Description
The Sarais in Mughal India study alms at enquiring into the structure & working of the institution of safes in Mughal period. Some of the aspects on which this is focused are geographical distribution of raiser factors promoting this institution, the organisational set up of saraia. categories of people using sarais and facilities provided in them. In addition to above the architectural, features, namely the planning and lay-out of the affairs and the utilisation of space in it have also been studied. I have presented this study here in two parts; the first Part comprises of an analysis of the working of the institution of raiser. while in the second Part the planning and lay-out of eight surviving structures of Sarais belonging to different periods ranging from the second half of I6th century to the first half of 18th century has been discussed. At the end of short summary of the conclusions i s given which relates to both parts of this study. The description of structures in part is based on the information collected by a team of the members of the Department of History A.M.U. Aligarh, including myself in course of a survey of medieval monuments undertaken during may and September 1977. The report of this survey is nearing completion and i s expected to be published in one of the forth coming issues of Wedieval India-A maeallanv.