The most important thing in real estate is location, location, location. When looking for a place in Abu Dhabi it is the same except the location you worry about is the location of the minarets. You can have the most beautiful flat with a lovely view of the ocean, but if there is a mosque nearby, you will be blasted from bed each morning about 4:45 am. When they say "call to prayer" they don't mean a whisper.
A minaret is the tall tower next to the mosque where the muezzin (guy that does the yodeling) calls the faithful to prayer. It doesn't matter how many minarets a mosque has as long as there is one. When sheikhs and sultans build mosques they usually try to up the number to show how important they are. The Sheikh Zayed mosque that has just been built was originally going to have 6 minaretes. When the old guy died, they cut it back to 4 as they had already spent $2.2 billion and needed to cut costs.
I like to think of a wizened old guy climbing the stairs to the top of the tower 5 times a day to do the calling, but the reality is that it is probably done by computers and sound systems or a giant iPod or something. One thing for sure, the volume control knob is on "extra loud". It has to be because the first call to prayer comes around 4:45 am when the muezzin informs the sleeping faithful that "prayer is better than sleep." The next call to prayer is about 10 minutes later, like a snooze alarm. Then you have noon prayer, "wake-up from your siesta" prayer around 4:00pm, time for supper prayer around 7:00pm, and "time to go out and mingle and cause massive traffic jams prayer" around 8:00pm. These are approximate times as it all depends on the moon of course.
A minaret is the tall tower next to the mosque where the muezzin (guy that does the yodeling) calls the faithful to prayer. It doesn't matter how many minarets a mosque has as long as there is one. When sheikhs and sultans build mosques they usually try to up the number to show how important they are. The Sheikh Zayed mosque that has just been built was originally going to have 6 minaretes. When the old guy died, they cut it back to 4 as they had already spent $2.2 billion and needed to cut costs.
I like to think of a wizened old guy climbing the stairs to the top of the tower 5 times a day to do the calling, but the reality is that it is probably done by computers and sound systems or a giant iPod or something. One thing for sure, the volume control knob is on "extra loud". It has to be because the first call to prayer comes around 4:45 am when the muezzin informs the sleeping faithful that "prayer is better than sleep." The next call to prayer is about 10 minutes later, like a snooze alarm. Then you have noon prayer, "wake-up from your siesta" prayer around 4:00pm, time for supper prayer around 7:00pm, and "time to go out and mingle and cause massive traffic jams prayer" around 8:00pm. These are approximate times as it all depends on the moon of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment