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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The interminable debate between Muslim legists concerning the propriety of “audition (al-samā')”, or more properly “musical audition”, is probably the most interesting of Arabic polemical literature. The subject of the dispute has been dealt with by several writers, and translations from three celebrated Arabic disputants, Ibn Abi'l-Dunyā (d. 894), Al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), and his brother Majd al-Dīn (d. 1126), as well as a Persian author Al-Hujwīrī (d. c. 1072) and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (d. 1204), have been published in English.
page 22 note 1 See the list of works on “audition” in Farmer's, H. G.Sources of Arabian Music: An Annotated Bibliography, pp. 92–3Google Scholar.
page 22 note 2 See D. B. Macdonald's translation of the section on “audition” from Al-Ghazālī's Iḥyā 'ulūm al-dīn in an article entitled “Emotional Religion in Islām” (JRAS., 1901–2); Farmer's, H. G.A History of Arabian Music (1929), pp. 20–38Google Scholar, and his article “Maimonides on Listening to Music” (JRAS., 1933); Robson's, J.Tracts on Listening to Music (1938)Google Scholar; and the Kashf al-mdḥjūb by Al-Hujwīrī, translated by R. A. Nicholson (1911).
page 23 note 1 Al-Maa'ūdī, , Les prairies d'or viii, 103Google Scholar.
page 23 note 2 Al-Fihrist, p. 149.
page 23 note 3 The text used is that of the Cairo edition, a.h. 1305. The chapter on audition, etc., occurs in vol. iii, pp. 176 et seq. The section on the “Origin of Singing and its Source” has been transposed from after the section on “The Disagreement of People about Singing” to before the section on “The Beautiful Voice”.
page 23 note 4 The original title was Al-'iqd, the words al-farīd being added later.
page 23 note 6 Al-Ibshīhī, , Al-mustatraf (Cairo, a.h. 1314), ii, 129Google Scholar.
page 23 note 6 Al-Fīrūzābādī, Al-qāmūs, s.v.
page 24 note 1 The extracts are from Abū Nuwas, Di'bil, Al-Ḥamdūnī, 'Ukāsha ibn al-Ḥaṣīn, Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi himself and a certain Kitāb fi'l-'ūd (“Book Concerning the Lute”).
page 24 note 2 A nephew of Caliph 'Alī and a distinguished amateur.
page 24 note 3 The two latter were famous singing-girls.
page 25 note 1 Cf. Al-Mas'ūdi, op. cit., viii, 93, and the explanation of the divergence in Farmer, , History of Arabian Music, p. 50Google Scholar.
page 25 note 2 The naṣb was a more artistic form of the ḥudā' (caravan-song).
page 25 note 3 Al-Ibshīhī, op. cit., ii, 134, has fityān (youths) instead of qaināt. See Robson, and Farmer, , Ancient Arabian Musical Instruments, p. 19Google Scholar.
page 25 note 4 For another version see Robson and Farmer, loc. cit.
page 25 note 5 Al-Ibshīhī, loc. cit., adds Fadak after Khaibar.
page 26 note 1 See Al-Mas'ūdī, op. cit., viii, p. 88, for missing genealogy.
page 26 note 2 Cf. Al-Mas'ūdī, loc. cit., and Robson and Farmer, p. 19.
page 26 note 3 See Bibl. Geog. Arab., viii, 129, where it is said that since Ptolemy does not mention the lute in his Kitāb al-mūsīqī, it must have been unknown to the Greeks.
page 26 note 4 That Ptolemy's Harmonics was known in Arabic is highly probable See Farmer, , Sources of Arabian Music, p. 26Google Scholar.
page 26 note 5 Cf. the verse in Al-Ibshīhī, ii, 134.
page 26 note 6 That the mizhar was probably a tambourine see Farmer, , Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, ii, 29Google Scholar; Ency. of Islām, iv, 985, Suppl., p. 74. Robson and Farmer, op. cit., p. 11.
page 26 note 7 Cf. Al-Ibshīhī, loc. cit., where these two musicians are merged into one as Al-Dālāl Naubat al-Ḍuḥā.
page 26 note 8 The text has Abū 'Abd 'al-Na'hn, and so has Al-Ibshīhī. Guidi, Tables alphabétiques du Kitāb al-aghānī, has Abū 'Abd al-Muna' 'am.
page 27 note 1 Sūra, xxxv, 1.
page 27 note 2 Two of the commentators who held this view were Ibn al-'Abbās (d. 687–8) and Al-Zuhrī (d. 742).
page 27 note 3 The reference may be to a psalm (mazmūr) rather than to a reed-pipe (mizmār) as I have suggested elsewhere. Ency. of Islām, iii, 540.
page 27 note 4 Cf. text and see Lisan al-'arab, x, 288.
page 28 note 1 Hence the term tarjī' is used for the refrain of a song.
page 28 note 2 Cf. the passage in Al-Ghazālī, op. cit., ii, 200, and JRAS. (1901), p. 721.
page 28 note 3 The “head voice” has always appealed to the Arabs.
page 30 note 1 Lit. “his liver”.