Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

I. Pre-Islamic

1. Introduction.

2. 3rd millennium bce.

3. 2nd millennium bce.

4. 1st millennium bce.

5. Sassanian period, 224–651 ce.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Iran, §I: Introduction

1. Introduction.

The long history of music in Iran can be traced at least as far back as 3000 bce. The evidence is archaeological and textual, and some of the sources are here assembled as a first attempt to construct a music history of the region from its origins to the Arab conquest in 651 ce. Although Iranian languages and culture spread far beyond the borders of modern Iran, including parts of Trans-Caucasia, Central Asia, north-west India and Mesopotamia (see Frye, 1962, p.3), this article concentrates on the music of the heartland, the region between the lowlands east of the Tigris and west of the Indus.

Iran means ‘land of the Aryans’, and the name owes its origins to the tribes that arrived in the area in the early 3rd millennium bce. The name Persia comes from Parsa or Pars, a region roughly equivalent to the modern province of Fars, which, together with other areas of western Iran, was settled by Persian and Median tribes during the 1st millennium bce.

Geographically, ancient Iran was split into an eastern and western part by the deserts of Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut (fig.2), and this division also affected culture, including music. This is noticeable as early as 2000 bce when western people, the Elamites, favoured string instruments while eastern inhabitants favoured Bactrian trumpets. The split still remained three millennia later when Islamic harps differed distinctly in eastern and western Iran (Lawergren, MGG2, ‘Harfen’, Abb.10).

The Elamites were the main western people between 2350 and 650 bce. Their territory lay on the plains surrounding the city of Susa and penetrated up the Zagros mountains where Madaktu and Kul-e Fara were prominent centres. Mesopotamia, occupying the river banks of the Euphrates and Tigris and their tributaries, lay on the western border. Elamites and Mesopotamians (successively Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians) were ethnically distinct, spoke different languages and were often at war. The ebb and flow across the border between Elam and Mesopotamia is not always well understood, but around 2000 bce many cultural manifestations point to strong Mesopotamian influences on Elam, one example being the spread eastwards of bull lyres from the dominant power of Sumer.

Less understood are the early people of eastern Iran, but cultural features of the northern regions (Bactria and Margiana) appear to have travelled southwards between 2300 and 1600 bce into eastern Iran, but without crossing into the western region, for example, the Bactrian trumpets (see §2(iii) below). By the 9th century bce, new peoples, the Medes and the Persians (Parsans), had entered the region from Central Asia but continued moving westwards. During the 560s several Persian and Iranian groups led by King Cyrus II ‘the Great’ (559–529 bce) defeated the Medes and captured western Iran and Mesopotamia. In 546 bce Cyrus united all his lands into a single territory, known as the Achaemenid empire after Achaemenes, a mythical ancestor of the Persians. This empire, which by about 500 bce extended from the Balkans to northern Egypt and the Indus, lasted until it, in turn, was conquered by Alexander the Great (d 323), who destroyed its capital, Persepolis, in 330 and placed the region under Hellenistic control. Under Alexander's successors, Iran became part of the Seleucid empire. From 323 bce Iran was ruled by the Parthians to the north-east until 226 ce (for this period, see Parthian Empire), when the Sassanians, a people of southern Iran, created an empire based on that of the Achaemenids. It reached its fullest extent in the late 6th century and saw the establishment of Zoroastrianism as the chief religion, but fell to the Arabs in 642 ce.

Unlike Mesopotamia, ancient Iran has left few texts dating from the period under discussion. Although both cultures used cuneiform characters, this system of writing was not as well suited to the Elamite language as to Sumerian and Akkadian in Mesopotamia. The few surviving Elamite texts are of little musical interest. Although Iranian literature gradually increased, it was written on perishable materials; numerous clay seals (bullae) have survived, but the enclosed texts are lost. Mesopotamian texts, however, survived, being largely written on clay. The Sassanian period has left fragments of writing in the Pahlavi language, but most information comes from later Muslim authors writing in New Persian or Arabic. Because of the paucity of contemporary texts, evidence of ancient Iranian music is based primarily on archaeological finds. Objects take the centre stage, but music and the contexts of music performance begin to emerge if a comparative approach is adopted, particularly with regard to Mesopotamia.

