Download PDF | (Early and Medieval Islamic World) Lisa Nielson - Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamicate World_ A Social History-I.B. Tauris (2021).
297 Pages
Introduction
At the height of her career, the singer Jamīla (d. c. 720 ce/first century, h) set out from Medina to perform the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. She brought an extensive entourage of musicians, servants, and companions, including fifty singing slave women and all the celebrated musicians of the day. The party was merry, stopping at oases, inns, and monasteries along the way to sing and drink wine. Jamīla was a mawlā, or freedwoman, who learned the rudiments of music by listening to the songs of her neighbor, the singer Sa’ib Khathir (d. 683 ce/mid-first century, h), who was himself the son of a Persian slave.1 After she was freed, Jamīla married and achieved considerable wealth and fame as a musician, training many of the next generation of great musicians.
As such, she became a link between pre-Islamic, polytheistic music traditions and the nascent Islamicate court culture. Jamīla’s pilgrimage made a large enough impression on the social landscape that it is mentioned in a number of different sources.2 What makes her story notable is not only that she was a woman of means and a former slave. It was her ability to use her musical skills to gain her freedom, acquire wealth, and rise in social status. Nor was she was the first or only woman during this time to do so. For millennia, free and unfree women formed the backbone of what we today consider professional musicians.3 The documentary and archeological records of the ancient cultures of Sumer (c. 3000 bce), Egypt, Palestine, Babylon, and Assyria contain numerous textual and visual references to women musicians performing for public entertainments, intimate settings, and ritual and informal gatherings.
Music performance was also gendered, with specific instruments and genres associated with women, others with men. With the advent of Islam in the seventh century, these perceptions and performance practices did not substantially change. As Islam spread during the seventh and eighth centuries, foreign musicians, new musical traditions, and instruments were brought into the heart of Islamicate urban centers. The resulting integration of outside musical influences with extant music traditions led to the development of a sophisticated musical culture. Throughout the Islamicate states, singing women (Arabic, sing. qayna; pl. qiyān) and musical concubines (sing. jāriya; pl. jawārī) were integral to musical entertainments at all levels of the social order. Women musicians not only helped shape and define Islamicate musical culture, they remained a staple of musical life in Islamicate courts for centuries.4 Along with singing women, male musicians (mūsīkār, mughannūn) and cross-gendered entertainers called mukhannathūn performed together at court, often competing for the same patrons. Yet, although musicians received accolades, remuneration, expensive gifts, and enhanced status, the fact of their profession placed them in a shared social space that continually wavered along a spectrum of acceptable to unacceptable. That liminal status enabled some to slip between social and physical boundaries, infiltrating and challenging the social hierarchy.
By the late eighth century, grumblings about the excesses of court entertainments and outright alarm at the embrace of music by some Ṣūfi raised questions as to whether samāᶜ, listening, was legal in Islam. Listening could include a number of auditory acts, ranging from poetic recitation and lectures to Ṣūfi samāᶜ and dhikr (remembrance of God), but of particular concern was listening to music. This discussion ranged (and raged) over an array of literary genres for centuries, with the most granular treatment appearing in philosophy and pietistic literature. Over the centuries, terminology related to music and a thick compendium of legal arguments related to listening were created, shared, and rigorously argued. As a result, terms used to describe music and listening were fluid, interrelated concepts that were in constant conversation with literature, politics, religion, and practice. This book offers a social history of music in the early medieval Islamicate era (800–1400 ce). Using a sampling of literary discussions about music, musicians, and the legality of listening, I examine what the sources say about the shifting relationships among musician, patron, and society, and how these shaped a sophisticated and diverse musical culture. These relationships were not only defined through artistic and monetary exchange, but encompassed metaphysical considerations and the performing bodies of the musicians themselves.
