One of the masterpieces of medieval Arabic literature is the extraordinary Kitāb al-Aghānī [Book of Songs] compiled in the tenth century CE by Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (897–967). This enormous work (modern Arabic printed editions are over twenty volumes in length) was the culmination of several centuries of development of the Arabic songbook genre. Al-Iṣbahānī cites Yūnus al-Kātib (d. c. 765) as the first to gather and write down Arabic ghināʾ (i.e., songs) in a collection that included 825 songs composed by thirty-eight different singers.1 His work was followed by a series of compilations by later singers and authors that grew to include as many as 14,000 songs.2 Some of these collections included the names of the composers, along with indications of melodic modes as well as rhythms; however, since none of these earlier works has survived, it is not clear whether they also included related biographical materials, accounts of performances, and so forth. Alongside these songbook compilations was a thriving production of works dealing with individual singers, instrumentalists, and their compositions that probably did include biographical information.3 Al-Iṣbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī [hereafter KA] so successfully absorbed the information from these earlier works, however, that they ceased to be copied independently and eventually disappeared, though their traces are still to be found in the titles listed in the book-list of Ibn al-Nadīm and the various attributions meticulously notated by al-Iṣbahānī.
Al-Iṣbahānī chose to organize his work in a unique manner, basing it upon a list of the ‘Hundred Greatest Songs’ that was first created during the reign of the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 786–809) by the three famous singers Fulayḥ ibn Abī al-ʿAwrāʾ, Ismāʿīl ibn Jāmiʿ, and Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī.4 A generation later, during the reign of the caliph al-Wāthiq (r. 842–847), Ibrāhīm’s son, Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī, was charged with updating this list and replacing some of the older songs with newer, better examples. It is this song list, referred to as al-Ikhtiyār al-Wāthiqī [The Selection of Songs Compiled for the Caliph al-Wāthiq], that forms the basic structure of KA.5 In his introduction, al-Iṣbahānī justifies this choice saying that while some might have preferred that the book be organized by poet, or by singer, or by melodic mode, each of these would have produced rather monotonous reading with long sections that included little variation, whereas organizing the book by song has produced a work in which the reader is pleasantly led from one topic to the next.6
Since singer-composers most often selected verses from already extant poems rather than composing verses of their own, al-Iṣbahāni starts each entry by giving the lyrics of the song in question (usually only 2–4 verses in length), then gives the full text of the poem from which the song lyrics were taken, followed by an account of the melodic mode and the rhythm of the song, noting in passing if there are songs by other composers with the same lyrics or the same melody. If the poem is an ancient one, he sometimes also includes glosses for difficult vocabulary. He then gives biographical information about the poet, which at times includes detours into the history of the poet’s tribe, then information about the composer and the context for that specific song’s composition. Within the occasionally lengthy biographies of the poet and the composer, he cites hundreds of other songs that were not ranked among the one hundred great songs. It is no wonder then that the entry about a single song is at times over a hundred pages in length.7
The result is one of the most remarkable portraits of a pre-modern musical tradition, as well as some of the earliest substantial biographies of musicians, in world literature. KA offers not only accounts of lyrics, poems and songs, but also an intimate account of the daily life of musicians, the discovery of new ‘stars’ in unlikely venues, the training of young singers, debut performances, the functioning of musical life in Mecca, Medina, the Umayyad court in Damascus, and the ʿAbbasid court in Baghdad, how much musicians were paid, rivalries between singers, song competitions, banquets and drinking parties, excursions to the countryside and nights spent drinking in taverns, the buying and selling of skilled slave-singers, the punishment of singers who displeased their patrons, and their rewards when they managed to arouse in their patrons that specific type of deep emotional reaction that comes from listening to beautiful music: ṭarab.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, western scholars extracted and translated many sections from KA that dealt with ancient Arab tribal histories as well as the biographies of the most famous poets, but they were significantly less interested in the biographies of singers. A series of major scholars have studied KA in great detail and have also produced rich synthesized accounts of musical life in the early centuries of Islam, including Jacques Berque, H.G. Farmer, Eckhard Neubauer, and George Sawa, among others.8 Hilary Kilpatrick has authored an indispensable study of al-Iṣbahānī’s writing techniques and Manfred Fleischhammer has produced a magisterial work tracing al-Iṣbahānī’s various sources.9 In addition, translated passages from KA appear in a broad range of historical, sociological, and musical scholarship dealing with this period. To the best of my knowledge, however, there is not a single complete translation of a musician’s biography from KA into any modern language. This translation of the biography of Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī is therefore meant to rectify that situation and offer readers a chance not only to explore in astonishing detail musical life in the early ʿAbbasid court, but also an opportunity to experience the overarching structure and flow of the text.
Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī (742–804) is often cited as the most famous singer of his age and a pivotal figure in the courts of three successive caliphs – al-Mahdī (r. 775–785), Mūsā al-Hādī (r. 785–86), and Hārun al-Rashīd (r. 786–809) – for he was not just a court musician, but an intimate companion (Ar. nadīm) to these rulers. His biography has been studied by a number of scholars, including Michael Cooperson, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Eckhard Neubauer, all of whose work I am greatly indebted to.10 Part of the appeal of Ibrāhīm’s biography is that it is, quite simply, a jolly good read. The text opens with an account of Ibrāhīm’s Persian ancestry, the family’s relocation to southern Iraq, and his childhood. As Cooperson has noted, Ibrahīm’s father set him on a path that transformed his Zoroastrian Persian ancestry into an Arabized Muslim identity, first by moving the family from Iran to Iraq and then by establishing a close bond with a prominent Arab clan. Although his father died when he was only two or three years old, Ibrāhīm’s maternal uncles propelled him further along this trajectory by sending him to Qurʾan school. Ibrāhīm was apparently a poor student, however, for we are told much later that he only really learned to read and write during one of his stints in prison. Al-Iṣbahānī offers several conflicting accounts about how Ibrāhīm initially fell in love with music and decided to study it, but his love of music set him at odds with his uncles, who apparently beat him and tried to dissuade him from pursuing music as a career. He himself moved back and forth between the Arab and Persian worlds both linguistically and musically, for he studied music both in Iraq and Iran. At one point, Ibrāhīm was ‘discovered’ by a court official and, somewhat involuntarily, was conscripted into the entourage first of a high-ranking official and then into the caliphal court.
What follows then is a wonderful series of short vignettes or ‘reports’ (Ar. akhbār, s. khabar) recounting his adventures and misadventures in court. At times he achieves great success, and at other times he angers his patron, leading to imprisonment and lurid descriptions of horrendous beatings. Throughout his triumphs and tribulations, Ibrāhīm’s remarkable personality shines through: at moments he is flamboyantly generous, and at other times he is beset with miserly impulses that cause him to hoard his wealth. He is devious in his dealings with rival singers in the court, but deeply compassionate when reuniting lovers or dealing with his students; remarkably savvy in his dealings with those in power, but also enough of a ‘regular guy’ to be able to spend days at a time getting drunk in taverns. Some of these anecdotes border on the supernatural, such as when he claims to have learned a particular type of singing (mākhūrī) from the devil himself (Ar. Iblīs) or learns songs from two talking cats, but it is hard to know if he himself concocted these fantastic stories or if they are the work of later raconteurs.
Al-Iṣbahānī precedes each of these anecdotes with an account of his sources by giving a ‘chain of transmission’ (Ar. isnād), much the way a modern scholar cites sources in footnotes. For many readers, these lists of names will not be of any particular interest, so they are included here in a smaller font and italics to separate them clearly from the main narrative. Al-Iṣbahānī also uses a technique that was common in Islamic historiography of the period in that he at times includes multiple, conflicting accounts of the same information, leaving the reader to decide which is most likely to be true. In the early part of this text, for example, he gives several accounts of why Ibrāhīm was given the moniker al-Mawṣilī (‘the man from Mosul’) since he was neither born there nor did his family come from there. The use of such a geographically derived name (Ar. nisba) was common among new converts to Islam and others who did not have an Arabic tribal name to use, but Ibrāhīm’s use of the label ʿal-Mawṣilīʾ was not for any of the usual reasons, since he had no real ties to that city, and therefore merited special attention.
The biography of Ibrāhīm is located in KA following the text of one of his songs that was included in the list of the ‘Hundred Songs.’ Rather unusually, it is a song for which he composed not only the melody but also the lyrics. It should be noted that the translated text that is presented here does not constitute a comprehensive biography of Ibrāhīm, since dozens of other passages about him occur scattered throughout KA. Al-Iṣbahānī himself refers us to additional information about Ibrāhīm found in other entries (in the biography of his son, Isḥāq, for example, and also in that of a woman named Kunth, known as Dhāt al-Khāl – ‘the girl with the mole’ – with whom Ibrāhīm at one point fell in love). Additional anecdotes featuring Ibrāhīm are also found in a number of other medieval historical sources, such as al-Masʿūdī’s Murūj al-dhahab [Meadows of Gold],11 and in the rich biographical compendia of this era. This text is, however, a full, unabridged translation of the main account of his life as it appears in KA.
1 Musical Captions
In order to differentiate the texts of poems from song lyrics, al-Iṣbahānī placed the word ṣawt [song] above each song-text.12 After giving the text of the song lyric and the original poem, he usually gives information about the song’s melodic mode and rhythm, which scholars have referred to as the ‘song captions’ or ‘performance indications.’13 These can include the melodic mode, the rhythm, other settings by other singer-composers, and any disputes among scholars regarding the origin of the verses or of the song setting. Some forty songs in this text are given such captions; others, however, appear with no musical information, probably indicating that although the text survived (perhaps in written form), al-Iṣbahānī was unable to locate any information about the music.
Al-Iṣbahānī states in his introduction that he has converted the names of the melodic modes of all the songs in KA to the new systematic nomenclature system devised by Ibrāḥīm’s son, an equally great musician, Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī. Unfortunately, this means that we do not have the names of the modes that Ibrāhīm and other musicians of his time and earlier actually used. Instead, we have Isḥāq’s terminology that is often referred to as the ‘finger modes’ or simply ‘fingers,’ a literal translation of the Arabic term aṣābiʿ. Isḥāq’s system is based on the placement of the fingers on the frets of the Arab lute. If the tonic or base note of a mode was the open string (muṭlaq), that sometimes goes unmentioned, but if the tonic is a ‘fingered’ note, al-Iṣbahānī indicates this by saying, for example, ‘on the index finger’ [fī l-sabbāba]. Having established the tonic, he then gives the fingering for one additional note in the lower tetrachord of the mode, which he terms the majrā (literally ‘course,’ as in the watercourse of a river). This has been translated by most scholars using the term ‘course,’ a term that is, in my opinion, rather opaque.14 I have therefore opted instead for the phrases ‘by way of’ or ‘with,’ which I hope are more intuitively comprehensible than ‘in the course’, and have also occasionally added the words ‘tonic’ and ‘fret’ in English, though these are only implied in the Arabic. A typical mode is thus indicated by a phrase such as, “on the index finger by way of the ring finger” [fī l-sabbāba fī majrā al-binṣir] or at times only “with the middle finger” [bi-l-wusṭā].15 The second and third fingers produced notes that were basically one half-step apart and were considered mutually exclusive: a mode could contain one or the other, but not both. By indicating which of the two was to be used, this system identified a crucial characteristic of the mode (similar, but not the same, as indicating whether a modern western scale uses a natural or flat third, the basic distinction between the major and minor scales).
