Lost History The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists Written by http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/results.pperl?authorid=74588 - Michael H. Morgan National Geographic | Hardcover | June 2007 978-1-4262-0092-2 (1-4262-0092-7) | 320 pages $26.00/$32.00 (Canada)   ABOUT THIS BOOK In an era when the relationship between Islam and the West seems mainly defined by mistrust and misunderstanding, we often forget that for centuries Muslim civilization was the envy of the world. Essential reading for any student seeking to understand the major role played by the early Muslim world in influencing modern society, Lost History fills an important void. Written by an award-winning author and former diplomat with extensive experience in the Muslim world, it provides new insight not only into Islam's historic achievements but also the ancient resentments that fuel today's bitter conflicts. Michael Hamilton Morgan reveals how early Muslim advancements in science and culture lay the cornerstones of the European Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modern Western society. As he chronicles the Golden Ages of Islam, beginning in 570 a.d. with the birth of Muhammad, and resonating today, he introduces scholars like Ibn Al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, Al-Tusi, Al-Khwarizmi, and Omar Khayyam, towering figures who revolutionized the mathematics, astronomy, and medicine of their time and paved the way for Newton, Copernicus, and many others. And he reminds us that inspired leaders from Muhammad to Suleiman the Magnificent and beyond championed religious tolerance, encouraged intellectual inquiry, and sponsored artistic, architectural, and literary works that still dazzle us with their brilliance. Lost History finally affords pioneering leaders with the proper credit and respect they so richly deserve

 

 

You can find his bio on here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perspective, algebra, trigonometry where all invented by Arabs

 

 

The first revolution to happen in Islam was agricultural. Sources tell us thatbefore Islam came, the total agricultural output of Iraq was roughly 100 milion silver pieces, Dirhams, annually. After the conquest this fell during the civil wars to 28 million around 714 AD. When the Abbasids came they raised the vlue of the Dirham, reduced the amount of tax collected, from 20% to about 14%, and they had some 200 million in dirhams by 800. Land produce nearly doubled and in some places quadropled especially in Al-Andalus where new agricultural techniques were introduced. When the Moriscoes were kicked out the agricultural system in Spain nearly collapsed. Same goes for Transoxania and southern Turkey. Famines were rare and were mainly caused by civil wars not crop failures. Scientific approach to agriculture,in Iraq and Transoxania, started quite late ,early 13th century, only to be killed by the Mongols. This approach included selective breeding for animals and plants in a systematic way. For example, horses were produced in large number in that way and Abbasid and Mamlukes did not find it hard to find a large supplu of battle horses because these governments had made their own programs

 

There was an educational revolution. Nizami schools gathered scientists as well as scholars inside and provided a very similar atmosphere as modern, 18th century I mean, universities. They had ever changing correculums and many sciences like Algebra and Trignometry, both were considered as a part of geometry and astronomy respectively and the latter discipline is an Islamic invention from top to bottom by the way, became independent because professors who worked in those institutions and who approached those problems in a scientific way.

 

There was a health revolution. Quarantine was not invented by Italian cit states but by the Hafsids if I am not mistaken. Theirs wee probably the only country in the 14th century who did not suffer greatly from  the Black death. Hospitals existed in every major provincial town in the Islamic world and doctors visited villages and quarantined them if necessary. If Vaccination was the only invention Islamic medicine ever did, and its not, it would be sufficient to go under the criteria of "revolution". Any way, try this link and tell me what you think and if you say "so why did the rennaisance happen in Europe and not the Islamic world ?" I will give you the full answer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventions_in_the_Islamic_world - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventions_in_the_Islamic_world

 

AL-Jassas

 

You are totally wrong ... Perspective was known to Greeks, algebra (of course not with this name) was known to Greeks, trigonometry was known to Greeks. None of these disciplines were truly invented by Arabs ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your infos are interesting even if very opinable ... anyway, true or not, I would not call them real scientific revolutions (I know I'm making here semantics ) and wikipedia is not not a reliable source

 

 

 

The first revolution to happen in Islam was agricultural. Sources tell us thatbefore Islam came, the total agricultural output of Iraq was roughly 100 milion silver pieces, Dirhams, annually. After the conquest this fell during the civil wars to 28 million around 714 AD. When the Abbasids came they raised the vlue of the Dirham, reduced the amount of tax collected, from 20% to about 14%, and they had some 200 million in dirhams by 800.

Mullahs say the same things about the Islamic revolution of Iran, they also don't consider that the population of Iran was around 30 million during Shah's rule but it is already more than 70 million.

 

First time ever I heard about a zoroastrin named Muhammad ibn Musa as well as it is the first time I ever knew Khiva was full of Persians despite the fact they never ruled that city. Most scientists were Persians but many were Arabs and christians.

 

Second, what has the mullas have to do with our discussion, I agree with you that the revolution, which was not Islamic but nationalistic untill it was hijacked by the mullas, distroyed the economy of Iran but this has nothing to do with our discussion.

 

Al-Jassas

 

Yes, you are right there. I meant Muslim . Curiously enough, in Spanish we have the tendency to put all Muslim of the Middle Ages under the label or "Arabs".

 

If for Algebra you mean the very limited works of numerical analysis of Diophantus of Alexandria, they of course Greeks had some notions of algebra.

 

If for trigonometry you mean the very limited calculations with cords of Ptolemey and others, then, yes, Greeks have some notions of it.

 

BUT, if you want real SERIOUS stuff, you have to start with Al-Kwarismi in Algebra, and with other Muslims mathematicians in planar and spherical trigonometry.

 

With respect of perspective between Greeks, I really wonder where you got that information, so I would like to ask you show your sources. Greeks believed eyes were some sort of laser-beam machines that scanned the scenes... . With those principles so wrong I really doubt they invented even a preliminary idea of perspective, but I could be wrong. Show me your evidence, please.

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever heard of Pompeii? Have you ever heard of the so called pompeian styles of painting? Particularly the second pompeian style applies concistently perspective rules. Another example are the frescos of the so called "stanza delle maschere" in the house of emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Surely Romans didn't invent perspective but they only inherited it from their Hellenistic models. These hellenistic models are unfortunely all lost so these proofs are only indirect, I know.

 

If you are interested in a reliable source contrasting with mainstream historiography I can recommend you the book of Lucio Russo "The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had To Be Reborn".

 

 

 

 

For example, Greeks had some idea about Physics, but it is the Physics of the 18th century that we use today. And it is the Algebra of the Muslims that we use today, not the lopsided algebra of the Greeks.

 

The Greeks had much more to say about Geometry than Algebra.

 

To say that the Greeks invented Geometry is to say the Indians invented Calculus, while all the Indians did was discover the values of the sine, cosine and tangent function. Besides inventing the modern numeral and decimal system.

 

But yes, mostly the Sciences as they are known to mankind were invented by the Greeks. The Greeks learned how to quantify and find the exactitudes of everything; mostly other cultures focused on the liberal sciences (history, politics, magic spells) while the Greeks focused on the exact sciences and the philosophy of research the whole world uses today.

 

The life of Al-Khawarizmi was recorded by ibn Al-Nadim,who wrote a catalogue of books that circulated during his time, and Ibn Qutaibah both lived around the time he did and both mention that his name was Muhammad ibn Musa. The Musa you are referring to is Musa ibn Shakir and his sons and some people say he was not an Arab but a Persian. Al-Khawarizmi had several sudents including Thabit ibn Qurrah and Al-Jawhari and all say his full name Muhammad ibn Musa. Only Nubakht was the sole known Zoroastrian scientist in the Islamic world, I will try to check for others.

 

AL-Jassas

 

-Akolouthos

 

 

Fellow, puting the pictures in front bigger than the one at the back IS NOT perspective painting. This picture from Pompeii show perspective all missed up. Look, for instance to the perspective of the pilars that is totally incorrect.

Chinese painting also put the figures in front larger than at the back to give the illusion of deep.

However, to make REAL perspective you have to manage the concept of point of fuge (or whatever is called in English) and that was developed in the West, based in the writing on Optics by Al-Hazen.

 

 

Originally posted by Leonardo Another example are the frescos of the so called "stanza delle maschere" in the house of emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Surely Romans didn't invent perspective but they only inherited it from their Hellenistic models. These hellenistic models are unfortunely all lost so these proofs are only indirect, I know.

 

 

A single point of fuge at the back is the easiest perspective possible. Yes, the Greeks were close. However, as in so many fields, it seems they didn't reach the goal

Otherwise Calculus, steam machines and wind mill would have been invented by them, and not by Brits and Arabs.

 

By the way, please don't tell me Greeks invented the guitar because they have the lyre.

 

Originally posted by Leonardo If you are interested in a reliable source contrasting with mainstream historiography I can recommend you the book of Lucio Russo "The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had To Be Reborn".

 

Yeap. But I don't believe in those too optimistic books with respect to Greek achievements. I am afraid it could convinced me that James Watt didn't invent the steam machine but Hero of Alexandria

 

Interesting observation.

 

Well, although Arabs and Muslims in general, during the Middle Ages, were excellent merchants and dominated the trade across three continents, they weren't superb nautical engineers, which is a pitty. One main problem of the Arab ships is that they were tide together by ropes! Believe it or not. There are models of Middle Arab ships that show that limitations.

 

Other people of theirs times had superior techniques of navigation, particularly Indonesians in South East Asia and later Chinese. Polynesians and theirs superb catamarans. And also, Norse ships, reinforced with iron pegs, were more seaworthly than most Arab ships.

 

Iberia received the sailing influences of all over the world, and the development of modern ships and techniques is due mainly to the efforts of research of the Portugueses, mainly with Henry the navigator.

 

The astrolabe was invented by the Greeks of late Alexandria. It is believed that Hyphatia has a main role in its discovery or improvement. Muslims further improved that tool.

 

 

 

 

 

I will rewrite your sentence above, replacing Muslim by Greeks to see how it sound

 

 

The situation is the same. The fact is that Muslims took the knowledge of the Ancient world, added the creations of India and China, and from that basis they develop lot of NEW knowledge in Medicine, Mathematics, Physics (optics), Mechanics (wind mill, for example), Chemistry (alcohol) and other fields.

 

It is really shameful that some Westerners still deny theirs contributions.

 

Originally posted by Tyranos Most of Western Europe lost track of Greco-Roman knowledge and fell into apathy following the all barbarian raids(ie Dark Ages) and collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

 

In the West there was a decline on abstract sciences and phylosophy, but not in technology. In fact, in the West have at the end of the Middle Ages better technology that Greeks ever dreammed. For instance, the mechanical clockwork was invented in that period of time.

 

 

 

 

Tipu Sultan, lion of Mysore; boogieman for the British

 

BOO YAH!

 

 

 

You have not chosen a good example. Here you can find better examples: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/04/eust/ho_03.14.13a-g.htm - http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/04/eust/ho_03.14.13a-g.htm

 

 

 

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by Leonardo Another example are the frescos of the so called "stanza delle maschere" in the house of emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Surely Romans didn't invent perspective but they only inherited it from their Hellenistic models. These hellenistic models are unfortunely all lost so these proofs are only indirect, I know.     A single point of fuge at the back is the easiest perspective possible. Yes, the Greeks were close. However, as in so many fields, it seems they didn't reach the goal Otherwise Calculus, steam machines and wind mill would have been invented by them, and not by Brits and Arabs.   By the way, please don't tell me Greeks invented the guitar because they have the lyre.   Originally posted by Leonardo If you are interested in a reliable source contrasting with mainstream historiography I can recommend you the book of Lucio Russo "The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had To Be Reborn".     Yeap. But I don't believe in those too optimistic books with respect to Greek achievements. I am afraid it could convinced me that James Watt didn't invent the steam machine but Hero of Alexandria

 

Nope, they weren't.

 

Greeks have toy "wind mills", like those sold to small kids in entertainment parks, used in small toys . They never actually created a real functional wind mill. The origin of them was from Mesopotamia or Persia in the Middle Ages, when the vertical ax wind mill was first invented. Then the horizontal ax wind mill developed, I am not sure if in the East or the West.

