Mosquiality

I was walking down one of the narrow streets of Bakırköy when I noticed this:




Well, I don't know.
Rocket ship?
Some kind of missile?
A heating unit?
Art - a sculpture?

I was surprised that no one else had stopped to look. A gypsy lady took advantage of my inactivity to try to sell me some "Evil Eye" trinkets. As I fumbled for my camera I told her several times (in Turkish) that I didn't understand and only spoke English, and she finally wandered off in disgust muttering to herself.



That was when I started thinking about "mosquiality", or maybe it should be "mosqueness".



Do you know what a mosque looks like? There are a few mosques in Australia - you can mostly notice them by their dome shape.
We saw quite a few in China, too. Again, they all had domes.

There are lots of mosques with domes in Turkey. Lots.















And I mean LOTS.






















Some of them are really impressive, huge structures. Some are shiny, some old and a bit crumbly. This one in Selcuk (near Ephesus where we went on holiday) is really ancient.




















Our ears told us that there is a mosque very close to where we live - we hear the "Call to Prayer" loud and clear five times a day. But its not obvious where the mosque is.


In the narrow street next to ours I looked up one day and saw the Minaret - when you are bustling along a narrow, crowded street you don't always get a chance to look up.


I don't remember noticing minarets before, nor hearing the call to prayer before we came to Turkey.





Most people - like, for instance our students - seem to pay no attention to the Call to Prayer, but we have heard (Jordanian) Ali singing along to it - which was when we realised it is actually in Arabic, not Turkish.

So not all mosques are big, and neither do they all have domes.














BUT they ALL have minarets.

When I realised that I noticed this one when I was on the train.


Can you see the little minaret stuck up on top, like a tiny rocket ready to be launched ... ?




So what about the little "rocket" in the Bakırköy street?


This has to be the smallest mosque I have ever seen.

I know it is a mosque because it says "Camii",
which means mosque.

And it is right next to the "mini pasaj",
so I guess everything is small around here.