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A Maghribī Work on Musical Instruments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
A frequently quoted authority on the musical instruments of the Arabs of Spain is a certain Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shalāḥī, to whom is ascribed a book entitled the Kitāb al-imtā' wa'l-intifā' fī mas'alat samā' al-samā' … (“The Book of Joy and Profit on the Question of Listening to Music…”), the unique copy of which is preserved in the Biblioteca National in Madrid. Unfortunately, so far as the present writer is aware, there does not appear to be a solitary instance of the original having been consulted by the several musicographers who have referred to this work. In almost every case the immediate or ultimate source of information has been Casiri's catalogue of the Escorial Library, which was once the home of this manuscript. A closer sanitation of this manuscript is long overdue and one day we hope to have a translation made for inclusion in our Collection of Oriental Writers on Music. Meanwhile, it appears urgent that a short notice of the work should be given for the following reasons: (1) Musicographers have erroneous impressions of the nature of this treatise; (2) the date and authorship require consideration; (3) the author's or copyist's name has appeared in so many different forms in European languages that this one individual is being registered under various names as different persons; (4) writers continue to depend on Casiri, whose list of musical instruments is somewhat faulty.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1935
References
page 339 note 1 For this name vide infra.
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page 339 note 3 No. Dciii.
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page 340 note 1 
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page 340 note 5 There are two fifteenth century works from the Maghrib, both in manuscript, that deserve mention: (1) A treatise, without title, by Sulaimān ibn Muhammad ibn 'Abdallāh, in the Madrid Library (No. ccxvii, 8), and (2) a Kitāb farah al-asmā' birukhs al-samā', by Abū Mawāhib Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tūnisī, in the Berlin Library (No. 5514).
page 341 note 1 “Abu Jacobo Joseph ex Almorathorum natione, Hispaniae tunc Regi, exeunte Egirae anno 618, dedicavit.” Yet in a note on the MS. itself Casiri says that the work was written in 701 (= 1301).
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page 342 note 1 He has placed three dots over the “a” following the “s”, which possibly means that the “s” is “sh”.
page 342 note 2 Cf. the Persian Silāhdār which has the same meaning.
page 342 note 3 On the MS. Casiri has written: “Author Magis Juridicus, ac Moralis est, guam Musicus.”
page 342 note 4 i, 387.
page 343 note 1 Vols. xxxiii, 31; xliv, 27.
page 343 note 2 Lavignac, op. oit., v, 2680, 2743.
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