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Updated: June 5, 2025
I saw him through my glasses duck his head between his arms, then dive panic-stricken through a doorway as the fort was smitten again in dust and thunder. "Was the poor little beggar hit?" "No, sir, only scared." While the target was still veiled in its dust the second four-point-seven spoke, and the minaret disappeared from view behind a dun-coloured shroud. "Cease fire" sounded at once.
You ride to the Pyramids on a brake with a man in a white felt hat blowing a horn, and the bugler of the Army of Occupation is as much in evidence as the priest who calls them to prayer from the minaret. I left the people I liked on the Sultey last Thursday in the Suez Canal and came on here in a special train.
It is a flood of roofs sweeping south to that golden, flashing minaret, a flood bearing innumerable high mill chimneys, church steeples, school spires, and the skeleton frames of gas-works.
The foundation is three hundred and thirteen feet square and eighteen feet in height, and the edifice itself is one hundred and eighty-six feet square, with a dome rising to the height of two hundred and twenty feet. At each corner of the foundation stands a tall, graceful minaret, one hundred and thirty-seven feet in height.
The former is distinguished by a lofty minaret which commands an extensive prospect; but the latter is esteemed more remarkable, as containing the piece of rock imprinted with the mark of our Saviour's foot while in the act of ascension.
A friend of mine once told me that he struggled up a church-tower in Florence, a great lean, pale brick minaret, designed, I suppose, to be laminated with marble, but cheerfully abandoned to bareness; he came out on to one of those high balustraded balconies, which in mediæval pictures seem to have been always crowded with fantastically dressed persons, and are now only visited by tourists.
That is to say, its Moslem houses are heavy and dark, and as comfortless as so many tombs; its streets are crooked, rudely and roughly paved, and as narrow as an ordinary staircase; the streets uniformly carry a man to any other place than the one he wants to go to, and surprise him by landing him in the most unexpected localities; business is chiefly carried on in great covered bazaars, celled like a honeycomb with innumerable shops no larger than a common closet, and the whole hive cut up into a maze of alleys about wide enough to accommodate a laden camel, and well calculated to confuse a stranger and eventually lose him; every where there is dirt, every where there are fleas, every where there are lean, broken-hearted dogs; every alley is thronged with people; wherever you look, your eye rests upon a wild masquerade of extravagant costumes; the workshops are all open to the streets, and the workmen visible; all manner of sounds assail the ear, and over them all rings out the muezzin's cry from some tall minaret, calling the faithful vagabonds to prayer; and superior to the call to prayer, the noises in the streets, the interest of the costumes superior to every thing, and claiming the bulk of attention first, last, and all the time is a combination of Mohammedan stenches, to which the smell of even a Chinese quarter would be as pleasant as the roasting odors of the fatted calf to the nostrils of the returning Prodigal.
Scarcely had we reached the opposite side of the great market-place when a deafening roar sounded, and an instant later, as I turned, I saw the great dome crack, tremble and collapse, together with the high white minaret, while the whole of its façade fell out with a terrific crash in the opposite direction.
He should be told about it on his return that evening from the front. At sunset the muezzin sounded, cracked voices cried unmelodiously from all the minaret tops. Immediately, as if it were their signal, all the crows arose from the town, hovered around in batches for a moment, chattering, and flew away up the hill to roost in the trees round the hospital till sunrise.
This was Konia, the ancient Iconium, one of the most renowned cities of Asia Minor. Scenes in Konia. Kpproach to Konia -Tomb of Hazret Mevlana Lodgings in a Khan An American Luxury A Night-Scene in Ramazan Prayers in the Mosque Remains of the Ancient City View from the Mosque The Interior A Leaning Minaret The Diverting History of the Muleteers.
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