwestward with a view to the Solymos. The outer walls are made of cleanly worked stones, some of which have stone carpentry markings. The building is of the type of the open courtyard, there is no closed, covered area. Around the inner courtyard there are also grouped open cells. On the west and southeast side there are 14 cells each, of which the eighth, slightly larger, has the shape of an Ivan. The cells have a roof facing the courtyard, pointed to the east, with a spiky toned vault. The north-east side corresponding eleven rooms, as well as the southwest wall, where the middle space forms the entrance itself. On the opposite side of the entrance to the entrance to the building, two circular rooms were built.

The portal is a remarkable decorative program of braided stripes, triangles and stars. On the inside are two niches, two muqarnas slabs and a band with interwoven and broken carvings. The gate itself is crowned with a powerful muqarnas slab with palms. The impressive ornamentation of the gate also indicates a function as Sultan-Han.

The building is in a very ruinous state. The vaulted sections of the northwest and southeast sides are still preserved, while the north-east side is only slightly preserved. Restoration work was carried out in the 2010s.

Environment

In the village of Düzlerçami, some remains of an ancient settlement have been found, which have not yet been identified or dated with precision.