Sayed al-Naqshabandi

Sayed Muhammad al-Naqshabandi (7 January 1920 – 14 February 1976) was an Egyptian munshid and reciter, founder of a distinctive school of ibtihalat and one of the best-known singers of supplication in the history of religious song; he was called 'the devout voice' and 'the nightingale of inshad'. ^{1 2}

He was born in the Shaqiqa lane of Dumayra in Dakahlia; before he was ten his family moved to Tahta in Upper Egypt, where he memorised the Qur'an with Ahmad Khalil before eight and learned inshad in the dhikr circles of the Naqshbandi order. His grandfather, Muhammad Baha al-Din al-Naqshabandi, had come from Azerbaijan to study at al-Azhar, and his father was a scholar and a shaykh of the order. He frequented the mawlids of Abu al-Hajjaj of Luxor, Abd al-Rahim al-Qinawi and Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti and learned the poems of al-Busiri and Ibn al-Farid by heart. ¹

He settled in Tanta in 1955 and his fame spread across Egypt and the Arab world; he went to Aleppo, Hama and Damascus for religious nights at the invitation of Hafez al-Assad, visited Abu Dhabi, Jordan, Iran, Yemen, Indonesia, the Maghrib, the Gulf and many countries of Africa and Asia, and made the pilgrimage five times. ¹

In 1966 a chance meeting at al-Hussein Mosque with the broadcaster Ahmad Farrag led to recordings for 'In God's Precincts', followed by many supplications for 'Du'a', broadcast daily after the sunset call, and the television series on the Beautiful Names; he joined the radio in 1967 and left it a wealth of nasheeds, supplications and some recitations. His melodies were composed by Mahmoud al-Sharif, Sayed Mekkawi, Baligh Hamdi, Ahmad Sidqi and Hilmi Amin. ¹

The article, quoting the broadcaster Wagdi al-Hakim, tells how Anwar Sadat, at his daughter's engagement, asked to hear al-Naqshabandi sing to Baligh Hamdi's melodies; al-Naqshabandi feared a tune unfit for supplication but was won over, and the collaboration produced six ibtihalat, among them 'Mawlay inni bi-babik'. ¹

He died suddenly of a heart attack on 14 February 1976, aged 56, a day after reciting and giving the Friday call live from the television mosque. Thousands prayed over him at the Sayyid al-Badawi Mosque in Tanta, and by his written wish he was buried beside his mother in the Khalwati cemetery at al-Basatin in Cairo. ^{1 2}

Sadat awarded him the State Order of the first class posthumously in 1979, and Hosni Mubarak the Order of the Republic of the first class on the Night of Power in 1989; Gharbia named Tanta's main street after him. ¹

Wikidata listed articles on him in four Wikipedia editions on 6 November 2026: Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, English and Persian. ²

• Arabic Wikipedia article, revision of 14 February 2026. ¹

• Wikidata item Q11006362. ²