Turkish musicians record traditional muslim call to prayer in iconic Hagia Sofia museum

Record ID: 1904506

  • Title: Turkish musicians record traditional muslim call to prayer in iconic Hagia Sofia museum
  • Date: 28th March 2020
  • Summary: Turkish musicians record traditional muslim call to prayer in iconic Hagia Sofia museum SHOTLIST 1. INTERIOR VIEW OF HAGIA SOFIA (TWO SHOTS) 2. (ARABIC) VARIOUS OF IMAM AHMET TORAMAN AND SINGER EMRE YUCELEN RECITING ADHAN (CALL TO PRAYER) INSIDE HAGIA SOFIA 3. SOUNDBITE (Turkish), MUSICIAN AND SINGER, EMRE YUCELEN, SAYING: “This is our cultural heritage. We are talking about architecture, a culture that has been standing for 1,500 years, and it is currently living in Anatolian lands. A great honor for us. We need to represent this." 4. SOUNDBITE (Turkish), MUSICIAN AND SINGER, EMRE YUCELEN, SAYING: "We have a very precious treasure, but it is very important to see it. I am very happy to have made this recording. There has not been such a detailed recording in history before. There is another record in the sense of acoustic tests by Prof. Dr. Zerhan Karabiber from Yıldız Technical University. I am very happy to have had the chance to do this. This was a scientific project. This project will take its place in the archive of Hagia Sophia." 5. SOUNDBITE (Turkish), MUSICIAN AND SINGER, EMRE YUCELEN, SAYING: "It was a very pleasing recording. Everyone was fascinated after recording. We installed 8 cameras at the recording points we determined. We tried to record how they were heard on each floor. We tried to record with the best possible sound we could." ISTANBUL, TURKEY (MARCH 28, 2020) (AAVN - ACCESS ALL) SCRIPT Two musicians recorded the traditional muslim call to prayer inside Istanbul's iconic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday (March 28) using eight cameras and voice recorders. Turkish musician and singer Emre Yucelen and a volunteer team organised the historic first time recording. Imam Onder Soy and muezzin Ahmet Toraman worked from a prayer room on the museum grounds and recited the Muslim call to prayer, or adhan, and other parts of the Quran inside the historic museum. A muezzin is the person who makes the call to prayer. Dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by historians, the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia was a Christian church until it was converted into a mosque when the Ottoman Empire conquered Istanbul in 1453 before it was turned into a museum in 1935. A graduate of Istanbul’s prestigious ITU-Turkish Music State Conservatory’s Sound Department, Yucelen uploaded the video to his YouTube channel which has so far been seen more than 5,000 times. This was not his first attempt to record acoustics from historical buildings in Turkey. In 2006, Yucelen visited 17 mosques in Istanbul and interviewed religious officials for two hours and recorded their voices during the adhans. The gigantic mosques have magnificent acoustics In 2007, he released a CD, Istanbul Mosques and Muezzins and remembers the ambiance inside those structures. “Reciting the adhan in the morning with Ali Riza Sahin Hoca in [Istanbul’s historic] Fatih Mosque on a winter evening,” he recalled. “Those leaves outside … the magnificent acoustics of that big dome.” He said Istanbul’s gigantic mosques have magnificent acoustics and noted they were built based on reciting the adhan with a natural voice, but nowadays it is recited with a microphone. Yucelen said he had a “classic perspective” and since he also gives singing lessons he, “really wanted to listen to the acoustics of this place.” The recordings were made in three different locations inside the museum: under the dome, in the mihrab -- a semicircular niche in the walls of a mosque indicating the direction the faithful should face while praying, and in the muezzin mahfili, a special platform in a mosque where a muezzin carries out his duties. According to Yucelen a detailed recording like the one he did has never been done. He recalled professor Zerhan Karabiber of Istanbul’s Yildiz Technical University who did an acoustical test in the museum but it was a voice recording. “This is are cultural heritage. We are talking about architecture, a culture that has been standing for 1,500 years, and it is currently living in Anatolian lands. A great honor for us. We need to represent this," Yucelen said. "We have a very precious treasure, but it is very important to see it. I am very happy to have made this recording. There has not been such a detailed record in history before. There is another record in the sense of acoustic test by Prof. Dr. Zerhan Karabiber from Yıldız Technical University. I am very happy to have had the chance to do this. This was a scientific project. This project took place in the archive of Hagia Sophia." he said. "It was a very pleasing recording. Everyone was fascinated after recording. We installed 8 cameras at the recording points we determined. We tried to record how they were heard on each floor. We tried to record with the best possible sound we could," he said. Reporting by Cigdem Alyanak Writing by Handan Kazanci, Mehmet Zahit Yilmaz
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  • Copyright Holder: Anadolu Agency
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