 

With respect to mechanical clocks, Greeks only have hydraulic clocks of continuous movement. The escapement appeared first in China in hydraulic clocks and mysteriously in Europe in the 13th century. All the rest of the history of the mechanical clock is a mistery, at least in the west. The only thing that's sure is that Greeks didn't invented the escapement! so they didn't have mechanical clocks (only cleypsidras with grears).

 

 

 

 

 

Here is another example. If this is your proof, well I am afraid Greeks weren't very good at perspective at all. Look at the ridiculous distortions in this sample I got from the link you suggested.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by Leonardo Another example are the frescos of the so called "stanza delle maschere" in the house of emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Surely Romans didn't invent perspective but they only inherited it from their Hellenistic models. These hellenistic models are unfortunely all lost so these proofs are only indirect, I know.     A single point of fuge at the back is the easiest perspective possible. Yes, the Greeks were close. However, as in so many fields, it seems they didn't reach the goal Otherwise Calculus, steam machines and wind mill would have been invented by them, and not by Brits and Arabs.   By the way, please don't tell me Greeks invented the guitar because they have the lyre.   [QUOTE=Leonardo] It's not about "Greek" achievements but about Hellenistic civilization achievements in the period following Alexander the Great's death. Here you can read part of the book: http://books.google.it/books?id=MOTpnfz7ZuYC&dq=lucio+russo+forgotten+revolution&pg=PP1&ots=NIZG5MZU06&sig=3_mV55WDiZ4nD4-LK7IKFVJDM_o&hl=it&prev=http://www.google.it/search?hl=it&q=lucio+russo+forgotten+revolution&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail - http://books.google.it/books?id=MOTpnfz7ZuYC&dq=lucio+russo+forgotten+revolution&pg=PP1&ots=NIZG5MZU06&sig=3_mV55WDiZ4nD4-LK7IKFVJDM_o&hl=it&prev=http://www.google.it/search?hl=it&q=lucio+russo+forgotten+revolution&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail

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Have you already read all the excerpts of the book I linked before? You are really Speedy Gonzales

 

 

 

So, I have to follow what you read?

 

Amazing.

 

Seeing the ridiculus and childlike Greek-Roman paintings above is not enough to convince you Greeks didn't master perspective?

 

You know what I believe? I believe you simply don't want to accept Muslim achievements during the Middle Ages. A pitty.

 

 

 

Exactly!

 

Some people just show Eurocentric bigotry with respect to inventors and discoverers.

 

During the Middle Ages, India, China and the Muslim World continue to develop Science and Arts from the level Greeks left it. During almost 10 centuries, they advances made the foundations of the Modern world.

 

Greeks didn't invented the indo-arabic number system, chess,

"Pascal"'s theorem, paper, ecuatorial mounting for telescopes, the escapement, printing or gunpowder. They lacked the skills on Medicine and Chemistry of Muslims. Greeks didn't developed algebra and trigonometry to the levels on which Europeans started theirs works, the difference between both was invented by Muslim, Indian and Chinese mathematicians of the Middle Ages.

 

It is so disgusting that bigotry don't allow history to show the whole picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why not, if you can learn more

 

 

 

 

Of course. However, I am afraid I know more than enough of your possition to continue

 

In fact, I believe it would be fair you study something about Muslim contributors, before we continue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If those paintings are "ridicolous and childlike" a lot of celebrated Renaissance paintings are "ridicolous and childlike" too ...

 

 

 

This is Chinese "Perspective", for instance. It looks natural and right, but it is not based on projections.

 

 

Now, using perspective and camera obscura you could produce this:

 

 

 

And all that goes back to this person

 

 

 

 And this Book on Optics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything anyone has said here about their scientific, artistic, literary, mathematical, or other contributions I was taught at school as a teenager.  At least that's true at a general level: I didn't get down to details until I was university.

 

I use a very blatant example of revisionism for illustration below, one which the institution cannot force through yet, no matter what it likes to think (but you can't blame the sleazy devils for trying, eh?); what I allude to above is more a crime of ommission rather than false revisionism as attempted below.

 

Iraq: teachers told to rewrite history

MoD accused of sending propaganda to schools

 

Deplorable, but I'll believe anything of the current UK government. However (a) it's a current political move and nothing to do with teaching history and (b) it's being admirably resisted by the teachers.

cause he said"This fool wants to turn the entire science of astronomy upside down!"

 

Indeed. They also spread Indian (indian numbers, zero) and Chinese knowledge (paper) to the West.

 

But not only that, Arabs and muslim of the Middle Ages, developed new knowledge, particularly in mathematics (advances in algebra, trigonometry), mechanics (wind mill), physics (formulation of optics) but specially medicine (cauterizing, for instance).

 

Besides, people usually forget that Muslims and Christian (Ortodox and Roman) intellectuals were in close contact during the middle ages, and that wasn't strange that a Greek architect from Bizantium worked between the moors of Spain, or that European Christians ended up counseling in Bagdad. And because those contacts, Europe has a chance to left the Middle Ages behind.

 

Middle Ages music, for instance, was heavily influenced by Arabs, and many of the most refined custums that changed Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree with pinguin. Aristotle did indeed believe that the light ray was produced from the eyes that allowed people to see... and many of his ideas went unchallenged for centuries.

 

Out of many Islamic figures, I respect Avicenna. Not only that he was a brilliant man, he was one of the most sincere and passionate Muslim in spite of critics from other religious leaders. 

 

Where do you get that from? Medieval music derives straight from the Greek modes, and where it isn't just unsophisticatedly pentatonic, it's diatonic (eight-note scale). In fact I would think that of all the medieval arts and sciences, music was the least influenced by the Arabs (or any other Asiatic source).

 

 

 

I dissagree simply because the influences of Arabs in Al-Andalus were very large, and there is some evidence that Arab musical styles spread from there to the rest of Europe. I am not saying that that was the single influence at all. Of course Bizantium also was an important source of culture during the Middle Ages (Venecian and Andalucian buildings had its influence. But there also was Arab influences in arts to the north.

 

This is an example.

 

Source "Saudi Aramco World" http://saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200407/flight.of.the.blackbird-.compilation..htm - http://saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200407/flight.of.the.blackbird-.compilation..htm

 

I quote:

 

THE FLIGHT OF THE BLACK BIRD

 

By Robert W. Lebling, Jr. and Norman MacDonald

 

 

 

If you eat asparagus, or if you start your meal with soup and end with dessert, or if you use toothpaste, or if you wear your hair in bangs, you owe a lot to one of the greatest musicians in history. He was known as Ziryab, a colloquial Arabic term that translates as “blackbird.” He lived in medieval Spain more than a thousand years ago. He was a freed slave who made good, charming the royal court at Córdoba with his songs. He founded a music school whose fame survived more than 500 years after his death. Ibn Hayyan of Córdoba, one of Arab Spain’s greatest historians, says in his monumental Al-Muqtabas (The Citation) that Ziryab knew thousands of songs by heart and revolutionized the design of the musical instrument that became the lute. He spread a new musical style around the Mediterranean, influencing troubadours and minstrels and affecting the course of European music.

He was also his generation’s arbiter of taste and style and manners, and he exerted enormous influence on medieval European society. How people dressed, what and how they ate, how they groomed themselves, what music they enjoyed—all were influenced by Ziryab. If you’ve never heard of this remarkable artist, it’s not surprising. With the twists and turns of history, his name has dropped from public memory in the western world. But the changes he brought to Europe are very much a part of the reality we know today.

	javascript:popupWindowNoScroll%28/issue/200407/flight.popup1.html,740,440%29">	Fleeing Baghdad, Ziryab moved west with his family. He stopped in the hills of Kairouan, in modern-day Tunisia, before gaining an invitation to bring his musical skills to Córdoba.

One reason Ziryab is unknown to us is that he spoke Arabic, and was part of the royal court of the Arab empire in Spain. Muslims from Arabia and North Africa ruled part of Spain from AD 711 until 1492. The last remnant of Arab rule in the Iberian Peninsula, the Kingdom of Granada, was conquered by the armies of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the same year that Columbus sailed for the New World.

The Arabs called their Iberian domain Al-Andalus—a direct reference to the Vandals, who occupied the peninsula in the fifth century and whose legacy was still pervasive when Muslim forces arrived in the eighth—and that name survives today in the name of Spain’s southern province, Andalusia. At its peak, Al-Andalus experienced a golden age of civilization that was the envy of all Europe, and which set the stage for the European Renaissance that followed. Muslims, Christians and Jews interacted in a convivencia—a “living-together”—of tolerance and cooperation unparalleled in its time. Influences from Arab Spain spread to France and throughout Europe, and from there to the Americas. It was in this context that the achievements of Ziryab became part of western culture.

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Blackbird flourished in the stimulating atmosphere of Harun al-Rashid’s Baghdad, developing his musical skills while implementing new ideas.

Ziryab’s achievements were not forgotten in the Arab world, and it is from historians there that we know of his life and accomplishments. As the 17th-century Arab historian al-Maqqari says in his Nafh al-Tib (Fragrant Breeze), “There never was, either before or after him, a man of his profession who was more generally beloved and admired.”

lackbird was actually named Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali ibn Nafi’, and he was born in about the year 789 in the land now called Iraq, perhaps in its capital, Baghdad. Some Arab historians say he was a freed slave—apparently a page or personal servant—whose family had served al-Mahdi, the caliph or ruler of the Baghdad-based Abbasid empire from 775 until his death in 785. In those days, many prominent musicians were slaves or freedmen, some of African origin, others from Europe or the Middle East (including Kurdistan and Persia). Historians differ over whether Ziryab was African, Persian or Kurdish. According to Ibn Hayyan, ‘Ali Ibn Nafi’ was called Blackbird because of his extremely dark complexion, the clarity of his voice and “the sweetness of his character.”

Blackbird studied music under the famous singer and royal court musician Ishaq al-Mawsili (“Isaac of Mosul”). Ishaq, his even more celebrated father, Ibrahim, and Ziryab are the three artists known as the fathers of Arabic music.

Baghdad was then a world center for culture, art and science. Its most famous ruler was Harun al-Rashid, who succeeded al-Mahdi. Harun was a lover of music, and brought many singers and musicians to the palace for the entertainment of his guests. Ishaq, as Harun’s chief musician, trained a number of students in the musical arts, among them Blackbird. Ziryab was intelligent and had a good ear; outside his lessons, he surreptitiously learned the songs of his master, which were said to have been complex and difficult even for an expert. Ishaq did not realize how much Ziryab had learned until Harun himself asked to hear the young musician.

In Ibn Hayyan’s account (as related by al-Maqqari), Ishaq told the caliph, “Yes, I’ve heard some nice things from Ziryab, some clear and emotional melodies—particularly some of my own rather unusual renditions. I taught him those songs because I considered them especially suited to his skill.”

Ziryab was summoned, and he sang for Harun al-Rashid. Afterward, when the caliph spoke to him, Ziryab answered “gracefully, with real charm of manner.” Harun asked him about his skill, and Blackbird replied, “I can sing what the other singers know, but most of my repertory is made up of songs suitable only to be performed before a caliph like Your Majesty. The other singers don’t know those numbers. If Your Majesty permits, I’ll sing for you what human ears have never heard before.”

Harun raised his eyebrows, and ordered that master Ishaq’s lute be handed to Ziryab. The Arabian lute or ‘ud, model of the European lute and relative of the guitar, was an instrument with four courses of strings, a body shaped like half a pear and a bent, fretless neck.

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Performing before the caliph, the young musician upstaged his teacher, Ishaq al-Mawsuli, who forced him to choose between exile and death.

Ziryab respectfully declined the instrument. “I’ve brought my own lute,” he said, “which I made myself —stripping the wood and working it —and no other instrument satisfies me. I left it at the palace gate and, with your permission, I’ll send for it.”

