Arab family of musicians of Persian origin.
(1) Ibrāhīm al-Mawsilī [al-Nadīm]
ECKHARD NEUBAUER
(b Kufa, 742; d Baghdad, 804). Arab musician of Persian origin. As his musical leanings did not meet with his family’s approval, he joined a group of vagabonds and travelling minstrels. He reached Mosul (whence his name al-Mawsilī originates) and later went to Rayy (now part of Tehran), where he took lessons in Arab and Persian music. He became a musician and companion (nadīm) at the caliph’s court in Baghdad under al-Mahdī (775–85), al-Hādī (785–6) and Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809). For Hārūn, with whom he formed a personal friendship, he compiled with Ibn Jāmi‘ and another colleague the Al-mi’at al-sawt al-mukhtāra (‘The 100 selected songs’), which was the foundation for the Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr (‘Great book of songs’) of al-Isfahānī. As an upholder of the classical tradition in Arab music of the Hijaz region, he followed a different stylistic path from the innovator Ibn Jāmi‘. In his luxurious house he ran a music school with room for over 80 female students (jawārī) at a time. Among his pupils were such well-known musicians as his son Ishāq al-Mawsilī, Mukhāriq, Zalzal, ‘Allūyah and others. He is said to have composed 900 vocal pieces (sawt), and the Jāmi‘ aghānīhi (‘Collection of his songs’) was still known in the 10th century. He was immortalized in several stories in the 1001 Nights.
EI2
H.G. Farmer: ‘The Minstrels of the Golden Age of Islam: Stories of the [‘Abbasid] Musicians’, Islamic Culture, xviii (1944), 53–61
G.D. Sawa: Music Performance Practice in the Early ‘Abbāsid Era 132–320 AH/750–932 AD (Toronto, 1989)
(b ?Arrajan, 767; d Baghdad, March 850). Arab musician of Persian origin, son of (1) Ibrāhīm al-Mawsilī. He had an excellent education in all the Islamic sciences and received instruction in music from, among others, his father and the lutenist Zalzal. He was a court musician and companion (nadīm) under every caliph from Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809) to al-Mutawakkil (847–61). As an upholder of the classical Arab music style, he stood in opposition to the innovator Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī and his followers. His Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr (‘Great book of songs’), the most extensive of almost 40 books that he wrote on music, was the main source for the book of the same name by al-Isfahānī (who included an exhaustive biography of Ishāq al-Mawsilī and details of his style of composition). Excerpts from his monographs on male and female singers and some quotations on musical theory are transmitted through the works of later writers on music. Without any knowledge of classical Greek theory of music, Ishāq al-Mawsilī provided Arab music with a theoretical system based on local traditions, the terminology of which was explained by Yahyā ibn ‘Alī al-Munajjim and by al-Isfahānī. At the beginning of the 12th century, musical metres corresponding to his terminology and definitions were still used in Muslim Spain, and even as late as the 14th century Ibn Kurr (d 1358) was said to have defended his teachings against ‘representatives of Greek musical theory’.
EI2 (J.W. Fück)
M.A. al-Hifnī: Ishāq al-Mawsilī al-mūsīqār al-nadīm [Ishāq al-Mawsilī the musician and companion] (Cairo, n.d.)
J.E. Bencheikh: ‘Les musiciens et la poésie: les écoles d’Ishāq al-Mawsilī (m.235H.) et d’Ibrāhīm Ibn al-Mahdī (m.224H.)’, Arabica, xxii (1975), 114–52
G.D. Sawa: Music Performance Practice in the Early ‘Abbāsid Era 132–320 AH/750–932 AD (Toronto, 1989)
E. Neubauer: ‘Al-Halīl ibn Ahmad und die Frühgeschichte der arabischen Lehre von den “Tönen” und den musikalischen Metren’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, x (Frankfurt, 1995–6), 255–323 [incl. trans. of Ibn al-Munajjim’s text]