The Europeans considered the Ottomans as indifferent of time. Working hours and meeting time were fixed in a rather lax manner. For the Ottomans the clock was “an amusing oddity”, the technological product of a foreign culture. But it does not mean that they did not have the means to determine time with great precision. Large mosques employed muvakkits, scholars to calculate prayer and fast times, and thus maintain “synchrony with the heavens”. They used astronomical observations to divide the day and the night into two sets of 12 equal hours, but since the length of day changed with the seasons, all clocks and watches had to be constantly adjusted to show 12 every day at sunset.