Continuing to follow my son's travels in Turkey. He took a trip to Bursa, the first Ottoman capital. It's quite beautiful!
Here is the mausoleum of the first Ottoman sultan. I had to say the words slowly to myself to really savor them: first. Ottoman. sultan.
Trying to put myself into a context where sultans are real political figures, not figments of the imagination from an Arabian Nights book, or indeed, an Orientalist fantasy that has more to do with being Western than observing another culture.
Travel is so important, and traveling off the beaten path with an open mind is the best travel of all.
A wonderful discovery! The calls to prayer in Bursa sound quite astonishingly different from the calls in Istanbul:
There are certain regional differences to the calls to prayer that I've noticed in my travels…I've heard the calls to prayer in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, and Palestine, and they do vary. I would love to know if the differences have some basis in how the muezzins are taught in different countries, whether there are different schools or practices, or whether this is all in the individual's artistic vision. Do students use the style of their mentors, I wonder? Or is there some deeper tradition that we don't know about?
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