Minaret

Over the years I'd hate to think of how many pictures I've taken of mosques.  Mainly I love their simplicity, although some of definitely more ornate than others.  Here's a picture of a minaret at the little mosque across the street from my hotel in San'a.  I guess I'm posting it because it gives a clear sense of the building material of ancient San'a, but also because it's so rare to get a shot looking down at a minaret.  In the old days a muezzin would have stood in the minaret and called the faithful to worship.  As you can see, while the muezzin is still live, his voice is now augmented by loud speakers.  Since there are so many mosques in most Islamic cities, and slightly different perceptions of when the five calls to prayer are supposed to get started (which may be caused by nothing more than simple variations in clocks), they usually end up starting at different times and the sound builds and rolls across the city.  The popular perception is that all life stops in the Middle East when the call to prayer begins, but more often than not the normal flow of life continues on uninterrupted (at least externally).  As we've discussed before, this is also impacted by country, city vs countryside, time of day, and day of the week.  I've included a link to a video of a recording of the call to prayer that I often show my students, partially because it is beautiful and partially because it includes some great pictures.  You can shut it off around half-way through, however, because the music starts, which is pretty but also obviously not authentic to the actual experience.