Mevlâna Müzesi: The Mevlana Museum

During our second day in Konya, we went to the town's main attraction: the Mevlana Museum. It is part museum, mostly shrine for the mystic theologian / poet most people in the West know as Rumi. It turns out that "Rumi" only means that he came from the Selcuk Sultanate of Rum in the 13th century. His ideas are alive and influential (he established the whirling dervish tradition), and here, he is known as Mevlana (Our Guide). In the Unitarian Universalist church we attended in Medford, Masschusetts, one of Rumi's verses was used as a hymn:
Come, come whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving
Ours is no caravan of despair
Come, yet again, come
There were a huge mix of people at the shrine: many pilgrims, a busload of Russian tourists, and us. Inside the shrine, there was a tomb where the pilgrims were praying. We couldn't take any photographs inside, unfortunately. The tiles, woodwork, and stonework were spectacularly beautiful. Here are a few of pictures from outside the shrine:



And one picture I copied from the internet of the interior of the tomb:

See what I mean?