Selcuklu Audioguides

Selcuklu is a large urban district of Konya, the city in the central Anatolian plateau that served as the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum from the 12th century onward. The district takes its name directly from those Seljuk rulers, whose engineering and architectural achievements turned Konya into one of the most important cities between Constantinople and Baghdad. Today Selcuklu encompasses Alaeddin Hill at the center of the metropolitan area, where the Alaeddin Mosque, built between 1155 and 1220, anchors a site that was already sacred long before the Seljuks arrived.

The reason most visitors come to Konya and its Selcuklu district is the Mevlana Museum, the tomb of the 13th-century Sufi mystic and poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi, whose verses on love, dissolution of the self, and union with the divine have found readers in every century since his death in 1273.

The turquoise-tiled drum and conical fluted spire above his mausoleum is the image most associated with Konya, and the museum inside preserves his tomb, personal items, original manuscripts, and the ceremonial halls of the Mevlevi dervish order. The whirling sema ceremony performed here is one of Turkey's most moving spiritual experiences.