(b Baghdad, 856; d Baghdad, 912). Arab courtier, poet and writer on music. He was a member of an intellectually distinguished family closely associated with the Abbasid court. His father, ‘Alī ibn Yahyā al-Munajjim (d 888), had been a pupil of Ishāq al-Mawsilī, the most celebrated musician of his day, and had written a book about him. The one extant musical treatise by al-Munajjim is of considerable interest; unlike other theoretical works of the 9th and early 10th centuries, it does not attempt to expound Greek ideas but outlines certain basic features of the modal system in terms of the indigenous theory as elaborated by Ishāq al-Mawsilī. It is a vital source for any study of the modal structure of Arab art music from the 7th to 9th centuries, despite its brevity and, especially, incompleteness, qualities that have also permitted, if not encouraged, a considerable variety of interpretations.
Risāla fī al-mūsīqī [Treatise on music] (MS, GB-Lbl Oriental 2361); ed. M. Bahjah: in Majallat al-Majma‘ al-‘ilmī al-irāqī, i/1 (1955), 113–24; ed. Z. Yūsuf (Cairo, 1964)
H.G. Farmer: ‘The Song Captions in the Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr’, Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society, xv (1955), 1–10
Y. Shawqī: Risālat Ibn al-Munajjim fī al-mūsīqā (Cairo, 1976)
E. Neubauer: ‘Die acht “Wege” der Musiklehre und der Oktoechos’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, ix (1994), 373–414
OWEN WRIGHT