Azan

Five times a day you can hear, even from inside, the call to prayer from the closest mosque. It is in Arabic, not Turkish. I often wake up to hear the first one, which is before sunrise. In our Anatolian City all the mosques broadcast the same caller (muezzin), always male, so you can hear an echo across the city (strangely, most Turks don’t realize this fact, proof they long ago stopped hearing the azans). In other cities, including Istanbul, every mosque has its own caller, and each starts at a slightly different time, creating an amazing cacophony. Although the azan is not a song, it can be very melodic and beautiful, with lovely pauses and drawn out notes.