The physical and metaphysical were further intertwined with gender, sexuality, slavery, kinship, origin, and social status, providing additional kindling for discussions about the legality of music. To provide a nominal order to these intersections, this book is divided into two parts. The first is an overview of the social and cultural realities of what we know about music, musicians, and thepatronate, while the second looks at the musician in the literary imaginary and development of the debate about samāᶜ. My focus on social history, rather than textual and performance history, is deliberate.5 Music is fundamentally a social and cultural institution that imbues every layer of the human landscape. To remove it from that social context is to diminish the importance—and variety—of creative expression throughout history. More importantly, however, focusing on one aspect of music alone is anachronistic to how medieval people experienced musical expression. Regardless of whether one listened to or even thought about music, music and musical sound were enmeshed in the physical and metaphysical worlds medieval people inhabited. In the medieval Islamicate world, the process of reflection and revision was intrinsic to constructing the linguistic apparatus needed to talk about music and write music history.
Because such reflection operated over multiple intellectual and esoteric levels, I include musicological considerations such as instruments and performance practices but focus primarily on the social factors that affected music as a sociocultural practice. Following Michael Chamberlain in Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350, I define the social world as a set of practices, not a structure.6 In essence, the social realm was a multifaceted, ever-changing organism. Similarly, given the cultural diversity that existed within the Islamicate states, it is hard to find a universally satisfying term to denote the regions within Islamdom. “Islamic” is only partially accurate. Along with Marshall Hodgson, Michael Chamberlain comments that privileging Islam as the primary director of the culture has several pitfalls,7 not least of which is that by placing Islam at the forefront, one can create a monolithic sense of sameness across divergent eras. Religion influenced the development of music but primarily in terms of practice—what instruments and song were appropriate or not—and how music influenced the practice of religion. Part I, “Musical Culture in Early Islamicate Courts,” gives an overview of music and performance in the early Islamicate states and terms commonly used to discuss and define music and classes of musicians.
Since slavery, conquest, diplomatic gift exchange, and marriage brought different musicians and traditions into the early Islamicate courts, Chapter 1 considers what might have been borrowed from other cultures as well as those practices adopted from preIslamic traditions, such as singing slave women and mukhannathūn from preIslamic Arabia. Chapters 2 and 3 look at musicianship, performance practices, and patrons in the early Islamicate courts. As in other cultures, the musical practices of the elite are easier to sketch due to there being more information about them. However, the rich trove of information in pietistic texts suggests there were shared musical practices and borrowings among social orders. That blend offers a tantalizing glimpse into uses of music in the middling and lower classes, along with diverse Ṣūfi practices and encroachment of song in religious cantillation. Salons, gatherings related to music and poetry, including storytelling in public spaces, all operated within several dimensions: audience, patron, performer(s), word, and sound. Within this matrix, formal definition between song and poetic recitation was less important than the perspective of audience and performer on what they heard—or chose to hear. We continue to see analogues today, especially in popular and improvised musico-poetic events. Spoken word, rap, hip-hop, mash-ups, jazz, and so on all exist within the spectrum of sound-poetry while continuing to defy explicit definition. Because expectations for both musical and extramusical performances were different for men and women, access to social mobility was tied to gender, kin, and origin, as well as legal and social status.
Patrons and slave owners did not fully control social mobility. Musicians could and did manipulate the patronage system to their advantage. Relationships among patrons and musicians were asymmetrical dependencies, transactional, and rooted in gifting and obligation.8 They were also laden with degrees of intimacy, especially in the case of enslaved women. Although patrons held power, patron and musician alike contributed to the construction and perpetuation of the patronage system. Enslaved women musicians were an important community within Islamicate music cultures, so much so that references to them are ubiquitous in the literature. Chapter 4 goes into greater depth on the institutions of slavery and gender in the medieval Islamicate states. Articulating how perceptions of music and musicians in medieval Islamicate society were tied to gender, social status, and sexuality, however, is messy business. The fluidity of Arabic terminology and our tenuous understanding of the meaning of such concepts at the time fit uneasily within modern taxonomies. In addition to biological differences, some of the characteristics that contributed to gender identity included visible physical markers, such as length and style of hair, facial hair, dress, and mannerisms, as well as social/cultural categories, such as marriage and profession.9 Sexual practices reinforced gender identity; however, what we would define