Sahat Kula
Sahat Kula ( South Slavic spelling of Turkish saat : hour, clock, time; kule : tower; actually Saat Kulesi ) denotes the clock towers built during the Ottoman rule in the Balkans .
history
One of the first city clocks in the Ottoman Empire is mentioned in 1610: French masters had it installed on a mosque in Prizren . Not much later clock towers followed in Kanina , Kruja , Elbasan , Jajce , Skopje and Banja Luka ; in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries in many other places in the sultanate.
A Sahat Kula was usually built near a main mosque. The campanile served as a model , although the Ottoman versions did not always correspond to the standard of the model. The towers were usually four, six or octagonal, inside there was a wooden staircase, the clock and a bell with a striking mechanism that struck the time. At first the clocks struck the time "à la turca", with sunset falling at 12 o'clock. Different lengths of day required frequent checks and corrections of the clock, which was the responsibility of a separate employee, the muvekhit .
Public clocks were known far earlier in the Balkans. In Dubrovnik one was horologium in 1389 built.
Examples
- Skopje clock tower
- Clock tower of Tirana
- Gjakova clock tower
- Pazardzhik clock tower
- Pristina clock tower
See also
literature
- Milan v. Šufflay : towns and castles of Albania mainly during the Middle Ages . Akad. D. Knowledge in Vienna, Phil.-hist. Kl. 63,1, Vienna 1924, p. 35.
- Tursko-yugoslavenski odnosi . In: Enciklopedija Jugoslavije , vol. 8, 1st edition, Zagreb 1971, p. 405.