Yesterday morning, I woke up to a chorus of muezzins calling to prayer (azan or adhan) in canon. This was so beautiful. Now, you will say, what is so unusual about that? Don't you have muezzins' calling for prayer five times every day? Yes, we do. And this is one of the reasons I like about living here. This is much nicer than having to check for the times on a calendar.
However, some years ago (I don't know when exactly), they decided it would be better to unify the call for prayer. So, now, there is only one muezzin, though each time a different one, who calls from the main mosque, the Ulu Cami (see picture) and this is heard all over the city through the loud speakers of the mosques. OK, I agree, this is not such a bad idea, mostly because you get to hear different styles of adhan. In the past, it also happened that a sleepy muezzin (who was usually the imam of the mosque) was out of tune or some might have even overslept and started late :). But somehow this was nice, very endearing. It was your imam after all.
I wonder how it is in other Muslim countries. Unified or individual adthan? Are there still places where they do not need to use loud speakers? Do you have any memories connected to the call of prayer?
2 comments:
Ah I know that feeling well Nergiz.
In Egypt, each mosque makes their own adthan. Now I think there are very few places on Earth that have as many mosques as Egypt does! You can imagine the chorus of adthans that we hear every prayer! In a normal situation you'd hear at least 5 different moazens at the same time.
While this is beautiful, it also has it's downsides. The first is that some of them have really really bad voices and this harms more than the good it does. The moazen should have a beautiful voice that people would love to hear. But more often than not, this is not the case. The second is that because there are so many at the same time, and they don't all start at the same time nor have the same speed, the end result is you can't really listen well to the adthan because each of the 5 or more moazens are on a different sentence of the adthan.
There has been many discussions here lately over unifying the adthan but a decision has not been reached yet due to much opposition from people who want to keep it this way.
For me personally, I lean towards unifying and choosing really really good people to do it every prayer.
Hope I see you around in SL btw, it's been a while! :)
Salam Breathe
Last Sunday, I was in Istanbul and it turns out they haven't unified the adhan. It was nice hearing the different mosques call for prayer and it did sound good to me. But I agree that it is important to select muezzins with a good voice. In Bursa, I have the feeling it is not that they don't have good muezzins but it is the cheap equipment (loudspeakers) that distort the beautiful calls for prayer. What a pity!
I hope I will soon visit Egypt and hear the adhan there.
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