as sexual orientation and sexual acts were not necessarily tied to gender. Samesex relations were technically illegal under Islamic law, but in practice, all sexual acts outside the bonds of marriage were illicit. Men who enjoyed same-sex partners in the dominant role were stepping out of bounds because they were having sex outside of marriage, not necessarily because they were having sex with other men.10 Because women were penetrated and always passive partners, to penetrate was inherently masculine and to be penetrated was feminine. Therefore, men who preferred the passive role were unmasculine.11 Like the Greeks, age was another gender marker. Young boys were objects of desire because they were androgynous; having all the characteristics of women—smooth skin, shapely limbs—with the erotic allure of men. Passion for boys was included in categories of illicit love, not always because of the sex act, but because passion itself could be dangerous. The onset of puberty transformed boys from beardless youth to bearded adult, masculinizing them emotionally and physically. Thus, although there were distinctions between what constituted male and female, masculine and feminine, these were not strictly biological or binary structures in medieval Islamicate society. Institutions of slavery in the medieval Islamicate world were similarly fluid and complicated, with a range of personal status along the spectrum of free to unfree. Recent scholarship into Islamicate slavery has provided keen insight into trade, economic, and social practices; however, with the exception of select studies of the harem (Arabic, h. arīm), women in literature, and musical performance practice, the experiences of men have been privileged over those of women.12 As in other slave systems, men and women in the Islamicate states experienced slavery differently. The work and expectations for men and women were divided by gender, and women’s relegation to the broad category of domestic labor meant their work left little documentary evidence.13 Chapter 4, “Slavery and Gender,” is by no means as in-depth as it deserves to be. Rather, its purpose is to provide additional background on how music and the status of enslaved women musicians fit into the medieval Islamicate social order. Part II, “Diversions of Pleasure: Representations of Musicianship and Identity,” turns to the literary representation of music and musicians, especially conversations about samāᶜ and the politics of listening. In Chapter 5, I consider symbolic and rhetorical uses of music and the figure of the musician in literature, and what possible influence such uses may have had on the perception of music. Narratives involving musicians are found in a variety of Arabic literary genres and serve different symbolic purposes. Themes such as repentance, piety, and willful blasphemy were deployed as a means to support or undermine positive depictions of prominent musical figures and patrons, and therefore music itself. Using the structure and content of these narratives as a frame, I discuss how the use of musician narratives enabled an author (or purported author) to enter the larger conversation about music and listening. Such narratives, and their familiarity to the reader, could offer a layered critique, praise the patronate, underline the purpose of a specific event, make a social or political point, and address moral implications of music audition. By way of example, I provide brief biographies of nine well-known musicians from the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries to show some of the ways musicians were represented in medieval sources. Chapter 6 focuses on the rise of discussions about the legality of listening to music, samāᶜ, in Islam. Samāᶜ was, and remains, a practice associated with Ṣūfism. As early as the eighth century, some Ṣūfi had begun to incorporate samāᶜ and movement into communal devotions. The purpose of samāᶜ was to induce an ecstatic state in the hearer, in order to bring them closer to the divine. Depending on the perspective of the order, samāᶜ and dhikr could be lengthy, emotionally intense, and drenched with music and recitation. Not unexpectedly, criticism of samāᶜ arose from religious, social, and political concerns about social and spiritual excesses. Although much has been written about Ṣūfism and samāᶜ, the development of samāᶜ as a broader philosophical-musical concept has not been fully explored. The Dhamm al-Malāhī (Censure of Instruments of Diversion) of Ibn Abi’l Dūnya (823–94 ce/207–80 h) has been held up as the first extant treatise to focus specifically on samāᶜ as being chief among several unhealthy diversions.14 However, discomfort around music is noted in earlier treatises. Two early treatises on music, the Mukhtār (Kitāb) al-lahw wa’l malāhī (Book of Play and Musical Instruments) by Ibn Khurdādhbih (c. 820–912 ce/203–99 h) and the Kitāb al-malāhī (Book of Musical Instruments) by Ibn Salama (c. 830 ce/214 h), allude to concerns about the appropriateness of music and singing.15 What distinguished Ibn Abi’l Dūnya’s treatise from the others was that it provoked heated discussion as to the value and legal standing of listening. Many of the scholars who advocated for samāᶜ (or allowed that music was acceptable under certain circumstances) were Ṣūfis, such as the first rebuttal to Ibn Abi’l Dūnya by ‘Ubayd Ibn Surayj (fl. late seventh, early eighth centuries/first century, h) and later philosophers like Abū Hamid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Tusi al-Ghazālī (1058–1111 ce/450–505 h).16 Not all Ṣūfis approved, however. Within the Ṣūfi orders, opinions ranged from rulings firmly against all uses of samāᶜ to specifying that only those who had achieved age and wisdom should