On the flight to Konya I met a woman from Helsinki. She was in the Textiles trade on a buying trip. That's all I remember. It's extraordinary really but I can't remember a single thing about landing or arriving in Konya. Maybe this was because I didn't arrive until well after dark. I checked in to the Otel Petek which I note is still there. I don't have my Lonely Planet book anymore (I'll explain why later) so I've had to check the internet to see where Otel Petek was exactly. As previously mentioned my camera was loaded with slide film so I didn't really want to waste shots on nondescript things such as hotels or the rooms I stayed in. I wish that digital cameras had been invented because I would have taken snaps of nearly everything and today I would be able to look at them and remember things. As it is I can remember nothing whatsoever about Otel Petek on Çikrikçilar Içi and only know that it cost 20,000TL per night because I wrote that down. I'm not sure anymore what the exchange rate was in 1990 - was it 6,000TL to £1 or more? Anyway, hotel rooms were getting cheaper. It wasn't far from Allaaddin Teppesi.
Konya is a conservative place. It's not as if Turkey is the kind of place that has bars or night spots. There might be such places on the Aegean or Mediterranean coasts but certainly not in Konya. The woman from Helsinki had mentioned that she was staying in one of the larger hotels and given that there was nothing else that could be done I went over to that place and found the bar. When I got there she was there but she was clearly with business associates and I didn't want to intrude. I had a beer and left shortly afterwards. I had the impression and still have a nagging feeling that there was more to this woman than met the eye. I couldn't believe she was just buying textiles (she had mentioned cotton) for some Finnish fashion house. I thought that maybe she was some kind of diplomat. What was she and the men she was with discussing? I'll never know. They were talking furtively. I went back to my hotel and doubtless tuned in to the World Service before bed.
So what's Konya all about? Sufi mysticism, that's what. The Mevlânâ, that's what. What's that? Who's that? more like. Mevlânâ Celâleddin Rumi is who. He was/is one of the greatest philosphers and poets of the Islamic world. He was born in the city of Balkh in present day Afghanistan. According to a site I chanced upon today "It is an astonishing fact that, 800 years after he was born, Mevlana Rumi is the most popular poet in the United States of America." I can't vouch for this. It goes on " The name Mevlana Celâleddin Rumi stands for an ecstatic flight into infinite love.
The story of love must be heard from love itself
For like a mirror it is both voiceless and expressive.
Mevlana Rumi (1207-1273).
This philosopher and mystic of Islam addressed all people, regardless of their faith or ethnic origin. Mevlana's original Sufi philosophy and importance surpass national and ethnic borders. He advocated unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love. When Mevlana Rumi died, for the first and only time known in world history, Moslems, Jews and Christians quarreled about the honour to carry him to his grave."
It seems that when he was a child the Mongols had reached the outskirts of his birth city and his family joined a caravan for Nishapur. Immediately after their leaving, Balkh was destroyed by the troops of Jenghiz Khan. His travels took him next to Baghdad then Kufa then Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem. Damascus and Aleppo. His father, Veled, is then reputed to have said "God has inspired us to go to Anatolia. That country draws our caravan to it." Anatolia was then under the Seljuk rule of Alaeddin Kekubad I. He sent envoys to persuade Mevlana's father to come to Konya. He did and stayed two years until his death. His father's followers then attached themselves to Mevlana. However Veled's successor at the Madrasa sent Mevlana to Damascus and Aleppo. When he returned he took over his father's post as madrasa teacher.
He was a person of extraordinary intellectual maturity but grew dissatisfied with the extent of his knowledge and understanding and began to move towards a mystic approach to philosophy. It seems Mevlana was accosted one day (apparently exactly 25 November 1244) by a crazed and elderly itinerant dervish called Semseddin of Tabriz who had become a mystic at an early age, studied with a number of sheyhs (spiritual teachers) and had sought out Sufis searching for a guide to his spiritual ecstasy. The two of them became inseparable and spent all their time engaged in long discussions and ecstatic exchanges. Mevlana disappeared from the mosque and madrasa and while his followers had at first tolerated his new-found mystical relationship with Semseddin, in time they grew jealous and began to threaten him. In February 1246 Semseddin of Tabriz disappeared apparently without trace.