Harun sent for the lute. He examined it. It looked like Ishaq al-Mawsuli’s.

“Why won’t you play your master’s lute?” the caliph asked.

“If the caliph wants me to sing in my master’s style, I’ll use his lute. But to sing in my own style, I need this instrument.”

“They look alike to me,” Harun said.

“At first glance, yes,” said Ziryab, “but even though the wood and the size are the same, the weight is not. My lute weighs about a third less than Ishaq’s, and my strings are made of silk that has not been spun with hot water—which weakens them. The bass and third strings are made of lion gut, which is softer and more sonorous than that of any other animal. These strings are stronger than any others, and they can better withstand the striking of the pick.” Ziryab’s pick was a sharpened eagle’s claw, rather than the usual piece of carved wood. He had also, significantly, added a fifth course of strings to the instrument.

Harun was satisfied. He ordered Ziryab to perform, and the young man began a song he had composed himself. The caliph was quite impressed. He turned to al-Mawsuli and said, “If I thought you had been hiding this man’s extraordinary ability, I’d punish you for not telling me about him. Continue his instruction until it’s completed. For my part, I want to contribute to his development.”

Ziryab had apparently concealed his finest talents from his own teacher. When Ishaq was finally alone with his pupil, he raged about being deceived. He said frankly that he was jealous of Ziryab’s skill, and feared the pupil would soon replace the master in the caliph’s favor.

“I could pardon this in no man, not even my own son,” Ishaq said. “If I weren’t still somewhat fond of you, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill you, regardless of the consequences. Here is your choice: Leave Baghdad, take up residence far from here, and swear that I’ll never hear from you again. If you do this, I’ll give you enough money to meet your needs. But if you choose to stay and spite me—I warn you, I’ll risk my life and all I possess to crush you. Make your choice!”

Ziryab did not hesitate; he took the money and left the Abbasid capital. Ishaq explained his protégé’s absence by claiming that Ziryab was mentally unbalanced and had left Baghdad in a rage at not receiving a gift from the caliph. “The young man is possessed,” Ishaq told Harun al-Rashid. “He’s subject to fits of frenzy that are horrible to witness. He believes the jinn speak with him and inspire his music. He’s so vain he believes his talent is unequaled in the world. I don’t know where he is now. Be thankful, Your Majesty, that he’s gone.”

javascript:popupWindowNoScroll%28/issue/200407/flight.popup5.html,700,620%29"> There was a germ of truth in Ishaq’s tale: According to Ibn Hayyan and others, Ziryab did believe that in his dreams he heard the songs of the jinn, the spirit beings of Islamic and Arab lore. He would wake from a dream in the middle of the night and summon his own students, teaching them the melodies he had heard in his dreams.

As Reinhart Dozy notes in Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne, “None knew better than Ishaq that there was no insanity in all this: What true artist, indeed, whether believing in jinn or not, has not known moments when he has been under the sway of emotions hard to define, and savoring of the supernatural?”

Ziryab and his family fled from Baghdad to Egypt and crossed North Africa to Kairouan in present-day Tunisia, seat of the Aghlabid dynasty of Ziyadat Allah I. There he was welcomed by the royal court. But he had no intention of staying in Kairouan; his eyes were on Spain. Under the Umayyads, Córdoba was fast becoming a cultural jewel to rival Baghdad, and Blackbird thought Córdoba might be a fit setting for his talents.

Ziryab wrote to al-Hakam, ruler of the emirate of Al-Andalus, and offered his musical skills. Al-Hakam, delighted with the prospect of adding a Baghdad musician to his court, wrote back inviting Ziryab to proceed to Córdoba. He offered the musician a handsome salary. Ziryab and his family packed their bags and headed overland to the Strait of Gibraltar. There they embarked on a ship bound for Algeciras, Spain.

When Ziryab arrived in Spain in the year 822, he was shocked to learn that al-Hakam was dead. Devastated, the young musician prepared to return to North Africa. But thanks to the glowing recommendation of Abu al-Nasr Mansur, a Jewish musician of the Córdoban royal court, al-Hakam’s son and successor ‘Abd al-Rahman II renewed the invitation to Ziryab.

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Blackbird broke social barriers in Córdoba, teaching new musical styles to the children of the wealthy as well as to ordinary entertainers.

After meeting with the 33-year-old wonder from Baghdad, ‘Abd al-Rahman —who was about the same age—made him an attractive offer. Ziryab would receive a handsome salary of 200 gold pieces per month, with bonuses of 500 gold pieces at midsummer and the new year and 1000 on each of the two major Islamic holidays. He would be given 200 bushels of barley and 100 bushels of wheat each year. He would receive a modest palace in Córdoba and several villas with productive farmland in the countryside. Naturally, Ziryab accepted the offer; overnight he became a prosperous member of the landed upper class in Islamic Spain.

bd al-Rahman’s objective in hiring the young musician was to bring culture and refinement to the rough-and-ready country of Al-Andalus, the wild west of the Arab world and not too long ago a “barbarian” Gothic land far from the civilized centers of Damascus and Baghdad. The ruler’s own Umayyad family had come as exiles from Damascus, where they had ruled an Islamic empire for several hundred years. Now the power rested with the Abbasids in Baghdad, and that city had become a magnet for scientists, artists and scholars of all descriptions.

In fact, ‘Abd al-Rahman offered Ziryab employment before even asking him to perform. And when he eventually did hear Ziryab’s songs, contemporaries say the ruler was so captivated that he would never again listen to another singer. From that day forward, ‘Abd al-Rahman and Ziryab were close confidants, and would often meet to discuss poetry, history and all the arts and sciences.

Ziryab served as a kind of “minister of culture” for the Andalusi realm. One of his first projects was to found a school of music, which opened its doors not only to the talented sons and daughters of the higher classes but also to lower-class court entertainers. Unlike the more rigid conservatories of Baghdad, Ziryab’s school encouraged experimentation in musical styles and instruments. While the academy taught the world-famous styles and songs of the Baghdad court, Ziryab quickly began introducing his innovations and established his reputation as, in the words of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, “the founder of the musical traditions of Muslim Spain.”

He created the rules governing the performance of the nuba (or nauba), an important Andalusian Arab music form that survives today in the classical music of North Africa, known as maluf in Libya, Tunisia and eastern Algeria, and simply as andalusi music farther west. Ziryab created 24 nubas, one for each hour of the day, like the classical ragas of India. The nuba form became very popular in the Spanish Christian community and had a pronounced influence on the development of medieval European music.

Adding a fifth pair of strings to the lute gave the instrument greater delicacy of expression and a greater range. As music historian Julian Ribera wrote in the 1920’s, the medieval lute’s four courses of strings were widely believed to correspond to the four humors of the body. The first pair was yellow, symbolizing bile, the second was red for blood, the third white for phlegm, and the fourth, the bass pair, was black for melancholy. Ziryab, it was said, gave the lute a soul, adding another red pair of strings between the second and third courses.

Ziryab heightened the lute’s sensitivity by playing the instrument with a flexible eagle’s talon or quill, rather than the traditional wooden pick. This innovation spread quickly, and soon no skilled musician in Córdoba would consider touching wood to the strings of his lute.

Ziryab reputedly knew the words and melodies of 10,000 songs by heart. Though this claim may be exaggerated, his memory was certainly prodigious. He was also an excellent poet, a student of astronomy and geography, and a dazzling conversationalist, according to Ibn Hayyan and al-Maqqari. He often discussed the customs and manners of nations throughout the known world, and spoke extensively of the high civilization centered in Baghdad. As his popularity in Al-Andalus grew, so did his influence. His suggestions and recommendations became the popular fashion. Many of his new ideas gradually migrated into the land of the Franks—to France, Germany, northern Italy and beyond.

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Ziryab’s innovations in Al-Andalus included appropriate clothing for each of the four seasons.

iryab loved well-prepared food almost as much as he did music. He revolutionized the arts of the table in Spain, in ways that survive to this day.

Before Ziryab, Spanish dining was a simple, even crude, affair, inherited from the Visigoths, the successors of the Vandals, and from local custom. Platters of different foods were piled together, all at the same time, on bare wooden tables. Table manners were nonexistent.

A wide array of foods was available in Al-Andalus—meats, fish and fowl, vegetables, cheeses, soups and sweets. Ziryab combined them in imaginative recipes, many originating in Baghdad. One of these dishes, consisting of meatballs and small triangular pieces of dough fried in coriander oil, came to be known as taqliyat Ziryab, or Ziryab’s fried dish; many others bore his name as well. He delighted court diners by elevating a humble spring weed called asparagus to the status of a dinner vegetable. Ziryab developed a number of delectable desserts, including an unforgettable treat of walnuts and honey that is served to this day in the city of Zaragoza. In his adopted home, Córdoba, the musician-gourmet is remembered today in an old dish of roasted and salted broad beans called ziriabí.

The staying power of Blackbird’s reputation is such that even today in Algeria, where Andalusi influence continues to echo, the sweet orange Arab pastry known as zalabia—here it takes the form of a spiral of fried batter soaked in saffron syrup—is believed by many Algerians to derive its name from Ziryab’s, a claim impossible to confirm or refute. An Indian version of zalabia, the jalebi, can be traced back to the 15th century within India but no earlier, and could be a borrowing from the Arabs and ultimately from Ziryab.

With the emir’s blessing, Ziryab decreed that palace dinners would be served in courses—that is, according to a fixed sequence, starting with soups or broths, continuing with fish, fowl or meats, and concluding with fruits, sweet desserts and bowls of pistachios and other nuts. This presentation style, unheard of even in Baghdad or Damascus, steadily gained in popularity, spreading through the upper and merchant classes, then among Christians and Jews, and even to the peasantry. Eventually the custom became the rule throughout Europe. The English expression “from soup to nuts,” indicating a lavish, multi-course meal, can be traced back to Ziryab’s innovations at the Andalusi table.

Dressing up the plain wooden dinner table, Ziryab taught local craftsmen how to produce tooled and fitted leather table coverings. He replaced the heavy gold and silver drinking goblets of the upper classes—a holdover from the Goths and Romans—with delicate, finely crafted crystal. He redesigned the bulky wooden soupspoon, substituting a trimmer, lighter-weight model.

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From chess to coiffure, and from novel foods like asparagus to tooled leather table coverings, dinnerware and table manners, Ziryab pioneered customs that were later carried north, where they influenced the manners and customs of Europe.

Ziryab also turned his attention to personal grooming and fashion. He developed Europe’s first toothpaste (though what exactly its ingredients were, we cannot say). He popularized shaving among men and set new haircut trends. Before Ziryab, royalty and nobles washed their clothes with rose water; to improve the cleaning process, he introduced the use of salt.

For women, Blackbird opened a “beauty parlor/cosmetology school” not far from the Alcazar, the emir’s palace. He created hairstyles that were daring for the time. The women of Spain traditionally wore their hair parted in the middle, covering their ears, with a long braid down the back. Ziryab introduced a shorter, shaped cut, with bangs on the forehead and the ears uncovered. He taught the shaping of eyebrows and the use of depilatories for removing body hair. He introduced new perfumes and cosmetics. Some of Ziryab’s fashion tips he borrowed from the elite social circles of Baghdad, then the world’s most cosmopolitan city. Others were twists on local Andalusi custom. Most became widespread simply because Ziryab advocated them: He was a celebrity, and people gained status simply by emulating him.

As an arbiter of courtly dress, he decreed Spain’s first seasonal fashion calendar. In springtime, men and women were to wear bright colors in their cotton and linen tunics, shirts, blouses and gowns. Ziryab introduced colorful silk clothing to supplement traditional fabrics. In summer, white clothing was the rule. When the weather turned cold, Ziryab recommended long cloaks trimmed with fur, which became all the rage in Al-Andalus.

Ziryab exercised great clout at the emir’s court, even in political and administrative decision-making. ‘Abd al-Rahman II has been credited with organizing the “norms of the state” in Al-Andalus, transforming it from a Roman-Visigothic model to one set up along Abbasid lines, and Ziryab is said to have played a significant role in this process.