Iran, §I: Introduction

2. 3rd millennium bce.

(i) Arched harps.

The arched harp is one of the first complex instruments to appear in the archaeological records of Iran dating from about 3300–3100 bce; in Mesopotamia the earliest known evidence for such instruments is slightly later (c3000 bce), but, given the uncertainties of dating and the scarcity of the material, it is impossible to determine in which region this harp appeared first. Moreover, it is likely that the instrument had existed some time before it was depicted in art.

Iranian sources show different contexts for the use of arched harps from those of Mesopotamia. Iranian representations from the 3rd millennium bce depict harps played in complex rituals. The scene in fig.3a shows a harpist performing with a drummer, a singer and a wind player. The other objects are pots, and their large variety suggests an environment with more cultic overtones than a simple meal eaten by the person seated on the right.

The harp in fig.3b appears in a scene crowded with humans, deities, snakes, birds, animal parts and flora; the exact significance of this composition remains elusive (for an interpretation, see Porada, 1965, pp.41–2). The main figure is a seated goddess with snakes rising from her shoulders. The harp, which appears above her head, lacks a player, suggesting that the association between these instruments and religious rite was so strong in ancient Iranian society that the player was superfluous. It is likely that the harp had a symbolic function. Many of the elements, including the snake goddess (or god), are also present in fig.3c. In Mesopotamia, harps were shown in less complex rituals, as accompanying officiants who brought offerings to kings and gods (e.g. on the ‘Standard of Ur’; Rashid, 1984, pl.11). Such musical ‘presentation scenes’ became popular throughout the Middle East west of Iran. After the 3rd millennium bce, arched harps disappeared from the Middle East, being replaced by angular harps (see Harp, §II, 3(v)).

(ii) Bull lyres.

Large lyres with a bull's head on one side flourished primarily in Mesopotamia but were also known in adjacent regions, including Elam. Many ancient lyres have been excavated at the southern Mesopotamian site of Ur (2450 bce; fig.4a; Rashid, 1984, pp.29–41; see also Mesopotamia, fig.3), but pictorial evidence shows nearly identical instruments from other sites in Mesopotamia and Elam, including Susa (fig.4b). The Iranian sources, like those of Mesopotamia, display strong associations between animals and music, with some players taking the form of animals. The small size and poor quality of representations of bull lyres drawn outside Mesopotamia, however, makes it impossible to distinguish Iranian and Mesopotamian instruments. Since these lyres and their animal associations are similar throughout the whole region, it is difficult to be certain of their origin. Most likely, they first appeared in Mesopotamia since this region was militarily dominant and had elaborate rituals involving music on instruments that ‘lowed like bulls’.

(iii) Trumpets.

Many small trumpet-like objects dating from between 2200 and 1750 bce have recently been brought to light by clandestine excavations near ancient oases in Bactria and Margiana in eastern Iran (modern southern Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan). The sizes and shapes of these objects are similar to gold, silver or copper ‘trumpets’ already known from documented excavations in more southerly parts of Iran (two from Astarabad, three from Tepe Hissar and one from Shahdad). The Bactrian objects belong to a wider assemblage recently defined as the ‘Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex’ (BMAC; see Hiebert, 1994, p.376) and dated between 2200 and 1750 bce. Although the trumpet-like objects have not until now been considered part of that assemblage, they probably shared its general characteristics. The dates of the burials suggest that this kind of trumpet originated in the Bactria-Margiana region and spread gradually into the southern parts of eastern Iran (ibid., p.374).

The trumpet-like objects come in three basic shapes. All have a short tube expanding to a flared end, with a total length of between six and 12 cm and a tube diameter of about one cm. On one type the tube is decorated with reliefs of faces, often mounted several abreast (fig.5a–c). The second type has a bulbous sphere instead of heads (fig.5d–e). The third type has no face or bulb. The finely sculpted faces and the quality of the materials indicate that such instruments were élite objects. Some were made of gold or silver, others of copper-rich bronze. One of the Tepe Hissar finds (fig.5e) consists of two overlapping layers: an inner silver trumpet covered by an outer gold trumpet about one mm thick.