experience samāᶜ as they would have more immunity from earthly distractions. The issue for Ṣūfis who advocated for the use of samāᶜ was similar to that of those who preached against it; namely, how to divest the sensual pleasure of listening to music (especially when performed by a visually appealing musician) from its potential to act as a means to access the divine. It was too easy to transfer appreciation of the art to appreciation of the singer. For those who were skeptical as to whether such a divestment was possible, only avoiding music entirely would keep one safe.17 Therefore, whether music was allowable or not centered on the emotional and social effect of audition, grounded in associations linked to gender, intimacy, and proximity. Writers concerned about samāᶜ were essential to the development of music discourses. To show how concerns about samāᶜ shifted from the page to practice, Chapter 7 is dedicated to a selection of scholars who vehemently advocated against it. Although there were plenty of writers who wrote in defense of samāᶜ, I focus exclusively on the opposing view. The detail such authors brought to their standpoint sheds considerable light on contemporary performance practices, including elite and non-elite uses of music. They redefined music terminology and music history to bolster their position, soliciting ever more nuanced responses from those who supported samāᶜ and music audition. Because medieval scholars who argued against samāᶜ shared similar rhetorical language and writing conventions with those who were in favor, referring to different camps as “pro-” or “anti-”samāᶜ establishes a false binary when there was a range of opinion, often within the same juridical schools. Regardless of their standpoint, discussions about samāᶜ imbued general terminology for music, instruments, and musicians with moral and symbolic meanings and changed the social and conceptual framework for thinking about music. This change promoted the development of multivalent music discourses necessitating new vocabulary and symbolic language. The final chapter attempts to bring these many threads together and propose some general conclusions about the politics of music. There are many questions left unanswered, and I consider further avenues of exploration needed to construct a fuller understanding of medieval Islamicate music history.
Reflections and Methodology
Writing a history of a musical culture that is distant in time is a process of reflection. Not only must one attempt to place themselves within the “foreign country” that is history, one must struggle to step outside the kaleidoscope of information that informs our own musico-cultural values. In the medieval Islamicate world, links among practical musicianship, music theory, and metaphysics were bound in the gaze of early Islamicate historians on their own past and present in conjunction with the personal and communal reflection inherent in the practice of Islam. How these intersections informed perceptions and uses for music is key to understanding the musical culture. Another reflective surface is the modern gaze. Because the European construction of the Orient is integral to understanding how we arrived at this history today, I note—albeit in broad strokes—aspects of the history of this scholarship as well. As the Islamicate states expanded in the seventh and eighth centuries, the growing Muslim community needed to construct an identity that differentiated them from people of other religions. They also required a means to understand that identity as it unfolded. How sound genres functioned in an Islamicate frame, especially since music was intrinsic to polytheism and other monotheisms, was pondered by scholars of law, religion, and history. Early medieval Islamicate historians began by looking back on their history and that of the cultures that they conquered, admired, and established diplomatic relations with. Despite assertions by later religious scholars, music had always been part of the cultures of Arabic-speaking peoples. Folklore and poetry hinted at pre-Islamic practices, although the majority of that history was transmitted orally and therefore in constant motion. This motion was literal and figurative due to trade and travel of nomads and urbanites alike. During the ninth century, translations of Greek, Roman, Indian, and Persian treatises on everything from science to literature, along with intellectuals from those regions, provided ample tools for the scholarly community. The importation of foreign slaves and skilled laborers into the urban centers was another conduit for new knowledge. Islamicate historians drew on all these sources, interpreting them within the context of Muslim identity and law. They reflected the past onto their present and tried to understand the present within their reading of the past. Often, those perceptions were wildly divergent, as we will see in constructions of music history. The practice of Islam itself requires layers of reflection, radiating from the individual to community. In the West, Islam is translated as “to submit,” with the basic understanding that Muslims submit to God. Although that is accurate on one level, this concept is far more complex. Submission was not a blind following of faith, but acknowledgment that there was a higher power guiding one’s actions. Islam provided a process for constructing a balanced life and individual practice to serve God. Within that practice, one relinquished control to the greater good and continually reflected on one’s individual relationship with God by studying the Qur’an and law and following the Pillars of Islam.18
