The Philosophy of Music by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Philosophy of Music by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi Inna Naroditskaya (bio) The Philosophy of Music by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi. Saida Daukeyeva. Alma-Ata: Fond of Soros-Kazakhstan, 2002. 352 pp., in Russian, English; summary and table of contents, 3 colored photographs, Russian-Arabic glossary of terms, diagrams and tables of tones, melodies, modes, and forms; bibliography. ISBN 9965-13-819-2. For eleven hundred years scholars from distant world regions, working in and across scholarly disciplines and writing in different languages, have been allured to the monumental philosophical works of Al-Farabi (870–950). At the roots of the Islamic Renaissance, Al-Farabi navigated and shaped the humanistic thoughts of a period now perceived as the golden age of Eastern literature and sciences. From Turko-Persian historical cultural roots, Al-Farabi and other scholars of Khorosan made a fundamental contribution to Arabic literature, producing Arabic translations and interpretation of Aristotle, Plato, and other ancient classics at a time when Medieval Europe had neither knowledge of the Greek language nor a taste for this culture. Two hundred years later Al- Farabi’s works, translated into Latin, inspired and stirred Europeans toward the Risorgimento and later movements marked by fascination with and appropriation of ancient Greece as the origin of Western cultural history.1 [End Page 133] The discursive, interpretive mode of Al-Farabi’s translation and adaptation of Greek texts was embraced by scholars who translated and annotated his works. A founder of political philosophy, Al-Farabi was a music theorist and a performer, an ud player (praised as the inventor of the 5-string ud). Among his surviving writings on music are treatises on tuning, rhythm, and the philosophy of music (Kitab fi ’l Nuqra, Kitab al ti Ihsa al-iqa, Kitab fi ’l Musiqa) as well as a monumental work, The Grand Book on Music, Kitab al-musiqi al-kabir—the focus of Saida Daukeyeva’s The Philosophy of Music by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi. Daukeyeva’s monograph belongs to the steadily expanding literature on Al-Farabi’s theory of music and specifically on his masterpiece, reissued in many languages and with multiple commentaries.2 Few scholars have Daukeyeva’s background and capacity to write about Abū Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzlagh al-Farab at-Turku.3 Al-Farabi, an ethnic Turk from the Central Asian city Farab in Persia’s Great Khorasan, traveled and resided in the Arabic cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, and Baghdad, also spending years of study in Constantinople. Daukeyeva, 11 centuries later, also of Turkic ethnicity and from the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan (formerly a Soviet republic), was trained as a performer and theorist in her native capital and in Moscow (the Moscow State Conservatory of Tchaikovsky), later residing in Damascus and other Arabic urban centers. She completed her book while studying in London (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London). The monograph, engaging her knowledge of Turkish, Arabic, Russian, and English and written in Russian, consists of two parts, her own writing and her translations, the two-part structure mirroring the work she herself examines. In recent decades a number of Russian-language sources on Al-Farabi have been produced in former Soviet republics, now independent Central Asian states, including several volumes on his philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and music issued in Kazakhstan’s capital Alma-Ata (Daukeyeva’s home), where the Kazakh National University bears the name of Al-Farabi.4 To this expanding scholarly field Daukeyeva contributes her firm grasp of Arabic sources, familiarity with Soviet and post-Soviet materials, and an intimate knowledge of Central Asian literature as well as European and American scholarship. In this respect, the reviewed monograph is interesting not only because of its subject, but also as a glimpse into distinct intellectual traditions formed in Central Asia. The three chapters in the first part of the monograph move from a general historical view of the culture and music of Al-Farabi’s times in the first chapter, to the philosophy of knowledge and an epistemological discourse on music in the second, and a discussion of music theory focusing on sound, modes, rhythms, and musical...