From royal courts to wine-filled gatherings, music played a vital role in medieval Persianate culture. Two remarkable texts — one practical, one theoretical — reveal how musicians lived, performed, and understood their art.

By Timur Khan

In the field of music, many of the seminal works of the medieval Islamic world were written in Arabic from the 9th to the 13th centuries AD. The culture of patronage at the wealthy court of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad in particular supported the creation of a vast corpus of biographical, religious, and theoretical texts on music.

From around the 14th century onwards, in regions where Persian became the elite lingua franca (including today’s Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other parts of Central and South Asia), musical treatises came to be most often written in that language. We will focus on earlier works, one from the 11th and another from the 12th or 13th century, which illuminate something of how music was conceived and practiced in the Persian-speaking world during the same period as the flourishing of musical writing in Baghdad.

The two sources in question provide different perspectives on music. The first is a book known as both the Nasihat-nama (Book of Advice) and Qabus-nama (Book of Qabus), finished in 1082. Its author, the amir Kaikavus (r. c. 1050–1087), was the leader of the Ziyarid dynasty which ruled the Caspian littoral area of Iran from around 931 to 1090. The book advises Kaikavus’ son on matters of statecraft, but also offers advice on a number of professions and activities in life. Hence, in one of its 44 chapters, Kaikavus explains how to be a good musician. He gives a detailed and colourful description of a musician’s craft and life.

Our second source is, by contrast, primarily theoretical. It is a treatise which explains the organisation of music into twelve modes. We know little about its author, Muhammad ibn Mahmud ibn Muhammad Nayshaburi. By the latter epithet, we know he was from or at least is associated with the city of Nayshabur (or Nayshapur, or Nishapur), now in eastern Iran. He was seemingly an expert in the field of music: in the text’s preamble he is also referred to as the ‘wonder of the age’ and ‘master [ustad, denoting great learning] of Khurasan.’ The scholar Ann E. Lucas writes that Nayshaburi was patronised by the sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire, Bahram Shah (r. 1118–1152), while Amir Hosein Pourjavady, who produced an edited version of the treatise, states only that he lived in the 12th or 13th century.

Together, these two sources give us a snapshot of music in the medieval Persianate world, both in theoretical and practical terms. An important caveat is that both texts are presenting us with music as it existed in an elite or even courtly context, not the lives of ordinary people.

A Hireling for Drunks: The Life of a Medieval Musician

The setting for musical performance described by the Qabus-nama is a gathering held at the host’s private home. Both the host and the audience are needed for the musician to earn a livelihood: the former books the musician, and the audience give him silver in the course of the evening. Kaikavus mentions a bowl being passed around the audience, in which they could drop some money to show appreciation. At these parties, wine drinking was indispensable – a typical feature of elite socialising in the Persianate world for centuries. The position of the performer is made clear: a “hireling for drunks,” dependent on patronage and at the mercy of his audience.

Hence, the main skills of the singer as identified by the Qabus-nama relate to managing the audience: they should “follow the nature of the audience” in choosing what to play and show “patience to drunks.” Whatever drunken audience members request should be played. Though an audience may not pay at first, and only praise with words, once they drink more the silver will flow. The singer should not challenge their requests or how much money they give, even if it is a miserly contribution: “do not quarrel with drunks” is a concise way of putting it. The singer should avoid quarrels, including with his fellow musicians, as this “earns no silver” and may annoy the guests. Finally, the musician cannot be openly rude in a gathering: they will leave without their money, “with downcast head and face, and with torn clothes […] return home […] no wages are given to a rude hireling.”

According to Kaikavus, “they also say that the singer should be blind, deaf, and mute,” meaning he should never speak of the things he sees going on at the host’s home to anyone else. Evidently some scandalous behaviour and talk went on at these parties, and if the musician let it get out, the master of the house would not hire them again.

Managing the audience wasn’t just about patience and a conciliatory attitude, of course: the musician had to know what to play when, and for whom. A singer needed to know poems and songs on all kinds of topics, to be played at an appropriate moment. The themes identified in the Qabus-nama range from separation and union (of lovers) to blame, prohibition, acceptance, faithfulness, generosity, happiness, and complaint. Not only the mood but the four seasons were important: different modes and songs had their proper season, and should not be played in another.

