Professor Hassanein has a crazy sense of humor in class. Today he made us laugh when he told us his blind Shaikh at Al-Azhar ate like an animal but recited the Quran like a song bird.
-Letter Home, October 14, 1978
I knew all about song birds reciting the Quran. During Ramadan they erected Tajwīd, Quranic Recitation, tents in the streets and I heard the famous Abdul Bāsit Abdul Samad recite in Tartīl, Singsong style, a word that comes from the same triliteral root that gives the nouns Ratl, Railroad Train, and Rutailā’, Daddy Long Legs. I still have the tape I bought that night from his Merch table and can still hear him tooting and skittering through the Quran.