Mevlana was beside himself, left in a spiritual vacuum which he expressed in lyric poems full of longing for Semseddin. Nothing was heard of him but then a dervish returning from a visit to Damascus brought news of him and after four letters of invitation (the last delivered personally by Sultan Veled, Mevlana's son) Semseddin was persuaded to return.
All the above, the wonderful names etc, the places and such like really conjures up a truly oriental world. It's all summarised from a book I bought in Konya called "Mevlana and the Mevlana Museum by Mehmet Onder. It is edited by Zumrut Aksit who missed the fact that the book says having been away from Konya "for several years" following his disappearance in February 1246, after his return to Konya, after having been reunited with Mevlana, married to his daughter and ensconced in a corner of the madrasa, those opposed to Semseddin renewed their schemes to remove him. Mevlana's daughter died within a short time of Semseddin's return and their marriage. Those against Semseddin blamed him and plots began to take shape and the book says "on the night of 5 December, 1247, he was waylaid with great cunning, it is thought, and never heard of again". The Editor should have corrected the text, it was clearly several months that Semseddin had gone missing the first time.
Mevlana was inconsolable and gave himself up to mystic ritual and devotion. He wrote more longing poems for Semseddin. The poems might lose something in translation but they are really quite excessive in their tone. A person might be forgiven for wondering whether the relationship was more than spiritual. For instance: "Oh, the essence of a thousand rose gardens, you masked yourself from the jasmine. Oh my soul's soul's essence, how did you hide yourself from me". It goes on at length in this vein but I think it is explained by Mevlana's belief that one can find the love of God under the guidance of a spiritual mentor who himself had attained the mystical truth.
After Semseddin of Tabriz, Mevlana became influenced by Sheyh Selahaddin Zerkubi - the goldsmith. Selahaddin's daughter was married to Sultan Veled to seal the bond between them with marital ties and Selahaddin was Mevlana's closest companion for 10 years. Selahaddin died in 1258. Mevlana's next inspirational companion was Celebi Husameddin. He inspired Mevlana to write his great 6 volume work the "Mesnevi". Semseheddin had been responsible for creating the sufic personality of Mevlana, for nurturing his mystic self beyond the level of ultimate in divine devotion. Selahaddin matured his esoteric leanings, while Husameddin was responsible for encouraging the great philosopher-poet to write the"Mesnevi" a work of great importance for mystic literature.
Mevlana died on Sunday, 17 December 1273 while the sun was setting. As mentioned above his funeral was not an exclusively Islamic affair. People from every religion were there, Muslim and non-Muslim. When a group of Muslims said to the non-Muslims: "What business do you have with this funeral? Mevlana was the leader of our religion. " They replied: "We realized the truth of Moses, Jesus and other prophets from Mevlana's plain words and saw in him the actions and personalities of the prophets as we have read in our own Holy Books. Just as how you Muslims recognized him. Just as you loved him, we loved him too, and became slaves for him far more than you did." A Greek monk added: "Mevlana was like bread. No body can keep himself away from needing bread. Have you ever seen a hungry man who refused to eat bread?"
Konya became a centre for pilgrimage. His tomb, which is also known as the Green Dome (Qubba-i Hadra), was built by the efforts of Sultan Veled and Ala al-Din Qaysar, and by the material support of the Seljuk Emir, and his Georgian wife Gurju Khatun. Its architect was Badr al-Din from Tabriz and was completed a year after Mevlana's death.
Mevlana referred to "love" as the greatest guide on the mystical path, spiritual devotion being, in his words, the true guide to spiritual enlightenment. "the way of the prophet is the way of love. Be not without love and you be not without life. To love is to be alive." You can't argue with this philosophy. It makes me wonder how we have arrived in the situation we seem to find ourselves in today. Clearly the radical teachers and preachers who we are told are preaching hate draw their influences from somewhere else.
