Music and the Islam factor

Islamic influence upon Islamicate music

• Source: pre-Islamic Arabian features that remained at core of Islamic culture
  • Centrality of Arabic language and verbal arts, especially poetry
  • Linguistic form: the qasida (monorhyme, monometer)
  • Genres of love (nasib), praise (madih), description, satire (hija')
  • Courtesan tradition: the qayna
• Expansion: powered by Islamic ideology
• Assimilation: cultural fusion via openness to learning and multiculturalism (especially Persian arts and sciences)
• Globalization, synergy: cultural diffusion, as Islam provides political/cultural/linguistic/religious "lingua franca"
• Accumulation of financial capital
  • Opulent courts (Madina, Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba, Granada...)
  • Leisure class
  • Patronage of music and singing
  • Professional class of musicians
• Accumulation of intellectual/artistic capital
  • Bayt al-Hikma
  • Music theory as philosophy
  • Development of musical arts
• Islamic content
  • Rituals
  • Language-centrality
  • Ethical conditions - Sharia: discourse and controversy over music, music terms
    • Qur'an
    • Sunna (Hadith)
  • Mystical currents (Sufism)
    • "tazkiyat al-nafs, tarqiyat al-ruh" (taming the self; raising the spirit or soul)
    • Batin > Zahir (Haqiqa > Sharia) (flexibility)
    • Experiential relation to God
    • Absorption of local traditions
    • Aesthetic as means to spirituality, expression of spirituality
    • Use of music/poetry to express/attain spiritual state (ecstasy, union, annihilation...)