These very brief instructions were apparently enough to inform skilled musicians about the melodic mode of a composition, but for modern scholars some critical information is missing, most notably, information about the upper tetrachord of the mode. If, for example, one used the middle-finger fret in the lower tetrachord, did one also use the middle-finger fret in the upper tetrachord, or not? As a result, modern scholars have differed in their reconstructions of the modal system of Arab music in this period.16
In contrast, the rhythmic system used in KA is rather clear, in part due to other works such as those by the philosopher and music theorist al-Fārābī (870–943).17 Here again al-Iṣbahānī relies on the ‘new terminology’ used by Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī (which quite frankly in this case is not much different from the earlier terms) and refers to rhythms using terms such as ‘first heavy,’ ‘second heavy,’ ‘first light,’ ‘second light,’ ‘light heavy,’ ‘hazaj,’ ‘ramal,’ and ‘light ramal’ (note that ramal was the name for both a poetic meter and a musical rhythm).18
In addition to indicating the rhythm and melodic mode of a song, however, these ‘captions’ often include other types of information:
The poetry is by Ḥammād al-Rāwiya and the music is by Ibn Jāmiʿ in the ‘first heavy’ rhythm by way of the middle-finger fret – this is what al-Ḥazanbal transmitted, citing ʿAmr ibn Abī ʿAmr. Ibn Ḥamdūn said, “This song is an amazing composition with many notes, well-constructed, and is among the best songs of Ibn Jāmiʿ. The caliph al-Muʿtaṣim was quite taken with it and would often order other singers to be silent when it was sung in his presence and would not listen to anything else for the rest of the day.”
KA V: 210
These passages also demonstrate a common feature of medieval Arab music, namely, the practice of contrafactum composition (setting new words to a known tune, or setting known lyrics to a new tune). Singer-composers such as Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī usually drew the lyrics for their song compositions from extant poems, and once a song began to circulate, its lyric was often picked up and set to new melodies by other composers. Here is the caption to a song that Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī performed for the caliph Musā al-Hādī, noting that the lyric consists of the third, second, and first verses of the original poem, and comparing this to settings by three other singer-composers:
The poetry is by Abū Sakhr al-Hudhalī and the melody is by Maʿbad. The melody starts with the [third] verse, ʿwa-yā hajar Laylāʾ [Layla has departed], and after that, the second, and then the first verse; it is in the ‘second heavy’ rhythm by way of the ring finger according to ʿAmr ibn al-Bāna. Ibn Surayj composed a song using the sixth and seventh, then the fourth and fifth verses of this poem, in the ‘first heavy’ rhythm according to al-Hishāmī. ʿArīb also composed a setting of the sixth, seventh, fourth and fifth verses, in the ‘first heavy’ rhythm, and the caliph al-Wāthiq composed a setting in the ramal rhythm, which he had composed before ʿArīb’s version, and she modeled her composition on his [ʿāraḍathu] using her own melody. Some people mistakenly attribute the melody of Maʿbad to Ibn Surayj and that of Ibn Surayj to Maʿbad.
KA V: 185–86
There were thus four different songs using selected verses from the same original poem in two different arrangements (verses 3-2-1 and 6-7-4-5) with four different melodies, in three different rhythms, all in circulation at the same time.
Another aspect of al-Iṣbahānī’s scholarship comes to light in these passages, and that is his extraordinary meticulousness in tracking down the provenance of both lyrics and melodies, along with their modes and rhythms. He not infrequently notes that he cannot find the melody or the rhythm of a certain song text, and also carefully records disagreements among transmitters:
The melody is by Maʿbad according to al-Hishāmī and Aḥmad ibn al-Makkī, in the ‘first heavy’ rhythm by way of the middle finger. Some have attributed it to Ḥunayn, and others say that it was composed by al-Gharīḍ; Ḥabash attributed it to Yazīd Ḥawrāʾ. There is also a setting by Ibrāhīm in the ‘light ramal’ rhythm by way of the ring finger.
KA V: 186
Given the enormous scope of KA, one can only regard with something approaching awe the effort and organizational skills that went into compiling, collating, and cross-referencing the thousands of details that it contains.
