walking upstream…
Sheikh Salama Hijazi
Sheikh Salama Hijazi
Salama Hijazi was born in Alexandria in 1852 to a family attached to the city's Sufi circles; the Sheikh of its munshidin, Kamil al-Hariri, taught him inshad and nay before a Cairo teacher, Khalil Muharram, completed his training. He started as a reciter, not a singer, and it took theatre managers Sulayman al-Qurdahi and Iskandar Farah to draw him toward acting — shedding his caftan to play a lover onstage had no local precedent before 1884. He broke with Farah, founded his own troupe, and toured the Levant and the Maghrib until a stroke half-paralyzed him in 1909; he kept performing on a crutch. His 48 surviving Odeon discs, cut between 1905 and 1911, made him Egypt's first great recorded voice of musical theatre — though musicologist Frédéric Lagrange wonders if history mistook a singular experiment for a beginning, its messenger finding 'copycats instead of true disciples.'
the sound in question
1908
Al-mashriqan alayka yantahiban (elegy for Mustafa Kamil Pasha, words by Ahmad Shawqi)Sheikh Salama Hijazi
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Abdu al-Hamuli1870s–90s · Dawr / Muwashshah / Classical Arabic tarab
In January 1895 Abdu al-Hamuli, already Cairo's most fashionable voice, shared the Opera House stage with Abu Khalil al-Qabbani's touring troupe — the first time an Arab singer had stood on that stage at all. AMAR's institutional history credits that stunt with finally pushing Hijazi past his own hesitation about acting. He had already borrowed al-Hamuli's voice on the concert circuit: musicologist Frédéric Lagrange notes Hijazi chanted his qasidas 'following Abduh al-Hamuli's manner' and opened them, as al-Hamuli did, on the same formula, 'dulab al-awadhil.'
listen: upstream & heresource: AMAR Foundation — "Abdu al-Hamuli" (artist bio; the 1895 Opera House collaboration with Qabbani that pushed Hijazi toward theatre) ↗
No known recording — al-Hamuli died in 1901, before commercial Egyptian gramophone recording beganAbdu al-Hamuli
1905
Salamun ala husnin (from the operetta Shuhada' al-gharam, i.e. Romeo and Juliet)Sheikh Salama Hijazi
listen forNo al-Hamuli recording survives to set beside this one — commercial discs in Egypt only began after his 1901 death — so listen instead for the manner Lagrange says Hijazi lifted wholesale: 'Salamun ala husnin,' cut for Odeon in 1905, opens on the same fixed formula al-Hamuli used to launch his own qasidas, then lets the voice run long, heavily ornamented lines before dropping through the maqam shifts that were this generation's whole vocabulary of love song.
The Damascene theatre pioneer Abu Khalil al-Qabbani brought his touring company's melodies to Cairo in the 1880s, and Hijazi's reaction, by the account of actress Maryam Samat's memoirs, went past admiration: 'Qabbani composed new melodies of the utmost creativity,' she recalled, 'which led Sheikh Salama Hijazi to revere this experience by inviting some members of his troupe to join Qabbani's chorus, in order to memorize his melodies and how they were performed and notated.' Musicologist Frédéric Lagrange, working from Hijazi's own recordings, goes further: the theatrical 'melodies' Hijazi later composed and recorded were, he writes, 'undoubtedly copied ... from Abi Khalil al-Qabbani.'
listen: upstream & heresource: Al Jazeera Documentary — "Abu Khalil al-Qabbani ↗
No known recording — Qabbani died in 1902/1903, before commercial Egyptian recording reached his repertoireAbu Khalil al-Qabbani
listen forNeither side of this pairing is easy to hand a listener: Qabbani left no recordings at all, and the one disc of theatrical 'melodies' Lagrange traces directly to him — 'Lahn al-Qudah,' 'Lahn al-Mawt,' 'Lahn al-Hayat' — isn't preserved on video the way Hijazi's qasidas are. What is documented is the method itself: a chorus carrying a fixed communal refrain while the lead singer embroiders around it, muwashshah-style — the Damascene theatre's signature move, and the reason Hijazi sent his own troupe members across town to learn it firsthand.
Muhammad Uthman1870s–90s · Dawr / Muwashshah / Classical Arabic tarab
Frédéric Lagrange's account of Hijazi's 1880s takht years names two rivals in one breath: he 'enchanted listeners with Abduh al-Hamuli's and Muhammad Uthman's adwar.' Uthman, AMAR's own biography records, was 'along with Abdo al Hamuli, one of the two pillars' of the era's musical modernization — so distinctive a composer that al-Hamuli himself borrowed his melodies and reworked them to his own taste. Which specific Uthman adwar Hijazi absorbed isn't named, and no title in his surviving Odeon catalogue matches an Uthman composition outright.
listen: upstream & heresource: AMAR Foundation — "Muhammad Uthman (1855-1900)" (artist bio) ↗
No known recording — Uthman died in December 1900, before commercial Egyptian gramophone recording began (c. 1903–05)Muhammad Uthman
Qaduh el-mayyas zawwid wagdi (dawr)Sheikh Salama Hijazi
listen forNeither recording exists to test this directly: Uthman died in 1900, before Egyptian commercial discs began, and no title he composed survives on Hijazi's 48-disc Odeon catalogue. So the honest listen is generic, not a direct trace. Hijazi's own dawr 'Qaduh el-mayyas zawwid wagdi' shows the idiom both men worked in — a joyful, dancing performance built on close call-and-response with the chorus and pre-composed melodic turns the singer then ornaments freely: the shared vocabulary of the era's adwar repertoire, not a lifted phrase.