Majdi al-‘Aqili

Birth date: 1917-01-01

Birth place: Aleppo

Image asset ID: 4OC9chqjhY9wFinilPZGVo

Majdi al-’Aqili is celebrated as one of Aleppo’s most renowned composers. His passion for music blossomed during his secondary school years, where he studied the oud under Bakri Kurdi and delved into traditional music with Ali Darwish and Omar al-Batsh, despite facing objections from his father. His musical journey in the 1930s was both diverse and innovative. In 1935, he invented the gankaran, a seven-stringed instrument similar to the oud that could also be bowed. The following year, he traveled to Italy to study Western classical music theory, returning to Aleppo in 1939 to begin his teaching career in local schools.