(b Iraq; d Córdoba, Spain, Aug 852). Arab musician. A mawlā (‘freedman’) of Caliph al-Mahdī (775–85) at Baghdad, he was a pupil of Ibrāhīm al-Mawsilī and a rival of Ishāq al-Mawsilī at the court of Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809). He left Baghdad for Syria, served the Aghlabid ruler Ziyādat Allāh (817–38) in Qairawan (Tunisia), and later received a generous welcome from ‘Abd al-Rahmān II (822–52) in Córdoba. His influence there as a court musician and companion (nadīm) must have been exceptional: customs in clothing and eating that he had brought from Baghdad became fashionable, and the tradition of his school of music was maintained by his descendants at least two generations after his death. Like his contemporary al-Kindī he seems to have known the musical theory of late antiquity and to have reconciled it with the teachings of his masters in Baghdad. Details of his vocal training techniques are described by Ibn Hayyān (d 1076) in his Kitāb al-muqtabis (‘Enlightening book’) cited by al-Maqqarī (d 1632) in his Nafh al-tīb, a history of Muslim Spain. Like some of his colleagues in Baghdad he is said to have introduced a fifth string on the lute, to have replaced the wooden plectrum with a plectrum made from an eagle’s wing feather and to have improved the resonance and purity of tone of the lute. The first steps in the development of the later four-movement nawba (nūba) are perceptible in his performing practice as described by Ibn Hayyān. A collection of his song texts was made by Aslam ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, the brother of one of his sons-in-law.
EI2
J. Ribera: La música de las cantigas (Madrid, 1922; Eng. trans., 1929/R as Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain), 100–07
H.G. Farmer: Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence (London, 1930/R), 28, 241, 308
H.G. Farmer: ‘The Minstrels of the Golden Age of Islam’, Islamic Culture, xviii (1944), 56
R. d’Erlanger: La musique arabe, v (Paris, 1949), 388ff
K. al-Wahhābī: Marāji‘ tarājim al-udabā’ al-‘arab [Source materials for the biographies of Arabian littérateurs], iii (Nejef, 1958), 128–9
E. Neubauer: ‘Der Bau der Laute und ihre Besaitung nach arabischen, persischen und türkischen Quellen’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, viii (Frankfurt, 1994), 279–378
ECKHARD NEUBAUER