Spatial Analysis of Ottoman Inns Built in the 15TH AND 16TH Centuries

During the 15th and 16th centuries, developing of cities and growing of population led to new significant changes on both municipal and commercial frameworks of Anatolian cities. In this process, new streets that have a centralized mosque and a domed market building surrounded by inn and covered market street, also specialize according to commercial activity branches began to appear. Also known as “long bazaar”, which demonstrated a distribution from central to surrounding, commercial activities were made in the shops which were positioned in the wayside of the streets. Inn structures of these streets were found to be taking place in city centers as well as covered market streets, domed market buildings and bazaars. Particularly in these centuries, many commercial districts in some cities such as Edirne, İstanbul, İzmir and Bursa, were rigged with “commercial inn” structures and turned into significant commercial centers. Inn, bazaar, grand bazaar, covered bazaar, arasta bazaar, and shops are commercial structures with different functions. Inns of Anatolian historical cities have reached today as basic structures that form the patterns of commercial districts. In this study, spatial analysis of the 15th and 16th century commercial inns that have a significance on Turkish urbanism and folk culture as well as commercial life are going to be conducted. Selected inns within the context of study were chosen from historical cities of Ottoman period that located on significant trade axes. These inns are going to be investigated in accordance with their layout distributions and evaluated based on plan variations. The common and

Keywords

Ottoman Inns, Commercial Building, Inn, Caravanserai, Historical Commercial Area.