The audience itself should also dictate the music played. Firstly, there was the question of their inherent nature, as defined by the humoral theory of the body. Kaikavus points out that music was created to suit all the different kinds of people and exhorts the reader that as a musician, one must play “so that everyone has a share in listening to you.” If the listener is red and ruddy-faced (or sanguine, lively), the musician should play an instrument called the do-rud (literally, ‘two strings’). If they are yellow-faced and bilious, or hot-tempered, the higher registers are called for. If a listener is black, thin, and melancholic, a lute called se-tar (literally, ‘three strings’) is the preferred instrument. If they are white-skinned, corpulent, and ‘wet,’ one should play in the lower register.

Then there is the question of their age and status. For a group of wise older people, songs in more elevated modes about old age and reproach for the world should be played. For young people and children, songs about women and praise for wine and drinkers are appropriate, set to the lighter modes. For a party of warriors, the performer should recite quatrains (known as do-baiti, literally “two couplets”) about fighting and shedding blood. These verses are identified as coming from Mawara al-Nahr, the Arabic term for the territory beyond the Oxus River – Transoxiana in European classical terminology. This area of Central Asia was known for good fighters.

The Origins and Modes of Persian Music

We will read more about the modes from a more theoretical perspective when we discuss the treatise of Nayshaburi. Where Nayshaburi names twelve and treats the mode as the central component of music as a whole, Kaikavus names ten: Rast, Mada, ‘Iraq, ‘Ushhaq, Zirafgand, Busalik, Spahan, Nawa, Guzashta, and Rahawi. Some of these terms refer to places, like ‘Iraq and Spahan (Isfahan). Others have more varied meanings: ‘Ushhaq means ‘lovers,’ and Guzashta ‘past,’ for example. While the modes are evidently important in the craft of music as depicted in the Qabus-nama, the text’s version of music’s creation does not focus on them.

Kaikavus places the origins of music in the pre-Islamic period of Iranian history. He identifies the early codifiers of music as gabr, a derogatory term for Zoroastrians. As per the Qabus-nama, the first mode of music was made to play in royal assemblies. It was called khusrawani, which means “royal.” After that, the early musicians developed ways (rah, literally “path”) of playing with fewer rhythmic measures, which our author calls surud, otherwise a generic term for a melody or song. This was geared towards the old. But there were, it turned out, people besides the old. With this in mind, a new path was made for the young, out of lighter rhythms. Kaikavus calls this khafif, which is a metre used in Arabic poetry and means ‘light’ or ‘nimble’. Finally, there was the matter of children and women, who “are yet more gentle-natured, and remained without a share.” And so the ancient musicians created a new rhythm for them called tarana (also a general term for a song), which is the gentlest of all.

Overall, Kaikavus provides a colourful and detailed account of music in medieval Iran, especially as practised in the gatherings of the elite. He also mentions, in less detail, some of the theoretical features of music at the time, as well as its history as seen from an Iranian perspective. Unlike the Arabic treatises of the Abbasid court, who foregrounded the Greek philosophers whose work provided the basis for their music theory, the Qabus-nama looks to the pre-Islamic Iranian past. We will see that Nayshaburi’s treatise offers a little more and different theoretical information, and likewise views music’s history from an Iranian perspective.

Twelve Modes and the Legacy of Barbad

We turn now to Muhammad Nayshaburi’s treatise on music. This untitled work is short, at around 1,000 words in Persian, and sometimes confusing because of its undefined musical terminology and lack of detailed explanation. Ann E. Lucas notes that Nayshaburi seems not to have engaged with the theoretical work on music coming from out west in Baghdad. Those Arabic texts contain a great deal more detail, are highly technical and, while they appear to share certain concepts with Nayshaburi, had a very different understanding of music’s origins.

But however detailed and technical the Arabic texts are, they are not necessarily easier to understand than Nayshaburi’s treatise for a reader today. Technical terms are highly variable and hard to grasp without a stated definition. Consider some English words used in music: would it be easy for an unacquainted reader to understand what a “note” or a “tone” is, or what distinguishes them, without a clear definition provided? After all, these words have various meanings outside their musical definition. Hence when an author like Nayshaburi speaks of parda (‘curtain’), shu‘ba (‘branch’) and bang (‘cry,’ ‘call’) the precise meaning is not immediately obvious.

Beyond issues of definition, since musical notation did not become widely used in the Islamic world (though it did exist), it is largely impossible to reconstruct the music described in these works.