Although their shapes are trumpet-like, some scholars have suggested alternative interpretations: perhaps the objects were stands meant to be placed with their broad ends downwards, an arrangement that would bring the faces vertical; perhaps they were funnels or spouts. But such mundane objects seem unlikely considering the precious materials and the extraordinary workmanship. Hakemi suggested that a trumpet of the second type found at Shahdad may have been joined to a long wooden tube, which has since decayed (1997, p.635). Such contraptions are unnecessary, for the unaltered trumpets can produce a good sound.

Bactrian trumpets may not have been the first trumpets in the Middle East. A crudely sculpted object on a stone relief from Khafagi in Mesopotamia (Rashid, 1984, p.61) is probably earlier; it appears to be a 50 cm-long conical trumpet without the flared end.

In date and provenance the BMAC is close to the origin of Indo-Iranian mythology, in particular Zoroastrianism (Boyce, 1984, pp.1, 8, 11). Scholars have tried to connect Zoroastrian dualistic concepts to the visual symbols used in the art of the BMAC (Hiebert, 1994, p.374), but at present the association is entirely speculative. Bactro-Iranian trumpets may offer more solid evidence associated with the Zoroastrian myth about Yīma, mankind's first king, who reigned during a Golden Age when weather was fair and sickness and death were unknown. According to the myth, which has ancient roots but was committed to writing only about 1000 ce, at the onset of a severe winter Yīma's god, Ahura Mazda, ordered him to bring plants, animals and humans into a shelter. To help him, the god gave Yima two implements: a golden sufrā (‘trumpet’, see Duchesne-Guillemin, 1979, pp.540–41) and a gold-plated astrā (‘whip’). The myth implies that the instrument was used to call animals, a procedure still used by hunters when stalking their quarry and a task well suited to Bactrian trumpets with their high-pitched tessitura and flexible pitch. Moreover, many of the ancient trumpets are golden. The divine association could easily have caused them to multiply as cult objects. (The shofar, a much larger – and later – trumpet, is entirely confined to cultic use.)

Iran, §I: Introduction

3. 2nd millennium bce.

(i) Angular harps.

Arched harps disappeared from the Middle East, about 1900 bce, when angular harps spread throughout the region. Shapes and proportions were everywhere similar except in western Iran (Elam), where smaller models flourished during the 2nd millennium and larger ones during succeeding millennia. Angular harps could be played with vertical or horizontal strings. In either case, the harps had similar bodies but vastly different numbers of strings and playing techniques. Vertical harps usually had more than 20 strings plucked by both hands; horizontal harps had about nine strings struck with a plectrum held in the right hand and damped by the fingers of the left hand positioned behind the strings (Lawergren and Gurney, 1987, p.51).

The main sources of information are terracotta plaques. In Mesopotamia horizontal harps were shown only with the player and harp in profile. Vertical harps were shown both in profile, and as front views with the player and harp en face (fig.6a–b). However, the latter could not be depicted realistically, for the strings would have to be lined up into a thin sheet protruding towards the viewer, and these would easily be damaged. As a result, strings were hardly modelled at all, although the rib to which they were tied is always shown running along the front of the harp, and the protruding rod at the bottom is contracted into a short knob. Both side and front views, however, show the same playing position, size and shape of the instrument; they are certainly identical harps. Both views show harps with slightly waisted bodies. Elamite representations adopt the same pose as the Mesopotamian front views, but the harps are much smaller (fig.6c). Horizontal harps from Elam are also small, but depicted differently from their Mesopotamian counterparts (fig.6d): the harp is always shown from the side while the player faces the viewer (fig.6e). To produce this composite pose, the harp body was turned parallel to the player's stomach. Unlike the Mesopotamian players of horizontal harps, Elamite harpists do not appear to line up their horizontal harps along the direction of movement, but this may, again, be an attempt to avoid a thin protruding part on the plaque.

In eastern Iran a horizontal harp is shown with normal size at this time (Shahr-e Sokhta, see Harp fig.4b) and the same large size is shown a millennium later at Kul-e Fara and Madaktu (see fig.7 below).

(ii) Lutes.

