Konya

People have farmed the Konya plain for nine thousand years; Çatalhöyük, south-east of the modern city, was one of the largest settlements of the Neolithic world. The city itself grew on a mound now called Alaeddin Hill, known to the Phrygians and then, as Iconium, a Roman and Byzantine provincial town. Saint Paul preached here on his journeys through Asia Minor, and under Byzantine rule it was a frontier city raided from the east.

Its great age began after the Seljuk victory at Manzikert in 1071. Konya became the capital of the Sultanate of Rum, and from the late 12th century its sultans built the mosque on the hill, madrasas, hospitals, walls and caravanserais, and drew scholars, craftsmen and mystics from across the Islamic world. Among the refugees from the Mongol advance was the family of Jalal al-Din Rumi, who taught here for decades and died in 1273; his followers formed the Mevlevi order, whose lodge beside his tomb became the centre of a network across the Ottoman lands.

Mongol overlordship and then the Karamanid emirate followed the Seljuks, and the Ottomans took the city in the 15th century, when it settled into the role of a provincial capital known for its scholars and its grain. The railway arrived at the end of the 19th century. The republic closed the dervish lodges in 1925, and the Mevlevi complex reopened as a museum in 1927; the ceremony returned in the 1950s as a cultural performance. Irrigation, sugar refining and later manufacturing turned Konya into one of the fast-growing industrial cities of the Anatolian interior.

Konya's identity rests on two things that sit oddly together: a reputation as one of Turkey's most conservative and devout cities, and the memory of Rumi, whose poetry of love and tolerance is read around the world. Both are taken seriously here. Religious observance shapes the week, mosque attendance is high, alcohol is little seen, and the city votes reliably for religious parties; at the same time the Mevlevi heritage brings visitors of every belief to the tomb on Mevlana Caddesi.

The Sema, the Mevlevi turning ceremony, is the city's best-known cultural export and is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. The dervishes turn with one palm raised and one lowered, to the sound of the ney, an end-blown reed flute, and the ceremony has a strict order that audiences are asked to respect. Each December the anniversary of Rumi's death, called Şeb-i Arus, the wedding night, because he understood death as union with God, fills the city.

Konya also has a strong craft tradition: carpets and kilims from the plain, tile-work, and the silver and leather trades of the bazaar. Its football club, long supported through the lower divisions, won the national cup in 2017 and is followed with feeling. Hospitality is warm but formal, hosts insistent with tea and sweets, and strangers are readily helped, particularly at the Mevlana complex.

About 1.4 million people live in the three central districts of Selçuklu, Meram and Karatay, and rather more than two million in the province as a whole, which is the largest in Turkey by area. Most people live in apartment blocks, and the city has spread steadily north and west across flat land, with tram lines and ring roads following.

Konya is one of the "Anatolian tigers", the provincial cities that industrialised from the 1980s on family firms and their own capital. Its factories make agricultural machinery, car parts, food products and building materials, and its organised industrial zones are among the largest in the country. Agriculture matters just as much: the surrounding plain is Turkey's granary, growing wheat, barley, sugar beet and, more recently, a great deal of irrigated maize.

That irrigation is the region's central problem. Groundwater has fallen sharply, wells are drilled ever deeper, and sinkholes have opened in the fields around the city — an issue discussed constantly in local politics. Daily life is otherwise steady and family-centred: early starts, lunch in a lokanta, a long evening of visiting, tea gardens and walks on Alaeddin Hill or in Meram. Universities bring tens of thousands of students, though the city stays quiet after dark by Turkish standards.

Konya's kitchen is wheat, lamb and slow heat. Etli ekmek is the city's signature: a flatbread up to a metre long, spread with finely minced lamb, onion and pepper and baked in a wood oven, then cut into strips. Fırın kebabı is lamb roasted slowly in a sealed oven until the fat renders away, served on bread with nothing but raw onion. Tirit layers bread with meat broth and yoghurt, and bamya çorbası, a soup of tiny dried okra pods soured with lemon and vinegar, is served at memorial meals and on feast days.

Bread and pastry are everywhere: sac böreği and etli pide from the bakeries, simit from the carts, and the wheat-and-meat porridge keşkek at weddings. Höşmerim and irmik helvası appear as sweets, but the local speciality is mevlana şekeri, a pulled white sugar candy sold in boxes on the avenue by the museum. Sugar from the plain's beet refineries has long made the city sweet-toothed.

Drinking means tea, drunk in tulip glasses at every hour, and ayran, salted yoghurt thinned with water, with meat dishes. Turkish coffee follows a meal. Alcohol has a small place in a devout city and is limited to a few hotels and licensed restaurants. Weekend breakfast in Meram, spread over cheeses, honey, kaymak, olives and hot bread, is a fixed institution.