Iftar Cannon

The Iftar Cannon (Arabic: مدفع الافطار, romanized: Madfa al-ifṭār; Turkish: iftar topu, lit. 'cannon for breaking the fast'), also known as Ramadan Cannon, is a long-held Ramadan tradition that began in Egypt and spread to large parts of the Islamic world; every evening upon the sunset call to prayer (maghrib adhan), a cannon fires a single shot to notify people of the start of Iftar in Ramadan, when Muslims get to break their day-long fasting as the sun sets. The blast of the cannon was first used to inform the entire city of the time of Iftar, before the invention of accurate clocks and mass media; it no longer serves its main purpose but rather is a symbolic tradition. However in Turkey, some people still rely on the sound to break their fasts, but recently in some cities, a sound bomb is used instead of a canon.