(d c1453). Persian scholar. Educated in Samarkand, he later moved to Anatolia, settling in Kastamonu. His output consists largely of commentaries on religious and scientific works, but also includes a treatise on music theory, the Majalla fī 'l-mūsīqī (‘Codex on music’). It survives in two forms, the second much enlarged by quotations from the Timurid theorist ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāghī, whose work was presumably unknown or unavailable to him when the first version was written. The Majalla lies squarely within the Systematist theoretical tradition (see Arab music, §I, 4(i)). It is indebted in particular to Safī al-Dīn al-Urmawī, although it adds to his definitions of the intervals of the gamut, based on a circle of 5ths, a more recent method which proceeds by dividing a string into 256 parts, the first fret being set at 243, thus yielding a limma. In addition to intervals, it covers the standard topics of modal and rhythmic structure, to which the enlarged version adds form, and it points out incidentally one or two regional differences of terminology. It is alone among theoretical works in that it explicitly eschews any treatment of instruments on religious grounds.
Majalla fī 'l mūsīqī [Codex on music] (first version MS, Topkapi Ahmet III 3449); facsimile ed., Publications of the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, series C, no.29 (Frankfurt, 1986) [with introduction by E. Neubauer]; (second version MS, GB-Lbl Oriental 2361, f. 168b–219b); Fr. trans. in La musique arabe, iv, ed. R. d'Erlanger (Paris, 1939), 3–255
OWEN WRIGHT