The Seljuk Han in Anatolia has tons of information about and pictures of the caravanserai, inns for caravans, built by the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in what is now Turkey. The Seljuk caravanserai, called hans, were a vital resource for trade from the middle ages to recent times. The website, by
Katherine Branning, explains
what a han is,
their origins,
their function in trade,
what life there was like and much more. The site also features 39 individual hans, such as the
Kadin Han, now a furniture store,
Dibi Delik Han, which is undergoing restoration,
Zazadin Han, which has been restored already, and the spectacular
Sultan Han Kayseri. For an academic survey of Seljuk hans, here's Ayşıl Tükel Yavuz'
The concepts that shape Anatolian Seljuq caravanserais [pdf, automatic download].
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 8, 2010 -
13 comments
Gallipoli is one of the most famous battles of World War I. Fought in on a Turkish peninsula in 1915 it was, like most Great War battles, a huge waste of life and largely fruitless. Jul Snelder's site has a wealth of information,
the causes, history and aftermath of Gallipoli,
the slang of the ANZAC forces,
placenames in both English and Turkish,
interesting little factoids,
how Allied troops used subterfuge to hide their evacuation,
the Turkish perspective,
pictures of the battlesite today juxtaposed with old photographs,
a mini-travel guide to Gallipoli and much more. One of the most famous units at Gallipoli was the Australian
12th Light Horse Regiment. To learn more about this type of unit, responsible for the "
last successful great cavalry charge" two years after Gallipoli, I direct you to the excellent website of the
Australian Light Horse Association, where you can learn anything you might reasonably want to know about the subject.
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 15, 2008 -
82 comments
Labour, which had started the disasters of Cyprus by denying it any decolonisation after 1945, had now completed them, abandoning it to trucidation [by doing nothing when Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974]. London was quite prepared to yield Cyprus to Greece in 1915, in exchange for Greek entry into the war on its side. Had it done so, all subsequent suffering might have been avoided. It is enough to compare the fate of Rhodes, still closer to Turkey and with a comparable Turkish minority, which in 1945 peacefully reverted to Greece, because it was an Italian not a British colony. In the modern history of the Empire, the peculiar malignity of the British record in Cyprus stands apart.
The Divisions of Cyprus, an article in The London Review of Books by historian Perry Anderson, is an excellent history of Cyprus from 1878 to the modern day as well as a polemic against the way that outside powers have treated the island.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 17, 2008 -
17 comments