Ziryab brought in astrologers from India and Jewish doctors from North Africa and Iraq. The astrologers were grounded in astronomy, and Ziryab encouraged the spread of this knowledge. The Indians also knew how to play chess, and Ziryab had them teach the game to members of the royal court, and from there it spread throughout the peninsula.

Desserts like guirlache, an age-old concoction of walnuts, honey and sesame that is still popular today in Zaragoza, Spain, may well reflect the continuing influence of Ziryab, who combined arrays of ingredients in novel ways. Photo: Tor Eigeland.

ot surprisingly, Ziryab’s all-encompassing influence incurred the jealousy and resentment of other courtiers in Córdoba. Two celebrated poets of the day, Ibn Habib and al-Ghazzal, wrote scathing verses attacking him. Al-Ghazzal, a prominent Andalusi satirist, probably viewed the Baghdadi Ziryab as a high-toned interloper. Ziryab maintained the friendship and support of the emir, however, and that was all that mattered.

But ‘Abd al-Rahman II died in about 852, and his remarkable innovator Ziryab is believed to have followed about five years later. Ziryab’s children kept alive his musical inventions, assuring their spread throughout Europe. Each of his eight sons and two daughters eventually pursued a musical career, though not all became celebrities. The most popular singer was Ziryab’s son ‘Ubayd Allah, though his brother Qasim was said to have a better voice. Next in talent was ‘Abd al-Rahman, the first of the children to take over the music school after their father’s death—though arrogance was said to be his downfall, for he ended up alienating everyone, according to Ibn Hayyan.

Ziryab’s daughters were skilled musicians. The better artist was Hamduna, whose fame translated into marriage with the vizier of the realm. The better teacher was her sister ‘Ulaiya, the last surviving of Ziryab’s children, who went on to inherit most of her father’s musical clients. As ‘Abd al-Rahman II and Ziryab departed the stage, Córdoba was coming into its own as a cultural capital and seat of learning. By the time another ‘Abd al-Rahman—the third —took power in 912, the city had become the intellectual center of Europe. As historian James Cleugh said of Córdoba in Spain in the Modern World, “there was nothing like it, at that epoch, in the rest of Europe. The best minds in that continent looked to Spain for everything which most clearly differentiates a human being from a tiger.”

As the first millennium drew to a close, students from France, England and the rest of Europe flocked to Córdoba to study science, medicine and philosophy and to take advantage of the great municipal library with its 600,000 volumes. When they returned to their home countries, they took with them not only knowledge, but also art, music, cuisine, fashion and manners.

Europe found itself awash with new ideas and new customs, and among the many streams that flowed northward from the Iberian Peninsula, more than one had been channeled by Ziryab.

Robert W. Lebling, Jr. is head of electronic publishing for Saudi Aramco in Dhahran. His academic background includes studies in the history, politics and anthropology of Arab North Africa and Al-Andalus. He is collaborating on a book on natural remedies of Arabia.

Norman MacDonald is a Canadian free-lance illustrator who lives in Amsterdam. He has been sketching the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague.

This article appeared on pages 2-11 of the Al-Andalus print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

 

 

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim Medieval music derives from Greek music? Surely most of it was native.

That's why I mentioned 'unsophisticatedly pentatonic'. Yes there was a lot of 'native' music around. But the diatonic stuff - singing mostly, given the Church's attitude to instrumental music - comes straight from the Greek modes.

 

Some antique Greek:

 

Some late antiquity:

 

 

 

 

 

As for imports such as the guitar/variants, I don't think they can be called Greek at the exclusion of Arab (nor vice versa)

 

I'd distinguish between the instrument and the music played on it. Modern Indian musicians use the clarinet quite a lot, but what they play on it isn't Western music. On a standard guitar it may be theoretically possible to play quarter-tone music, but it's pushing the envelope. A guitar may look like a sitar, but the music played on them is wildly different.

 

'Guitar' derives from Greek 'kithara' and is a fixed pitch instrument, which means it is entirely unsuitable to Arab music. The 'guitarra moresca' is somewhat different, and anyhow I'm not denying there was Arab music in Iberia. In fact the instrument that probably came from the Arabs, and possibly points east, was the violin (at least, the violin family - strings with no frets, rubbed by a bow), but in Europe it was 'tamed' into playing music that derives from Greek sources (or local 'native' ones).

 

 

Come back when you have some musical evidence, rather than semi-mythological popularisations. Moreover, medieval European lutes are fixed-pitch (fixed fretted, unlike, say, the sitar), diatonic instruments, unsuitable for Arab music. Generally speaking historically the influence has gone the other way, as Arab music has been constricted by being played on Western instruments.

 

The picture of a lute you show significantly has no frets, which means you can play Arab music on it. The fixed frets on European lutes however, like those on guitars show how widely different the music that was played on them was to that played on Arab instruments.

 

Music is my weakness, so I don't know much about it. It calls my attention, though, that you mention hymns from antique and late antique times. How were they recorded? As far as I know there wasn't musical writing in classical times but up to the renacense, when Guido D'Arezzon invented it. I don't understand how was recorded, then.

 

Really? I am not a musician so I can't give here a good fight , however I have heared quite a bit of Arab, Middle Ages Spanish and European music, and I can't percieve the barrier that you comment. Arab and European music are not from different planets.

 

Arabs and Europeans knew each other and interchange culture and knowledge during a thousand year in Spain and also in the Middle East. And Arabs had a higher culture... I tell you

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 The picture of a lute you show significantly has no frets, which means you can play Arab music on it. The fixed frets on European lutes however, like those on guitars show how widely different the music that was played on them was to that played on Arab instruments.

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The Greeks had musical notation, though not the same as ours of course, from somewhere around 500-odd BC, based on using the letters of the alphabet to represent notes.

 

http://classics.uc.edu/music/index.html - http://classics.uc.edu/music/index.html  for instance.

Well, they're both kinds of music so they have something in common. However, melodically Western music historically was based on an seven-note octave scale (called an 'octave' because the seven plus the first repeated at double the frequency of the first makes eight). Only in relatively modern times has a 12-note scale been in use.

 

Arab music however is based from the beginning on a 24-note scale, which distinguishes it from all other world music AFAIK. That's why you can't play it on a piano or a fretted lute or guitar (though you can get closer by 'bluing' the note - pulling the string sideways) or keyed and valved Western wind instruments.

 

European music is also much concerned with harmony - and has been ever since Pythagoras -and Arab music pretty well ignores harmony.

 

You might find this concert review interesting:

http://news.egypt.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1480&Itemid=55 - http://news.egypt.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1480&Itemid=55

 

Arabs and Europeans knew each other and interchange culture and knowledge during a thousand year in Spain and also in the Middle East. And Arabs had a higher culture... I tell you

I'll give you Iberian music has Arab influences, but at that time I count Iberia as part of the Arab world. But Iberian music has had little effect on the rest of Europe until relatively modern times.

Originally posted by gcle2003 The picture of a lute you show significantly has no frets, which means you can play Arab music on it. The fixed frets on European lutes however, like those on guitars show how widely different the music that was played on them was to that played on Arab instruments.   It may be so, but when I hear Flamenco and other ancient styles of Spanish Music I can't help but the similarity of patterns with Moroccian and Arabian musical styles. With respect to lutes, they look similar to some multi-cords guitars played in folk music in several countries in Latin America. I can't help but see the link.

You have to be careful to distinguish between the 'lute' and the 'oud' (or 'oudh') which is the Arab version of the instrument, and is fretless.

Originally posted by google   Sometimes spelled Oudh. The Arabic word for wood, in perfumery usually refers to wood from the Agar tree (see). http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=1&oi=define&q=http://nowsmellthis.blogharbor.com/blog/_WebPages/Glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNHEYzJ0xuNgU0DhEvrEElf0LUxM4Q - nowsmellthis.blogharbor.com/blog/_WebPages/Glossary.html (pron. "owd" or "ood") a member of the lute family from the Middle East. Being fretless, it’s capable of great expression, and has a powerful bass. Instrumentalist Bull, Sandy recorded some oud tracks on his albums in the mid-60s, which is probably its first appearance during the folk revival. http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=2&oi=define&q=http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/traditional-music/ency/o.htm&usg=AFQjCNFViRYkbuSPvFhSV1IUQDBZ2j8T7A - www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/traditional-music/ency/o.htm a sort of lute http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://www.mpmbooks.com/amelia/GLOSSARY.HTM&usg=AFQjCNHmW95TpQJB6bav_Jpt2YpABArdkg - www.mpmbooks.com/amelia/GLOSSARY.HTM (Pronounced "ood" where the "oo" sound is like that in "moon".) Sometimes spelled Ud. This is a musical instrument commonly used in Arabic, Turkish, and Armenian music which was the forerunner of the European lute. It has 11 strings and no frets. ... http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=4&oi=define&q=http://www.sadiia.com/glossary.htm&usg=AFQjCNE-OLpmpKYeoQI7YLNjaPkz1eCenA - www.sadiia.com/glossary.htm Fretless, plucked short-neck lute. http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=5&oi=define&q=http://www.raqs.co.nz/bellybeat/terms.html&usg=AFQjCNHMUDe-x5JtJ_eAFpp9DdgMigODAg - www.raqs.co.nz/bellybeat/terms.html The oud, (Arabic: العود Al'oud ) (Persian: بربط Barbat ) (Turkish: ud or ut) (Greek: Ούτι) is a pear-shaped, stringed instrument, still used in traditional Middle Eastern music and East African music. http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=6&oi=define&q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oud&usg=AFQjCNGHmFIfYEcx32zb1LbVRB3wr90iSw - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oud

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Although I may agree with the rest of your argument, this part really shocked me.

 

Iberian music didn't influenced European?

I can hardly believe those hundred of thousand European schollars that went to study to Toledo and other multicultural cities of Middle Ages Spain never heared music there and weren't influenced.

 

On the other hand, although heavily influenced by the Arab world and ruled by muslims, Spain never stopped to be mainly Roman. People spoke romance languages, and they recieved not only Arab influences but from France, Italy and Germany as well.

 

In short, Andalucia was one of the two or three places were West met East, and influenced both. And music is one of the influences that travel faster (just see Chinese people dancing reaggeton or playing rock)

 

 

 

 

Not in the middle ages. Moreover it hasn't really influenced European music, even though non-Iberian Europeans have learned to some extent to appreciate it. Latin American music in the last 100 or so years has had more influence, but that's more African than Latin.

I can hardly believe those hundred of thousand European schollars that went to study to Toledo and other multicultural cities of Middle Ages Spain never heared music there and weren't influenced.

We have plenty of records of music from the middle ages and the Renaissance. I'm not aware of any of it that shows any influence from Arab music, or even any similarity to Arab music. On the other hand the development from Greek music is traceable throughout. (Even local musical traditions, which were pretty primitive still, are eventually brought within the Greek tradition. )

On the other hand, although heavily influenced by the Arab world and ruled by muslims, Spain never stopped to be mainly Roman. People spoke romance languages, and they recieved not only Arab influences but from France, Italy and Germany as well.

By and large you appreciate most the music you grow up listening to. Quarter-tones sound awful to the average European ear, just as diminished chords and even minor ones offend Eastern ears. You sing the songs of the musical tradition you belong to, and without training you rarely learn to appreciate other styles, unless they are somehow hybridised - like for instance West Indian steel bands. But there is no hybrid Arab-European music because the two are too dissimilar - much more dissimilar than European and Chinese since Chinese music kind of stuck at an early developmental stage and didn't go on to different kinds of complexity and sophistication like the European, Arab and Indian traditions did.

 

Similarly African music stuck at an early developmental stage, which means that it (and Chinese) music are actually more assimilable to other ears than European, Arab and Indian are to each other. (I'm talking here about the three classical traditions, not modern variants.)