The first lutes appeared in 2300 bce in Mesopotamia, a millennium after the first harps; another millennium later lutes had become the dominant string instruments in western Iran.

Terracotta plaques from Susa often show lutenists as nude women and grotesque males. These may be musicians in a social class below those attached to courts and temples. The size of lutes increased during the 2nd millennium bce (Lawergren and Kilmer, MGG2, ‘Mesopotamien’, Abb.22–3). Depictions on Iranian bronze beakers from the 10th and 9th centuries bce show lutes that correspond to a length of 140 cm (see Muscarella, 1975, figs.5 and 12). During the 1st millennium bce the lutes largely disappeared from Iranian art, but the instrument must have survived nevertheless, since it reappeared in the 1st millennium in many different forms. It may have existed outside the realm of élite society, largely neglected by art.

See also Lute (ii), §1.

Iran, §I: Introduction

4. 1st millennium bce.

(i) Elamite harp ensembles.

Angular harps continued to appear on the art of this period and formed the core of Elamite royal ensembles at Madaktu and Kul-e Fara (fig.7). A depiction of the former occurs on an Assyrian wall relief from Nineveh (c650 bce; now in the British Museum) showing the banquet arranged to celebrate King Ashurbanipal's defeat of the Elamite army at the provincial town of Madaktu. The scene shows the exodus from Madaktu and departure of the Elamite court ensemble (fig.7b). At the rear 15 women and children wail and clap their hands; in the front are players of 11 melody instruments: seven vertical angular harps, two horizontal angular harps and two double pipes. Many instruments play simultaneously, possibly in some type of heterophony. Although Madaktu was only a provincial capital, it was large enough to support a substantial court ensemble. Susa, the main capital, probably had an even larger ensemble, but no depiction of it is known.

The largest collection of Elamite musical instruments is shown at the provincial site of Kul-e Fara (900–600 bce), which lies in a narrow valley surrounded by cliff walls carved with numerous reliefs. Three of the reliefs show groups of harps in various combinations. Although some of the carvings are severely eroded, surviving details allow several different kinds of harp to be distinguished (fig.7a). The first group (Kul-e Fara I) has been known for a century, but Kul-e Fara III and IV were published more recently (de Waele, 1989). Angular harps dominate, but there is a remarkable variety of combinations. Horizontal (H) and vertical (V) harps are grouped in the following patterns:

Kul-e Fara I: (square frame drum) + V + H

Kul-e Fara III: V + V + V

Kul-e Fara IV: V + V + H; V + V + H

Group IV is drawn on an uneven surface, and it is difficult to determine whether it shows a single group of six players or two sub-groups with three players in each. Since a leader seems to be at the front, the former interpretation is more likely.

Unlike other Iranian depictions of vertical angular harps (of which those of Madaktu are typical), those found at Kul-e Fara show different arrangements of the ornamental tassels hanging from the rod. Group IV lacks tassels altogether.

(ii) Royal and ritual music.

During the 3rd millennium bce, music was often shown in religious scenes, but sources from the next two millennia begin to show it in wider contexts. A metal bowl, dating from c650 bce, found at Arjan, Elam, shows a lively scene (fig.8) with a seated king entertained by an ensemble of musicians, dancers, stilt walkers and acrobats, while cooks prepare food and drink, and others carry jars or pots. The ensemble consists of a lyre, two angular harps, a set of double pipes, a lute and perhaps small percussion. It is thought to be a purely secular occasion, although the absence of texts to support this interpretation makes certainty impossible.

Perhaps the most remarkable scene of music-making in the ancient Middle East is found on a Hittite vase from Inandık dated a millennium earlier (see Anatolia, fig.7). The scene has many features in common with that on the Arjan bowl but is interpreted as ritual activity. There are 15 instrumentalists playing six thick lyres (a giant one requires two players), two long-necked lutes and six pairs of hand-held cymbals. Statuettes of an ensemble (lute and cymbals) stand on top of a broad pedestal, and another pedestal (or altar) supports a pair of bull statuettes. Beneath is a depiction of a real bull with a knife at his throat. Acrobats bounce and tumble, while other participants cook and scurry about with jars and pots. A semi-nude couple copulate, an act interpreted as the sacred ritual of hieros gamos (Gk.: ‘sacred marriage’).

