The Green Dome
Bedreddin Tebrizi (active late thirteenth century) · 1274
Before you go inside, stand in the courtyard and look up at the fluted turquoise tower that gives the whole complex its name. The Green Dome, Kubbe-i Hadra in Turkish, rises directly over the grave of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi. It is not a dome in the usual rounded sense but a sixteen sided drum with a tall conical cap, the form of a Seljuk tomb tower, covered in glazed tiles of a green that shifts towards blue in strong sunlight. Since the fourteenth century it has been the emblem of Konya, and today it appears on postcards, on the city's coat of arms and in the memory of every pilgrim who has come here.
The tower was built in 1274, the year after Rumi's death, by the architect Bedreddin of Tabriz. The cost was met by Gürcü Hatun, the Georgian born wife of the Seljuk sultan, and by the powerful minister Süleyman Pervane, who had also been among Rumi's admirers. Beneath the tiles the structure is brick, resting on four thick columns inside the hall, and the tiles you see now are largely the work of restorations, the most thorough in the nineteen sixties, since glazed tiles on an exposed tower rarely last more than a couple of centuries in Konya's winters. Notice the band of inscription and the small lantern at the top, and how the tower reads as a single vertical gesture among the low domes around it.
Rumi had asked that no grand monument be raised over him, saying that the tomb of a lover of God should be the hearts of those who remember him. His followers built the tower anyway, and from it grew a lodge that housed the Mevlevi order for six hundred and fifty years. When the lodges were closed in 1925 the local people argued successfully that this place should be kept as a museum, and it opened to the public in 1926.
Did You Know? The Green Dome was chosen as the symbol of Konya so early that it appears on Ottoman coins and later on the five thousand lira banknote of the nineteen nineties.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.