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Abstract

Starting from early Arabic sources, the absolute pitch of the Early Abbasid ʿūd is considered and related to evidence on pitch usage in Roman-period sources. Similar instruments, it is argued, must have existed already in late antiquity. Iconographic evidence takes us back to late Classical Greece, whose music would have provided especially fertile ground for designing such a lute. In contrast to the traditional tuning in fifths and fourths throughout, lutes with equidistant design had also existed for a long time, likely also on precursors of the ʿūd. The association of this style with the name of Manṣūr Zalzal must therefore be reassessed.

Open Access
In: Oriens
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Abstract

The phrase “music is the nourishment of the soul” reflects a century-old complex of musical, medical, and astrological thinking; integrated notions of celestial and terrestrial harmony, humoral medicine and ethos theory that reach back to Ancient Greece. Adopted into Islamicate philosophy, those theories were combined with a modal system that amplified them. The present paper traces them in various Ottoman texts with the aim of understanding how concepts of music theory, astrology, medicine, and food interacted. A crucial question is whether music theory sources can be brought into a relationship with descriptions of musical (therapy) practices in hospitals.

In: Oriens
The series Documenta Coranica is dedicated to the study of history of the Qurʾānic text as manifested in manuscripts and other sources. Documenta Coranica publishes witnesses of the Qurʾān from the early period in the shape of facsimile, accompanied by transcription and a commentary. The series makes codices on parchment, papyri, inscriptions, variant readings and other relevant sources for the history of the Qurʾān, accessible to the academic public. The first volumes contain manuscript fragments from Sanaa (DAM 01-25.1, DAM 01-27.1, DAM 01-29.1), the manuscript Ma VI 165 (Tübingen), and the codex Or. 2165 of the British Library.

The series comprises two sections: Manuscripta contains facsimile editions of Qurʾānic manuscripts with a line-by-line transcript in Modern Arabic script on the opposite page and a commentary about codicology, paleography, variant readings and verse numbering explaining content and characteristics of each manuscript. Testimonia et Studia contains studies about material evidence for the history of the Qurʾān, as manifested on papyrus, stone and rock inscriptions etc., as well in exegetical, narrative and philological sources.

Documenta Coranica inscribes itself into a German-French cooperation: in the framework of the research project Coranica, 2011-2014, and Paleocoran 2015-2018, both funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche.
Author:

Abstract

Samāʿ literature reveals a tension in premodern Islamicate societies. While musical practices were ubiquitous and practiced in many contexts, Islamic legal tradition regarded them with suspicion. Musical instruments occupied a central place in these discussions, perhaps, because as physical objects associated with what is otherwise in the non-tangible domain of sound they were seen as the quintessential manifestation of music. Udfuwī’s Imtāʿ is one of the most comprehensive works in the genre, and its chapter on instruments is unique in both the length and place it ascribes to percussion instruments. Udfuwī argues for their permissibility and stresses their social importance throughout history.

In: Oriens
Author:
Tianyi Zhang offers in this study an innovative philosophical reconstruction of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191) Illuminationism. Commonly portrayed as either a theosophist or an Avicennian in disguise, Suhrawardī appears here as an original and hardheaded philosopher who adopts mysticism as a tool for philosophical investigation.
Zhang makes use of Plato’s cave allegory to explain Suhrawardī’s Illuminationist project. Focusing on three areas—the theory of presential knowledge, the ontological discussion of mental considerations, and Light Metaphysics—Zhang convincingly reveals the Nominalist and Existential nature of Illuminationism and thereby proposes a new way of understanding how Suhrawardī’s central philosophical ideas cohere.
In: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Nature of Suhrawardī’s Illuminationism
In: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Nature of Suhrawardī’s Illuminationism
In: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Nature of Suhrawardī’s Illuminationism
In: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Nature of Suhrawardī’s Illuminationism