Mohamed Al-Tablawi

Sheikh Mohamed Mahmoud Al-Tablawi was born in the village of Met Oqba in 1934, memorised the Quran as a child, and was reciting professionally by fifteen. He took his qira'at qualification from Al-Azhar and joined Egyptian radio in 1956 — the medium that made the great Egyptian reciters national figures and carried them across the Muslim world. He died in 2020, aged 86, while serving as head of Egypt's syndicate for Quran reciters.

He belongs to the mujawwad tradition, which is a different discipline from the murattal recordings most listeners encounter first. Mujawwad is recited slowly and melodically within the Arabic maqam system, and a single verse may be returned to several times at different pitches. The tajweed rules are identical; what changes is that the reciter is also shaping a musical line, and the listener is expected to sit with a passage rather than move through it.

Al-Tablawi's reputation rests on control at the top of his range. He could sustain a high phrase without strain and resolve it cleanly, which is the part of the Egyptian style that is hardest to do and easiest to do badly. He recited at state occasions in Egypt and at funerals of heads of state abroad, and he recorded both a mujawwad and a plainer murattal mushaf.

Start with him when you want to hear the Quran as the classical Egyptian school renders it, and give it unhurried attention — a mujawwad recording used as background does not work, because the repetition and the pitch movement are the point rather than an embellishment on top of it.