(d Baghdad, 1294). Theorist, performer and composer, possibly of Azeri origin. He was a prominent court musician under the last Abbasid caliph, al-Musta‘sim (1242–58), although he first attracted attention for his skill as a calligrapher. Surviving the sack of Baghdad in 1258, he entered the service of the Mongol Il-Khans and became attached to the powerful Juwaynī family, but after their fall (1286) he lost favour, and died imprisoned for debt.
Safī al-Dīn is one of the most important figures in the history of music theory in the Islamic Middle East, and the first great theorist since Ibn Sīnā (980–1037) and Ibn Zayla (d 1048) whose works are extant. His two treatises on music, the Kitāb al-adwār (‘Book of cycles’) and the later and fuller Risāla al-sharafiyya (‘The Sharafian treatise’), present a synthesis of elements found in the earlier theoretical tradition which dominated the thinking of all the more important theorists of the following two centuries.
His most significant and influential contribution was a scale system derived from a tetrachord division given by al-Fārābī as a fretting on the tunbūr khurāsānī (long-necked lute). This scale system integrated the ‘irrational’ neutral intervals found in practice (and previously defined empirically on the lute) within a rigidly symmetrical extension of the Pythagorean scale, thereby enabling them to be approximated to just-intonation intervals. It divided the octave into 17 intervals: the octave into two tetrachords and a whole tone (above); the tetrachords into two whole tones and a limma (above); and the whole tones into two limmas and a comma (above). This constitutes essentially an elegant solution to an analytical problem, and its relationship to the intervallic intonational norms found in practice is in some respects oblique. Nevertheless, the use Safī al-Dīn made of it to provide information about the intervallic outlines of the most important modes is of inestimable value. His account is much fuller than that of Ibn Sīnā, and affords the earliest opportunity to examine the modal system (or at least the scale structures) of Islamic art music in any detail. He supplied a complete list of the two main sets of modes – the 12 shudūd and the six āwāzāt – and noted two further modes derived from two of the shudūd. Wherever possible they are presented in terms of a standard octave scale structure, occasional distortions notwithstanding.
Safī al-Dīn ignored some of the general topics dealt with by both earlier and later theorists, and his range is thus rather narrow. He said nothing about form, for example, and despite being credited with the invention of the nuzha (a rectangular psaltery; fig.a) and the mughnī (a kind of archlute; fig.b) he failed to include any discussion of instruments. The omission is obviously deliberate since he deleted from the Kitāb al-adwār a section on the tuning of the qānūn (psaltery) and jank (harp) which had been included in an early draft. Such material was evidently tangential to his primary theoretical concerns.
Safī al-Dīn’s instructive, if all too brief, examples of notation afford some slight insight into features of melodic articulation. However, they are designed less to record representative compositions than to exemplify the technique of notation. His system uses letters (in a sequence which allots them numerical values) for pitch and numerals for duration, and thus also gives some indication of rhythmic structure. His conceptualization of mode, with lines joining the notes in a consonant relationship, is shown in the illustration.
His general treatment of rhythm, while perhaps not as original as his treatment of scale, is also innovative, and was to prove equally influential. He used the syllabic definitions derived from earlier theoretical analyses (and ultimately from prosody) to describe the dimensions and internal accentual patterns of the various rhythmic cycles in common use. In addition to this, he introduced a visual display of this information in the form of circles.
Safī al-Dīn was also highly regarded as a composer. One of his songs was notated by the encyclopedist Qutb al-Dīn (for part of the original notation and a transcription see Arab music, §I, 4(i)(ii), ex.7). His compositions, many in the cyclical nawba form, were widely disseminated by his pupils. His enduring fame is attested by the number of compositions attributed to him in surviving song text collections of the 15th and 16th centuries. For further discussion of Safī al-Dīn in historical context see Arab music, §I, 4(i)(ii); Iran, §II,1.
Kitāb al-adwār [Book of cycles], ed. al-Rajab (Baghdad, 1980); ed. Khashaba and al-Hifnī (Cairo, 1986); facsimile in Publications of the Institute for the History of Arab-Islamic Science, series C, xxix (Frankfurt, 1986); trans. in R. D’Erlanger, La musique arabe, iii (Paris, 1938), 185–565
Risāla al-sharafiyya [The Sharafian treatise], ed. al-Rajab (Baghdad, 1982); facsimile in Publications of the Institute for the History of Arabic Islamic Science, series C, xxix (Frankfurt, 1986); trans. in D’Erlanger, La musique arabe, iii (Paris, 1938), 3–182
EI1 (‘Mūsīkī; [H.G. Farmer])
EI2 (Neubauer)
E. Neubauer: ‘Musik zur Mongolenzeit in Iran und den angrenzenden Ländern’, Der Islam, xlv (1969), 233–60
L. Manik: ‘Zwei Fassungen einer von Safī al-Dīn notierten Melodie’, Beiträge zur Musik des Vorderen Orients und seinen Einflussbereichen: Kurt Reinhard zum 60. Gerburtstag, ed. A. Simon, Baessler-Archiv, new ser., xxiii/1 (Berlin, 1975), 145–51
B. Reinert: ‘Das Problem des pythagoräischen Kommas in der arabischen Musiktheorie’, Asiatische Studien, xxxiii (1979), 199–217
OWEN WRIGHT