{[Music in Islam]}[11th April 1991]

[Redbook9:75][19910411:0935l]{[Music in Islam]}[11th April 1991]

19910411.0935

[continued]

*‘Instrumental music was forbidden by the orthodox in the formative stages of Islam. As for vocal music, its place was largely taken by a sophisticated and artistic form of the recitation of the Qu’rān known as tajwīd. Nevertheless, the Muslim princely courts generously patronised and cultivated music. Arab music was influenced by Persian and Greek music. Al-Fārābī, a 10th-century philosopher, is credited with having constructed a musical instrument called the arghanum (organ). In India, Amīr Khosrow, a fourteenth-century poet and mystic, produced a synthesis of Indian and Persian music and influenced the development of later Indian music.

‘Among the religious circles, the Sūfīs introduced both vocal and instrumental music as part of their spiritual practices. The samā, as this music was called, was opposed by the orthodox at the beginning, but the Sūfīs persisted in this practice, which slowly won recognition. The great Sūfī poet Jalālad-Dīn ar-Rūmī (died 1273[ce])** – revered equally by the orthodox and the Sūfīs – heard the divine voice in his stringed musical instrument when he said “Its head, its veins (strings) and it skin are all dry and dried; whence comes to me the voice of the Friend?”’

***

*{cf [[Redbook9:117-121][19910415:0840#]{[Islamic] Music}[15th April 1991],] 117ff}

**{2048J~1280CE}

***– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 38

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