Along with the influence of the Qur’an and ḥadīth on the development of literary conventions, the continuous cycle of reflection, introspection, and correction embedded in the practice of Islam is fundamental to understanding the role of music and conversations about listening in medieval Islamicate culture. When a caliph threw a drinking party with his singing women and beardless boys, a Ṣūfi order performed dhikr in a mosque, or a wedding party broke out instruments for impromptu music making, such actions had implications for the souls of the individual and community. The study of medieval Islamicate music began in earnest in the nineteenth century and remains a tiny subset within the discipline of musicology. Much of what we know about music in the seventh to thirteenth centuries is still dependent on the work of a handful of late-nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury scholars.19 A good portion of that work was excellent, with the caveat that there are additional layers to parse when examining nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, such as why a text was chosen for translation, the intended audience, and the translator’s discipline.20 Musicologists Henry George Farmer, the Baron D’erlanger, and Julian Ribera in the early twentieth century were among the first to present an outline of early Islamic music history, as well as theorize about the possibility of Arabian influence on the development of Western music. To this day, Henry George Farmer is among the most respected authorities, and his work, much of which was published in the 1920s and 1930s, continues to be invaluable. Although several of his theories have been disproven, Farmer’s work did much to pave the way for a more nuanced understanding of global music history.21 Along with Farmer, the Arabist James Robson was responsible for several translations of music treatises. Musicologists are most familiar with Robson’s 1937 English translation of Ibn Abi’l Dūnya’s Dhamm al-Malāhī (Censure of Instruments of Diversion) as part of a series on non-Western music for the Royal Asiatic Society.22 Robson also collaborated with Farmer on a translation of Ibn Salama’s music treatise and commentary on Ibn Khurdādhbih’s remarks on music, gleaned from an oration recorded by the historian al-Mas’ūdī and a manuscript fragment.23 Despite this important early body of work, the specter of Orientalism and the Eurocentric gaze cannot be banished, nor should it be. As Said and subsequent scholars have demonstrated, the work of dismantling Orientalism and decolonizing our understanding of non-Western histories is ongoing. Likewise, European fragmentation of history into epochs and modes of progress aided scholars in the construction of a framework for viewing history; however, that framework is also being reconstructed. For example, the concept of a “middle” or “dark” age originated with the poet Petrarch in the fourteenth century when he compared the period between the Roman Empire and his own. As Michael Shank and David Lindberg explain, to intellectuals such as Petrarch the Middle Ages were a useful invention that contrasted the political fragmentation and barbarous degenerate Latin of the recent past with the lost glory and beautiful language of Rome, to which they aspired. To invoke the Middle Ages when discussing empire, language, or art, was implicitly to narrate history with the radical discontinuity of a sorry, if not necessarily vacuous, millennium.24 Although applying the term to other cultures, such as “medieval China” or “medieval Islam,” gives this history a convenient reference point, “the price of calling everything between 400–1450 ‘medieval’ is that the deeply entrenched unflattering connotations associated with the European Middle Ages automatically color other civilizations.”25 Therefore, my use of “medieval” is to signal the period, not the underlying implication (and judgment) of social and intellectual progress. Similarly, Europeans scholars considered the shift from orality to literacy within a culture a sign of evolution and progress, which aligned neatly with Western renaissance and enlightenment principles. As recent studies have found, however, medieval cultures shared and stored knowledge on at least three levels: written, oral, and in memory. Orality was not limited to spoken transmission of texts, nor was “written” a word-for-word rendition. Both modes existed in tandem, with memory the connective tissue in between. This was certainly the case in the medieval Islamicate world. Of course, ideologies of supremacy, revisionist histories, and creating intellectual hierarchies are by no means a modern, or even strictly Western, invention. Medieval people may have had a different perception of their relationship to the world and one another, but enslavement, colonization, patriarchy, and economic exploitation are nothing new. Yet, there are key differences. Although medieval cultures did establish sets of binaries—good/ evil, man/woman, perfect/imperfect, enslaved/free, yin/yang—these were not necessarily firm categories or opposites. Rather, they could be complements, formulated along the lines of “this and,” rather than “either/or.” To reflect these connections, I position familiar terms as being on a spectrum of organizing principles: gender, sex, sexuality, slavery, orality-literacy-memory, religiousnonreligious, and song-recitation.26 These concepts were woven into other social, religious, and philosophical categories as well as inhabited metaphysical realms, meaning the social and metaphysical were connected and reflective of one another as well. Although maddeningly elliptical, the shifts in how medieval Islamicate thinkers defined such concepts offer a means to attempt to hear the splendid cacophony of ideas, sounds, and practices that encompassed medieval Islamicate musical cultures.
