There is, however, no attempt made here to affect the emotions through any of the plastic or pictorial arts. In this respect the Blue Mosque, like every other mosque in Islam, is absolutely devoid of paintings and statues. The reason is that Moslem law proscribes all representations of the human form, either in painting or statuary, as impious, because they are regarded “as encouragements to idolatry and as profanations of God’s chief handiwork.”[181] According to one of the traditional sayings of Mohammed, “Whoever draws a picture will at the day of resurrection be punished by being ordered to blow a spirit into it; and this he can never do; and so he will be punished as long as God wills.” Nor does the Prophet leave any doubt as to the nature of the punishment, for he declares explicitly, “Every painter is in hell-fire.” In another saying, however, he greatly modifies this pitiless statement and tells the painter, “If you must make pictures, make them of trees and of things without souls.” It is because of this concession to artists that one may frequently see in Mohammedan houses pictures of flowers and trees and even of landscapes, provided there be in them no delineation of “the human form divine.” But in the homes of the strict adherents of Moslemism all images are rigorously tabooed, for, according to another saying of the Prophet, “Angels do not enter into the house in which is a dog, nor into that in which are pictures.”[182] Konia is now a flourishing city of about sixty thousand souls. Most of its inhabitants, like those of Brusa, are pure Turks, who rigidly adhere not only to the religion but also to the manners and customs of their fathers. There is here, however, a goodly number of Greeks, Armenians, and Germans, besides whom there is also, among the employees of the Bagdad Railway, a sprinkling of Swiss, French, and Italians. Among the various institutions we visited, none gave us more agreeable surprise than those established here some decades ago by the Priests and Sisters of the Assumption from France, which are in a very prosperous condition. The Sisters have a school and dispensary, and their devoted care of the poor and sick has made them greatly beloved by all classes, irrespective of creed. Nowhere is the zeal of the ardent French nun seen to better advantage than in foreign missions, where her enthusiasm, notwithstanding the great difficulties she frequently encounters, never abates and where she exhibits a happiness that communicates itself to all who come in contact with her. Nowhere in Anatolia, except probably in Brusa, has one a better opportunity to study the manners and customs and simple pastimes of the genuine Turk than in Konia. Theaters and operas, as we know them, they have not. From all social assemblages, like those in the western world, which are frequented by men and women alike, they are debarred by a custom that is more binding than the laws of the Medes and Persians.