ЕТНОГРАФСКИ СВЕДЕНИЯ ЗА ХАНОВЕТЕ ПРЕЗ ВЪЗРАЖДАНЕТО
ETHNOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ABOUT CARAVANSERAI DURING THE REVIVAL PERIOD

Summary/Abstract: The increase of local crafts production and the import of colonial and manufactury goods in the second half of XIX c. leads to the increase of goods exchange at the annual fairs, weekly markets and bazaars. Many local and foreign merchants from near villages come to sell and buy goods and most of them put up in the caravanserai, built near the marketplace or the fair. The data from the sources about the examined period show that a previous tradition is kept in relation to the place, where the caravanserai are built. The innovations appear only in the fact who is the possessor of the building itself, and they are directly connected with the economical changes on Bulgarian soil in the first half of XVIII c. In the examined period owners are mainly private persons — very often merchants — Bulgarians, Turkish or Valachs, and sometimes the owner may be a craft-quild. The increase of their number is connected with the development of crafts production, the specialization of certain regions in agricultural production and the functioning for these purposes weekly markets and seasonal fairs, the enlargement of exchange relations and of the number of merchants, travelling through Bulgarian lands. The data from the periodicals, issued during the period of National Revival, from memoires and more general studies reveal the situation of caravanserai, the number of the rooms available in them, the mode of life of the visitors, the significance of caravanserai for the development of towns and villages.

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