KONYA
Konya was the capital of the Selcuk Empire between 1071 and 1308. Always an important regional centre, it was visited by St Paul several times around AD 50. The city has become an industrial centre in the last few decades and is now surrounded by bleak concrete suburbs before you get to the Selcuk monuments which lie at its heart.
Every visitor to Konya wants to see the Mevlana Tekkesi, the home of the
whirling dervishes, founded around 1231. At the heart of the complex is
the tomb of Mevlana (“Our Master”) Celaleddin Rumi,
founder of the order. The function of the dervishes was essentially to
convert to Islam the native Christian population of Anatolia and bridge
the gap between them and their Selcuk rulers. Mevlana preached tolerance,
forgiveness and enlightenment, and his poetry, even in a translated version,
has an uncanny knack of tugging at the heartstrings. The dervish convent
was shut down in 1925 on the orders of Ataturk, but the Mevlana Festival
of the Whirling Dervishes is still held every December, although it now
takes place in a local gymnasium. In their white long robes, the dervishes
spin in a kind of ballet, hoping to achieve a mystical union with the deity. |