The Sources Using literature to speculate on history is always fraught. Medieval Islamicate literary conventions embraced the structure and form of the Qur’an, ḥadīth, and poetic meters. Authority was established through chains of authority, or isnād, as well as citation and commentary by previous authorities. Exaggeration and hyperbole were common, as was collaboration and outright plagiarism. Scholars constantly copied one another’s works for their own libraries, dropping sections into their own. That does not mean that one must distrust all the information in these texts, but careful triangulation is necessary. Given that these texts resided within the interstices of oral, written, and memorized knowledge, my reading is less concerned with veracity than tone and image. Another wrinkle is that although music and musicians are ubiquitous in Arabic literature, there are few texts that provide details about individual musicians. In addition, although a number of sources discuss women writing, reciting poetry, and publishing books of songs, none of these books are extant. Therefore, all the available sources for women’s biographies, poetry collections, and songs attributed to women are filtered through male-authored literary works. That does not undercut their value; rather, it offers another point of reflection on the male gaze and female subject. For this study, I examined texts devoted to music theory and philosophies of music (mūsīqī), but focus on nonspecialized texts, drawing primarily on literary sources (adab). These include poetry, essays, history, and biographies. In describing musicians, especially the qiyān, these texts not only purport to be making statements of fact about their lives and character, but make use of symbolic gestures that link music and audition to larger issues of morality, passionate love, music, and religious practice. Treatises intended for a wider or less specialized readership might use terminology and associated meanings from specialized texts, but often inflect that language towards a general audience. This language became integral to discourses regarding religious and legal positions on samāᶜ, as well as formed the underpinnings of social commentary in a range of literary genres.27 Thus, nonspecialist texts provide a historical perspective on the literal performance of musicians as well as literary performance within a system of musical semiotics. The sources that provide the most information about music and musicians are the Kitāb al-Aghānī (Great Book of Songs) of Abū’l faraj al-Iṣbahānī (897–969 ce/283–356 h), the Risālat al-Qiyān (Epistle on Singing Girls) by al-Jāḥiẓ (776/7– 868/9 ce/159/60–253/4 h), the Histories of al-Ṭabarī (839–923 ce/224–310 h), and the Murūj al-Dhahab (Meadows of Gold) by al-Mas’ūdī (d. 956 ce/344 h).28 I also draw on the eighth- and ninth-century music treatises by Ibn Khurdādhbih and Ibn Salama, the Kitāb al-Muwashshāʾ (Book of Brocades) of Ibn al-Washsha (d. 937 ce/325 h), the Fihrist of al-Nadīm (935–90/1 ce/322–79/380 h), Music: The Precious Jewel of the tenth-century Andalusi writer al-Rabbih (860– 940 ce/245–328 h), and the memoirs of the qāḍī (judge) al-Tanūkhi (940–94 ce/324–84 h). Although mention of music and performance is found in literature after the tenth century, there are fewer texts from the eleventh to the fourteenth century that focus exclusively on music. Philosophy, poetry, biography, and other literary genres continued to include commentary on music and descriptions of performance, with pietistic and theological treatises devoting more space to music and listening. As we will see, however, the question of music began to shift away from music as a practice to the effects of listening. That shift pushed listening further into the metaphysical, with discussion focused less on what melodic sounding constituted music to what vocal forms were musically exempt. Because of our own sensibilities, Western scholars have tended to study only music-positive texts, with the consequence of dismissing those who advocated against music as fanatics.29 