*** The TOUR TO KONYA is CANCELLED due to lack of enough participants. One can easily do the below arrangement individualy.  Please send us an email, we will help with individual arrangements.

*** Please note that we will try to arrange a Mevlevi (Whirling Dervishes) show during one of the evenings of the conference.

Trip to Konya: A trip to Konya (the home of the whirling dervishes) will be organized as the post conference tour. It will take place on Sunday, 2 May 2010. The tentative program is as follows:

• Leave Nevşehir for Konya in the afternoon of Saturday May 1.
• Check in at hotel in Konya
• Dinner at hotel
• After dinner a private show of whirling dervishes
• Visit Mevlana Mosque and other places in the morning of Sunday May 2nd.
• Lunch
• After lunch return flights to Istanbul directly from Konya.
  
  

The basic cost of the tour :  Rate:   150 Euro per person

Price includes:

- Private Coach throughout the trip
- Private professional tour guide - ENG speaking
- Hotel overnight at Konya; including Dinner on the first day, and Breakfast on the second day.
- Whirling Dervsih show at night
- Mevlana Museum visit with tour guide and entrance fees
- Lunch at local Rest. in Konya
- Transfer to Konya Airport at the end of the tour (or return to Cappadocia)
- Tax of VAT (18%)

Price Excludes:

- Private expenses at the hotel
- Local flight from Konya

Alternative Return Flights from Konya to Istanbul :

** SAW airport is located on the Asian Side of Istanbul, and is around 50 km away from Ataturk Airport which is the main airport for International flights.   There are airport shuttle busses from SAW to Taksim, the city center, nearly every 30-45 minutes.  One can easily get another shuttle from Taksim (where SAW shuttle drops you)  to Ataturk Airport.  Total journey might take around 1-1,5 hours.

Those interested should contact the Conference General Chair ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) as soon as possible.

About Mevlana & Whirling Dervishes :

Jalaleddin Rumi was one of the great spiritual masters and poetic geniuses of mankind, and the Mevlevi Sufi order was founded to follow his teachings. He was born in 1207 in Balkh in present day Afghanistan to a family of learned theologians. Escaping the Mongol invasion, he and his family traveled extensively in Muslim lands, performed pilgrimage to Mecca and visited Medina; the journey brought the family to Erzincan and then Karaman, where Rumi studied for a short period in the Halaveye School. In 1228, at the invitation of the Sultan of the Seljuks, Alaeddin Keykubad, they settled in Konya, Anatolia, in present day Turkey, then part of the Seljuk Empire. Here Jalaleddin married and lived with his wife, Gevher Hatun, who bore him two children. He is called ‘Rumi,’ meaning ‘Anatolian’ because of his life in that place. He also gained the title Mevlana which means ‘Our Master’ through his life’s work there.

Mevlana (meaning 'Our Guide') would recite the verses whenever and wherever they came to him - meditating, dancing, singing, walking, eating, by day or night - and Husam al-Din would record them. Writing of Rumi and his poetry, Malise Ruthven (Islam in the World) says, "No doubt the Mathnawi's emotional intensity derives in part from the poet's own vulnerable personality: his longing for love is sublimated into a kind of cosmic yearning. The Love Object, though divine and therefore unknowable, yields a very human kind of love. In the Quran a remote and inaccessible deity addresses man through the mouth of his Prophet. In the Mathnawi it is the voice of the human soul, bewailing its earthly exile, which cries out, seeking reunification with its creator." Rumi teachings expressed that love is the path to spiritual growth and insight. Broadly tolerant of all people and other faiths, he says :

Come, come, come again,
Whoever you may be,
Come again, even though 
You may be a pagan or fire worshipper,
Our hearth is not the threshold of despair.
Come again, even if you may have
Violated your vows a hundred times,
Come again…

Rumi is also well known for the Sufi brotherhood he established with its distinctive whirling and circling dance, known as Sema and practiced by the Dervishes. The Sema ceremony, in seven parts, represents the mystical journey of an individual on their ascent through mind and love to union with the divine. Mirroring the revolving nature of existence and all living things, the Sufi dervish turns toward the truth, grows through love, abandons ego, and embraces perfection. Then he returns from this spiritual journey as one who has reached perfection in order to be of love and service to the entire creation. Dressed in long white gowns (the ego's burial shroud) and wearing high, cone-shaped hats (the ego's tombstone), the dervish dances for hours at a time. With arms held high, the right hand lifted upward to receive blessings and energy from heaven, the left hand turned downward to bestow these blessing on the earth, and the body spinning from right to left, the dervish revolves around the heart and embraces all of creation with love. The dervishes form a circle, each turning in harmony with the rhythm of the accompanying music as the circle itself moves around, slowly picking up speed and intensity until all collapse in a sort of spiritual exaltation.