The Penn Stater Magazine

Konya, Whirling Dervishes, and the Silk Road

May 18, 2011 at 10:08 am Tina Hay Leave a comment

I really fell in love with the beautiful mosques and other Islamic sights we saw throughout Turkey, and one of the most beautiful of the bunch was the Mevlâna Museum in the city of Konya (pronounced CONE-ya). We visited there after leaving Antalya, on our way up to the trip finale in Cappadocia.

The Mevlâna Museum isn’t a mosque, though it looks like one—and they make you put plastic booties over your shoes before you go in, just like a mosque. It was a “dervish lodge” in the 1200s associated with Celaleddin Rumi, who founded a sect of Islam called the Mevlevi Order. The Mevlevis are better known as the Whirling Dervishes—they whirl and dance as part of their spiritual ceremony—and the lodge was where they lived and trained. It’s very much considered a holy place today.

The museum is incredibly ornate, with tile and gilded calligraphy everywhere. It also includes the tomb of Rumi himself, along with that of his father and others, as well as display cases with old Korans and beautiful, amazingly well-preserved,  prayer rugs that are several centuries old.

Unfortunately no picture-taking is allowed inside the museum. Those of us with cameras kept looking at each other and wincing; it was killing us not to be able to photograph some of the beauty we were seeing.

Photos are OK outside on the museum grounds, and I did take a few photos there, including the one at left, of a painting showing (I think) a dervish student and his mentor.

After leaving Konya, we continued the long drive to the Cappadocia region, stopping at one point at a caravanserai—an overnight inn used by caravans on the Silk Road as far back as the 13th century. One website has the perfect way of explaining a caravanserai: it’s essentially a “truck stop for camels.” The particular one we visited is called Sultan Han and is one of about 100 still standing. Here’s a photo of one of the outdoor areas at Sultan Han.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Alumni Association. Tags: caravanserai, Konya, Legendary Turkey, Mevlana Museum, Rumi, Sufi, Sultan Han, whirling dervishes.