Critique of "Arab music" history

• Touma's tends to project contemporary Arab nationalism into the past)
• My reading of "Arab music":

• • Arab self-consciousness rises with Islam.
  • So does multiculturalism, esp. Persian influence.
  • Irony: concept of al-ghina' al-`arabi arises with Persian influence
  • True "Arab" music is pre-Islamic (Beduin ethos)
  • Islam tended to reject the non-Arab
  • Abbasid period was less Arab, more Persian
  • Rise of musta`riba (Arabized) class.
  • Ethnicity is ambiguous. Islamization, Arabization vs. lineage and region.
  • Is Abbasid culture really Arab? Multiculturalism, on an more equal footing.
  • Ambiguous ethnicity (e.g. al-Farabi himself)
  • Universalism in treatises (e.g. al-Farabi)
  • Andalusia: likewise multicultural.
  • "Arab singing" tends to mean Beduin.
  • Later Abbasid period: Persian and Arabic singing share a single musical tonal system.
  • Eclipse (1258-1800). Ibn Khaldun: "Arab" is pejorative, or primitive culture.