Whatever the interpretations of these two bustling scenes, they provide lively testimony on the contexts of ancient music in the Middle East. Many aspects of music-making were probably similar throughout the region, but the written documents are relatively few and rarely permit general conclusions or regional differentiation. When there is ample textual evidence in one area (as with the use of music in Hittite rituals; see Gurney, 1977, pp.33–4), there may be no corresponding information in another – as with the lack of texts in ancient Iran.

(iii) Achaemenid period, 550–331 bce.

There is little contemporary information on music during this time. Drawing on later texts, Boyce concluded that minstrels had flourished and held privileged positions at court (Boyce, 1957, pp.20–21). Likewise, there is no pictorial evidence from Iran itself, but a musical artefact influenced by Achaemenid culture has recently emerged from China: a key used to tune the qin-zither during the Warring States period (5th–4th centuries bce) was decorated with a bull-man resembling the large bull-men atop architectural pillars at the Achaemenid capital of Persepolis (Lawergren, 1997, and 2000). Such long-distance musical influence on China was facilitated by horse-riders travelling along the east–west expanse of the Eurasian steppes.

Greek writers have left much information on the Persians of the Achaemenid period, some of which concerns music. Herodotus remarked on Achaemenid priests who did not perform their rites to ‘aulos music’ (Histories, i.132). Athenaeus mentioned a court singer who sang a warning to the king of the Medes of the acquisitive plans of Cyrus II. Xenophon, who visited Persia in 401 bce, tells of the great number of singing women at the Achaemenid court (Cyropaedia, iv.6.11; v.1.1; v.5.2; v.5.39). Athenaeus related that the Macedonian general Parmenius captured the 329 singing girls belonging to the court of Darius III (Sophists at Dinner, xiii.608) and that a royal officer at Babylon had 150 singing girls at his table (xii.530). Because Greek writers are fairly unanimous, they should probably be trusted in their account of the many singing girls. The tradition of women musicians entertaining men continued in the Islamic period by the tradition of Qayna girls. They were uneasily tolerated by the faithful, as was their music.

Iran, §I: Introduction

5. Sassanian period, 224–651 ce.

The evidence concerning music in this period is more substantial than that from earlier eras, in particular relating to the Zoroastrian religion, which had already been adopted as the state religion by the Achaemenids and restored by the Sassanians after a brief interlude of Hellenism under the Parthians (see Parthian Empire).

One Zoroastrian text has already been mentioned in connection with Bactrian trumpets (see §1(iii) above). It is part of the Avesta, the holy book of the faith, preserved orally and not written down until the 5th century ce; the oldest surviving copy dates to the 14th century. The earliest part of the Avesta is the collection of gāthā, some of which go back to the 2nd millennium bce (Boyce, 1984, p.8; Mallory, 1989, p.37). The language of these texts is similar to that of the Indian Rgveda, and other features, such as some deity names, are also shared. The correspondence indicates a common origin of tribes speaking Indo-Aryan languages, and their homeland is considered to have been on the steppes of south Russia. One branch moved into north India around 2000 bce, when the Indus valley civilization (including its language) came to an end. Another branch probably entered the Bactria-Margiana region of eastern Iran (for indications of the language change there, see Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky, 1992, pp.8–10). The gāthā were hymns similar to the Vedic Samhitās, which are known to have been sung or chanted (Gonda, 1975, pp.313–16).

Modern translations render gāthā variously as ‘hymns’, ‘poems’, or ‘psalms’. Although there is no direct evidence that the gāthā were sung, songs played a prominent role in early Zoroastrian imagination, and it is likely that they were chanted. The Zoroastrian paradise (garōdmān) was known as the ‘House of Song’ (Boyce, 1984, p.28), where music induced perpetual joy. Similar ideas also entered Mahayana Buddhism where sūtras glowingly describe music as one the chief delights of Paradise (see Lawergren, 1994, pp.234–8). For Zoroastrians, this music begins when a righteous person dies. The soul of the deceased chants for three days outside the head of the corpse (Boyce, 1984, p.81). In the 5th century bce Herodotus claimed that Zoroastrian magi (priests) chanted at sacrifices (Histories i.132).

