Come, Come, Whoever You Are...

By Muhammed Ozdemir - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey

Monday, April 16, 2007

Some 47 million people have visited the Mevlana Museum since it opened in Konya in 1927 and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are still visiting the museum every year, honoring the 13th century philosopher and Sufi saint.

The dergah of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi was transformed into a museum in 1927, following the abolishing of dervish lodges and dergahs on Nov. 30, 1925. Opened to visitors in 1927, the Mevlana Museum includes the shrine of the saint as well as several valuable historical works, which have brought it world-wide fame.

The museum hosted 25,710 tourists from within Turkey during the first year it was opened and the number of visitors has regularly risen since, despite falls during some leaner years of the Turkish Republic and during World War II.

Some 1.28 million people visited the Mevlana museum in 2006 and the number of visitors has reportedly reached nearly 47 million people over the museum’s 80-year history.

The lowest number of visitors came to the museum in 1932 with 5,461, while the museum hosted a record number of visitors in 1996 with 1.50 million. The next-highest figure was in 2005, with 1.39 million visitors.

The museum hosted the highest number of Turkish visitors in 2004, with 1.10 million people, and the highest number of foreign visitors in 1998.

The lowest number of visitors come during January and February, and the highest visit the museum in July and August, according to the museum records.

Seventy-five percent of visitors to the museum are domestic tourists and 25 percent foreign tourists. Tourists from the UK, France and Germany have dominated foreign visitors in recent years, however tourists from Italy, the US, Japan, South Korea, Iran, the Czech Republic, Greece and Russia have also started to visit the museum in recent years.