In short, Andalucia was one of the two or three places were West met East, and influenced both. And music is one of the influences that travel faster (just see Chinese people dancing reaggeton or playing rock)

Nowadays yes: after all we have records, CDs, MP3 players, peer-to-peer downloading systems... all influencing what we hear at an early age. 

 

Music is not like literature or architecture or painting: our reaction to it is much more conservative and dependent on upbringing. Even so however, neither in literature nor architecture nor painting did Arab traditions influence European ones to the extent that Arab physicians, scientists and mathematicians did.

 

PS On checking around I'll grant that the European lute was a development from the Middle Easterh oud. However the point remains that in order to play European music on it it helped to be fretted, while to play Arab music it had to be unfretted. Like I said, it's the music we're really concerned with here, not the instrument.

 

I can't believe that comment. So, for you Latin American music is Salsa and Guarachas at the sound of a voodoo dance? ... gimme a break. Reaggeton is just the music of a few heavily African countries of the Caribbean. Nope. I was talking about the music of Spain, not from Congo.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 .. We have plenty of records of music from the middle ages and the Renaissance. I'm not aware of any of it that shows any influence from Arab music, or even any similarity to Arab music. On the other hand the development from Greek music is traceable throughout. (Even local musical traditions, which were pretty primitive still, are eventually brought within the Greek tradition. )

 

Well, perhaps you should research more. Listen to Ladino (Jewish Spanish) music of the Middle Ages, for example. I stop it in here, because I am afraid you don't know about historical Iberian music, so we have not a common ground to discuss the topic.

 

 

 

I should have put 'Latin American' in quotes. Or said ' the music commonly referred to as 'Latin American'. I also said 'more African than Latin' not 'exclusively African'. The paso doble for instance is undoubtedly Spanish (but unrelated to Arab music). So is the tango. But rhumba, samba, bossa nova, mambo, conga are all more African than Spanish, not just because of the rhythmic structures, but also because of the 'blued' sevenths. I agree though they are hybrids.

Originally posted by gcle2003 .. We have plenty of records of music from the middle ages and the Renaissance. I'm not aware of any of it that shows any influence from Arab music, or even any similarity to Arab music. On the other hand the development from Greek music is traceable throughout. (Even local musical traditions, which were pretty primitive still, are eventually brought within the Greek tradition. )   Well, perhaps you should research more. Listen to Ladino (Jewish Spanish) music of the Middle Ages, for example. I stop it in here, because I am afraid you don't know about historical Iberian music, so we have not a common ground to discuss the topic.

When you can find me one piece of music written in the Middle Ages or Renaissance Europe north of the Pyrenees that has any sign of Arab influence to it I might pay attention to your case.

 

The only Ladino (Sephardic) music I've come across is an artificial modern mélange of various influences, including Indian. It's hardly surprising - and hardly relevant to this thread - that Sephardic music should have been influenced by Arab music. If there is any historic, early medieval Ladino music I'd love to see it, but I don't see how Jewish music can be considered either Arab or European.

 

Ashkenazi - Yiddish - music similarly follows very closely German/Russian styles and uses a lot of minor scales. But the very fact that it uses minor scales indicates that it is influenced by European (originally Greek) sources, not Arab ones.

 

PS I've just gone through the substantial Guide de La Musique du Moyen Age edited by Françoise Ferrand heading a group of academics from France, the UK, and the US, and find no reference at all to any influence of Arab music on the subject. However there is a considerable section on the spread southward of musical styles, primarily from France, partly from Germany, into Spain as the country was regained from the Moors.

 

Partly this was because the courts of the new Christian magnates liked to emulate the French courts. More significant probably was the influence of the Church, with its concern over what and how music was sung/played.

 

Apparently by the mid-15th century the court of Aragon especially was developing a more independent role, and the choir of Alphonse V (which included two organists) was only surpassed in size by that of Henry VI of England (36 adults and ten children).

 

Note the organists. The keyboarded organ is essentially unique to European music. I don't recall choral singing of this order being present in Arab music either.

 

The origin of Tango as an African rythm is highly unlikely, particularly when one hear Milonga and other folk dances associated with compadritos (mestizos) rather than with Black people. In fact, nobody dances Tango in south saharan Africa

 

With respect to Rumba, Salsa, Conga and other Cuban-Puerto Rican-Dominican rythms, indeed they have an African rythmic bass. However, even in Cuban music when you hear other instruments rather than drums, like guitar or flutes, for instance, the origin is not African but European. So, the Africanization of Latin American music, that outsiders like to strenght affects mainly to the Caribbean. And even in there, the Afro capital of Hispanic music, you will find Indian intruments being played like the Guiro and the Maracas.  In South America many rythms and tunes have an Amerindian origin rather than African. Even more, many folk dances like Mexican, are rooted in German Polka!

 

Back to the point, the music of Spain is obviously based in two factors: the song and the Spanish guitar. Now, the song is obviously influenced by the muslim call to pray, and by many Arab singuing styles. With respect to the guitar, that is dominant in all the folk music in Latin America, including in places like Cuba or Brazil, is undeniable Arab in origin.

 

With respect to the music of Northern Europe to be unpoluted by Arab styles I doubt.

 

Classical music started from the South to the North. From Italy and France came the Opera singers and trovateurs. Vivaldi and early classical musicians were Italians.

 

And Italy, was heavily influenced by the Arabs as well.

 

So, if the link between Arab and European music has not been found, it is time to make the homework

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 Apparently by the mid-15th century the court of Aragon especially was developing a more independent role, and the choir of Alphonse V (which included two organists) was only surpassed in size by that of Henry VI of England (36 adults and ten children).   Note the organists. The keyboarded organ is essentially unique to European music. I don't recall choral singing of this order being present in Arab music either.

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And talking of Vivaldi, please listen to the famous Seasons and identify some influences from Arab music.

The Arab Influence on the Italian Renaissance

Jeff Matthews

http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/blog27.htm#arabinf - http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/blog27.htm#arabinf  

Dangling in the southern winter sky and very visible from my balcony in Naples is the great equatorial constellation of Orion. The second brightest star in that constellation is the red supergiant, Betelgeuse. (This is the first of a few familiar names coming up that no one knows how to pronounce. Another one is "Averroës.") Betelgeuse is 390 light years from my balcony and, thus, remote from the various fields of human conflict that are responsible for my knowing neither  the pronunciation nor the original name of the star—thus, our high school astronomy club's cutesy mnemonic of "Beetle Juice." I don't recall ever learning that the name came from the Arabic bayt al jauza, meaning "in the house of the twins," referring to the Heavenly Twins, Castor and Pollux, hanging out right above Orion. 

Speaking of high school, I did not do well in mathematics, but I am willing to give Al-Khwarizmi (known to us as Algorizm!) (770 - 840) his credit if he takes a bit of my blame. I will take all the blame for not knowing who Chaucer was talking about in the Canterbury Tales, when, in praising the knowledge of the doctor on the trip, he reminded us that ye olde pilgrim sawbones was familiar not only with Hippocrates and Galen, but "Rhazes, Hali, Averroës and Avicenna."

It is convenient—but not a good idea—to pigeonhole our own cultural history into tidy episodes: The Renaissance, The Age of Reason, The Enlightenment, The This & That,  as if they had happened all of a sudden with no connection to anything else—as if Leonardo woke up one fine morning in 1500, looked at his homemade (obviously) hour-glass and said "Gee, it's the Renaissance; I'd better design a helicopter." The point of this entry, then, is simply to draw your attention to how interconnected European and Arabic culture used to be, and how there is a link between the glorious age of Arab science and culture (800-1100) and the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance. (I am not making the post hoc, ergo propter hoc mistake of saying that that which comes first necessarily causes that which comes second. I am simply saying it's a good idea to know what came before you—Bonum est quod ante te evenit scire (I think) .

After Islam's rapid spread from Spain to India, Muslims founded the city of Baghdad in 800, and it is here that the Muslim quest for knowledge begins, the manifestation of an insatiable curiosity  (to use Einstein's choice phrase from many centuries later) "to figure out how the Old Man runs the universe." It is in Baghdad  that the Muslims founded their great school of translation, the incredible ambition of which was to translate as much as they could find of science, astronomy, mathematics, music, geography and philosophy—whatever remained of Classical Greek knowledge. It meant going even further afield—to India—to study the mathematics and philosophy of those who had written in classical Sanskrit centuries earlier.

In 800 this was by no means an easy task. Much classical Greek writing had not survived the centuries of neglect by Christians inimical to "pagan" thought. As early as the year 500, the great library at Alexandria was a ruin and, a few years later, Justinian closed Plato's Academy in Athens because it was a hotbed of pagan (non-Christian) philosophy. Arab scholars, then, translated into Arabic the few Greek texts that remained, or translated from languages into which the Greek originals had previously been translated by scholars who had left Greece for parts east. These were mainly exiled Nestorian Christians from Greece, and Classical Greek scholars from Plato's academy who had fled to Persia, where they founded a great center of learning at Jundishapur (before the coming of Islam) and translated much of their material into Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Middle East at the time. After Baghdad, the Arabs later started equally fine centers of scholarship in Spain at Cordoba and Toledo.

Transmission of this glorious knowledge from The Muslim world into Italy happened primarily through Spain and Sicily; that is, the great courts of learning in Cordoba and the pre-Crusades court of http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/blog26.htm#sept21 - Norman Sicily in the 12th century. It is in Sicily, particularly, that Norman tolerance provided for the coexistence of Byzantine Greek, Italian Christian, and Arab scholars. It was, perhaps, the last great period of human tolerance in European history.
 

Medicine

One of the great medical translators from Arabic into Latin was Constantine of Carthage (known as "The African"). In the middle of the 11th century, he came to teach at the medical school in http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/blog24.html#aug25 - Salerno , the first of its kind in Europe, bringing with him his vast library of Arabic medical works, including, no doubt, Avicenna's Canon of Medicine.  That work was translated into Latin and used as a text in European medical schools well into the 17th century, and parts of it were current as late as the early 19th century! In 1127, a European translator, Stefano of Pisa, reported  that scholars of medicine were all still found in Sicily and Salerno, and were generally persons who knew Arabic. Again, we shouldn't set up a necessary chain of cause and effect; yet, there is surely a link between earlier Muslim medical thought (the view that "God has provided a cure for all disease"; therefore, it is our rational duty to find those cures) and the final abandoning by the Christian west of the view that prayer and mortification of the flesh cured illness.
 

Frederick II

In Palermo, Emperor http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/blog09.html#jan10 - Frederick II (1194-1250), in spite of the Crusades, was  driven by his own enormous intellectual curiosity to explore Arabic culture. He is known for his exchanges of letters on philosophy and science with Arab scholars. A prominent member of the court of Frederick in Palermo was the great Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci, the inventor of the arithmetic series that bears his name. (Quick! what is the next number in this series: 4, 1, 5, 6, 11, 17...)? He  had studied with Arab mathematicians, and  he is also the reason you don't have to do that last problem as "IV, I, V, VI, XI,  XVII..."; that is, he introduced "Arabic" numerals into Europe (they were really Indian numerals that the Arabs had picked up in their wanderings). 

Frederick’s court is also responsible for giving us a Latin translation (from the Arabic translation of the Greek) of Ptolemy's Almagest, and for translating the original works of the great Arab astronomer, Al-Farghini.  Frederick II's interests are so wide ranging that it is no wonder he was well read in Arab philosophy and science. He expanded the medical school in Salerno and started the University of Naples, which, today, still bears his name.

Michael Scot (1217-1240) was perhaps the finest mind at the court of Frederick in Palermo. From Scotland, he had worked at the great Arab translation center in Toledo and is responsible for giving us Latin versions of the philosophical works of Avicenna and Averroës, particularly the latter's commentaries on Aristotle. From royal courts to fledgeling universities, Italy in the 1100s and 1200s, then, seems to be a scene of Europeans scurrying to read the next installments of Arab works, particularly in philosophy, medicine and astronomy. 
 
