Dar al-Muwaqqit

A Dar al-Muwaqqit (Arabic: دار المؤقت), or muvakkithane in Turkish, is a room or structure accompanying a mosque which was used by the muwaqqit or timekeeper, an officer charged with maintaining the correct times of prayer and communicating them to the muezzin (the person who issued the call to prayer). Dar al-Muwaqqit was the Arabic term given to such structures added to many mosques in Morocco from the Marinid period onward. In the Ottoman Empire the equivalent of such structures were known in Turkish as a muvakkithane ("lodge of the muwaqqit").