Originally a Phrygian city, as almost every authority who has come into contact with the population calls it, and as is implied in Acts xiv. 6, it was in a political sense the chief city of the Lycaonian tetrarchy added to the Galatian country about 165 B.C., and it was part of the Roman province Galatia from 25 B.C. to about A.D. 295. Then it was included in the province Pisidia (as Ammianus Marcellinus describes it) till 372, after which it formed part of the new province Lycaonia so long as the provincial division lasted. Later it was a principal city of the theme of Anatolia. It suffered much from the Arab raids in the three centuries following A.D. 660; its capture in 708 is mentioned, but it never was held as a city of the caliphs. In later Roman and Byzantine times it must have been a large and wealthy city. It was a metropolis and an archbishopric, and one of the earliest councils of the church was held there in A.D. 235. The ecclesiastical organization of Lycaonia and the country round Iconium on all sides was complete in the early 4th century, and monuments of later 3rd and 4th century Christianity are extremely numerous. The history of Christian Iconium is utterly obscure. The city was thrice visited by St Paul, probably in A.D. 47, 50 and 53; and it is the principal scene of the tale of Paul and Thecla (which though apocryphal has certainly some historical basis; see THECLA). There was a distinct Roman element in Iconium, arising doubtless from the presence of Roman traders. This was recognized by Claudius, who granted the honorary title Claudiconium, and by Hadrian, who elevated the city to the rank of a Roman colony about A.D. 130 under the name Colonia Aelia Hadriana Augusta Iconiensium. The period of its greatest splendour was after the conquest by the Seljuk Turks about 1072-1074. It soon became the capital of the Seljuk state, and one of the most brilliant cities of the world. The palace of the sultans and the mosque of Ala ed-din Kaikobad formerly covered great part of the Acropolis hill in the northern part of the city. Farther south there is still the great complex of buildings which form the chief seat of the Mevlevi dervishes, a sect widely spread over Anatolia. Many other splendid mosques and royal tombs adorned the city, and justified the Turkish proverb, "See all the world; but see Konia." The walls, about 2 m. in circumference, consisted of a core of rubble and concrete, coated with ancient stones, inscriptions, sculptures and architectural marbles, forming a striking sight, which no traveller ever examined in detail. Beyond the walls extended the gardens and villas of a prosperous Oriental population, especially on the south-west towards the suburb of Meram.