Music is Persia and Arabia

There is little actual knowledge of the ancient Persian system, but, since many of its characteristics were undoubtedly transmitted to Arabian music after the Mohammedan conquest of Persia about 700 A.D., we are able to judge something of its nature from the study of music of the Arabs. The well known mathematical propensities of the latter people were applied to the structure of the scale, resulting in a very perfect division of the octave into seventeen equal parts, each consisting of one third of a tone. Thirty four scales were formed from the notes thus derived, of which twelve were principal; and the minute intervals were employed in the prevalent chant like melodies, which were dreamy and voluptuous in character, with the peculiarity of alternating duple and triple metre.

Such an appreciation of very small musical intervals would seem to point toward the existence of delicately adjusted instruments; and of these the Arabs had a great numer, chiefly of the string type. One of these, el 'ud, which transmitted its name to the mediaeval lute (precursor of our mandolin), consisted of a pear shaped body having a rather short neck, from which the head was bent sharply back. Its four or more strings were plucked by a plectrum. Similar to this, but of a smaller body and longer neck, was the tambura. The modern santir is a kind of zither, or table instrument, with many strings. Of a number of members of the viol family, the strings of which were played by a bow, the Rebab, a two stringed violin, was a direct ancestor of our violin.

It was chiefly through these instruments that Arabian music finally came to have important effects upon our own; for when the Arabs, under the influence of Mohammedanism, overan Egypt, North Africa, Turkey and Spain, in the 7th and 8th centuries, they carried with them their musical institutions which later on, especially through the Crusades, came into contact with European civilization. Since, also, Mahomet disapproved of music in connection with religion, the Arabian music was largely used for social diversion, and hence affected European music principally on the secular side.