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al-Hāfiz al-Marāg̲h̲ī , the greatest of the Persian writers on music. Born at Marāg̲h̲a, about the middle of the 8th/14th century, he had become one of the minstrels of al-Ḥusayn, the Ḏj̲alāʾirid Sultan of ʿIrāḳ, about 781/1379. Under the next Sultan, Aḥmad, he was appointed the chief court minstrel, a post which he held until Tīmūr captured Bag̲h̲dād in 795/1393, when he was transported to Samarḳand, the capital of the conqueror. In 801/1399 we find him at Tabrīz in the serv…

Ṣinid̲j̲ , pl. ṣunūd̲j̲ , the generic term for any kind of cymbal. Both al-D̲j̲awharī and al-D̲j̲awālīḳī say that the word is an Arabicised one. Lane thinks that it is derived from the Persian sand̲j̲ or sind̲j̲ and Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih (d. near the opening of the 10th century) avers that the Persians invented it (al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , viii, 90 = § 3214). However, the instrument was well known to the ancient Semites. We read of the ṣand̲j̲ in early Arabic literature. Al-Ḳuṭāmī refers to the ṣand̲j̲ al-d̲j̲inn and Ibn Muḥriz [ q.v.] was called the sannād̲j̲ al-ʿArab .…

(‘the fresh [voice]’) was the nickname given to Abū Zayd (? Yazīd) or Abū Marwān ʿAbd al-Mālik, a renowned singer of the Umayyad era. He was a half-breed of a Berber slave and a mawlā of the famous ʿAbalāt sisters of Mecca who were noted for their elegies. It was one of these—T̲h̲urayya, of whom ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa sang in praise—who placed al-G̲h̲arīḍ under the tutelage of the famous singer Ibn Surayd̲j̲ [ q.v.] but the former soon outshone his teacher as an elegiast ( nāʾiḥ ), so much so that the latter abandoned that career for that of an ordinary singer ( mug̲h̲annī ), alt…

, Naḳḳār-Ḵh̲āna , Naḳḳāra-Ḵh̲āna , Nawba-Ḵh̲āna , literally the “Drum House”, “Kettledrum House”, “Military Band House”, the name given in Islamic lands to the military band and its quarters in camp or town. These names are derived from the drums ( ṭabl, naḳḳāra) which formed the chief instruments of the military band, and from the name given to the special type of music ( nawba ) performed by this band. Originally, the naḳḳāra-k̲h̲āna or ṭabl-k̲h̲āna consisted of drums only, and in some instances of particular kinds of drums. This we know from s…

or Mūrṭus, a Greek author [?] of works on musical instruments that have only been preserved in Arabic. He appears to be identical with the Mīrisṭus mentioned by al-Ḏj̲āḥiẓ (d. 868), and these works must therefore have been known in Arabic at least as early as the second (ninth) century. According to the Fihrist (ca. 988), Mūrisṭus wrote two books on organ construction: 1. Kitāb fī ’l-Ālāt al-muṣawwitat al-musammāt bi ’l-Urg̲h̲anun al-būḳī wa ’l-Urg̲h̲anun al-zamrī; 2. Kitāb Āla muṣawwita tusmaʿu ʿalā sittīn Mīlan. On the other hand, Ibn al-Ḳifṭī (d. 1248) speaks of one book d…

, Urg̲h̲anūn, the artificially wind-blown musical instrument known as the organ. It also stood for a certain stringed instrument of the Greeks like the ὄργανον of Plato ( Republ., 399c); see Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ al-Ḏh̲ahab (viii. 91) where the urg̲h̲an is a stringed instrument, and the urg̲h̲anūn is an artificially wind-blown instrument. The word was used by the Persians, it would seem ( Burhān-i ḳāṭiʿ), to denote a species of vocal composition somewhat similar to the mediæval European organum. Of the artificially wind-fed musical instrument the Muslims were acquainted with…

or or as it was written in the West (al-Fārābī, Iḥsāʾ al-ʿUlūm; Schiaparelli, Vocabulista in Arabico = Latin musica) is the name given to the science of music. It is a post-classical word derived from the Greek μoυσιxή, and was already current at the time of Isḥāḳ al-Mawṣilī (d. 236 = 850) [q. v.]. In the Mafātīḥ al-ʿUlūm (ivth = xth century) mūsīḳī is one of the four mathematical sciences. Its author says: “As for mūsīḳī, its meaning is the [science of the] composing of melodies ( alḥān). It is a Greek word, and it is named the muṭrib. And the composer of the melodies is the mūsīḳūr or mūsīḳār (p. 236…

