The history of Arab music (Touma)
Arabian music, roughly according to Professor Habib Hassan Touma
- Pre-Islamic Arabia (Jahiliyya) of 6th century.
- Bedouin song (huda', nasb)
- Urban song of qayna (sinad, hazaj)
- Early Arabian school, in Medina, Damascus
- Multiple influences of Islam: as moral system, as civilizational catalyst
- Rise of al-ghina' al-mutqan (perfect singing)
- Rise of Medina as musical center
- mukhannathun, esp. Tuways (632-710)
- little systematization of theory (finger modes)
- multicultural influences in Arabia
- New music of Baghdad
- Persian influence
- Traditionalists: Ishaq al-Mawsili (767-850), student Ziryab.
- Modernists: Ibrahim al-Mahdi (779-839)
- Bayt al-Hikma produced music treatises translated from the Greek.
- Appearance of new scholarly music treatises in Arabic.
- Systematic and philosophical music theory (e.g. Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (b. c 872): Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir)
- Ethnographic and historical compendia (e.g. Abu Faraj al-Isfahani (d. 967): Kitab al-Aghani al-Kabir)
- Music of Andalusia
- Ziryab flees Ishaq's jealous, lands in Cordoba (Umayyad Spain) in 822, develops new musical system (24 nawba)
- Transfer to North African art musics (Ala, nawba, san`a, ma'luf)
- Decline of Arab music: 13th to 19th c
- 19th c awakening and liberation (nahda)
- Tarab
- Takht
- Turkish and Persian influence
- Varied traditions (North Africa, Levant, Egypt, Iraq, Arabia)
- New theory (Mikha'il Mishaqah
- 20th c decline (westernization, globalization)
