Umm Kulthum even attended Rawheya's daughter's wedding, although she ordinarily preferred not to appear in public (offstage).ĭuring her early career years, she faced staunch competition from two prominent singers: Mounira El Mahdeya and Fathiyya Ahmad, who had similar voices. She developed a close relationship with Rawheya Al-Mahdi, Amin's daughter, and became her closest friend. She was invited on several occasions to the home of Amin Beh Al Mahdy, who taught her to play the oud, a type of lute. Although she made several visits to Cairo in the early 1920s, she waited until 1923 before permanently moving there. A few years later, she met the famous composer and oudist Zakariyya Ahmad, who invited her to Cairo.
At the age of 16, she was noticed by Mohamed Abo Al-Ela, a modestly famous singer, who taught her the old classical Arabic repertoire.
On stage, she wore a boy's cloak and bedouin head covering in order to alleviate her father's anxiety about her reputation and public performance. When she was 12 years old, having noticed her strength in singing, her father asked her to join the family ensemble, upon which she joined as a supporting voice, at the beginning just repeating what the others sang. Her grandfather was also a well known reader of the Quran and she remembered how the villagers used to listen to him when he recited the Qu'ran. Through her father, she learned to recite the Qur'an, and she reportedly memorized the entire book. From a young age, she showed exceptional singing talent. She learned how to sing by listening to her father teach her older brother, Khalid. Umm Kulthum was born in the village of Tamay e-Zahayra, belonging to the city of Senbellawein, Dakahlia Governorate, in the Nile Delta to a family with a religious background as her father Ibrahim El-Sayyid El-Beltagi was an imam from the Egyptian countryside, her mother was Fatmah El-Maleegi, a housewife. Umm Kulthum as a toddler, with her father Ibrahim El Beltagi
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