 

Philosophy

Muslim religious philosophy is of particular interest.  Al-Kindi (d. after 870) was the first important Muslim philosopher. He held and taught that revealed truth (religion) and rational truth were not in conflict, but were complementary—even identical. Then, Al-Farabi (874-950)  elevated philosophy even above the revealed truth of the sharia, the religious law of Islam, and held that our goal is to develop our rational faculty.

Ibn Sina (981-1037), known in the west by the Latin name, Avicenna, is often called by Westerners the "Arab Leonardo" for the amazing breadth of his knowledge in medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. In addition to his Canon of Medicine (mentioned above), he is certainly one of the most remarkable thinkers of the Middle Ages and the most important and original of all Muslim phosphors. His held that religion was a kind of philosophy for the masses; the goal of all revealed truth (including his own Islam) was to lead us to our highest state—one of philosophic contemplation.  He held the particularly original idea that intellectual discovery implies an intuitive act of knowledge. The idea of the intuitive intellect working outside of the methodical process of collecting facts and deduction has again become quite modern.

Perhaps Ibn-Rushid (Averroës) 1128 -1198  is also of great interest to us. He wrote many commentaries on Aristotle and is known in Arab philosophy simply as "The Commentator." His works in religious philosophy were widely read in Europe, especially by Thomas Aquinas, the point, of course, being not that one was right and the other wrong, but that one of the greatest of European medieval philosophers honed his own sharp intellect by dealing with his Muslim predecessor. Averroës' work in law, medicine, and astronomy were also highly regarded.
 
 

Literature

Hardly mentioned at all when you read about the Arab influence in European thought is the extent to which Arab literature might have had any influence on European medieval literature. There are a number of possibilities. It may be that the Arab habit of composing popular poetry in vernacular Arabic in Sicily and Spain had some influence on the subsequent "vernacularization" of not only European court poetry and song in the Provence (the Troubadours) and Sicily, but even in the beginnings of great European vernacular literature. 

In A History of Islamic Sicily, Aziz Ahmad dwells on the controversial connection between Dante's Divine Comedy and prior Islamic works of the same nature. There is no real conclusion to be drawn, except the possibility that our great originator of non-Latin Romance literature got some inspiration from somewhere. Dante certainly knew of Avicenna and Averroës through Latin translation; in the Divine Comedy, he places them both in Purgatory with the great pre-Christian scholars of ancient Greece. (Dante was not so kind to Mohammed, himself, though, who, in Canto 28, is in Hell as a Sower of Discord). Did Dante also know (through its Latin or Early French translations) of The Book of the Scale, an earlier Arab eschatological work that has interesting parallels in the Divine Comedy? Again, we should beware of post hoc reasoning,but it is an intriguing possibility.

It was the contributions of minds such as those mentioned, above, that prompted Robert Briffault (in The Making of Humanity) to write:
 

It was under the influence of the Arabs and Moorish revival of culture and not in the 15th century, that a real renaissance took place... After steadily sinking lower and lower into barbarism, it [Europe] had reached the darkest depths of ignorance and degradation when cities of the Saracenic world, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, and Toledo, were growing centers of civilization and intellectual activity. It was there that the new life arose which was to grow into a new phase of human evolution. From the time when the influence of their culture made itself felt, began the stirring of new life.

Those are strong words that I do not entirely accept. Yet they remind us that our ethnocentric view of our own cultural history as a straightforward chain of events is not very helpful.  Perhaps we should step back and view all of culture as a vast web of ideas; they may spring forth in different places at different times—or many of them at the same time, unnoticed elsewhere.
 

Here, read these. They will be on the midterm exam.

Ahmad, Aziz. A History of Islamic Sicily. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1979.
Briffault, Robert. The Making of Humanity. London: 1938.
Gutas, Dimitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. London: Routledge, 1998.
Lunde, Paul. “Ishbiliyah: Islamic Seville.” Aramco World 44.1 (Jan/Feb) 1993.
Marmura, Micahel E. "Avicenna." The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: MacMillan, 1967.
Rahman, Fazlur. "Islamic Philosophy." The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: MacMillan, 1967.
Rosenthal, Franz. The Classical Heritage in Islam. Trans. Emile and Jenny Marmorstein. In series: Arabic Thought and Culture. London: Routledge, 1992.
Sarton George. Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. I-III. Baltimore: Wilkins and Wilkens, 1950
Tschanz, David W. “The Arab Roots of European Medicine.” Aramco World May/June 1997.
Unesco Courier, The. September, 1986. Title of issue: "Averroes and Maimonides: Two Master Minds of the 12th Century".  Paris: Unesco, 1986.
Wilson, N.G. From Byzantium to Italy; Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. London: Duckworth, 1992.

© Jeff Matthews    

 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DF173CF934A25751C1A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print - http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DF173CF934A25751C1A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

 

RECORDINGS; Journeying Into a World Of Arab Music

This is going nowhere if you don't even bother to read what I write. I specifically said the tango was Spanish, like the paso doble.

With respect to Rumba, Salsa, Conga and other Cuban-Puerto Rican-Dominican rythms, indeed they have an African rythmic bass. However, even in Cuban music when you hear other instruments rather than drums, like guitar or flutes, for instance, the origin is not African but European. So, the Africanization of Latin American music, that outsiders like to strenght affects mainly to the Caribbean. And even in there, the Afro capital of Hispanic music, you will find Indian intruments being played like the Guiro and the Maracas.  In South America many rythms and tunes have an Amerindian origin rather than African.

Possibly. But nothing to do with the topic or indeed with what I wrote, which is that the music known as 'Latin American' is more African than Spanish. I didn't say anything about other influences, whether Amerindian or generally European, just that it was more African than Spanish.

 

Gourds (of which maracas are just one type) are incidentally in widespread use as musical instruments wherever they occur, in particular in Africa. Amerindian music I've been exposed to (North American mainly Cherokee) is on the whole pentatonic and music everywhere goes through a pentatonic stage: it's inherent in the nature of music itself.

Even more, many folk dances like Mexican, are rooted in German Polka!

Any music in fast, unsyncopated, unswinging,  2/4 time[1] is going to sound like a polka (which incidentally is not 'German' but Czech). Again though we're talking about my denial that Arab culture contributed to the development of European (outside Spain) music in the middle ages, and the attribution of a minor role to Spanish music in 'Latin American' music. Modern European influences on Latin American music is irrelevant.

 

[1] i.e. 'OOMpah' music.

Back to the point, the music of Spain is obviously based in two factors: the song and the Spanish guitar.

Not in the least. The guitar is an instrument, not a kind of music. You can have a stab at playing any kind of music on it, though some are easier than others: classical Arab music is almost impossible to play on it.

 

Moreover its origin (in this form) is Greek (kithara - Latin cithara - Spanish guitarra), and it was brought to Iberia by the Romans. The Arabs used the oud, which as I've pointed out before is fretless, which it has to be for Arab music. (A similar but independently developed instrument is the India sitar, which has movable frets, which you need to cope with the complexity of Indian music. It's possible the kithara may have had moveable frets, since Greek music melodically - scale-wise - was also more complex than modern European music - until the 20th century anyway.)

Now, the song is obviously influenced by the muslim call to pray, and by many Arab singuing styles.

If anything it's the other way around - the call to prayer among the Arabs is influenced by Arab singing traditions, which is hardly surprising. The germane point however is that no European singing tradition sounds in the least bit like an Arab call to prayer.

 

In any case the individual singing a 'song' as you are describing it is only a partial factor in European music (it's more inportant in Arab music, but that just goes to make the point that Arab traditions had no influence on the European).

With respect to the guitar, that is dominant in all the folk music in Latin America, including in places like Cuba or Brazil, is undeniable Arab in origin.

Sheer nonsense.

With respect to the music of Northern Europe to be unpoluted by Arab styles I doubt.

Doubt away. Better still, start studying the subject you pontificate about.

Classical music started from the South to the North. From Italy and France came the Opera singers and trovateurs. Vivaldi and early classical musicians were Italians.

I guess you have no idea how naive that sounds. Opera and Vivaldi are very late examples: by their time the classical European tradition was already well-formed. The overwhelmingly dominant force on the development of European music was the Church. Granted that Rome was the central clerical powerhouse, nevertheless the major developments took place not in Italy but north of the Alps (and Pyrenees). 

And Italy, was heavily influenced by the Arabs as well.

In what way? Not musically.

So, if the link between Arab and European music has not been found, it is time to make the homework

I've done mine. So have the faculties of music all over Europe. The person who hasn't done any is you.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 Apparently by the mid-15th century the court of Aragon especially was developing a more independent role, and the choir of Alphonse V (which included two organists) was only surpassed in size by that of Henry VI of England (36 adults and ten children).   Note the organists. The keyboarded organ is essentially unique to European music. I don't recall choral singing of this order being present in Arab music either. Yes. You will be amazed about the richness of Spain's classical music.

No I wouldn't, I'm quite familiar with it. But I'm not sure what you mean by 'Spanish classical music' since, in its normal meaning, that is not what we're talking about here, which is medieval music, not classical.

Never heared of the barroque style developed in the Americas, for example?

Baroque was not developed in the Americas. That's plain silly. I've no doubt the baroque style was adopted by Spaniards in the Americas as everywhere else, but it started in Italy.

 

You could start your homework with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music

As far as I can see, that long quote doesn't even mention music anywhere.

 

That's going a little deeper than I intended . However, put two tetrachords on top of one another and you have an octave (a seven-note scale). The kinds of tetrachords you mix together give you all those Greek 'modes'.

 

Going downward, A G F E is a diatonic tetrachord, A F# F E is chromatic and A F Fb E is enharmonic (where of course Fb is between F and E in normal notation - something like a 'blue' seventh in the key of F).

The latter two were less used in literate Europe (though the chromatic tetrachord was used, though not that often, in Byzantine music), but at least the chromatic one was not really absent from practice and even concerns. Often the medieval European music theorists had to accomodate chromatisms from the religious chants with the theory and the notations, and the discrepancies between these was a stringent problem, though it was usually regarded as an imperfection, as a "vice". Actually from this period we have the "bémol" (i.e. flat) alteration coming from b-molle  (as opposed to b-durum), two alternate sounds (corresponding to modern Bb and B) available for a same step of the scale (and the graphical notations also from this period!). These theoretical traditions and concerns existed throughout the Middle Ages (and not only in Italy, as Pinguin suggested, but even in norther areas like South Germany) and eventually bloomed in late Renaissance and Baroque. So, step by step, the Western musical theory developed and we should not wonder when we find in Vivaldi that famous augmented fourth.

Yes. That Bb - B effect is related to the fact that the seventh harmonic on a trumpet doesn't match either note, hence the 'blue' note in between the two.

 

But of course none of this shows any Arab influence,

All this says is that Arab music is rich, complex, sophisticated and worth listening to. Which it is.

 

But so is Indian music, and neither had any influence in developing the Western musical tradition.

 

No problem with that, but it's more of a clarification than a correction, since I was a little vague with 'put two tetrachords on top of one another'. I didn't mean making the low note of one the same as the high note of the other: you're correct that to get an octave you need a tone between them. (By making the top of one twice the frequency of the lowest of the other.)

 

 

Yes, you are right with respect to Tango. I misquoted you. However, I bother to read what you write, that's why I answered you. I quote you:

 

"But Iberian music has had little effect on the rest of Europe until relatively modern times."

"Not in the middle ages. Moreover it hasn't really influenced European music, even though non-Iberian Europeans have learned to some extent to appreciate it. Latin American music in the last 100 or so years has had more influence, but that's more African than Latin."

 

You said Iberia didn't influence the rest of Europe in the Middle Ages, and also that Latin American music was African.

 

And you expect I don't react?

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Possibly. But nothing to do with the topic or indeed with what I wrote, which is that the music known as 'Latin American' is more African than Spanish. I didn't say anything about other influences, whether Amerindian or generally European, just that it was more African than Spanish.

