rabic music is part of the Middle Eastern musical culture area which stretches roughly from Morocco across North Africa and Northern Arabia to Central Asia.1 This culture area is divided into subareas, each constituting major musical subcultures, such as: the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria), Egypt, Arabia (Palestine, Syria, Iraq), Iran, Turkey, Armenia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (Spector 1967:434-84). Although each of the subareas have developed distinct styles of their own, differing in particulars from each other, they do agree in general on the following musical traits and complexes: microtones, rich ornamentation, maqamat, homophony, heterophony, improvisation, complex rhythms, meters and instruments. While Arabs in some parts of Africa (e.g. the Sudan) make music on Arabic instruments like the 'ud or employ Arabic texts and Koranic derived poetry, the music itself cannot always be considered Arabic, since it is often pentatonic, unornamented, with a contour and range of melody which has to be considered African rather than Arabic. Furthermore, there is often a tendency toward harmony and polyphony which are totally absent in contemporary Arabic music. To what extent native African music influenced or changed Arabic traditions can be ascertained only by comparing African music of a given region with its own Arabic subculture, and subsequently with the Arab music in the centers of the Arab world (Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus). Classical Arab music as practiced in the culture areas of Egypt and Arabia (Palestine, Syria and Iraq) is based on microtones. This music is taught most often on the instrument par excellence, the short-necked Arab lute called 'al 'ud in Arabic.2 The 'ud is an early lute, shaped like a halved pear, with two to eight strings, unfretted and played with a plectrum, in Egypt an eagle feather. The 'ud first appeared on Persian clay figures from about 800 B.C.E. and on Indian reliefs from the first centuries C.E. The great Arabic scholar 'al-Farabi (870-950) described its usage in detail.3 The 'ud was brought to Spain and Sicily by the Moors and Saracens and from there it entered Europe. Its name was changed from 'al 'ud to Alaude in Portugal, to La'ud in Spain, to Laute in Germany and to Lute in England. It became the most important instrument in Europe in the 16th century. It was superseded in importance only by the piano.