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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 2, Book 5 Chapter 57: Music “To some people music is like food, to others it is like medicine, and to others like a fan.” Alf Lailah wa Lailah These prefatory lines, serve as they do to provide a text on the lintel of the doorway to this subject, reminds one how widely dissimilar is the attitude of Islamic peoples towards the art and practice of music to that of others; music is indeed “like food,” since it often sustains when all else fails.

You can scan Greek literature in vain for any such parallel sentiments. Music in its literal connotation was alien to Greek philosophy. Aristoxenus certainly dealt with it, but his approach, devoid of the slightest hint of philosophic appeal per se , was a purely scientific one.[^1] It is true that the Pythagoreans had given a foretaste of the Islamic spiritual conception of music, but that was in the dim and distant past of Greece.

What is more in keeping with the Greek evaluation of this art is to be found in Athenaeus of Naucratis (fl. 200 A. D.), whose utterances are mere entertaining chatter.[^2] A.

The Music in Itself “This art...is the foraging ground of audition, and the pasturage of the soul, and the spring grass of the heart, and the arena of love, and the comfort of the dejected, and the companionship of the lonely, and the provision of the traveller, because of the important place of the beautiful voice in the heart and its dominating the entire soul.” Ibn ‘Abdi Rabbihi, al-‘Iqd al-Farid.

After reading the prologue to this chapter, one cannot help realizing how vastly different are the sentiments of Islamic peoples from those of the peoples of Greece and Rome on the assessment of music. And by music we mean that art which the noblest minds in Islam believed to be capable of being informed with and ennobled by thought , and in turn to adorn and enforce thought , and to be thus understood and felt.