Although there were authors who were decidedly on the lunatic fringe, their interpretation still has value. In addition, despite the rich and diverse musical traditions that flourish throughout cultures influenced by Islam today, the belief that music is not allowed in Islam continues to be based on a handful of texts condemning music.30 To give a snapshot of the variety of opinion, I spotlight eight treatises from the ninth to fifteenth centuries that were collected in the mid-fifteenth century by Ibn Burayd Burhān al-Dīn Ibrāhīm al-Qāḍīrī (1413–75 ce/815–79 h). According to his notations, Ibn Burayd copied the treatises between 1451 and 1456 ce, using texts from his personal collection and older extant versions. Although they are all strongly against listening, aside from the juridical elements, these treatises offer a glimpse into the development of and changes to the definitions for—and therefore uses of—music in early medieval Islamicate musical culture. Now held at the National Library of Israel (NLI), this collection (majmūᶜ) includes one of the four extant versions of the Censure of Instruments of Diversion by Ibn Abi’l Dūnya. The copy in the NLI is one of two that is nearly twice as long as the abridged version held at the Staatsbibliotek in Berlin. The order of the texts and authors is as follows:31
1. Abū Bakr al-Ājurrī (d. 971 ce/360 h): Ap. Ar. 158/1, f. 1a–10a. Al-jawāb ᶜan masʾalat al-samāᶜ (Response to the question regarding listening) 2. Ibn Jamāᶜa (Burhān al-Dīn) (1325–88 ce/725–90 h): Ap. Ar. 158/2, f. 11a– 20a. Suwwāl sālahu shakhṣ min al-fuqarā’ (Response to a faqīr) 3. Diya al-Dīn al-Maqdisī (1173–1245 ce/569–643 h): Ap. Ar. 158/3, f. 21a– 37b. Al-amr bi-itbāᶜ al-sunan wa ijtināb al-bidaᶜ (The command to follow established laws and avoid heresy) 4. Abū Bakr al-Khallāl (848–923 ce/234–311 h): Ap. Ar. 158/4, f. 38a–58a. Al-amr biʾl maᶜrūf waʾl-nahy ᶜan al-munkar (Commanding the proper and condemnation of the improper) 5. Al-Khallāl: Ap. Ar. 158/5, f. 58b–61b. Kitāb al-qirā ᶜan al-qabūr 6. Al-Wāsiṭī (1259–1311 ce/657–711 h): Ap. Ar. 158/6, f. 62a–63b. Mas’alat fi al-samāᶜ (Question regarding samāᶜ) 7. Al-Wāsiṭī: Ap. Ar. 158/7, f. 64a–72b. Al-bulghat wa’l iqnaᶜ fi ḥill shubhat mas’alat al-samāᶜ (The exaggeration and persuasion of those who declare samāᶜ is permitted) 8. Ibn Abi’l Dūnya (823–94 ce/208–81 h): Ap. Ar. 158/8, f. 73a–84b. Dhamm al-Malāhī (Censure of instruments of diversion) 9. Al-Ṭabarī (Abū’l Ṭayyib) (959/60–1058 ce/d. 450 h): Ap. Ar. 158/9, f. 85a–91b. Kitāb fīhi mas’alat fi’l radd ᶜalā man yaqūl bi-jawāz al-samāᶜ al-ghināʾ wa’l raqṣ wa’l taghbīr (Book refuting the opinions of those who allow listening to music, dance, and the taghbīr)32 10. Ibn Rajab (d. 1393/795 h): Ap. Ar. 158/1, f. 92a–155b. Fūʾayn min Kalām Ibn Rajab (A collection of teachings by Ibn Rajab)33 The second text by al-Khallāl and the final, longest text by Ibn Rajab are not concerned with samāᶜ; therefore, I have left them out.34 Why Ibn Burayd chose these particular texts for his majmūᶜ is not specified; however, some conclusions can be drawn based on what is known of his background and that of the authors. First, these authors were all well-known scholars from Damascus, Jerusalem, and Cairo who ascribed to the Ḥanbali and Shāfiᶜī schools of jurisprudence. Some shared a scholarly lineage, and since a few are contemporaries, it is possible they knew one another personally. The later texts reference the earlier scholars, nuancing their arguments as they incorporated them into their own. Although each text grew out of a distinct era, that they were brought together in the fifteenth century means the collection reflects, in part, Mamlūk Damascus and Jerusalem.35 Thus, the challenge is to find a balance between the historical contexts of the collection and that of the individual texts.36
On Translation