 

If you say so, you don't have idea about Latin American music. I bet for you the music from my region is Salsa and Reaggeton . And that Puerto Rican and Cuban are the only Latin American music.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Gourds (of which maracas are just one type) are incidentally in widespread use as musical instruments wherever they occur, in particular in Africa.

 

Maybe, but the particular kind of instruments called "maracas" and "guiros" played by the so called "Afro" bands of the Caribbean are traced by archaological records to ancient Tainos. That's something people of the region -that knows better- acknowledge.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Amerindian music I've been exposed to (North American mainly Cherokee) is on the whole pentatonic and music everywhere goes through a pentatonic stage: it's inherent in the nature of music itself.

 

I see. You haven't been expossed to much Amerindian music, indeed. If you believe that Cherokee music is the only Amerindian music that exists.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Any music in fast, unsyncopated, unswinging,  2/4 time[1] is going to sound like a polka (which incidentally is not 'German' but Czech). Again though we're talking about my denial that Arab culture contributed to the development of European (outside Spain) music in the middle ages, and the attribution of a minor role to Spanish music in 'Latin American' music. Modern European influences on Latin American music is irrelevant.

 

The only problem with that is the following: Mexican musical styles were copied from German bands in Mexico . Besides, sorry to say it, but this phrase is the most absurd I've ever seen in this site:

 

"Modern European influences on Latin American music is irrelevant."

 

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... With respect to the guitar, that is dominant in all the folk music in Latin America, including in places like Cuba or Brazil, is undeniable Arab in origin. Sheer nonsense.

 

What is nonsense? That the guitar is the dominant instrument in Latin American folk? Or that is Arab in origin?

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... I've done mine. So have the faculties of music all over Europe. The person who hasn't done any is you.

 

Eurocentrism is falling. Wait for the musical orthodox history, and its fairy tales of lonely development to fall as well

 

I know it is hard to admit glorious Europe has some debt with the Islamic civilization, and even more with Iberia. But there are people that know better.

 

Please take a look to the article of the New York Times I posted above.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 Baroque was not developed in the Americas. That's plain silly. I've no doubt the baroque style was adopted by Spaniards in the Americas as everywhere else, but it started in Italy.   You could start your homework with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music

-------------

You're again misquoting. I said Iberian music had little effect on the rest of Europe until relatively modern times. (I'll give you after the mid-19th century, but by then it had been assimilated to the mainstream anyway.

 

And I said Latin American music was more African than Spanish, not that it was simply African.

And you expect I don't react?

I expect you to read what I wrote, and not misstate it.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Possibly. But nothing to do with the topic or indeed with what I wrote, which is that the music known as 'Latin American' is more African than Spanish. I didn't say anything about other influences, whether Amerindian or generally European, just that it was more African than Spanish.   If you say so, you don't have idea about Latin American music. I bet for you the music from my region is Salsa and Reaggeton . And that Puerto Rican and Cuban are the only Latin American music.

I already quoted the tango and the paso doble which aren't Puerto Rican or Cuban. Neither is mariachi, which is Mexican, or reggae, which is mostly Jamaican, or calypso and steel band, which are mostly Trinidadian, or bossa nova or samba which are Brazilian. The mambo and salsa are Cuban with PR influence on the salsa: son is Cuban mostly but mariachi bands also play sons. None of these except tango, paso doble and possibly mariachi are particularly Spanish.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Gourds (of which maracas are just one type) are incidentally in widespread use as musical instruments wherever they occur, in particular in Africa.   Maybe, but the particular kind of instruments called "maracas" and "guiros" played by the so called "Afro" bands of the Caribbean are traced by archaological records to ancient Tainos. That's something people of the region -that knows better- acknowledge.

I didn't deny that. I just said it didn't mean there was any kind of influence indicated by the use of gourds, which appears in many places quite spontaneously. In any case, once more, we're trying to discuss the type of music played, not the instruments played on.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Amerindian music I've been exposed to (North American mainly Cherokee) is on the whole pentatonic and music everywhere goes through a pentatonic stage: it's inherent in the nature of music itself.   I see. You haven't been expossed to much Amerindian music, indeed. If you believe that Cherokee music is the only Amerindian music that exists.

You're misquoting again. I didn't say that Cherokee was the only Amerindian music that exists, merely that it's the only one I know much about, and have books on.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Any music in fast, unsyncopated, unswinging,  2/4 time[1] is going to sound like a polka (which incidentally is not 'German' but Czech). Again though we're talking about my denial that Arab culture contributed to the development of European (outside Spain) music in the middle ages, and the attribution of a minor role to Spanish music in 'Latin American' music. Modern European influences on Latin American music is irrelevant.   The only problem with that is the following: Mexican musical styles were copied from German bands in Mexico . Besides, sorry to say it, but this phrase is the most absurd I've ever seen in this site:   "Modern European influences on Latin American music is irrelevant."

They're irrelevant to the topic, which is to do with the influence of Arab music on European musical development. That modern American (Latin or otherwise) music is influenced by European styles is indeed irrelevant, though it is obviously true.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... With respect to the guitar, that is dominant in all the folk music in Latin America, including in places like Cuba or Brazil, is undeniable Arab in origin. Sheer nonsense.   What is nonsense? That the guitar is the dominant instrument in Latin American folk? Or that is Arab in origin?

That it is Arab in origin. The Arab instrument that comes closest is the oud which is (a) unfretted, and (b) has a domed soundbox rather than a flat one. Even fretted it is more like a mandolin than a guitar.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... I've done mine. So have the faculties of music all over Europe. The person who hasn't done any is you.     Eurocentrism is falling.

There's nothing Eurocentric about what I'm saying. Arab music also didn't influence Chinese or Japanes music. European music didn't influence Arab music or Chinese or Japanese music. None of them influence African music.

 

There's only been some mutual interchange of influence in modern times. (Though there may have been some Japanese-Chinese mutual influence - I don't really know about that: they certainly have some similarities.)

Wait for the musical orthodox history, and its fairy tales of lonely development to fall as well   I know it is hard to admit glorious Europe has some debt with the Islamic civilization, and even more with Iberia. But there are people that know better.   Please take a look to the article of the New York Times I posted above.

I did. It didn't say anything whatsoever in the way of claiming Arab music influenced developments in Europe. I'm not denying the artistic merit of Arab music (though some of it, like most popular music, is pretty valueless: I have an LP of night club music from Damascus in the 'fifties which makes no more serious a contribution than music from a European night club would).

Originally posted by gcle2003 Baroque was not developed in the Americas. That's plain silly. I've no doubt the baroque style was adopted by Spaniards in the Americas as everywhere else, but it started in Italy.   You could start your homework with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music   I didn't say barroque was invented in the Americas. I said barroque was produced in the Americas, too.

What you actually wrote was 'Never heared of the barroque style developed in the Americas, for example?'

 

The baroque style was developed in Italy.

 

It would help if you would stick to the subject instead of wriggling around trying to change the subject all over the place. Your original statement was that Arab music influenced the development of European music in the Middle Ages - that it was one therefore of the undoubted contributions that the Arabs made to European culture.

 

You haven't produced one iota of evidence to support that assertion, which is understandable because it is not true.

 

Waffling around the subject won't get you anywhere.

 

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... You're again misquoting. I said Iberian music had little effect on the rest of Europe until relatively modern times. (I'll give you after the mid-19th century, but by then it had been assimilated to the mainstream anyway.

 

It depends on what YOU MEAN by Iberian music. I tell you tall all the styles of Music that you consider "European" existed in Spain in the Middle Ages. However, in there you will also find "Arab" music than sound anything like the folk music of Saudi Arabia at all.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... And I said Latin American music was more African than Spanish, not that it was simply African.

 

You insist in your mistake and ignorance. If you have a clue about Latin American music you would notice that most of it is European, and that just the rythmic bass of some music from the Caribbean can be traced back to Africa.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... I already quoted the tango and the paso doble which aren't Puerto Rican or Cuban. Neither is mariachi, which is Mexican, or reggae, which is mostly Jamaican, or calypso and steel band, which are mostly Trinidadian, or bossa nova or samba which are Brazilian. The mambo and salsa are Cuban with PR influence on the salsa: son is Cuban mostly but mariachi bands also play sons. None of these except tango, paso doble and possibly mariachi are particularly Spanish.

 

Jamaica and Trinidad AREN'T part of Latin America but the West Indies. You have to hear the influence of FADO in Brazil and of the SPANISH GUITAR folk songs all over Latin America, and also Colonial and Modern music, to understand what I am telling during several posts.

 

Latin American music has root in Precolumbian Amerindian music and in the Spanish colonial Empire. It is one of the most diverse music of the world. Believing that the music of Puerto Rico is all that has to do with Latin American music is just not knowing it.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... There's nothing Eurocentric about what I'm saying. Arab music also didn't influence Chinese or Japanes music. European music didn't influence Arab music or Chinese or Japanese music. None of them influence African music.

 

Umm! Wello, there is some surprises here. Arab music influenced the West African music in places like Ghana and Mali, and that's in the roots of American blues. String instruments were brought by Muslim to West Africa.

With respect to the purity of Chinese or Japanese music, perhaps you are right. However, never forget that during the Tang dinasty there was a sizable Muslim colony in China. The "arabesque" was brought by Muslims to Japan, indeed, although I have no antecedents on music.

Finally, Arab music influenced Iberian music, and that's part of Europe.

 

No it doesn't. You simply misquoted me. You made out I said things I didn't. Doesn't matter what they meant to me, since it was you that made it up.

I tell you tall all the styles of Music that you consider "European" existed in Spain in the Middle Ages.

That's ridiculous. Most of the styles of music I consider "European" didn't develop until after the middle ages, starting more or less with the Baroque, but including madrigals for instance.

 

It's true that all of the medieval styles of music were represented in Iberia in medieval times. After all the boundary between the Christian and the Muslim worlds ran through the peninsula: the border wasn't the Pyrenees. In fact I said as much earlier, when I quoted Alphonse V.

However, in there you will also find "Arab" music than sound anything like the folk music of Saudi Arabia at all.

Obviously. That's the whole reason for not taking Iberia as representing Europe as a whole. There were lots of Arabs there.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... And I said Latin American music was more African than Spanish, not that it was simply African.   You insist in your mistake and ignorance. If you have a clue about Latin American music you would notice that most of it is European, and that just the rythmic bass of some music from the Caribbean can be traced back to Africa.

I did not in fact say that it was more African the European, I said it was more African than Spanish. And I've now repeated that many many times, so you muat be misquoting me deliberately. Don't.

 

I've almost certainly played a whole lot more Latin American music than you have over the last sixty-odd years. Rhythms aren't just accompaniments - noit just a matter of the bass: rhythms also get incorporated into melodies. The very distinctive Latin American anticipation of and delay to the second beat of the bar for instance is usually reflected in the melodic line leading to the typical 'one and...and three four' form that is often mistranscribed as a triplet quarter-note followed by two ordinary ones.

 

You can sing The Girl from Ipanema with no accompaniment at all and you can't get away from the African rhythm.

 

Much modern Latin American music owes a lot to non-Spanish non-African sources. For instance it owes a lot to jazz (bossa nova, mambo) which is heavily European as well as African in origin.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... I already quoted the tango and the paso doble which aren't Puerto Rican or Cuban. Neither is mariachi, which is Mexican, or reggae, which is mostly Jamaican, or calypso and steel band, which are mostly Trinidadian, or bossa nova or samba which are Brazilian. The mambo and salsa are Cuban with PR influence on the salsa: son is Cuban mostly but mariachi bands also play sons. None of these except tango, paso doble and possibly mariachi are particularly Spanish.   Jamaica and Trinidad AREN'T part of Latin America but the West Indies. You have to hear the influence of FADO in Brazil and of the SPANISH GUITAR folk songs all over Latin America, and also Colonial and Modern music, to understand what I am telling during several posts.

When it suits you you quote wikipedia. Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American#Music_and_dance - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American#Music_and_dance

includes calypso and reggae and for that matter soca, which is also Trinidadian. In fact as musical styles, ignoring outside irrelevant factors like the language of the lyrics, they fall well within the ambit of Latin American music in general.