In the book I bought Mehmed Onder says: "Mevlana believed that by renouncing false temporal pleasures, greed and ambition, instinctive desires, evil, falsehood and hypocrasy, the adept could attain an understanding of true beauty and truth, could find true peace of mind. The attainment of such peace implied for him the nurturing of devotion to God as the finest of devotions." The first sentence chimes with the teaching of Buddha (see much later in this (eventually enormous) blog.
After his death the Mevlevi Order was founded. Mevlana was not the founder or leader of any order himself. The order is famous for the whirling dervishes. A postcard I sent home depicting this is shown above. There's a great deal of symbolism which is far too complicated to describe. The dancing is the Sema ritual and the purpose is to induce a controlled ecstasy in the individual through which he may divest himself of his physical self and attain the ultimate truth. Whirling induces a a form of spiritual inebriation in the performer.
I didn't see any whirling dervishes. From what I can remember the whirling season was a few months off in December. I did wander around the Tomb. It was a spooky experience. The place is exceptionally ornate and beautiful and there's the sound of the Ney-flute playing all the while in the background. I bought a couple of cassettes of ney-flute music and when it becomes possible to embed audio in these blogs I'll do it. For the moment I have embedded a YouTube video. Press the play button and have a listen while you read. The Tomb of the Mevlana is something that should not be missed if you are in Anatolia. Mind you it's not really a tourist site. It really is a holy place and although I'm sure I was not dressed disrespectfully I did feel slightly out of place. Other people had clearly come to pray.
Armed with the Lonely Planet I also visited the Ceramics Museum which I can recommend too. The Seljuk portal to the museum was spectacular enough in its own right. My picture and a postcard are below.
I have to say that I liked Konya. At last I felt that I was in the East. Istanbul is big city and Ephesus was too touristic to really get a truly oriental experience.
After a day in religiously visiting the places the Lonely Planet guide recommended I decided to take the next day to shop for a more substantial souvenir. Walking up and down the Mevlana Caddesi I had seen a great carpet hanging in the window of a shop. It caught my eye because it wasn't a traditional design. The carpet had a Caravansaray design.
I didn't really want to get into the hassle of rug buying. Having been to Turkey twice before I knew the drill and I had heard all the sales patter. I just liked this particular carpet. I went in to Young Partners and negotiated a price for the object of my desire. It involved quite a bit of tea drinking and looking at other rugs and carpets that I really wasn't interested in buying. There are doubtless lots of people who have been through the process who consider it to be an ordeal. Not me. I really enjoy sitting in a room full of beautiful rugs and carpets. Now I don't know whether this was a sales ploy but if it was it was a pretty good one. The showroom had a good number of rugs rolled up and packed for shipping and the address labels showed they were destined for Liberty's in London. The salesman told me that Liberty's buyer had been in a few days before and when they had time all these parcels were to be taken to the post office for shipping to London.
Anyway, I bought my carpet. I was invited to stay in the shop and drink more tea while my carpet was rushed off to the Museum to have a lead seal affixed to guarantee its authenticity. While I was there another tourist came in and was looking at the rugs. I was invited to join in the sales talk. I was able to confidently assure the potential buyer that the dyes used for the colours were all vegetable based. The blues were indigo, greens pistachio, browns tobacco etc. I drew their attention to the parcels ready for Liberty's and of course I had myself just bought a carpet for myself. What better way to feel confident that the product was genuine. Another sale was made! As a result I was invited to eat with the shop owner in a restaurant around the corner. I had Konya Kebap (what else?) and it was on the shop owner.
The next day, Saturday 22 September, there was food festival and after a day sightseeing, more free food! I was on my way to Cappadocia the next day but before I went I was treated to a free breakfast by my new best mates in Young Partners. In 3 days in Konya I only had to buy one meal for myself. I've still got my carpet and it's on my living room floor now. 17 years on and its still fine. Things have been spilled on it and I have had it cleaned and can say that the colours did not run. I'll add a picture to close this post shortly.
