Raghib Mustafa Ghalwash

Raghib Mustafa Ghalwash (5 July 1938 – 4 February 2016) was an Egyptian Qur'an reciter of the great radio generation; admitted as an Egyptian Radio reciter in 1962 at the age of 22, he was among the youngest of its golden age. ¹

He was born at Birma in the Tanta district of Gharbia. His father wanted him schooled for a senior post, so he went to the kuttab after school; he had memorised the Qur'an before ten and learned tajwid from Abd al-Ghani al-Sharqawi of his own village. ¹

By fourteen he was known in the surrounding villages, and in Ramadan 1953, aged fifteen, he recited at Mahallat al-Qasab in Kafr El Sheikh — in the region that had produced Mustafa Ismail and Mahmoud Khalil al-Husary. He then joined the qira'at institute of the Ahmadi Mosque in Tanta, read the Warsh transmission with Ibrahim al-Tablihi, and was given the daily recitation there between the afternoon call and the prayer. ¹

Conscripted in 1958 into the Central Security forces at al-Darasa, he frequented al-Hussein Mosque and came to know its shaykh, Hilmi Arafa. The article, quoting his own account in al-Masry al-Youm, tells how one Ramadan afternoon the muezzin Taha al-Fashni was late, and Ghalwash gave the adhan and recited the opening portion, on a day when Muhammad al-Ghazali was teaching there; the mosque became his door to senior officials and Cairo's great mourning gatherings. ¹

Encouraged by the radio's director, Muhammad Amin Hammad, he applied and was examined by a Qur'an panel that included Muhammad Abu Zahra and a voice panel that included the poet Mahmud Hasan Ismail; he was one of seven who passed out of about 160 applicants. The result came as his military service ended in 1962, and the papers ran the story of 'the sergeant who became a reciter'. ¹

He was invited to Kuwait, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia for official occasions, and a murattal recording of his is broadcast on Gulf radio stations. The article, citing al-Mesryoon (2014), says he travelled to Iran every Ramadan for thirty years in a row. In his last years he preferred to stay in Egypt for Ramadan; he recited the dawn Qur'an live once a month from Egypt's best-known mosques and recited on Fridays and religious occasions on radio and television. ¹

He died on 4 February 2016, aged 77, after an illness that had taken him to hospital. ¹

Articles on him existed in three Wikipedia editions (Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and Persian) on 6 November 2026; the Wikidata item linked to them carries another person's name and is not used. ¹

• Arabic Wikipedia article, revision of 24 October 2026. ¹