31st March: Arriving in Konya, the home of Mevlana and the Whirling Dervishes

View of the Gulf of Antalya from our window

The free shuttle bus from just outside the old town dropped us at the otogar in plenty of time for the 11 a.m. bus to Konya. The Metro bus was equipped with impressively fast wifi, which enabled me to work on and post a blog entry while Clem slept. We both stopped what we had been doing to gaze out the window at the magnificent scenery as we passed through the Taurus mountains. Grey rock and green pines poked through a thick layer of snow, as the bus wound its way (at a respectful pace, thankfully) between the peaks. A distressingly annihilated car by the side of the road testified to the dangers of the mountain road.

Crossing the Taurus mountains

Pines and rocks peeking through the snow

After just over three hours we reached the plateau on the other side of the mountain range, where we stopped at a small town with a snow-covered horizon. Clem and I enjoyed the bitingly cold but deliciously fresh air (one of Turkey's few drawbacks is that everything stinks of smoke) as we munched on our spartan packed lunch of bread and cheese. Clem topped up with some sunflower seeds, I with a Twix.

We arrived at the otogar on the outskirts of Konya at around 5 p.m., bought our tickets to Cappadocia for the following day, and followed directions to the minibus heading to the centre of town. We had read that Konya was a particularly conservative city, but the first thing we saw was a young couple hopping on in front of us, the girl clutching a red rose and the guy with his arm around her shoulder. The minibus dropped us by Kayali park, and we successfully followed the diagram I had drawn in a notebook (thanks, google maps) to find our hotel. We had not known what to expect from Otel Ulusan, but it was a very pleasant surprise: comfortable and exceptionally clean, with a friendly welcome to boot.

Konya was the home of Mevlana, also known as Rumi, the 13th century Persian sufi and poet who is supposedly the most read poet in the USA. He was even honoured by UNESCO with a Year of Rumi in 2007. He is particularly relevant to the modern world as the archetypal tolerant Muslim, preaching that God is content for different peoples to worship him in different ways. When he died in 1273, his followers built for him a beautiful mausoleum with a green-tiled "dome" (it's actually a cone on top of a cylinder, as you can see below) that is the rival of any Turkish building outside of Istanbul. Apparently Rumi himself rejected the building of a mausoleum for his father, also a sufi, on the grounds that no tomb could be so beautiful as the sky, so his followers may have been suffering from selective memory. Anyway, this is what we had come to see.

Mevlana Mausoleum

The order founded by Mevlana is now most famous as the home of the whirling dervishes and their "sema" dance of ecstatic union with God. The hotel receptionist told us that every Saturday evening the sema was performed in the Mevlana cultural centre; we were unaware of this when we planned to arrive in Konya on a Saturday and leave on Sunday. Taking advantage of our good fortune, we went in search of the cultural centre. We had a quick dinner (in the Hilton, because it was next to the cultural centre, but it was surprisingly reasonable) and arrived at the centre in plenty of time for the 8 p.m. start.

Mevlana cultural centre

It turned out that our information was slightly out-of-date: the sema did not start until 9, and was preceded by a talk (in English) about Rumi. There were no signs and no one spoke English so it took a while to work all of this out. The talk was very topical: the differences between Rumi's approach to non-Muslims and that of the Qur'an. The speaker, a professor at the Mevlana University, told us one of Rumi's stories that summarises his approach. In short: the prophet Moses heard a shepherd worshipping God by offering to wash his hair and his feet; Moses told him that God was not like his uncle; the shepherd left in distress and confusion; and God told Moses he should not part God from one of his people, as it was for each man to worship God in the way that he best understood. The speaker then read out several verses of the Qur'an that suggest a relatively tolerant approach to other religions (at least in respect of Judaism and Christianity), as well as verses that have been interpreted as calling for religious struggle (noting that he disagreed with this reading). All of this was fairly new to us, so the talk was interesting despite the rather dry delivery.

Just before 9 p.m. the dozen or so tourists listening to the talk were called through to the Semahane, a large chamber with rows of seating surrounding a wooden-floored circle. There were almost 1,000 spectators, we estimated, about half of the capacity, and the vast majority were Turkish. The ceremony started with a half-hour speech. In Turkish. I can't pretend we weren't bored. Just as our yawns were widening, however, the lights dimmed and the "whirling dervishes" made their way slowly into the central circle, each bowing in turn.

Inside the Semahane

Bowing one by one

The lights turned a deep red, much to our camera's distress, as the orchestra started to play. After the senior dervishes toured the circle "greeting" each other, the dancing started. The devotees removed their black coats to reveal white robes beneath, then approached the Celebi (the head of the order) in turn and were released unto their whirling. We might have found their tall hats amusing when they entered, but now we were impressed by the serenity and grace with which they moved. This was repeated several times, with a different coloured light each time. After the fourth iteration we decided it was time to go, so headed out into the crisply chilled evening for the short walk back to the hotel.