Prophet’s cloak attracts Ramadan faithful in Istanbul

ISTANBUL: A long queue of men and women standing in separate lines extends from an Istanbul mosque to see a centuries-old garment pressed down flat inside an glass exhibition case: the Prophet Mohammed’s sacred cloak made of linen, cotton and silk.

The Hirka-i Serif (the Noble Cloak) was brought to Istanbul in the seventeenth century, at a time when the Ottoman Empire controlled much of the Islamic world deep into today’s Saudi Arabia.