caravanserai

noun

1. (historical)A roadside inn, usually having a central courtyard where caravans (see sense 3) can rest, providing accommodation for travellers along trade routes in Asia and North Africa.

   “But not in sumptuous Caravansary / The adventurer idles there, / Nor satiates wonder with her pomp and wealth; […]”

   “The "wakálah," as the caravanserai or khan is called in Egypt, combines the offices of hotel, lodging house, and store. It is at Cairo, as at Constantinople, a massive pile of buildings surrounding a quadrangular "hosh" or court-yard.”

   “Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai / Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day, / How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp / Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.”

   “Eight days later, after leaving the desert and riding through neatly tended villages and snow-capped mountain scenery, he arrived there, hiring himself a room in a caravanserai near the bazaar.”

2. (broadly)A place resembling a caravanserai (sense 1) as being a place for resting temporarily, or a meeting place (especially one that is busy, or where people of different cultures encounter each other).

   “Conſider, I beſeech you, vvhat proviſion and accommodation, the Author of our being has prepared for us, that vve might not go on our vvay ſorrovving—hovv many caravanſera's of reſt—vvhat povvers and faculties he has given us for taking it—vvhat apt objects he has placed in our vvay to entertain us; […]”

   “They stopped at the most memorable places, and at last arrived at Rome, where a princess vacated her palace for their accommodation and so many louis-d'or a-month. Rome, once the mistress, is now the caravanseray of the world.”

   “Casting my fortunes at Mrs. Thompson's, I soon became initiated into the etiquette and usage of that polite caravansary; and I now write of that era of two-pronged forks, and when "saveall" was the choicest dish, and the observances at the table not altogether Chesterfieldian.”

   “When we got to Cromley, it was too early to go to the spike, and we walked several miles farther, to a plantation beside a meadow, where one could sit down. It was a regular caravanserai of tramps—one could tell it by the worn grass and the sodden newspaper and rusty cans that they had left behind.”

   “Only in Paris, a cosmopolitan caravansary in itself, did Americans and other foreigners fall nicely into the picture and spoil nothing in the charm of the place.”

3. (broadly)Synonym of caravan (“a convoy of travellers, their cargo and vehicles, and pack animals”).

   “There they go, our brothers who have been educated at public schools and universities, mounting those steps, passing in and out of those doors,[…]. It is a solemn sight always—a procession, like a caravanserai crossing a desert.”

4. (archaic, broadly)A hostelry, an inn; also (humorous), an (upscale) hotel.

   “By the bye it is as well to mention, for the benefit of the inexperienced, that there are no Inns in Ireland; all are hotels, from the lowest road cabin to the splendid caravanserai, with all its appurtenances of luxury and ease.”

   “Six anxious inquiries of marble-fronted-hotel clerks about rates; and twice when she angrily made it plain she couldn't afford it, and quit the caravanserai where Andy and Mahala and Mrs Boyle were to loll in kitchenette-bedizened splendor and hunted up a smaller hotel that looked like a private house with obesity.”