When Egyptian Qari Al-Saadani Stopped Cooperating with Quran Radio
Today, April 30, mark the anniversary of the death of the Quran reciter.
He was born in Kafr Barash village in Egypt’s Sharqia Governorate in 1903. At an early age, he went to the Maktab (Quran school) of the village where he memorized the entire Holy Book.
He then moved to Cairo in the 1930s to learn different Quran recitation styles and narrations with Sheikh Al-Jarisi.
His teacher introduced al-Saadani to the officials of the Awqaf ministry for recitation of the Quran at Imam Al-Shaarani Mosque in the city.
Al-Saadani’s fame began to spread in the country after reciting the Quran at a funeral and then he gained global recognition after his recitation was broadcast by the Egyptian radio.
It was later aired on many other radio station in the Arab world and elsewhere.
It was a time when radio was gaining popularity among people and great powers of the world like Germany, Britain and the USSR sought to attract the public in different countries, including in the Muslim world.
That is why radio stations in London, Berlin and Moscow broadcast Quran recitations, and one of the first qaris whose recitations were aired in those cities was al-Saadani.
Al-Saadani was a contemporary of many legendary Egyptian qaris such as Sheikh Mohamed Rif’at, Ali Mahmoud, Ahmed Nida, Mansour Bida, al-Husari, Shaashaei, Mohamed Salama, al-Bahtimi and Ali Hazin.
He had a special method of recitation that greatly moved the audience and was filled with innovation and beauty.
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Egyptian poet Ahmed Shafiq Kamil was very interested in al-Saadani’s recitations and the qari recorded a number of recitations especially for him but the recitations were at one time aired on the Quran Radio without naming the qari, which angered the reciter. He filed a complaint and stopped cooperating with the radio station until his death.
Al-Saadani died on April 30, 1976, at the age of 73.
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