Alara Han

About Alara Han

Alara Han is a Seljuk caravanserai on the Antalya to Alanya route, standing beside the Alara Çayı within the bounds of Çakallar in Okurcalar. According to the six-line inscription above its entrance on the north-east facade, it was built for the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I in 1231 and 1232. The Ministry of Culture notes that its unusual plan suggests the building was recorded as a ribat, built to lodge the army of the sultan on his journeys along the Alanya, Antalya and Konya routes. The han has a rectangular plan, with triangular buttresses rising along the north-west and south-west facades and crenellations running right around the roofline. Visitors enter through a low arched doorway between two rectangular towers. Above it, the building inscription sits in a round-arched frame resting on two lion-head stone consoles; among the titles of Keykubad it names him Sultan of Rum, Sham, the Armenians and the Franks. The entrance opens onto a small square courtyard with a star-vaulted fountain iwan, whose carved shell-niche fountain was damaged by treasure hunters, and a small barrel-vaulted mescit. Beyond the courtyard a long central corridor, once barrel-vaulted and now covered by a steel and polycarbonate roof, is lined with facing rooms and iwans for travellers. A double gallery wraps around it on three sides; the inner galleries are thought to have been used for resting and unloading caravan loads, and the outer ones as stables. Lion-head consoles on the gallery piers held the lamps that lit the building, and mason marks and red-painted zigzag patterns on the plaster can still be found in the walls. Alara Castle (Alara Kalesi) stands on a steep rock on the east bank of the Alara River a few hundred metres north of the han. Built under the Byzantine Empire, it became the western outpost of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia in the 11th century and was handed over to Alaeddin Keykubad I in 1231. Its interior is reached by a stairway of some 180 steps tunnelled into the rock, and the ruins of a palace, garrison quarters, a mosque and a bath survive in the citadel.