Shaykh Ali Jaber, the famous Imam of the Haram who shot to fame in the late 80’s with his beautiful and unparalleled style of recitation, passed away recently.
Some of my fondest memories of growing up are praying the Salat al-Tarawih behind him in Makkah as a teenager. Also I am very honored not only to have met him, but to share the same Quran teacher as him - both my ijazah in the recitation of Asim and his is through Sh. Bashir Ahmad (who still listens to students in the Masjid al-Nabawi in Madinah).
I’ll never forget one day, as I sat in line waiting for my turn to recite to Sh. Bashir, someone rather large came (Sh. Jaber was of a very large body), and Sh. Bashir jumped up, walked to greet him, kissed his forehead, and sat him down next to him (the Shaykh had never done this for anyone else - rather people would do it to him!) It has been a while since I had seen Sh. Jaber, and so I didn’t recognize him, and asked the student sitting next to me, ‘Who is this guy?’ He just looked at me in amazement and said, ‘Don’t you know? Its Imam Ali Jaber of the Haram’. I said, ‘What’s he doing here?’ This amazed my fellow student even more, and said, ‘Don’t you know that Sh. Bashir is his first Quran teacher, and that he has ijaazah from him?’ Well, no I didn’t, but I found out that day.
May Allah have mercy on Sh. Jaber - a Qari who recited the Quran while making it sound so full of honor and izzah…a truly unique voice.
Allah yarhamhu…Ameen!!
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