Although no instruments were used in formal worship, Zoroastrians used them to add a convivial element to the celebrations of holy days, ‘putting to rout, for a moment at least, the gloomy forces of darkness’ (Boyce, 1992, p.104). In the late 9th century ce a Muslim scholar observed that pillars were built before the time of No Rooz (New Year):

One column was sown with wheat, one with barley, another with rice, the other ones with lentils, beans … millet, sorghum … And the harvest thereof was never gathered but with song and music and mirth, which happened on the sixth day after the beginning of No Rooz. Among the presents which the kings of different nations gave to the Persian kings were the rarest wonders of their lands … Ministers, chief scribes and private courtiers gave gold and silver bowls set with jewels and bowls of silver enriched with gold … Wise men gave their wisdom; poets, their verses … (trans. Boyce, 1984, p.70).

Some silver bowls associated with Zoroastrianism were decorated with musical scenes (see fig.10 below).

According to al-Mas'udī (d c957), music was greatly esteemed at court and the founder of the Sassanid dynasty, King Ardeshir I (d 241), gathered singers, virtuosos and others involved with music into a special courtly class. Two centuries later, Varahran V (421–39; also known as Bahram Gur) elevated this class to the highest rank (Christensen, 1936, p.31). He was fond of music and recruited 12,000 singers from India (said to be ancestors of the Loris). But music was cherished even more highly by Khosrow II (591–628), whose reign was a veritable Golden Age of Iranian music. He is shown among musicians on a large cliff relief at Taq-e Bostan in western Iran. The king stands in a boat shooting with a bow and arrows and is accompanied by a band of harpists, who sail in his boat and an escorting one; in addition numerous shore-bound musicians play on a platform. It is a remarkable scene where the boats are shown at two successive moments on the same panel, and the harps are rendered in considerable detail.

There are many tales about the musicians at Sassanian courts. Since these were illustrated in hundreds of manuscripts centuries later, the stories are as important to Persian musical iconography as the Bible was to the European Middle Ages. Most stories were recorded in the Shāhnāmeh (‘Book of Kings’) composed by Ferdowsi about 1010. This national epic was based on old bardic tales preserved orally in eastern Iran at a time when the minstrel tradition had ceased in western Iran. Another source, Nezami's Khamseh (‘Five poems’) of 1190, is partly derived from the Shāhnāmeh. Of its five sections, two are concerned with music: Haft paykār (‘Seven portraits’) and Khosrow va Shirin. The former tells of Bahram Gur and his favourite mistress, the Greek harpist Āzādeh. They became the most popular musical image of Persia, being depicted in Sassanian art after 650 and in Islamic miniature paintings between about 1300 and 1600 (Ettinghausen, 1979, p.29).

Another story in the Haft paykār concerns Bārbad, the sweet-voiced lutenist who lived during the reign of Khosrow II. He outwitted the envious harpist Sarkash (also called Nakisā) and became the king's favourite. There are many other stories, such as the one about Khosrow II who fell in love with his singing girl Shirin, and some may be rooted in reality. Bārbad, for example, is generally assumed to have been an historical person. A variety of later texts affirm his fame as composer and lutenist and acclaim him the ‘founder of Persian music’. According to one tradition he died from poisoning at the hand of Sarkash, who had stayed on as a minor court musician.

The Sassanians employed large number of instruments, many of which are known only in name. In the story known as ‘Khosrow and his Page’ the king asks: ‘Which musician is the finest and the best?’ and the boy diplomatically mentions the players of all instruments he knew: chang (which he calls the foremost), vin, vinkannār, mushtaq, tunbūr, barbat, nād, dumbalak, rasn and 16 others (Unvala, 1917, pp.62–3). The identity of the chang is known, but many others are as yet unidentified, and sound-similarities in translations cannot be relied upon. Barbat, for example, has often been translated barbitos (e.g. Boyce, 1957, p.23); but the latter is an ancient Greek lyre not used after 400 bce, and the barbat cannot be the barbitos (although the name may be of Greek origin, probably via Byzantium).

