Islamic expansion and Islamicate music

Islam as catalyst...

• Rapid expansion: powered by Islamic ideology, drive for wealth and control, and enabled by weakness of 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 Nikomachos of Gerasa (Jordan, fl 100 CE)
    • Music theory as philosophy (music as among the "mathematical sciences", forming the quadrivium, along with geometry, arithmetic, astronomy)
    • Development of musical arts
• Outward flow from center: cultural diffusion, as Islam provides political/cultural/linguistic/religious "lingua franca"
• Fragmentation of Islamic empire in 10th c, corresponding fission in Islamicate forms, which nevertheless remained linked