Searching for Othman Al-Mawsily's Original Recordings

After a long search for about five months, we've learned that Al-Jalili family in Mosul used to own some of the original recordings of author, composer and singer Othman Al-Mawsily.  Through this search, we came across on-line information about Al-Jalili family since the 1880s, which included Dr Ismael Al-Jalili (in the UK) whose uncle, Siddique Al-Jalili had a small sample of Othman's music in his library collection, which he divided between close friends in Mosul before his death. Unfortunately, we learned that Ismael Al-Jalili had passed away in September 2019.  Do you know if those friends still have the recordings?  Are there other people inside or outside Iraq who have Othman's original recordings? How can we reach them?

For fun and in celebration of the holiday season, we've chosen many videos from around the world of songs in various languages that have copied the melodies of Othman Al-Mawsily, which were originally for religious (Muwashahaat) songs. If you are Iraqis or Arabs who value accuracy and your heritage, you would want to participate in alerting people worldwide through youtube comments, emails and social media postings about Al-Mawsily's achievements and the errors made about who composed what.

The original name of the muwashshah (song) composed by Othman Al-Mawsily was 'lughatul arabi ithkureena' which means "Language of the Arabs, remember us"  After that, many people around the world began singing this melody in different languages, including the Arabic song, 'yaa'athooli latelumni' or "O' my beloved, don't blame me"  Here are videos of songs from around the world using the same melody by Othman:

The Iraqi Yousif Omar performs in Arabic 'lughatul arabi ithkureena' 

The Syrian Hilda Hrekes sings in Arabic and Serbian languages 'ruse - ghazali'

The Serbian Vasilija Radojcic sings in Serbian 'ruse kose'

The Iraqi Abdul Wahab Al-Abbasi performs in Arabic 'ya'athooli latelumni'

Turkish Group performs in Turkish 'uskudara gideriken'

The Malaysian Noraniza Idris sings in Malay 'alangkah indah di waku pagi'

Pakistani Zoe and Turkish Sumru perform in Turkish and Urdu ' Ishq - uskudara'

The American Eartha Kitt sings in English and Turkish 'uskudara gideriken'

Singers from around Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and India sang with this melody to the point that Adela Peeva (a European woman) directed a documentary film about the origin of this song, and you can find short clips of the film in this video, where we added two comments under it and we encourage everyone who is at home due to the Coronavirus pandemic to post comments under the above videos, with many thanks.

This is an article by Zaid Khaldoon Jameel on the life and contributions of Othman Al-Mawsily  in Arabic and English.

As for the other famous song that Fairouz sang, 'zorooni kulli sena marra' or "Visit Me Once Every Year," it was also composed by Othman Al-Mawsily, not the Egyptian Sayyed Darwish.

We thank the personnel of the Institute of African and Asian Studies (IAAS) for posting two comments in English under the tweet of "Meem Magazine" and bringing attention to the error while correcting it in this tweet. We hope that you will join our efforts in promoting the accomplishments of the great composer and writer Othman Al-Mawsily, with many thanks.