Sheikh Saud Al-Shuraym was born in Riyadh in 1966 and was appointed an imam of Masjid al-Haram by royal decree in 1992, a post he has held ever since. For most listeners he arrives as one half of a pair: the Makkah Taraweeh broadcasts alternate him with Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, and the contrast between the two is the easiest way to hear what each one does.
Where Al-Sudais works through dynamic range, Al-Shuraym works through weight and pace. He recites noticeably slower than most imams of the Haram, holding the long vowels to their full count and leaving real silence at the end of a verse rather than running on. The effect is grave rather than dramatic, and it is the reason his Taraweeh is often described as easier to pray behind: there is time to follow the meaning as it arrives.
He studied at Imam Muhammad bin Saud University and took his doctorate at Umm al-Qura, later teaching fiqh — and the training is audible in the khutbah as much as the recitation. His Friday sermons are structured arguments rather than exhortation, which is why they circulate in print as well as in audio.
For a learner, Al-Shuraym is the most useful of the Haram reciters to imitate. The tempo is slow enough to follow without slowing the recording down, the madd lengths are unambiguous, and there is little ornamentation to strip away before you can hear the underlying tajweed.
Best suited for
- Praying Taraweeh behind a recording
- Hearing madd lengths clearly
- Learners imitating a Haram reciter