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Ibn Rushd [Abū l-Walīd Muhammad; Averroes]
(b Córdoba, 1126; d Marrakech, 10 Dec 1198). Arab philosopher, lawyer and judge. He studied law and medicine, although philosophy and mathematics interested him more. From 1153 onwards he held important positions as judge and vizier at the courts of Muslim Spain (Seville and Córdoba) and Morocco (Marrakech). As a philosopher he had great influence on Christian Europe; his commentaries on Aristotle’s writings were studied by European scholars for nearly 400 years. His influence on European musical theory was mainly through his Sharh (or Talkhīs) fī l-nafs li-Aristūtālis (‘Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima’), of which the section on the theory of sound was particularly important. The commentary was soon afterwards translated into Latin and Hebrew. The first printed Latin text appeared in Padua in 1472; by 1600 there were approximately 100 editions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EI2 (R. Arnaldez)
N. Morata: El compendio de anima (Madrid, 1934)
based on MGG1 (i, 894–5) by permission of Bärenreiter
H.G. FARMER/R
Ibn Sīnā [Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn; Avicenna]
(b nr Bukhara, 980; d Hamadan,1037). Persian philosopher, administrator and physician. Educated in Bukhara, he was a student of such precocity that he had mastered the whole range of traditional sciences by the age of 18. He led an eventful life of fluctuating fortunes as a minister and adviser to various rulers, but enjoyed in his later years a period of relative peace at Isfahan. One of the great intellectual figures of Islam, he became known as Avicenna in the West, where his philosophical and medical works, notably the authoritative Qānūn fī al-tibb (‘Canon on medicine’), exerted considerable influence.
Ibn Sīnā’s main contribution to the development of musical theory is contained in the Kitāb al-shifā’ (‘The book of healing’), an encyclopedia in which music is classed as one of the mathematical sciences (quadrivium). His general approach is similar to that of al-Fārābī, but the treatment, while necessarily terser, is sometimes more logical in its organization. The introduction dismisses the doctrine of ethos and discusses the nature of sound as both functional and expressive. The goal of the science of music is defined as knowledge of compositional procedures, and the first of the two main sections, fundamentally abstract and analytical, deals with pitch organization: notes, intervals (defined by ratios and ranked by degrees of consonance), tetrachord species and combinations thereof within the Greater Perfect System. The second is concerned with rhythm and, taking al-Fārābī’s account as its model, provides a schematic outline of possible structures; it is only towards the end that reference is made to those in current use. A briefer third section deals with processes of composition and with instruments; this introduces organological distinctions between, for example, ways of mounting strings or the presence or absence of a reed, and discusses the fretting of the lute. It also includes a valuable list – albeit one not always easy to interpret – of the more important melodic modes.
WRITINGS
Kitāb al-shifā’ [The book of healing] (MS, GB-Lbl Oriental 11190); Fr. trans. in La musique arabe, ed. R. d’Erlanger, ii (Paris, 1935), 105–245; ed. Z. Yūsuf: Kitāb al-shifā’, al-riyādiyyāt 3: jawāmi‘ ‘ilm al-mūsīqī (Cairo, 1956); ed. Z. Yūsuf: Kitāb al-shifā’, al-riyādiyyāt 3: jawāmi‘ ‘ilm al-mūsīqī (Cairo, 1956)
Kitāb al-Najāt (MS, GB-Ob Marsh 521); ed. M. El-Hefny: Ibn Sina’s Musiklehre, hauptsächlich an seinem ‘Naǧāt’ erläutert: nebst Übersetzung und Herausgabe des Musikabschnittes des ‘Naǧāt’ (diss., U. of Berlin, 1931); ed. in Majmū‘ rasā’il al-shaykh al-ra’īs [Seven short treatises], ed. Usmani Encyclopedia Committee (Hyderabad, 1935)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EI2 (A.-M. Goichon)
C. Brockelmann: Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, i (Weimar, 1898, 2/1943), 452ff
H.G. Farmer: ‘ The Lute Scale of Avicenna’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1937), 245–58; also in H.G. Farmer: Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, 2nd ser. (Glasgow, 1939/R), 45–57
OWEN WRIGHT
Ibn Zayla [Abū Mansūr al-Husayn ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Umar]
(d 1048). Arab theorist. A pupil of Ibn Sīnā, his one work on music, the Kitāb al-kāfī fī l-mūsīqī (‘Book of sufficiency concerning music’), is the last important surviving treatise on music before the rise of Systematist theory in the mid-13th century. In the choice and treatment of subject matter it generally follows the lines laid down by al-Fārābī and, particularly, Ibn Sīnā. It thus begins with the physics of sound, and surveys intervals, tetrachord species, octave divisions and melodic movement. The remaining subjects discussed are rhythm (treated methodically and clearly); composition (dealt with in a slightly less abstract way than was customary, with mention of a few technical devices and different categories of song); and instruments (including a classification scheme as well as the traditional lute fretting). Following al-Fārābī, Ibn Zayla also included a general classification of means of sound production, the ordering principle being the degree of approximation to the ideal of the human voice. The Kitāb al-kāfī fī l-mūsīqī also lays considerable stress on a traditional threefold division of music emphasizing the variety of responses that different kinds of music can evoke.
WRITINGS
Kitāb al-kāfī fī l-mūsīqī [Book of sufficiency concerning music] (MS, GB-Lbl Oriental 2361); ed. Z. Yūsuf (Cairo, 1964)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A.-M. Goichon: ‘Ibn Zayla’, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii (Leiden and London, 2/1971), 974 only
H.G. Farmer: The Sources of Arabian Music (Bearsden, 1940, 2/1965), 42–3
OWEN WRIGHT
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