Istanbul mosques spend their first Ramadan alone for centuries

Khalil Mabrouk - Istanbul

The Corona virus left the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul only its name, the grandeur of the place, and the fragrant history. As for its spirit, it suffocates with the absence of worshipers and visitors who were hosting them by the thousands, both during the night and day of Ramadan.

The blessed month has its own traditions in the mosque built by Engineer Muhammed Agha between 1609 and 1616. Since that date, Tarawih prayers have not been interrupted between its huge walls and under its six minarets overseeing the palaces of the sultans in the "Topkapi" complex or "High Gate".

The mosque spreads the spirituality of worship on every corner inside it. Among its pillars anchored many Europeans most famously converted to Islam during Ramadan, and in front of the worshipers competitions for reciting and memorizing the Holy Qur’an were held, among the most important international competitions of the Qur’an for the blind that the mosque witnessed every year during the holy month.

All those photos were absent from inside the mosque after it closed its five doors and 200 windows so that the "Coffed 19" epidemic would not infiltrate the worshipers and visitors, and the absence lasted for the dawn of the first Ramadan Friday.

The vicinity of the mosque changed,
not only the worshipers were absent from the courtyards of the mosque, but the colorful lily rugs that used to be spread throughout the April month in the famous Turkish tulip season disappeared, to be replaced by the police deployed heavily to prevent people from wandering around the squares.

And the spread of the virus put an end to the largest Ramadan breakfast table that was spread in the courtyard of the mosque throughout the holy month, and was serving breakfast to more than 20,000 people from all over the world every day, as was the absence of "Al-Muhtaran" music that preceded breakfast.

The Turkish Religious Affairs Authority said that it will not hold any collective breakfast during the current month of Ramadan, in line with the current quarantine procedures in place to counter the spread of the Corona virus in the country, stressing that these breakfasts will be replaced by distributing meals to the homes of the fasting of the poor inside and outside Turkey.

Authority Chairman Ali Arbash said in a televised symposium that religious affairs will distribute tens of thousands of food baskets and holiday clothing for orphans in 35 countries, and will focus on distributing breakfast meals and shopping cards to those in need in Turkey that include food and clothing throughout the month of Ramadan.

The spread of Corona closed the traditional food industries, handicrafts and book fairs that were opening in the courtyards, and theater fans who were gathering before breakfast to see the theatrical day show close to the place.

Sadness on each side, and
like the Sultan Ahmed, sadness surrounds the walls of the Al-Fatih Mosque, which can still enter its outer arenas without access to the sanctuary of prayer, after its doors were closed in the faces of worshipers.

For more than half a century, the mosque continued to attract Tarawih worshipers to it from all parts of the city, and the prayer in it was similar to the international meeting place for Muslims from all parts of the earth, before everyone left because of fear of being infected with the epidemic.

The streets of the Fatih area in the European Center in Istanbul are crowded with ancient mosques that the virus did not allow her to retell her story this year, from Sulaimaniyah to Sheikh Zadeh, passing through the Bayezid Mosque, the "Mother of the Sultan" and Iskandar Pasha, and even the "Sultan Muhrama" mosque in the area of ​​Edirna Kapi, wraps Sadness the atmosphere of Istanbul mosques this year with the absence of worshipers.

But the saddest of them is the "Sultan Ayoub" mosque, which barely accommodated a foothold among the visitors who attend every year to read Surat Al-Fatihah on the grave of the great companion "Abu Ayyub Al-Ansari."

As for the "noble rag" mosque in the "Fatih Wishes" area, it will not open its doors this year to hundreds of thousands of visitors who were attending the night of the twenty-seventh of Ramadan from all over Turkey and its states to see the turban of the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, his cloak and his honorable poems offered by the endowment of the companion Awais. Corneal to people once a year.

Priority to spirits
In his phone conversation with Al-Jazeera Net, the imam of the Balat neighborhood mosque in Istanbul, Berat Exuz, expressed his deep sorrow for people to stop going to the mosques to pray in Ramadan because of their closure, saying that worshipers in Turkey feel sad in all mosques and not in the major and historical mosques alone.

But he saw that closing mosques now aims to reduce the gathering of people to save their lives from the spread of the virus, explaining that this is basically in line with the essence of belief in preserving the human spirit, as he put it.

Imam Exuz said that the goal of any worship that God has prescribed is to achieve piety, indicating that worshiping a person in his home at this time preserves the souls of Muslims and fulfills the piety required by religion from worship.

He stressed that there is no Muslim who feels happy when closing any mosque, and that the Islamic world was shaken to close the Great Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque, but protecting the lives of Muslims today is a priority for everyone.