(Naḳḳār Ḵh̲āna, Naḳḳāra Ḵh̲āna, Nawba Ḵh̲āna),literally the “Drum House”, “Kettledrum House”, “Military Band House”, is the name given in Islāmic lands to the military band and its quarters in camp or town. These names are derived from the drums ( ṭabl, naḳḳāra) which formed the chief instruments of the military band, and from the name given to the special type of music ( nawba) performed by this band. Originally the naḳḳāra k̲h̲āna or ṭabl k̲h̲āna consisted of drums only, and in some instances of particular kinds of drums. This we know from several authorities. Ibn T…

, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Yūsuf b. Fāk̲h̲ir al-Urmawī al-Bag̲h̲dādī, was one of the best known Arabic writers on the theory of music. (In the Nas̲h̲ra bi-Asmāʾ Kutub al-Mūsīḳā ... Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīya, Cairo 1932, he is called ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Abi ’l-Mafāk̲h̲ir. There is no justification for preferring Faḳīr to Fāk̲h̲ir. See Collangettes, in J. A., Nov.-Dec. 1904, p. 383 and Sarton, Introd. to the Hist. of Science, 11/ii. 1034). Although his family came from Urmia, he himself appears to have been born and educated in Bag̲h̲dād. During the last year of the reign o…

b. G̲h̲aibī al-Ḥāfīhẓ al-Marāg̲h̲ī, the greatest of the Persian writers on the theory of music (Bouvat, J.A., 1926, calls him ʿAbd al-Ḳādir Gūyandī. The forms Ibn ʿĪsā, Ibn G̲h̲anī, Ibn G̲h̲ainī, Ibn ʿAini are all misreadings of Ibn G̲h̲aibī, as the autographs of the latter prove). He was born about the middle of the viiith (xivth) century at Marāg̲h̲a in Ād̲h̲arbāid̲j̲ān. In the late “seventies” of that century he was one of the “boon companions” of al-Ḥusain, the Ḏj̲alāʾirid Sulṭān (1374—1382) of al-ʿIrāḳ, who spent so much time with his minstrels ( J.A., 1845). Ibn G̲h̲aibī himself …

, the generic name for any instrument of the drum family. Islamic tradition attributes its “invention” to Tūbal b. Lamak (al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , viii, 88-9 = § 3213, and see lamak), whilst another piece of gossip says that Ismāʿīl, the founder of the mustaʿriba Arabs [ q.v.], was the first to sound it (Ewliyā Čelebi, Travels , i/2, 239). The word is connected with Aramaic tablā . According to al-Fayyūmī (733/1333-4), the term ṭabl was applied to a drum with a single membrane ( d̲j̲ild ) as well as to that with two membranes. This, however, does not include the duff or tambourine [ q.v.]. It is cer…

, a vase-shaped drum, the wider aperture being covered by a membrane, with the lower aperture open. The body is usually of painted or incised earthenware, but carved and inlaid wood, as well as engraved metal are also used. In performance it is carried under the arm horizontally and played with the fingers. The name has regional variants: darābukka (or ḍarābukka ), dirbakki and darbūka . Dozy and Brockelmann derive the word from the Syriac ardabkā , but the Persian dunbak is the more likely, although the lexicographers mistakenly dub the latter a bagpipe. The name darabukka …

Abū ʿUt̲h̲mān Saʿīd, the greatest musician of the Umaiyad period, was a negro mawlā of the Banū Ḏj̲umaḥ born at Mecca about the middle of the viith century and died there ca. 715. During the reign of Muʿāwiya I (661—680) his master, hearing him singing Arabic verses to Persian melodies, set him free. Ibn Misd̲j̲aḥ had picked up these tunes from the Persian builders who were at that time working in Mecca. Wishing to learn more of music he went to Syria (Rūm) and received instruction from barbiton players ( barbaṭīya; cf. Cairo ed. Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī, iii. 276) and theorists ( usṭūk̲h̲ūsīya). From…

