Muslim Call To Prayer - Adhan

Islam requires its adherents to pray five specific times a day. In order to signal the times of the prayer, the muezzin performs the adhan. The muezzin in modern times and areas uses a loudspeaker that is broadcast from the top of a mosque's minaret, calling out in Arabic the adhan's words:

Allahu Akbar! (God is the greatest)
Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah (I bear witness that there is no deity except Gd)
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah (I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Gd)
Hayya 'alas-salah (Make haste towards prayer)
Hayya 'alal-falah (Make haste towards welfare)
As-salatu khayru min an-naum (Prayer is better than sleep)
Allahu akbar (Gd is the greatest)
La ilaha illallah (There is no deity except Allah)

Living in Jerusalem, with its high population of Muslims, I have become acclimated to hearing the adhan at all hours of the day and night. I've lived in the Old City for about five months, as well, and anyone who lives in that area is especially treated to this Islamic call to prayer. The Old City has its own Muslim Quarter, so you get the loudspeakers booming from there, as well as the Arab town Wadi Al-Joz across the Kidron Valley on Mount Olives.

Muslim call to prayer. I took this from Ir David, the City of David.

Sorry about the obnoxious Americans talking.  There are like five

different mosques all broadcasting at the same time, so it's pretty

overwhelming to be hear it in person.

Some of these calls to prayer are during crazy hours of the day. Consequently, many people get woken up by the ringing Arabic echoing off Jerusalem's valley walls. I often found myself woken in the middle of the night by the adhan, at least for the first months I lived here. Let me just provide an analogy. I come from a little rural town in Virginia, a place of 1,200 residents called Elkton. The railroad runs through Elkton, making it really a central part of downtown. So, in 6th grade I dated a girl who moved into town, and in fact she ended up living right across from the train tracks. The first few months she lived in Elkton she complained nearly every day of being so tired - the whistling train woke her in the middle of the night, every night. The first night she slept in her new home she thought there was an earthquake.

I and the rest of us veteran Elktonians rarely hear the train. We have gotten used to it. Likewise, I am rarely woken now by the adhan. One of the prayer times just happens to be at dawn (fajr), which can obviously be very early. I used to be woken all the time by this prayer, and just like her thinking there was an earthquake, my fantastical imagination had me believing that a new jihad was breaking out. Now that I'm acclimated to the strange hours, I can truly enjoy the ancient call when I do hear it.

Oftentimes I find myself too familiar with my life here, something which I never expected so easily. I go to the grocery store and I walk past ancient walls, I take shortcuts around medieval monasteries, the skyline is littered with Ottoman Empire mosques and minarets. No matter where you live, life can become quite normal.  Old hand.  I know a guy living in Kabul, Afghanistan, right now for a research group. I wonder if he has become regularized to that world?

The resonating Islamic call to prayer still brings me into another dimension, and yet also helps re-sharpen my focus on exactly where I live. Whenever I happen to hear it late at night, or on a walk home, or from my bedroom, my eyes are forced open and I remember just how amazing this place is. The wailing call pierces my routinized heart, flooding me with a bittersweet epiphany of how far I am from Elkton.  

I love Elkton, but Jerusalem is like walking on the moon - this place is otherworldly.