2 Key Figures
There are a number of people who appear repeatedly in this text. From Ibrāḥīm’s own family his son, Isḥāq, and his grandson, Ḥammād, are cited repeatedly as transmitters of information, as is his great-grandson Aḥmad, usually referred to by his nickname Waswāsa. Many anecdotes are introduced in their voices: “I heard my father say …” or “My father told me that one day he was with my grandfather…,” though the anecdote itself is usually introduced with the verb “He said,” followed by a direct quote in the first-person voice:
Among the other singers of the court, Ibrāhīm’s main rival was Ibn al-Mahdī, son of the caliph al-Mahdī and half-brother to the caliphs Mūsā al-Hādī and Hārūn al-Rashīd.19 However close Ibrāhīm may have been to Hārūn al-Rashīd as a companion, Ibn al-Mahdī’s connection was that of blood, which necessitated more than a few moments of deft diplomacy on Ibrāhīm’s part. He was also acquainted with two of the most powerful men of the day from two rival families both named al-Faḍl: al-Faḍl ibn Rabīʿ and al-Faḍl ibn Yaḥyā al-Barmakī. Al-Faḍl ibn Rabīʿ’s father had served as vizier under the caliphs al-Manṣūr and al-Mahdī, and he himself served as vizier to the caliph al-Amīn, son of Hārūn al-Rashīd. Al-Faḍl ibn Yaḥyā al-Barmakī’s father, on the other hand, was vizier during much of the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd, and he himself served as governor of Khurasan, but in 803 the Barmakī family fell into disgrace, and al-Faḍl was thrown into prison where he died in 806. The anecdotes that feature the two al-Faḍls focus on Ibrāhīm’s ability to remain friendly with both men despite their political rivalry.
3 Notes on the Translation
The ‘chains of transmission’ that accompany each anecdote appear in italics; the musical information in the song captions are also in italics and indented. Individual anecdotes have been separated with the signa §.
Personal names have been freely substituted for pronouns to avoid extended passages where all participants are referred to simply as ‘he.’ I have also taken some liberties with the text by inserting additional words or phrases that are implied in the Arabic (such as the addition of the words ‘tonic’ and ‘fret’ mentioned above) so that the English is clear; significant additions, however, are enclosed in brackets. The footnotes are meant to give additional contextual information where that seemed useful, particularly for non-specialists, but it is my hope that the main text can be read smoothly without that information. Literally hundreds of names appear in the ‘chains of transmission,’ so information about only the most prominent figures have been given in footnotes. All of the Arabic poetry rhymes in the original, but I have only in a few places created English versions that rhyme, mostly for short, ditty-like verses in the Arabic, not for the more serious poems and song lyrics.
There are a number of interjections and exclamations that occur repeatedly in this text that are rather awkward in English, for example the phrase ‘May God make me your ransom/sacrifice’ (jaʿalanī Allāh fidāʾaka), which indicates the willingness of the speaker to sacrifice his life for that of the person addressed: this has usually been rendered simply as ‘By my life.’ Another oft-used exclamation is wayḥaka, for which the common translation – ‘Woe unto you!’ – sounds far too Elizabethan, and has been rendered with the slightly more contemporary expression, ‘Blast it!’
Many colleagues have helped me with comments, suggestions, and corrections on earlier drafts of this translation, but there remain without doubt many faults, all of which are of course my own.
Neubauer, “Arabic Writings,” p. 369.
The songbook compiled by the female singer Badhl (fl. 810) included 12,000 songs with the names of the composers, but without indications for modes or rhythms; that composed by Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā al-Makkī (d. 864) included 14,000 songs, see H.G. Farmer, A History of Arabian Music (London: Luzac,1929), rpt. 1994: 114, and Neubauer, “Arabic Writings,” p. 369.
See H.G. Farmer, “Tenth Century Arabic Books on Music: As Contained in ʿKitāb al-Fihristʾ of Abuʾ l-Faraj Muḥammad ibn al-Nadīm,” Annual of Leeds Oriental Society, 2 (1959–61): 37–47, rpt. in Studies in Oriental Music (Frankfurt: Institute for the History of Arabo-Islamic Science, 1997), I: 400–10.
KA I: 2.
Once al-Iṣbahānī had completed his account of the ‘Hundred Songs’, he went on to add other materials, including, for example, a substantial section on songs composed by caliphs and other members of the royal family.
KA I: 3.
The entry for the second song from the list of the ‘Hundred Songs,’ for example, occupies over two hundred pages.
