Muhammad Flayfel (1899–1986) was a self-taught Beirut composer — raised on an amateur-musician father's buzuq playing rather than formal training — best known for writing the melody of "Mawtini" (later the national anthem of Iraq and, until 1996, of Palestine) and for co-founding the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music. He is remembered in Fairuz's own story as the teacher who discovered her at a radio talent competition, advised her to enroll at the conservatoire where he taught, and personally drilled her in Qur'anic tajwid recitation and the classical Andalusian muwashshah repertoire — training with no embeddable recording of his own, since his legacy rests on composition and pedagogy rather than performance.