At the start of the thirteenth century Anatolia was the transit region at the western end of the Silk Road, and the Seljuk state drew much of its revenue from through trade. To secure it, caravanserais were built along the roads at intervals of roughly thirty to forty kilometres — a caravan's daily range. Traces of more than a hundred survive in Anatolia today.

Sultanhanı, near Aksaray, was built in 1229 under Alâeddin Keykubad I and is the largest of the type. The plan has two parts: a wide open courtyard used in summer and a vaulted covered hall used in winter. In the middle of the courtyard a kiosk mosque stands on four piers, with passage beneath it. The portal at the entrance, carved in marble with muqarnas and geometric interlace, is the building's most elaborate element — giving a monumental face to a lodging house shows that it also represented the power of the state.

Its institutional order matters as much as its architecture. Financed through the waqf system, the caravanserais provided lodging, food and care for animals free of charge for three days, without distinction of religion, language or allegiance. There was a physician for sick merchants, a farrier for the animals and a scheme of compensation for lost goods. This is infrastructure built not for profit but to increase the volume of trade — public investment in the modern sense. The Ottomans continued and extended the network; when railways and steamships shifted the routes in the nineteenth century the caravanserais lost their function. Sultanhanı was restored in the twentieth century and stands on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list.