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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 2, Book 5 Chapter 58: Music (continued) C.

The Music Theorists “There is one and the same principle which, if prevailing in the at tempered particles of the elements, is equipoise of temperament, if produced in tones in pure and delightfully interval , if apparent in gesture is grace, if observable in languages in rhetoric and eloquence, if created in the limbs is beauty, if the mental faculties is equity.” Jalal al-Din Dawwani: Akhlaq-i Jalali .

In addition to those who conceived music to be “like a fan” on a sultry day were those to whom it was “like medicine,” as we have heard in the opening fanfare to this chapter.

That was precisely how the Pythogoreans viewed music, and it was from them that the notions of the “theory of numbers,” the “harmony of the spheres,” and the “doctrines of the ethos (tathir) ” were handed down to Muslim peoples as methodical systems, although the history of the Semitic and Aryan races in pre-Islamic days teems with those beliefs.

In fact, the Greeks derived their theses on those matters from the ancient Semites of Babylonia-Assyria, as shown elsewhere.[^1] Iamblichus affirms that Pythagoras learned those secrets from the Chaldaei of Babylon,[^2] and books on music and arithmetic by Pythagoras were known in Arabic,[^3] as were the works of his disciples Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus and Nicomeachus.[^4] Perhaps the first impact came through the pseudo-Aristotelian production known as the “Book of Government” (Kitab al-Siyasah) , said to have been translated into Arabic, via Syriac, by Yuhanna ibn Batriq (d.

c. 200/815),[^5] and this is what we read therein on the influence of music and the harmony of the spheres. Mental diseases are amenable to cure by means of musical instruments which convey to the soul the harmonious sounds which are (ultimately) due to the motions of the spheres in their natural movements.

When those harmonious sounds are interpreted through human agencies, they produce music which is enjoyed by the human soul, because the harmony of the spheres is mirrored in the harmony of man’s nature, which is fundamental to life.