Alaeddin Tepesi

Alaeddin Hill is a mound built up by human settlement over thousands of years, rising in the very middle of Konya, and the whole history of the city has taken shape around it. Standing close to the last slopes of the mountains on the western edge of the Konya Plain, the hill is an oval mass of about 450 by 350 metres and roughly 20 metres high. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam notes that the first settlement of the city, whose founders are unknown, is thought to have been this small rise. Excavations carried out by the Turkish Historical Society in 1941 showed that the earliest settlement on the hill goes back to the 3000s BC, to the Early Bronze Age. The mound later lived under the Hittites, then the Phrygians, Lydians and Persians. The name of the city is believed to come from the Phrygian Kawania, which became Konion in Greek and Ikonion in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Figured Phrygian pottery fragments displayed in the Konya Archaeological Museum were also found on this hill. In the Roman and Byzantine age the walls ringing the hill were renewed, and the town grew inside and around this circuit. When Konya became the capital of the Anatolian Seljuk state at the end of the eleventh century, the Seljuk palace was built on the north side of this hill. The Alaeddin Mosque on the north of the hill, a large Seljuk building completed in 1220, is still the most distinctive part of its skyline. In the Seljuk period the fortress on the hill served as the inner citadel; in 1221 the growing city was enclosed by a new outer wall with towers about 4 kilometres long. Left in the middle of the outer wall, the hilltop fortress lost its importance, and a new inner citadel called Ahmedek was built to the west. At the northern foot of the hill, set on top of a wall tower, the Seljuk pavilion is the only part of the palace that can still be seen today. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, relying on the tile inscription around a window, dates the building popularly known as the Alaeddin Pavilion to the reign of Kılıçarslan II (1155-1192). Evliya Çelebi reports that Alaeddin Keykubad repaired the pavilion after an earthquake, which is why his name became attached to it. The pavilion was used by the Karamanids after the Seljuks, served as a residence for Ottoman governors until the 17th century, and was then abandoned. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam the pavilion was a single square room, surrounded on three sides by a balcony carried on consoles with muqarnas. The inner and outer walls were covered with tiles and stucco reliefs; the star-shaped tiles showed musicians, horsemen and winged lions. Two niches at the base of the tower each held a seated lion statue, and one of them was taken to the museum in Istanbul in 1908. The half-ruined pavilion and most of the tower beneath it were pulled down on the governor's order between 1905 and 1908. The remaining mud brick core and wall were covered in 1961 with a reinforced concrete shell designed by the architect İhsan Kıygı. Turkish Wikipedia states that this protective roof was removed in 2016-2017 because its structure had deteriorated; the white arch seen in older photographs may therefore no longer be in place. The tiles recovered from the pavilion in the 1941 excavation are now displayed nearby in the Karatay Madrasa Tile Museum. Other pieces are scattered among museums in Istanbul, Berlin and Paris. In the Ottoman period, Sultan Mehmed II had the ruined walls repaired after taking Konya in 1468. Charles Texier, who came to the city in the middle of the nineteenth century, describes how the wall stones were being pulled out and reused in new buildings. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam no part of either the inner or the outer wall survives today, the single exception being the tower ruin on which the pavilion sits. The hill was cleared of houses at the end of the 19th century and, after the 1910s, planted with trees and turned into the city's recreation ground. A stone water reservoir with arched fountains on both sides, built by the governor Avlonyalı Ferid Pasha to relieve the city's water shortage, opened in 1902 and was used until 1954. In 1982 the hill was registered as an archaeological, historic and natural conservation site. Today the hill is enjoyed like a park in the heart of the city, with green lawns, pine trees and shady walking paths. A good order is to begin at the pavilion ruin on the northern foot and then follow the paths that circle the hill. Seen from the surrounding road, it becomes clear how far the mound rises above the plain, in other words how much material thousands of years have piled up. When the hill is lit in the evening, the stone facades of the Seljuk buildings show between the trees. The Konya tram line runs around the hill, so it is easy to reach by tram from most parts of the city. The İnce Minareli Madrasa just to the west and the Karatay Madrasa to the north are a few minutes away on foot. This makes the hill a natural starting point for anyone who wants to get to know Seljuk Konya on foot. The park is an open city space in every season; check the official websites for the visiting hours of the museum buildings.