Konya, wow! How come I had never been here before? It’s not far from Antalya, and for a number of years Ferda and I had looked at the schedule for the annual Şeb-i Arus festival to try and coordinate a trip. However, I feel like people dis Konya a lot which is one of my excuses for having not been before. I have to thank Tommy for inspiring us to go this year. When he was visiting us in Antalya, he talked about heading to Konya next to see the whirling dervishes. In the end Tommy didn’t go, but he put the idea in my head. Thanks, Tommy. Konya’s a great place to visit.
Şeb-i Arus Festival, also known as Mevlana Festival or Rumi Festival or Whirling Dervishes Festival — take your pick!, not surprisingly attracts lots of Iranians. Born to Persian parents, Rumi wrote most of his poetry in Persian. In Shiraz I remember being impressed with how the Iranians could recite Hafez’s poetry from memory. I bet they do well with Rumi also. However, it’s not just Iranians — we talked with Japanese (from Fukuoka where Ferda and I had been less than two months earlier!), Malaysians, a German woman, and an Afghan man all in Konya for the festival. I had no idea to expect such an international crowd.
Ferda and I squeezed this trip in between a couple other commitments and only spent two days in Konya. That’s not enough. You need at least three days, more if you want to attend workshops, classes, or discussions about Sufiism, Rumi, and related topics. Another mistake we made was not going to the new Panorama Müzesi first. There we found the best overview of Rumi’s life and also interesting information about Selçuk symbols that we had seen in other museums and mosques in the city. The internet reviews of this “wax museum” aren’t great, but there really is some good information here.
For example, at the Taş ve Ahşap Eserleri Müzesi (Museum of Wood and Stone Carving) which is housed in the handsome İnce Minare Medrese:
which happens to have some nice tile work:
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