Iconographic sources provide more reliable information on instruments. Aerophones include the reed pipe (sornā; see Surnāy) and the double trumpet. The Chinese mouth organ (see Sheng), shown on a wall relief from Taq-e Bostan and a silver cup from Kalar Dasht in the Mazandaran (6th century ce; Archaeological Museum, Tehran), flourished briefly in Iran and, like some other foreign instruments and instrumental details, probably owed its introduction to traffic along the Silk Route; it comprised five, six or seven pipes in a wind reservoir with finger holes and reeds and was known in Iran as the mushtaq. String instruments were the horizontal angular harp (possibly vīn), the short-necked lute (barbut), which had between four and six strings, and the chang – a ‘light vertical angular harp’, a type that could have been invented in Iran, Central Asia or China (see Harp, §1). The membranophones included the kettledrum (kūs), small drum (tās), frame drum and hourglass drum (kūba), which was related to Central Asian drums. To the idiophonic group belonged the forked cymbals (chaġāna), related to Roman cymbals, and pairs of wooden clappers (or castanets, chahār pāra).

Although little literary evidence has survived from the Sassanian period, some insight into the nature of music may be gained from, for example, the writings of Qutb al-Dīn (Mahmūd ibn Mas‘ūd al-Shīrāzī; d 1311). According to him, seven musical modes were recognized during the Sassanian era, including sakāf, mādārūsnān, sāykād, sīsum and jūbarān (Farmer, 1926). The names are probably corrupt and lack musical significance. Christensen (1936, p.38) tentatively translates some as ‘sixth’, ‘plectrum’ and a place name. Qutb al-Dīn also asserted that Bārbad (fig.9) composed seven royal modes (khosrovāni), 30 derivative modes (lahn), one for each day in the Zoroastrian month, and 360 melodies or airs (dastān), one for each day in the Zoroastrian year (neglecting the five intercalary days). Other Muslim writers (e.g. Nezami) name some of the tunes, but do not give the lyrics. Christensen has suggested (1936, pp.44–5) that a manuscript found at Turpan (Xinjiang province, China) contains the words of a poem composed and sung by Bārbad or one of his contemporaries. It is an odd text found in a trove of Manichaean manuscripts, and has the song Khvarshēdh ī rōshan (‘The shining sun’) written in the Pahlavi language used at the time of Bārbad. Its four lines, each with 11 syllables, reads:

The shining sun, the beaming full moon
resplendent and beaming behind the trunk of a tree;
the eager birds strut about it full of joy,
the doves and the colourful peacocks strut about.

The title is reminiscent of the name of a Sassanian melody, Arāyishn ī khvarshēdh (‘The beauty of the sun’), known from Muslim authors. The small difference, Christensen suggests, could have arisen when the Pahlavi text was combined with New Persian by Islamic writers.

Iran, §I: Introduction

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG2 (‘Harfen [Antiken]’, B. Lawergren; also ‘Mesopotamien’, B. Lawergren and A.D. Kilmer)

J.M. Unvala, ed. and trans.: King Husrav and his Boy (Paris, 1917)

H.G. Farmer: ‘The Old Persian Musical Modes’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1926), 93–5; repr. in Studies in Oriental Music, ii, ed. E. Neubauer (Frankfurt, 1997), 426–32

A. Christensen: ‘La vie musicale dans la civilisation des Sassanides’, Bulletin de l'Association Française des Amis de l'Oriente (1936), 24–45

E.F. Schmidt: Excavations at Tepe Hissar (Damghan) (Philadelphia, 1937)

M. Boyce: ‘The Parthian Gōsān and Iranian Minstrel Tradition’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, ix (1957), 10–45

R.N. Frye: The Heritage of Persia (London, 1962)

E. Porada: The Art of Ancient Iran: Pre-Islamic Cultures (New York, 1965)

S. Fukai and K. Horiuchi: Taq-i-Bustan, i: Plates (Tokyo, 1969)

P. Amiet: Glyptique susienne (Paris, 1972)

J. Gonda: Vedic Literature (Samhitās and Brāhmanas (Wiesbaden, 1975)

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