Jacques Berque, Musiques sur la fleuve: Les plus belles pages du Kitâb al-aghâni (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997), H.G. Farmer, History of Arabian Music; E. Neubauer, Musiker am Hof; George Dmitri Sawa, Music Performance Practice in the early ʿAbbasid Era 132–320 A.H./750–932 A.D. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1989), rpt. 2004, and Musical and Socio-Cultural Anecdotes from Kitāb al-Aghānī al-Kabīr (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2019).
Kilpatrick, Making the Great Book of Songs; Manfred Fleischhammer, Die Quellen des Kitāb al-Aġānī (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004).
Michael Cooperson, “‘Arabs’ and ‘Iranians’: The Uses of Ethnicity in the early Abbasid Period” in Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts: Essays in Honor of Professor Patricia Crone (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 364–87; Hilary Kilpatrick, “Ibrahim al-Mawsili,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 311, Arabic Literary Culture, 500–925, ed. Michael Cooperson and Shawkat M. Toorawa (Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005); Neubauer, Musiker am Hof.
Al-Ḥasan al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādhin al-jawhar, ed. Charles Pellat (Beirut: n.p., 1966–79).
KA I: 3 – “I have placed at the beginning of every piece of poetry that has been set to music the term ṣawt as a sign and indication that clarifies what is part of the musical composition [ṣanʿa] from what is not.”
Farmer uses ‘song captions’ and Kilpatrick uses ‘performance indications’; see Farmer “The Song Captions in Kitāb al-Aghānī al-Kabīr,” Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society 15: 1955–56: 29–38, rpt. in Farmer, Studies, 1997: I, 433–442, and Kilpatrick, Making the Great Book of Songs.
The Arabic term majrā can mean a ‘course’ in the sense of a ‘watercourse,’ but more literally indicates the path through which something, such as a river, flows or runs, hence my translation: ‘by way of.’
There was more than one tuning for the ‘middle finger’ [wusṭā] – Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī’s accompanist, Manṣūr Zalzal, for example, is credited with introducing or inventing a tone played with the middle finger that was a ‘neutral’ tone between the flat and natural.
For the analysis of the Mawṣilī ‘finger modes,’ see Xavier Maurice Collangettes, “Etude sur la musique arabe,” Journal Asiatique, sér. 10, t. 8 (Paris: 1906): 162–68; Curt Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1943): 280–81; H.G. Farmer, “The Song Captions in Kitāb al-Aghānī al-Kabīr.” Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society 15: 1955–56: 29–38, rpt. in Farmer, Studies,1997: I, 433–442; Owen Wright, “Ibn al-Munajjim and the early Arabian Modes,” The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 19 (April 1966): 27–48; and Eckhard Neubauer, “Al-Ḫalīl ibn Aḥmad und die Frügeschichte der arabischen Lehre von den ‘Tönen’ und den musikalischen Metren. Mit einem Übersetzung des Kitāb al-Nagham von Yaḥyā bin ʿAlī al-Munağğim.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, Vol. 10 (1995–96): 255–323.
See George Sawa, Rhythmic Theories and Practices in Arabic Writings to 339 AH/950 CE (Ottowa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2009); Eckhard Neubauer, “Die Theorie vom īqāʿ. I: Übersetzung des Kitāb al-Īqāʿāt von Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī,” Oriens, vol. 21–22 (1968–69): 196–232, and “Die Theorie vom īqāʿ. II: ‘Übersetzung des Kitāb Iḥṣāʿ al- īqāʿāt von Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī,’” Oriens, vol. 34 (1994): 103–73.
For a detailed study of the musical rhythm ramal, see Eckhard Neubauer, “A Historical Sketch of the Musical Metre Called Ramal,” in Rhythmic Cycles and Structures in the Art Music of the Middle East, eds. Zeynep Helvaci, Jacob Olley, and Ralf Martin Jäger (Würtzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2017): 17–30.
Ibn al-Mahdī’s first name was also Ibrāhīm; to avoid confusion, his name has been changed to Ibn al-Mahdī throughout this text.