Islamic expansion and Islamicate music

Islam as catalyst...

• Rapid political expansion: powered by Islamic ideology, drive for wealth and control, and adaptability, absorbing local cultures, and enabled by weakness of and division among prevailing powers at the time (Sassanian and Byzantine)
• Inward flow towards center: assimilation, cultural fusion via openness to learning and multiculturalism (especially Persian arts and sciences)
  • Accumulation of financial capital
    • Opulent courts (Madina, Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba, Granada, Istanbul, Delhi, Isfahan...)
    • Development of leisure class
    • Patronage of music and singing
    • Professional class of musicians
  • Accumulation of intellectual/artistic capital
    • Bayt al-Hikma translation movement (Abbasids), including Greek treatises relating to music: Aristoxenus (fl. 335 BC), Aristotle (384-322 A.C.), Euclid (fl. 300 BC), Ptolemy (90-128 CE), and the Neo-Pythagorean Nikomachus of Gerasa (fl 100 CE)
    • Music theory as philosophy (music being counted as among the "mathematical sciences", forming the quadrivium, along with geometry, arithmetic, astronomy)
      • al-Kindi (801-873), first to use term "musiqi", music theory (tonal and rhythmic), and music therapy
      • al-Farabi (870-950), Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir (Great Book of Music), musician, writes on philosophy of music, mode, rhythm, instruments, influences on body and soul. Influenced by Aristotle and Plato.
      • Ibn Sina (980-1037), Kitab al-Shifa' (Book of Healing), Aristotelian
      • Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (1216-1294), systematized theory
      • All developed Greek theory to account for local Islamicate practice, for instance in the realm of tuning and scales.
    • Music theory as mysticism
      • Ikhwan al-Safa' (Brethren of Purity), 9th-10th century
      • Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din (1058 - 1111)
    • Development of musical arts, instruments, forms, ensembles, especially as sponsored by courts
• Outward flow from center: cultural diffusion, as Islam provides political/cultural/linguistic/religious "lingua franca"
• A common system of music theory (and presumably practice) prevailed into the 13th century in the Middle East (Egypt/Iraq/Iran).
• Fragmentation of Islamic empire starting with Umayyad Spain (Andalusian/North African styles), but especially after the 10th c (Seljuk invasion), Delhi Sultanate (13th century), and later with the rise of Ottoman/Safavid conflict and Mughal Empire, from the early 16th century, and the various Central Asian kingdoms. Corresponding fission in Islamicate forms ("Turkish", "Persian", "Hindustani", "Arab"), which nevertheless remained genealogically linked.