A Rare Recitation by Sheikh Mohamed Sidqi Al-Minshawi Returns to the Airwaves After Six Decades

SadaNews - The late Egyptian reciter Sheikh Mohamed Sidqi Al-Minshawi completed the recording of the entire Quran in the mid-1940s, and it was approved by a listening committee that included a select group of prominent scholars and reciters, who praised his performance.

He could have felt reassured; the work was completed and the approval was in his hands, but he sat listening to his recordings, tape after tape, and then requested to re-record it at his own expense; some tapes did not meet his satisfaction.

After nearly six decades since that session, the tapes returned to air from the archives of the Quran Radio. The radio began broadcasting a new recited version of the Quran in his voice, dating back to the 1960s, on June 1st of this month. The recited Quran is the reading that adheres to the rules of Tajweed without the embellishment typical of a performer.

The Tape That Did Not Please Him

It all began in 1965 when Al-Minshawi recorded the entire Quran on eighty-two tapes, which was approved by the committee and praised, but after he listened to the recordings himself, he found parts that needed adjustment. Therefore, he requested to re-record thirty-two tapes from the recitation, pledging in his official request to re-record without monetary compensation, and to bear the costs of the review committee at his own expense. The new recordings were approved in 1967, and since that year they remained locked away in the archives.

In presenting this legacy, the head of the National Media Authority Ahmed Al-Muslimani expressed his gratitude to the Al-Minshawi family for their ongoing support, a family that gifted the authority a number of his rare recitations from external ceremonies he performed over the decades.

When the Microphone Came to Him

Al-Minshawi was born in 1920 (1338 AH) in the village of Al-Mansha in Sohag province, southern Egypt, to a Quranic family that inherited the recitation; his father, Sidqi, was one of the most prominent reciters of Upper Egypt, and his grandfather, Tayib, was a Quranic man before him. According to a portrait published by Al-Jazeera Net, he completed memorizing the Quran at the age of eight under his father's guidance, then went to Cairo to receive Quranic sciences from Al-Azhar scholars.

While the reciter's stardom began on the waves of the radio in his time, and no recitation of a sheikh was broadcast before he excelled in competitions and was acknowledged by esteemed scholars, the situation was different for the young man from Upper Egypt; radio crews sought him out to record his recitation without him pursuing it. He later became known as "the weeping reciter," due to how his voice combined humility and emotion.

Sheikh Mohamed Sidqi Al-Minshawi traveled the world with his voice; he recited in Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and in Kuwait, Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Britain, being awarded the Order of Merit by Syria, and one of Indonesia's highest honors.

The weeping reciter did not have a long life; in 1966, an illness affected his vocal ability, but he continued his career until he passed away in 1969 before reaching fifty, leaving over a hundred and fifty recordings. Ironically, his voice continued to grow in popularity after him; today it is carried to generations who were not born when he stopped.

Source: Al-Jazeera