Ragheb Mustafa Ghalwash

Education

He was born on 5 July 1938 in Barma, a village near Tanta, and had memorised the whole Quran before he was ten. He learned tajwid from Sheikh Abd al-Ghani al-Sharqawi, then trained further at the Institute of Quranic Readings of the Ahmadi mosque in Tanta under Sheikh Ibrahim al-Tablihi. While still a teenager he was already being invited to recite in neighbouring villages.

Radio

Called up for military service in 1958, he was posted near the al-Husayn mosque in Cairo. The mosque's sheikh, Helmi Arafa, allowed him to give the call to prayer there and to recite before the evening prayer, where his voice drew attention. In 1962, at the end of his service, the radio's examination board chose him from some 160 applicants, making him the station's youngest reciter.

Career and later life

As the official reciter of the mosque of Sidi Ibrahim al-Dasuqi in Desouk, he received invitations from many countries, including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and travelled to Iran every Ramadan for thirty consecutive years. Admirers called him "the knight of reciters" and "the teacher of generations".

He died on 4 February 2016, aged 77, in a hospital in Tanta.