Explore South Central Anatolia
KONYA is a place of pilgrimage for the whole of the Muslim world. At its heart is the medieval Selçuk capital, which tugs at the hearts of all pious Turks and is often spoken of with more pride than the better-known tourist resorts. This was the adopted home of Celaleddin Rumi, better known as the Mevlâna (Our Master), the Sufic mystic who founded the whirling dervish sect, the Mevlevî; his writings helped reshape Islamic thought and modified the popular Islamic culture of Turkey.
In western Turkey, Konya has a reputation as one of the country’s most religious and conservative cities, while simultaneously holding the title as the single greatest consumer of raki in the nation. At first, it can appear underdeveloped, with poorly equipped schools and people more dour and less sophisticated than those nearer the Aegean, but this perceived “backwardness” in fact goes some way to creating what for many visitors is Konya’s charm.
Turkey’s seventh largest city is surrounded by some of Turkey’s most fertile countryside (the region is known locally as “the breadbasket of Turkey”), and its parks add a splash of greenery to the ubiquitous light-coloured stone. However, Konya can seem bleak in winter and sun-bleached in summer, and you’ll find this contrast the rule rather than the exception for Turkish inland towns.
Some history
Konya boasts a history as long and spectacular as that of any Turkish city. The earliest remains discovered date from the seventh millennium BC, and the acropolis was inhabited successively by Hittites, Phrygians, Romans and Greeks. St Paul and St Barnabas both delivered sermons here after they had been expelled from Antioch and, in 235 AD, one of the earliest Church councils was convened in the city – known then, under the Byzantines, as Iconium.
It also took a central role during the era of the western Selçuks, becoming the seat of the Sultanate of Rum. After they had defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Selçuks attempted to set up a court in İznik, just across the Sea of Marmara from İstanbul. They were expelled from there by the combined Byzantine and Crusader armies, but still ruled most of eastern and central Asia Minor until the early fourteenth century.
While the concept of a fixed capital was initially somewhat alien to the Selçuks, Konya became the home of their sultans from the time of Süleyman Ibn Kutulmuz, successor to Alparslan, the victor at Manzikert. Alâeddin Keykubad, the most distinguished of all Selçuk sultans, established a court of artists and scholars in Konya early in the thirteenth century, and his patronage was highly beneficial to the development of the arts and philosophy during the Selçuk dynasty. Many of the buildings constructed at this time are still standing, and examples of their highly distinctive tile-work, woodcarving, carpet making and masonry are on display in Konya’s museums.
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The life and teachings of the Mevlâna
The life and teachings of the Mevlâna
Celaleddin Rumi, later known as the Mevlâna, was born in Balkh, a central Asian city, in 1207. At the age of 20, having received a warning vision, the young man convinced his father to flee Balkh with him for western Asia, which they did just in time to avoid being massacred with the rest of the town by marauding Mongols. They settled in Konya, where the reigning sultan Alâeddin Keykubad received them cordially. The city had a cosmopolitan population, whose beliefs were not lost on the young man and it was here that he emerged as a leading heterodox mystic or Sufi.
During the 1250s he completed a masterpiece of Persian devotional poetry, the Mathnawi. A massive work covering several volumes, it concerns the soul’s separation from God – characterized as the Friend – as a consequence of earthly existence, and the power of a mutual yearning to bring about a reunion, either before or after bodily death. The Mevlâna – as Rumi was by now widely known – himself died on December 17, 1273.
On a practical level, the Mevlâna instructed his disciples to pursue all manifestations of truth and beauty, while avoiding ostentation, and to practise infinite tolerance, love and charity. He condemned slavery, and advocated monogamy and a higher prominence for women in religious and public life. The Mevlâna did not advocate complete monastic seclusion – the Mevlevîs held jobs in normal society and could marry – but believed that the contemplative and mystical practices of the dervish would free them from worldly anxieties. Although his ideas have never been fully accepted as Islamic orthodoxy they’re still one of the most attractive aspects of the religion to Westerners and liberal Muslims alike.
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The dervish festival and dances
The dervish festival and dances
Since Konya is the spiritual and temporal home of the whirling dervishes, the city plays host to the annual dervish festival every December 10–17, during the week prior to the anniversary of the Mevlâna’s death. Unfortunately this is not the best time to witness a dervish rite with sub-zero temperatures, doubled hotel rates and shops full of whirling dervish kitsch. In fact the most authentic place to watch a ceremony is in the restored semahane in İstanbul, the Galata Mevlevîhane. Unlike the dancers in Konya, its members are also practising dervishes who live according to the teachings of the Mevlâna. Alternatively, in July and August, there are official sema performances in the gardens of Konya’s Mevlâna complex.
The whirling ceremony – more properly the sema – for which the Mevlevî dervishes are renowned is a means of freedom from earthly bondage and abandonment to God’s love. The clothes worn by the Mevlevîs during the observance have symbolic significance. The camel-hair hat represents a tombstone, the black cloak is the tomb itself, and the white skirt the funerary shroud. During the ceremony the cloak is cast aside, denoting that the dervishes have escaped from their tombs and from all other earthly ties. The music reproduces that of the spheres, and the turning dervishes represent the heavenly bodies themselves. Every movement and sound made during the ceremony has an additional significance – as an example, the right arms of the dancers are extended up to heaven and the left are pointing to the floor, denoting that grace is received from God and distributed to humanity.
