Mevlana Museum

The Mevlâna Museum, located in Konya, Turkey, is the mausoleum of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Persian Sufi mystic also known as Mevlâna or Rumi. It was also the dervish lodge (tekke) of the Mevlevi order, better known as the whirling dervishes.

Sultan 'Ala' al-Din Kayqubad, the Seljuk sultan who had invited Mevlâna to Konya, offered his rose garden as a fitting place to bury Baha' ud-Din Walad (also written as Bahaeddin Veled), the father of Mevlâna, when he died on 12 January 1231. When Mevlâna died on 17 December 1273 he was buried next to his father.

Mevlâna's successor Hüsamettin Çelebi decided to build a mausoleum (Kubbe-i-Hadra) over his grave of his master. The Seljuk construction, under architect Behrettin Tebrizli, was finished in 1274. Gürcü Hatun, the wife of the Seljuk Emir Suleyman Pervane, and Emir Alameddin Kayser funded the construction. The cylindrical drum of the dome originally rested on four pillars. The conical dome is covered with turquoise faience.

However several sections were added until 1854. Selimoğlu Abdülvahit decorated the interior and performed the woodcarving of the catafalques.

Konya

Konya (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈkon.ja]; Greek: Ικόνιον Ikónion, Latin: Iconium) is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. It is the seventh most populous city in Turkey. As of 2014, Konya has a population of 1,174,536. Konya is an economically and industrially developed city and the capital of Konya Province.

Konya was historically the capital of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum and the Karamanids.

History

Etymology

Konya, was known in classical antiquity and during the medieval period as Ἰκόνιον (Ikónion) in Greek (with regular Medieval Greek apheresis Kónio(n)) and as Iconium in Latin. This name is commonly explained as a derivation from εἰκών (icon), as an ancient Greek legend ascribed its name to the "eikon" (image), or the "gorgon's (Medusa's) head", with which Perseus vanquished the native population before founding the city. In some historic English texts, the city's name appears as Konia or Koniah.

Ancient history

Excavations have shown that the region was inhabited during the Late Copper Age, around 3000 BC. The city came under the influence of the Hittites around 1500 BC. These were overtaken by the Sea Peoples around 1200 BC.

Rumi

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد رومی‎‎), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى), Mawlānā/Mevlânâ (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master"), and more popularly simply as Rumi (1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States.

Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, in his verse. His Mathnawī, composed in Konya, is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia. His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali

Museum

A museum (/mjuˈziːəm/; myoo-zee-um) is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public. The goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public.

Some of the most attended museums include the Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the British Museum in London, the National Gallery in London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums and children's museums.

Turkey

Coordinates: 39°N 35°E / 39°N 35°E / 39; 35

Turkey (ⁱ/ˈtɜːrki/; Turkish: Türkiye [ˈtyɾcije]), officially the Republic of Turkey (Turkish:  Türkiye Cumhuriyeti ), is a parliamentary republic in Eurasia, largely located in Western Asia, with the smaller portion of Eastern Thrace in Southeast Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Syria and Iraq to the south; Iran, Armenia, and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the east; Georgia to the northeast; Bulgaria to the northwest; and Greece to the west. The Black Sea is to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia. Turkey's location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia makes it a country of significant geostrategic importance.

Turkey has been inhabited since the paleolithic age, including various ancient Anatolian civilizations, Aeolian, Dorian and Ionian Greeks, Thracians, Armenians, and Assyrians. After Alexander the Great's conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process which continued under the Roman Empire and its transition into the Byzantine Empire. The Seljuk Turks began migrating into the area in the 11th century, starting the process of Turkification, which was greatly accelerated by the Seljuk victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, upon which it disintegrated into several small Turkish beyliks.