Nayshaburi describes a musical system divided into twelve modes, parda. Amir Hosein Pourjavady notes that the term parda could refer to fret, pitch, and note. But its meaning in this text is that of a mode. With variations, a twelve-segmented modal system was the standard in the courtly music around the Islamic world. It would remain the standard until the 18th century. As described by Nayshaburi, there are also six sub-modes (shu‘ba), each corresponding to two main modes. Beyond that, each mode has between 0.5 and 2 registers, bang.

The mode called Rast (‘right,’ ‘straight,’ ‘true’) is called the king of all the others, because they can all be derived from Rast. All the modes were derived from another. For example, “Mukhalifak arises from ‘Iraq; the high register of ‘Iraq was brought down and named Mukhalifak. [Mukhalifak’s] high register was lowered, and from that arises Rahawi.” But there appear to be some outlying modalities as well. Some modes, like Sipihri (‘celestial’) and Mukhalif-i Rast (literally, ‘against Rast’) can be modified in the low, middle, and high registers. The high register modalities are given new names, but are not classed as separate modes or sub-modes. Once again, without notation it is difficult to get a sense of how the modes relate to each other musically.

As in the Qabus-nama, there are principles for what time of day to play each mode, and what to play for people of different complexions and humours. Children should hear the khafif because they are light-hearted and lively, echoing the words of Kaikavus.

Nayshaburi’s treatise can feel rather drab compared to the Qabus-nama, but little spots of colour do emerge. Often these are references to the wider world, or to history: the mode Sipihri, for example, is supposed to be played commonly in Rum – the Byzantine Empire. Turks are said to play the mode Nawa until nighttime. Nahawand is referred to by our author as the mode of rest, and he further mentions that the Prophet Muhammad used to recite the Qur’an in the same mode.

The reference to the Prophet places Nayshaburi in an Islamic cultural context, but otherwise his understanding of music refers, like that of Kaikavus, back to pre-Islamic Iranian history. The earliest development he ascribes to Barbad, a semi-legendary musician of the Sassanid court of Khosrow II (r. 591–628). Barbad “established no more than seven pardas, in accordance with the seven constellations.” Barbad’s influence is evoked again later: one should play the Rast mode just after midday, because Barbad finished making a lute called the rudkhama, at this time. Coincidentally, it was also the time of his horoscope. We are told that a student of Barbad’s called Sa‘idi set the twelve modes in the reign of Khosrow’s short-lived son Kavad II (r. 628), known as Shah Shiruh. Later masters, Shams al-Din Muhammad Yahya and Kamal al-Zaman Hasan Nayi, added the six sub-modes. Thus the development of music was complete, for Nayshaburi tells us: “after that, great masters arose and worked hard, and could not create anything more.”

Both the Qabus-nama and the treatise of Nayshaburi shed light on an often-overlooked aspect of Islamic and Persian history. They outline a culture and theory of music that was familiar across the Islamic world for centuries, but also show how different traditions in that region interpreted the nature and origins of this music. And the passages of the Qabus-nama especially give us a rare, vivid window into a medieval Iranian musician’s day-to-day work: singing heroic ballads for Turkic warriors, lusty drinking songs for young men, and mournful airs for elders, all the while navigating the demands of rowdy drunks and miserly noblemen. My hope is that more people read texts like these and allow the medieval Persian and Islamic worlds to come to life in their minds.

Timur Khan is a PhD student based in Leiden, the Netherlands. His work focuses on the early modern and colonial history of Afghanistan and South Asia, particularly the 18th and 19th century Durrani empire. His work can be found on his Academia page.

Further Readings

Primary sources

An English translation of the Qabus-nama can be found for free at this link.

The Persian text can be read for free at this link.

The full Persian text of Nayshaburi’s treatise can be read for free, with a short introduction in Persian, at this link. 

Amir Hosein Pourjavady’s edited version of the treatise, with his own introduction, can be read (behind paywall) at this link.

Secondary sources and further reading

For a biography of Kaikavus see J.T.P. de Bruijn, “KAYKĀVUS B. ESKANDAR,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (2000). 

For more information on Persian music history see:

Ann E. Lucas, Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions (University of California Press, 2019), especially chapter 2.

Amir Hosein Pourjavady, Music Making in Iran from the Fifteenth to the Early Twentieth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), especially 175-80 for discussion of early texts on Persian music including the treatise of Nayshaburi. 

Eila Zonis, Classical Persian Music: An Introduction (Harvard University Press, 1973).

Top Image: British Library MS Add. 27257 fol. 436