Walid Al Dulaimi

Early life and training

Born in Ramadi, Anbar Province, in 1941, he went blind around 1944–45 during an epidemic of purulent eye disease. After a short spell at a music institute for the blind in Baghdad, he memorised the Quran with several teachers in his home town, completing it in his early teens, and also studied with Sheikhs Abd al-Jalil al-Hiti and Abd al-Latif al-Abdali.

He began reciting and singing muwashshahat at the Great Mosque of Ramadi, then became well known in the mosques of Fallujah, where he performed so often on religious occasions that he was nicknamed "al-Falluji".

Kuwait

In 1967 he moved to Kuwait. While serving as muezzin of the al-Wazzan mosque in al-Mirqab, he graduated top of his class from the Institute for Imams and Preachers and spent six years studying Quranic sciences and exegesis at the Dar al-Quran; he then became imam of the al-Mutair mosque in Dahiyat Abdullah al-Salem and also taught the Quran. On a visit to Cairo he recited before Abdul Basit Abdul Samad and Muhammad Siddiq al-Minshawi, who encouraged his Iraqi style. It was on hearing him recite during the Ramadan night prayers of 1981 that the Kuwaiti singer Hamad Sinan decided to give up singing and devote himself to the Quran. He retired in the early 1990s.

His murattal recitations follow the reading of Hafs 'an 'Asim.

Death

Displaced to Erbil by the insecurity in his home region, he died there in hospital on 2 November 2019 (5 Rabi' al-Awwal 1441 AH) after a long illness. The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq issued an official obituary, and he was buried in the old cemetery of Ramadi, near his teachers.