(a.), pandore. The pandore may be generally distinguished from the lute by its smaller sound-chest and longer neck. We see it in ancient Egypt (Sachs, Die Musikinstrutnente des alten Ägyptens, p. 54), Assyria (Engel, Music of the most ancient nations, p. 54), and Persia (terracotta from Susa in the Louvre, Paris). In Egypt it appears to have been known as the nefer (cf. Lavignac, Encycl. de la musique, i. 27; Transact. Glasgow University Oriental Society, v. 26) which some scholars equate with the Hebrew nebel. The instrument exists with but little change in the gunībrī of North Africa, …

, Abū Walīd Mālik b. Abi ’l-Samḥ, was one of the great singers and composers of the Umaiyad and early ʿAbbāsid period. He was born during the reign of Muʿāwiya I (40—60 = 660—680) in the land of the Ṭaiʾ, his father belonging to the Banū T̲h̲uʿl, a branch of the Ṭaiʾ, whilst his mother came from the Banū Mak̲h̲zūm. In this way Mālik could claim to be one of the aristocracy of Islām, and as a child he was adopted by ʿAbdallāh b. Ḏj̲aʿfar, the famous art patron of Madīna, and was given a good educ…

, Kīt̲h̲āra, guitar. These are instruments with a flat sound-chest like the modern Spanish guitar. That this type was known to the ¶ Arabs of the viiith century is proved by the frescoes at Ḳuṣair ʿAmra ( Ḳuṣejr ʿAmra, Vienna 1907, pl. xxxiv.). We see an instrument with a somewhat similar sound-chest, but with a longer neck in Persian art (Martin, Miniature Painting ana Painters of Persia, India and Turkey, pl. 715). Ibn G̲h̲aibī (d. 1435) mentions an instrument called the or (cf. the tuntuni of India; Day, Music and musical Instruments of Southern India …., p. 130). Its sound-chest was …

, Miʿzafa (a., plur. Maʿāzif). Among the various classes of musical instruments dealt with by Arabic, Persian and Turkish writers on music is one which embraces those with “open strings” ( awtār muṭlaḳa) such as the lyre or cithara, harp, psaltery and dulcimer. Among them are instruments grouped as maʿāzif. Nowadays, this term refers to all stringed and wind instruments ( M. F. O. B., vi. 28) but in the Middle Ages it had a more restricted meaning and stood for “instruments of open strings”. Al-Ḏj̲awharī (d. ca. 1003) and al-Ṣag̲h̲ānī (d. 1261) define them a…

Mīk̲h̲āʾīl b. Ḏj̲ird̲j̲īs al-Lubnānī, the most important modern Arabic writer on the theory of music, was born in 1800 at Rok̲h̲maya,Lebanon. His family removed later (after 1807) to Dair al-Ḳamar, the residence of the famous Amīr Bas̲h̲īr S̲h̲īhāb [q. v.] who was favourably disposed towards the elder Mus̲h̲āḳa. In 1819, the Amīr, having given offence to the Sublime Porte, was compelled to take refuge in ¶ Egypt, and the following year Mīk̲h̲aʾil Mus̲h̲āḳa also found it necessary, on account of the “subsequent disturbances”, to leave for Damascus. In this tow…

, Abū ʿAbbād Maʿbad b. Wahb, was one of the great singers and composers of the early Umaiyad period. He belonged to Madīna and was a client of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḳaṭan (cf. Ag̲h̲ānī, i. 19) of the house of Wābiṣa of the Banū Mak̲h̲zūm. He was a half-caste, his father being a negro. In his youth he was an accountant, but having taken music lessons from Sāʾib Ḵh̲āt̲h̲ir, Nas̲h̲īṭ al-Fārisī and Ḏj̲amīla [q. v.] he adopted music as a profession and soon made a name for himself. During the reign of ʿAbd al-Malik (65—86 = 685—705) he …

, the generic name in Arabic for the viol, or any stringed instrument played with a bow ( ḳaws). The origin of the name has been variously explained : a. from the Hebrew lābab (l land r being interchangeable) ; b. from the Persian rubāb (), which was played with the fingers or plectrum; and c. from the Arabic rabba (to collect, arrange, assemble together). The first derivation is scarcely feasible. The second has a raison d’être, although the mere similarity in name must not be accepted without question. In spite of the oft repeated statement that the Arabs admit that they borrowed the rabāb from …