Shirazad Taher

Training

Born into a Kurdish family in Mosul, he learned to read the Quran from his father, a school headmaster who taught Arabic and the Quran. His fine voice got him noticed early in the city's mosques, where he was called "the little Minshawi" after Muhammad Siddiq al-Minshawi. He combined an engineering degree in electronics and telecommunications at the University of Mosul, completed in 1991, with the study of the readings under the city's masters, Ibrahim al-Mashhadani and then Abd al-Latif al-Sufi, who in 1988 granted him the ijaza in the seven readings through the Shatibiyya and the title "Badr al-Qurra'".

In the mid-1990s he went to Yemen, where Sheikh Abd al-Razzaq ibn Muhammad Amara gave him the ijaza in the three readings that complete the ten; he is credited with bringing that chain of transmission to Mosul and the rest of Iraq. He later studied the "major" ten readings (through the Tayyiba) in the Emirates.

In the Emirates

Settling in the United Arab Emirates, he led prayers at a mosque in Dubai, taught the readings, judged Quran competitions and produced dozens of radio and television programmes. He champions the distinctiveness of the Iraqi school of recitation, which he describes as carrying a deep undertone of sorrow. When the Holy Quran Academy in Sharjah was inaugurated in 2020, he was its Secretary-General.

His widely distributed murattal recitation follows the reading of Hafs 'an 'Asim; he has also recorded recitations in Warsh 'an Nafi'.