Anyone accustomed to working with historical texts knows the difficulty of parsing a translation from a language we do not know (or are not comfortable in) and creating an accessible, reasonably accurate translation. Although the original author remains “authoritative,” authority shifts to the translator and, by extension, the intended audience for the translation. As a result, the translator has to decide what words to use when translating certain concepts, some of which might not have a satisfactory equivalent in the receiving language. Given the era in which it flourished, Orientalist scholarship was dominated by male scholars, and the documentary record has been read from the standpoint of European men.37 In most Western languages (except perhaps French), there are few unbiased terms for women who are not married but have an intimate and artistic connection to men and live a public life. This lack makes it difficult to translate other relationships women had with men in a way that the Western reader would not subconsciously link to Western moral codes.38 More often than not, scholars relegated the roles of women musicians in the temples and courts of pre-Islamic Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Mediterranean cultures to prostitution, and therefore such women were assumed to have low status and little power. Reexamination of extant source material for ancient and medieval cultures has shown women musicians fulfilled a more complex social role. Women, free and unfree, filled the ranks of professional mourners, poets, musicians, and priestesses, often playing several roles simultaneously.39 In the medieval Islamicate states, singing slave women ran the gamut of being companions, concubines, prostitutes, bawds, entrepreneurs, power brokers, and deeply pious. Some were members of the ruling families, legitimate and otherwise.
Despite their many roles in society, the term qiyān frequently is rendered as “singing girl” or “singing slave girl.” In describing their role in medieval society, qiyān have been called “lady-like prostitutes” and well-trained concubines— designations that are not untrue, but carry moral judgment in a specifically Western context.40 Referring to them as “girls” further relegates this diverse group of free and unfree professionals to a single, subordinate category. Thus, it is vital to avoid labels that diminish their importance and relegate them to sexual objects, disengaged from the events of their time. In that light, I refer to them as qiyān, jawārī, and singing women. I use singing slave women when speaking expressly of enslaved women musicians. Likewise, although the term mukhannathūn can be translated as “effeminate,” this designation carries pejorative connotations. My preference is to use the Arabic and refer to this unique group of entertainers as being cross-gendered.41 To keep things as tidy as possible, all key terms are given in Arabic, with transliteration and translation for non-Arabic readers. Transliteration follows the conventions established by the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES).
A Brief Comment on Geography
Medieval people traveled, fought, intermarried, and traded constantly, so to continue to divide the global medieval world of approximately the sixth to the fifteenth century into “East” and “West” is insufficient. Furthermore, the shifting borders of the Islamicate states covered a vast geographic area reaching from Spain to China well into the late nineteenth century, spanning “East” and “West.” I try to avoid those divisions except when pinpointing geographic location. When I refer to the West, I mean the region that includes modern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Balkans, as well as the British Isles. By necessity, my geographic focus is limited to the urban centers and courts of Damascus, Jerusalem, and Baghdad from 661 to 1400 ce. For the purposes of this study, the regions referred to as Mesopotamia, Arabia, and the Ancient Near East include the Arabian Peninsula (the Gulf States), what are now Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Israel (The Levant) and, peripherally, Egypt—the regions specified in antiquity as Arabia felix and Arabia deserta or upper and lower Arabia
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