The caravanserai stands in the village of Kurtkulağı, twelve kilometres south-east of Ceyhan, on the caravan road that ran from Adana down to Aleppo. It is an Ottoman stage inn — the Kurtkulağı stage — and is also known simply as the Menzil Han, the stage inn.
Who built it and when is not settled. Its inscription, now kept in the Adana Museum, is read as recording construction in 1659 by Hüseyin Paşa, with Mehmed Ağa as architect. The Ministry's culture portal, on the other hand, places the building in the early seventeenth century under Hüseyin Paşa and gives 1659 as the year Mehmet Ağa repaired it.
What is not in dispute is the strength of the thing. The walls are thick and solid, of the strength of a castle, built entirely of stone and reinforced on three sides by heavy buttresses that run up to the eaves.
The plan is a large rectangle measuring 45.75 by 23.60 metres, leaving aside the projections on the east front, where the building departs from classical caravanserai architecture. Inside, two rows of piers run across the width, joined to one another by pointed arches; these carry the barrel vaults that run the length of the building and make up the whole of the roof.
The caravanserai was restored in 2006.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Adana as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 9.6 °C in January to 28.8 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, October and November; rainfall is heaviest in December (125 mm) and lightest in August (9 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
