The discipline of Turkish Religious Music refers to a distinctive type of music composed by Muslims in Turkish societies. It reflects the rich cultural and musical synthesis that came into existence with the Turkish embrace of Islam and its later developments. It concerns various forms of music including mawlid, salat, tawshih, na‘t, ilahi, and qasida. Each of these forms contains Turkish religious motifs from Central Asia to Anatolia and from the Seljuqs to the Ottomans. Especially during Ottoman times,
religious music became a central part of daily religious rituals, both within and outside of the mosque. The department offers courses on the theoretical and practical aspects of all these musical forms. In this context, the department has a choir, the Turkish-Sufi Music Choir, whose singers and players are all students in the Faculty. Their concerts are some of the Faculty’s most vibrant musical activities, and represent its artistic face.