Iconium

Iconium, an ancient town of Asia Minor, situated on the western edge of the plateau that skirts the northern slopes of the Taurus Mountains, 310 miles E. of Smyrna. The capital under the Romans of Lycia, it was three times visited by St Paul, who founded there a Christian church. In 708 it fell into the hands of the Arab conquerors. Its prosperity culminated in the end of the 11th century, when it was made the capital of the Seljuk empire. In 1190 Frederick Barbarossa defeated the Turks in the neighbourhood, and captured Iconium. Some fifty years later its sultans were made the political playthings of the Mongols; and in 1392 they submitted to the suzerainty of the Ottoman Turks, though the state was not incorporated in the Ottoman empire until 1486. Being the meeting-point of some of the principal highways of Asia Minor, and a place of considerable trade, it failed not to figure prominently in the wars of the Turks. In 1832 Ibrahim Pasha defeated the Turks there.—The modern town, called KONIEH or KONIYA, the capital of the Turkish vilayet of Konieh, is a place of 20,000 or 30,000 inhabitants, who live by commerce, by making stockings and gloves, and on the contributions of the numerous pilgrims who visit the sacred tombs and other holy places of the town. Here is the principal monastery of the Mevlevi or 'dancing' dervishes in the Ottoman empire. Numerous ruins of mosques, madrasas (colleges), &c. attest the decayed splendour of the place.