الشيخ أحمد التونيSheikh Ahmad al-Tuni

Life

• Born 1932, al-Hawatka, Manfalut district, Asyut Governorate, Egypt^[1,2]
• Died 17 March 2014^[1,2]
• From the village of al-Hawatka in the Manfalut district of Asyut, Upper Egypt.^[1,2]

Career

• Known as «ساقي الأرواح» (the cupbearer of souls) and «سلطان المنشدين» (the sultan of the munshids); counted among the greatest munshids of Upper Egypt.^[1]
• Took Sufi singing out of its local setting to the world, invited to many spiritual-music festivals; sang in Paris and across Europe, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, North Africa and Syria.^[1]
• Sang for hours at the mawlids of al-Sayyid al-Badawi, al-Sayyid al-Husayn and al-Sayyida Zaynab, improvising from the poems he knew by heart, never repeating them on two consecutive nights.^[1]
• His recitals centre on the words rather than the melodies, which are a background; he improvises on poems by Abu al-Azayim, Ibn al-Farid and al-Hallaj, moving between maqams.^[1]
• In 1998 Tony Gatlif's film Vengo opens with his meeting with the flamenco guitarist Tomatito.^[2]
• In 1999 he was invited to France for the first time, to the Théâtre de la Ville, and recorded «The Sultan of All Munshidin» (2000).^[2]

Singers and composers

• His ensemble: Hassan Muhammad Ali (violin), Mustafa Abd al-Rahman (nay), his son Muhammad (percussion) and his younger son Mahmoud (munshid). The French article gives percussion, nay and oud.^[1,2]
• Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami is counted among his best-known students.^[1]

Where the sources disagree

• The Arabic article gives his ensemble's instruments as riqq, nay and violin; the French article as percussion, nay and oud.^[1,2]
• The Egyptian-Arabic Wikipedia gives his birth as 1 January 1932; the Arabic and French articles give only 1932.^[1,2,3]

Sources

1. أحمد التوني — ويكيبيديا العربية
2. Cheikh Ahmad Al-Tûni — Wikipédia (français)
3. احمد التونى — ويكيبيديا المصرية