From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

The sunshine for a while, and downward go

Like lauwine loosened from the mountain’s belt.

Byron “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto IV, 12.

Aside from the interest which attaches to it as the north-western terminus of the Bagdad Railway, Konia, the ancient Iconium, like so many other places in Anatolia, is extremely rich in legendary and historic lore. According to a local myth it was the first spot to emerge from the waters of the Deluge. It is mentioned in the legend of Perseus and the Gorgons. A local legend has it that the name was derived from the Greek word eikon—figure or image—referring to the mud figures, which, when breathed upon by the wind, were converted into living men and women. This is evidently a variant of the old myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha. It was doubtless this pride in their great antiquity and a belief that Phrygian was the primitive language of our race that led the inhabitants of Iconium to claim a Phrygian origin. That Phrygian was really the oldest language they had no doubt. For, it was averred, the Egyptian King, Psametik, had conclusively proved this by showing that “infants brought up out of hearing of human speech spoke the Phrygian language.”

The Ten Thousand Greeks, in the army of Cyrus, halted here on their famous expedition to southern Mesopotamia. Cicero reviewed his troops here when he was proconsul of Cilicia. It was one of the important missionary centers of the early evangelizing activity of St. Paul. It was to this city that, accompanied by Barnabas, he directed his steps after he had been expelled by the Jews from Antioch.

In Roman times Iconium stood at the intersection of several important highways and was designated by Pliny urbs celeberrima—a most celebrated city. According to a venerable tradition, Iconium had for its first bishop Sosipatros, one of the seventy-two disciples, who was succeeded in the episcopal chair by Terentius, likewise one of this chosen body of disciples. Equally noteworthy is the fact that Iconium was the birthplace of St. Thecla, who is said to have been converted to Christianity by the Apostle St. Paul. She is the heroine of the Acta Pauli et Theclæ. From the earliest ages of the Church she was greatly venerated in Asia Minor, where she was known as the “Apostle and Proto-martyr among Women.” In the Greek Church her feast is celebrated on the twenty-fourth of September under the title of “Proto-martyr among Women and the Equal of the Apostles.”

And here, according to a venerable tradition on which oriental geographers set much store, is the tomb of “Plato the Divine,” who, under the name of Eflat, is revered by the local population as a thaumaturgus. The origin of this singular tradition in this part of Anatolia—so distant from the real burying place of the immortal philosopher—is one of the curiosities of Ottoman folklore.[178]

During two centuries—from 1099 to 1307—Iconium was the capital of the Seljuk Sultans of Rum[179] and is still regarded as one of the holy places of Islam. Many of its sultans were patrons of art and literature, and, during the zenith of its splendor, this Seljukian metropolis could boast of nearly as many colleges and students as Bagdad—the far-famed capital of the Abbasside Caliphate.

Its present chiefest title to fame is the tomb of the noted Jelal-ed-din-Rumi, usually known as Mevlana. He was famed for knowledge and wisdom and was the founder of the Dancing Dervishes and the author of the “Mesnevi,” a celebrated poem in Persian verse, in which is instilled the Sufi system of pantheism. His successors, as heads of the Dancing Dervishes, have their residence in Iconium and theirs is the right and the privilege to gird each Ottoman Sultan, on his accession to the throne, with the historic sword of Osman. This imposing function, which is performed in the Mosque of Eyub in Stamboul, has been likened to the coronation by the Pope of the Holy Roman Emperor.

By those who know them best the better class of Dancing, or, more properly, the Whirling Dervishes, are described as being a very tolerant and large-minded people. Thus it is said that “in the dangerous period in the winter of 1895–1896, when religious and national feeling ran high in Turkey, it was mainly owing to the Mevlevis that the softas of Konia were prevented from attacking the Christian population of the town.”[180]