 

Fado is simply a Portuguese musical style. That it now gets sung in Brazil and Rhode Island and thereabouts is hardly surprising. It isn't really 'Latin-American' music since it's not particularly connected with America. Same goes for flamenco.

Latin American music has root in Precolumbian Amerindian music and in the Spanish colonial Empire. It is one of the most diverse music of the world. Believing that the music of Puerto Rico is all that has to do with Latin American music is just not knowing it.

I have no idea why you say that, unless you are again deliberately distorting what I've been saying. Who is it that believes the music of Puerto Rico is all there is to Latin American music?

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... There's nothing Eurocentric about what I'm saying. Arab music also didn't influence Chinese or Japanes music. European music didn't influence Arab music or Chinese or Japanese music. None of them influence African music.   Umm! Wello, there is some surprises here. Arab music influenced the West African music in places like Ghana and Mali, and that's in the roots of American blues.

Where on earth did you dig that up from? I don't think you'd know Arab music if you heard it. Moreover the slaves brought over from Africa didn't come from the Muslim parts of Africa, and they certainly weren't Muslim.

 

The harmonies of American blues are totally European. The melodic lines differ and are partly African, and the verse form of the lyrics is African. But not one iota of that anywhere has anything at all to do with Arab music.

 

As you would realise if you had any idea at all of what you are talking about.

String instruments were brought by Muslim to West Africa.

Maybe. So? What has that got to do with anything?

With respect to the purity of Chinese or Japanese music, perhaps you are right. However, never forget that during the Tang dinasty there was a sizable Muslim colony in China. The "arabesque" was brought by Muslims to Japan, indeed, although I have no antecedents on music. Finally, Arab music influenced Iberian music, and that's part of Europe.

If you had said at the beginning merely that Arab music left some traces in the countries the Arabs occupied, I would never have started off.

What you actually said was

Middle Ages music, for instance, was heavily influenced by Arabs

And that's completely inaccurate.

The only medieval music that was 'heavily influenced by Arabs' was medieval Arab music. Where the Arabs ruled, they played it. But it never had any influence anywhere else.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ...    Please take a look to the article of the New York Times I posted above. I did. It didn't say anything whatsoever in the way of claiming Arab music influenced developments in Europe. I'm not denying the artistic merit of Arab music (though some of it, like most popular music, is pretty valueless: I have an LP of night club music from Damascus in the 'fifties which makes no more serious a contribution than music from a European night club would).     It says. It say that certain forms of orchestra came from Andalucia (Al-Andalus). It points to the Andalucian Nuoba as something to watch out. Please, read it again.

So 'certain forms of orchestra came from Andalusia'. So what? What has that to do with Arab music affecting medieval music?

Certain forms of orchestra came from China for that matter, and Japan. But they certainly had no influence on medieval music.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... You haven't produced one iota of evidence to support that assertion, which is understandable because it is not true.   Let's go straight to discuss the Andalucian Nuoba and other forms of orchestra from the "Muslim" Andalucia. These people are saying Arabs not only contributed with many instruments, made the first large orchestras but also the first long term pieces of music.   Comment that, please. I marked the interesting parts.   Look,  this is in wikipedia:

So? It says that Andalusian music extensively influenced the Arab world, especially in North Africa.

It says not one word about Arab music influencing medieval music outside the Arab world. Not one word.

 

And it goes completely wrong with 

The English words http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute - lute , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebec - rebec , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar - guitar , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_%28music%29 - organ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naker - naker are derived from Arabic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oud - oud , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabab - rabab , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar#History - qitara , http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Urghun&action=edit&redlink=1 - urghun and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nagqara&action=edit&redlink=1 - nagqara' .

 

'Lute' does derive from 'al-oud', but the important thing is that an oud is not a lute. An oud has no frets: a lute is fretted. And that makes a world of difference because it means that lute music observes a fixed scale.

 

'Organ' is straight from latin 'organ', and so is the line of descent of the instrument, and again it is a fixed keyboard instrument. 'Guitar' goes back to Greek 'kithara' and Roman 'cithara' and if there is a similar Arabic word then the Arabs got it from the Romans and Greeks, not the other way around. A 'naker' is a drum, and don't try and tell me the European peoples didn't have drums before the Arabs came.

 

That leaves 'rebec' and, as I've pointed out before, instruments of the violin family are suitable for both Arab and European music. There were a whole slew of violin precursors around in medieval Europe - the pochette (French), the fiedel (German), the viola d'amore (fretted) and the lira da braccia (Italian) - and the rebec was just one of them. The main point however, which you seem incapable of grasping, is that we are talking about music, not instruments. What counts is not the instrument, but the music being played on it.

Andalusian classical music (or Arabo-Andalusian music, moussiqua al-âla) is a style of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_music - Arabic music found across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Africa - North Africa , though it evolved out of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Andalusia - music of Andalusia between the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_century - 9th and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_century - 15th centuries , during the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus - Al-Andalus period. It is now most closely associated with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco - Morocco (al-Âla), though similar traditions are found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algeria - Algeria (Gharnâtî, and San'a), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia - Tunisia and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya - Libya ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maluf - al-Maalûf ). The popular musics of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaabi_%28Music%29 - chaabi developed themselves as alternative to this classical form of music. Andalusian classical music was allegedly born in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliph_of_Cordoba - Emirate of Cordoba ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus - Al-Andalus ) in the 9th century. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian - Persian musician http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziryab - Ziryâb (d. 857), who became court musician of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Rahman_II - Abd al-Rahman II in Cordoba, is usually credited with its invention. Later, the poet, composer and philosopher http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ibn_B%C3%A2jja&action=edit&redlink=1 - Ibn Bâjja (d. 1139) of Saragossa is said to have combined the style of http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ziry%C3%A2b&action=edit&redlink=1 - Ziryâb with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_classical_music - Western classical music to produce a wholly new style that spread across Iberia and North Africa. By the 11th century, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorish_Spain - Moorish Spain had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually throughout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France - France , influencing French http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour - troubadours , and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute - lute , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebec - rebec , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar - guitar , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_%28music%29 - organ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naker - naker are derived from Arabic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oud - oud , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabab - rabab , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar#History - qitara , http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Urghun&action=edit&redlink=1 - urghun and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nagqara&action=edit&redlink=1 - nagqara' . The classical music of Andalusia reached North Africa via centuries of cultural exchange, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almohad_dynasty - Almohad dynasty and then the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinid_dynasty - Marinid dynasty being present both in Al-Andalus and in Morocco and most of North Africa. Mass resettlements of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslims - Muslims and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardi_Jews - Sephardi Jews from Cordoba, Sevilla, Valencia and Granada, fleing the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista - Reconquista , further expanded the reach of Andalusian music. A suite form called the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalusi_nubah - Andalusi nubah forms the basis of al-âla. Though it has roots in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalusia - Andalusia , the modern nûba probably is certainly a North African creation. Each nûba is dominated by one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_mode - musical mode . It is said there used to be twenty-four nuba linked to each hour of the day, but in Morocco only eleven nuba have survived, which together include 25 "Andalusian" modes. Each nûba is divided into five parts called mîzân, each with a corresponding rhythm. The rhythms occur in the following order in a complete nuba: basît (6/4) qâ'im wa nusf (8/4) btâyhî (8/4) darj (4/4) quddâm (3/4 or 6/8) An entire nuba can last six or seven hours, though this is never done today. Rather, in Morocco usually only one mîzân from any given nûba is performed at a time. Each mizan begins with instrumental preludes called either tûshiya, m'shaliya or bughya, followed by as many as twenty songs (sana'i) in the entire mizan. Andalusian classical music orchestras are spread across Morocco, including the cities of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fez%2C_Morocco - Fez , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetouan - Tetouan , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaouen - Chaouen , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangier - Tangier , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meknes - Meknes , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat - Rabat , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca - Casablanca .

 

I left that all in just to emphasise that not one word of it confirms or supports what you are claiming.

 

But I'm not going to carry on while you shuffle all over the place desperately trying to hide your inadequacies unless you actually come up with some fragment that even indicates that Arab music might have influenced the development of European music.

 

How do you know that those instruments are guitars rather than early lutes or mandolins or balalaikas or banjos or small zithers or psalters or dulcimers or scheithölte[1]? The left-hand one even looks like a lyre.

 

[1] Sorry, I don't know the English for Scheitholt. The picture on the left looks a bit like one if you squint one way. The other way it looks like a lyre.

 

You need to be careful when you throw around technical terms like 'guitar'. Any old piece of wood with pluckable strings doesn't make a guitar.

 

Yes. I used the term "arab" in the broad sense, like is used in the Spanish Speaking world, to mean people that "writes in Arabic characters" .

 

But you are right, I meant Islamic civilization of the Middle Ages, particularly the one that influenced Al-Andalus.

 

By the way, could you convince the fellow in this list that the Persian music influenced Westerners. He doesn't listen to me

 

 

 

 

Why should anyone listen to you when you know nothing at all about music, let alone its history and development? It's not as if you'd ever found anyone authority that agrees with you, or any example of a European composition from the middle ages that shows any sign of influence from the Arab world.

 

Now apparently you're claiming that all Islamic music is the same, and the same as Arab music, which again shows your ignorance. Unless you mean Pakistanis and Indonesians aren't Islamic now? Their music has pretty little if any connection with Arab music either. The subcontinent has pretty much the same music everywhere. (Classically anyway.)

 

And that ludicrous laughing icon doesn't alter the fact you are making a fool of yourself here.

 

...

 

I am just claiming that Europe owes a good chunk of its modern culture to the Muslim age of glory, music included.

 

I am not a musician so I can't prove you wrong. You show me your scales and other technicalities and you push me away from the discussion.

 

However, I am not an ignorant in the history of culture, and I know from the experts of the Iberian and Ibero-american countries, that you are wrong. Perhaps the reason is because the Iberian culture is more open to accept the ancient Muslim glory, than the rest of Europe.

So, I just assume your denial has other reasons, that has nothing to do with music.

 

Finally, why you get upset with my laughing, and get so serious, if I am doing the clown? 

 

 

You're dead obviously not a musician, asnd know nothing about the history of music, or you wouldn't come up with such nonsense. Before you so pompously pronounce wild assertions based on your complete lack of knowledge of the subject, learn a little about it. Or just listen to some Arab music and some medieval European music, assuming you are not tone deaf. There's plenty of it available.

You show me your scales and other technicalities and you push me away from the discussion.   However, I am not an ignorant in the history of culture, and I know from the experts of the Iberian and Ibero-american countries, that you are wrong. Perhaps the reason is because the Iberian culture is more open to accept the ancient Muslim glory, than the rest of Europe.

Nonsense. In this field you are a total ignoramus and you have completely failed to produce anything from any expert of any kind at all giving your thesis any support.

 

I don't know how you have the chutzpah to say you know nothing about something but you know you are right.

 

Any influence the Arab world may have had on architecture, art, science, mathematics, philosophy, religion, whatever is completely irrelevant to the question of whether Arab music had any influence on European music. The only thing that is relevant is the music.

So, I just assume your denial has other reasons, that has nothing to do with music.

Why? It's me (and Chilbudios) that knows about the music. You don't. You're an ignoramus in the subject. You cannot make any worthwhile assumption based on anything you know, because you know nothing abou the topic.

 

My denial is based on the fact that I've studied the history of music, I definitely know what kind of music was played in the middle ages, I have a pretty clear understanding of the structure and theory of classical Greek music, and I've also read a lot about Arab music. And I've also listened to Arab and medieval music, though not to too much Greek music.

 

Your position is pure propaganda based on nothing at all. 

Finally, why you get upset with my laughing, and get so serious, if I am doing the clown?

I don't get upset about your laughing. I'm merely pointing out that it is ludicrous because it is you who are being laughed at for pontificating about things you know nothing about.