Re-reading and clarifying the socio-political values of the suburban caravanserai of the Central Plateau of Iran in the Safavid era

In the simplest definition, a caravanserai is a building that accommodates a caravan. Caravanserai is one of the most important inheritages of Iranian architecture, whose emergence in The Land of Iran has begun for many years due to its location on the East-West Commercial Highway and commercial boom, and other factors such as political, economic, military, religious and social have played a role in its development. During the Safavid era, along with the repair and construction of roads and the strengthening of the country's road network, much attention was also paid to the construction of caravan buildings. In a general classification, caravanserais are placed in two groups: suburban and inner city. Suburban caravanserais are one of the important construction elements in the communication ways of the Islamic era. Today, the margins of the roads of this land are filled with such valuable buildings have lost their former role with the emergence of modernism, changes in transportation and trade systems and they are at risk of erosion and destruction due to lack of adequate care. Therefore, recognizing this part of Iranian architecture provides the possibility of linking the present human being with the unrepeatable legacy of the past and re-educating from the precious experiences of the predecessors. In researches on the recognition of caravanserais, more attention has been paid to the physical aspects. For example, Mohammad Yousef Kiani and Wolfram Clais have discussed the climatic-physical typology, shape classification, determining the characteristics of caravanserais and introducing Iranian caravanserais by providing visual documents. Maxim Siro also studied the old roads, the buildings that were formed around them and the climatic-functional typology and introduced each of these buildings by providing documents, documents and a brief description. While the architectural values of caravanserais go back to its roots in the political, cultural and social beliefs of this land. Therefore, the present study aimed to explain socio-political values as an important part of non- Physical values of caravanserais in order to recognize and protect these buildings and it has done by asking the question of what socio-political values can be recall in suburban caravanserai of the central plateau of Iran, especially in the Safavid era?. This research is qualitative-historical in terms of nature. In this article, according to the nature of the research, the integrated research method has been used. This means that in the first stage, which aims to explain the meaning and concept of value in human sciences, the descriptive-analytical research method has been used. Therefore, first, qualitative data about value issues are extracted, inferred and classified using written library document resources in the field of humanities and the opinions of experts in these field. In the next stage, which aims to explain political-social values, with a descriptive-historical method, first to collect information based on library sources and researches of late researchers, as well as visual and written documents left from the past such as travelogues, as well as field observations, then the obtained information is analyzed by inductive reasoning method and the different aspects of the political-social values of the caravanserais are explained and a conclusion is made. Finally, based on these studies, the political values of caravanserais based on the levels of political values of Almond et al., in three levels, were explained, which include: system (system maintenance and adaptability), process (effective participation in political events, compliance and support and justice) and policy making (quantitative and qualitative welfare, individual security) and nationalism and freedom). Also, social values of these buildings, based on Schwartz's theory, have been presented based on five concepts of security, tradition, conformity, altruism and redemption.