Sabri Mudallal

Sabri Mudallal (1918 – August 2006) was a munshid, singer and composer from Aleppo, a master of traditional Syrian music and religious song, called 'the shaykh of singers'. ^{1 2}

He was born in Aleppo's al-Jalloum quarter into a musical milieu; his father took him to Sufi dhikr ceremonies and sent him to Qur'an school to memorise and learn recitation. His teacher saw his gift and sent him to Omar al-Batsh, one of Aleppo's great masters of classical Arabic music, under whom he learned the maqams, the muwashshah, the dawr, the layali, the qasida, the mawwal and the Aleppine qudud; the first piece he learned was al-Batsh's own muwashshah 'Kahhal al-Sihr Uyunan' in maqam bayat. ¹

He served as a muezzin at the Great Mosque of Aleppo, first sang on Syrian radio in 1949, and in 1954 founded a religious-song ensemble with the Aleppine munshid Hassan Haffar. His repertoire was mainly sacred, and he was known above all for the Andalusian muwashshah and the wasla suite, though he sang secular music too; he was the first to sing 'Ib'atli Jawab' (1949), later famous in Sabah Fakhri's voice. ¹

The Aleppine musicologist Muhammad Qadri Dallal, who published a study of his singing in 2006, finds the influence of the great Egyptian composers — Sayed Darwish, Mohamed El Qasabgi, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Zakariya Ahmed, Dawood Hosni — giving religious song a new colour. He was known for circular breathing, which let him sing at length without a pause. ¹

In 1975 he took his ensemble, with Abdel Raouf Hallak and Hassan Haffar, to Paris for a concert of Islamic sacred song, released in 1980 as his first record, 'Muezzins d'Alep – Chants religieux de l'Islam'. In 1997 Mohamed Malas directed a documentary on him for Syrian television, 'Aleppo... Maqamat of Pleasure and Delight', and in the 1990s he sang with Aleppo's Ensemble Al-Kindi, leading to 'The Aleppian Music Room' (1998) and 'Songs from Aleppo' (Institut du Monde Arabe, 1999). ¹

He died in Aleppo in August 2006; Wikidata gives 21 August. ^{1 2}

Wikidata listed articles on him in five Wikipedia editions on 6 November 2026: Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, English, French and Mazanderani. ²

• English Wikipedia article, revision of 27 August 2026. ¹

• Wikidata item Q3460731. ²