He’s Charles’s kind of guy: a 13th-century Persian Islamic scholar, poet and mystic, the inspiration for the whirling dervishes that put the wind up General Gordon at Khartoum, and who even today is among the biggest-selling translated poets in America.

This year being the 800th birthday of Mevlana Rumi in what is now Afghanistan, it was fitting that the Prince of Wales should take his wife to visit the mystic’s shrine on the first full day of their four-day official visit to Turkey, followed by a demonstration of dervish-whirling.

The Prince disclosed yesterday that he had paid a private visit in 1992 to the shrine in the central Turkish city of Konya, a seat of religious conservatism. Rumi’s shrine, once a mosque and the headquarters of his sect, is now more a museum, and dress rules for visitors are lax. The Duchess carried a white shawl in case it was necessary to cover her head, which it wasn’t. But the couple did have to don blue plastic galoshes, as much to keep the carpets clean as out of deference to an Islamic shrine.

Andrew Peacock, of the British Institute in Ankara, who showed the royal couple round the museum with its tombs and rich Islamic art, said that Rumi was a liberal who would not have minded that a blonde Englishwoman toured his shrine bareheaded.

“His thinking was open to other religions; he invited Christians and Jews to join him in worshipping God,” Mr Peacock said.

He explained how Rumi’s descendants developed the idea of the whirling dervish, a dervish being a monk. They invented twirling meditation: become dizzy and you lose all thoughts of ego and dwell on higher things.

The royal couple saw dervishes in action at a cultural centre. Seated in the front row of a packed arena they watched ten dervishes take to the circular dance floor and go through their giddying paces in white skirts, long white pantaloons and tall woolly hats.

When Kemal Atatürk created the modern Turkish state in 1923 he did away with monkish sects, so any dervish you see whirling today is a member of a secular municipal dance troupe. The Konya ensemble dance full-time, all over the world, and are paid by the city council.

When they had finished the Prince gave a speech on Rumi’s appeal in the 21st century. “Whatever it is, it seems to me that Western life has become deconstructed and partial.” The East, on the other hand, had given us “parables of the soul”.

It might have been a hit with Islamic scholars at Cairo University but given that his audience yesterday was composed largely of schoolchildren it sailed straight over their heads. The Prince had expected to address university students, his spokesman said, but the local mayor had decided to open the event to a wider audience.

He wound up after 15 minutes to applause and whistling. The hosts presented the couple with a Turkish carpet. No good for whirling on though; you need a well-polished floor.

Times Recommends

• Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor'
• 'Delayed justice' fear for OJ Simpson
• Sex and the sari