‘Uthmān al- Mawsilī

'Uthmān al-Mawsilī was an Iraqi vocal performer of religious and secular genres, as well as a composer, instrumentalist, poet and Sufi, active between Mosul and Baghdad in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire. Born in Mosul in 1854 and dying in Baghdad in 1923, he is regarded as the most representative figure of Iraqi music of that late period.

He came from a humble family and was blinded in early childhood. He was raised in Mosul by a nobleman who provided him with the best education available, and there he studied Arabic, the Qur'an and music. At the age of seventeen he moved to Baghdad to learn the Iraqi maqam with Shaltagh and with al-Karkuklī, and his many talents soon became evident.

He became a highly esteemed Qur'an reciter and served as personal reciter to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, undertaking occasional political missions. He recited in the great mosques of the Ottoman world and influenced a generation of reciters in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. He excelled above all at celebrations of the mawlid nabawi, where he sang Iraqi maqamat and religious muwashshahs, and in the Arab world he was regarded as the great master of the muwashshah. He successively belonged to three Sufi orders, within which he sang, and he played the qanun, the ney and the tabl, as well as accompanying secular song.

His legacy endures through his disciples, among them Abu Khalil al-Qabbani of Syria, and the Egyptians Kamil al-Khula'i and Sayyid Darwish.