Guide
The Silahtar Mustafa Pasha caravanserai stands in the Alacakapi quarter of Battalgazi, the old Malatya, and was built in 1637 by Mustafa Pasha of Bosnia, sword-bearer to Murad IV. It occupies a rectangle of 68 by 76 metres, laid out as an open courtyard with a covered hall, and its architect was Master Ebubekir, son of Master Mehmet, the chief architect of Aleppo. Standing on the roads east, it says something about how much trade passed through the city; it served a military purpose as well as a commercial one, and it is built on notably solid foundations, with shops ranged in a line as part of the complex.
There is a room on each side of the arched entrance gate. Above that gate, reached by a stair within the thickness of the wall, is a space thought to have been a prayer room. Six vaulted rooms are ranged along the courtyard side of the hall and on each side of the entrance, while the covered part proper is roofed with three rows of vaults resting on plain piers. The building has two inscriptions, one over the door of the inner han and one over the courtyard gate. In the restoration carried out between 2007 and 2010 the shops that had grown around the front of the building were removed, and the prayer room, the arcades, the pool area and the walls were restored. The Ministry's page records the caravanserai as open to visitors every day between 09.00 and 17.00.
