Nouri Iskandar

Nouri Iskandar was an Assyrian Syrian musicologist and composer, who was known for his work in Assyrian-Syriac sacral and folk music. He was born in Deir al-Zur to an Assyrian family originally from Urfa in modern-day Turkey. His family moved to Aleppo in 1941, where he joined the local Syriac Orthodox scout band and took his first music lessons. He studied at the higher institute of music at the University of Cairo between 1959 and 1964 and graduated with a B.A degree in music. He started composing Assyrian folk music in the early 1970s and produced popular songs like "O habibo habibo", "Zliqe frisi", "Lo tehfokh" and others. He also presented a number of operettas in Syriac and Arabic, the most notable of them being "Furqono". He participated in the first modern festival of Assyrian music in Beirut in 1973, where he collaborated with the Lebanese musician Wadi al-Safi. He was the director of the Music Conservatory of Aleppo until he moved to Örebro, Sweden. He passed away on December 25th, 2023. He was an extraordinarily gifted musician and composer who contributed to the preservation and development of the Assyrian-Syriac musical heritage.