But the orthodox Moslems, as represented by the softas and mollahs, do not regard with sympathy the peculiar ceremonial practices of the various orders of dervishes, especially their use of incense, music, and lighted candles in public worship. To the strict followers of the Koran the characteristic forms of worship of the Mevlevis and Rufais, more commonly known as the Dancing and Howling Dervishes, are as distasteful as are the ritualistic services of certain modern Anglicans to the conservative members of the Church of England. As to the esoteric doctrines of the dervishes, especially those based on the Mesnevi, they are declared by the doctors of Islam to be quite irreconcilable with both the Koran and the Hadith—the accepted traditions of Mohammedanism. It must be said that the bizarre performances of the Dancing and Howling Dervishes—performances which are resorted to as a means of detaching the minds of the devotees from all things earthly and attaining a state of spiritual ecstasy—are to the casual spectator but little different in kind from certain revivals of our southern negroes. The solemn dervishes, however, exhibit far more dignity and reverence in their devotions than do the excitable and noisy Africans in their camp-meetings and revivalistic gatherings.
Surrounded by a barren and desolate country, Konia, when seen from afar, looks like an oasis in the desert. It is situated on an elevated plateau well-watered by mountain streams and blessed with a salubrious climate. It was these attractive features that led the Seljukian Turks to choose it for their capital. Its luxuriant gardens and orchards have long been famous and add much to the city’s picturesqueness—especially when viewed from a distance. For when one enters the old Seljukian capital there is little to attract attention except a few mosques. Of the old Greek city practically nothing remains aside from the fragments of friezes, cornices, bas-reliefs, and ancient inscriptions which are found in the walls which surround the erstwhile Seljukian capital. Here, as in so many other places in Anatolia, the Turks, when requiring material for their mosques and palaces, converted the imposing temples of the Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines into quarries for stone, and lime. As in Nicæa, a great part of the space within the walls of Konia is covered with crumbling ruins overgrown with weeds and bushes. The poet must have had such a scene in his mind’s eye when he penned the lines:
There a temple in ruin stands
Fashioned by long-forgotten hands;
Two or three columns and many a stone,
Marble and granite with grass overgrown
Out upon time! It will leave no more
Of the things to come than the things before.
Modern Konia, a good part of which lies outside of the walls of the Seljuk capital of the thirteenth century, is composed of one-story buildings, constructed chiefly of wood and sun-dried bricks. But amid all the squalor and decay that distinguishes this historic city there are several mosques and medresses—colleges—which will well repay careful inspection.
Among the buildings deserving particular attention is the splendid tekke of the Dancing Dervishes, in which is the tomb of Hazret Mevlana, the founder of this peculiar order. It is popularly known as the “Blue Mosque” from the exquisite sapphire and turquoise blue tiles which until recently covered the cupola that rises above the great turbeh of the founder. There is nothing in Brusa, Stamboul, or Cairo that can surpass its rich and delicate traceries and arabesques, its profusion of jeweled lamps, its wealth, precious tapestries, wondrous faïence, its magic glories of color from the looms and kilns of Persia and India. But over and above all this wealth of ornamentation there is a religious atmosphere that does not exist in the ordinary mosque. For the dervishes, unlike the orthodox Moslems, make a special appeal to the emotions of their followers, and hence their widespread influence and popularity throughout the Mohammedan world.