That ecstatic maintained that those who heard spiritually...

That ecstatic maintained that those who heard spiritually did not apprehend mere notes (naghamat) , modes (maqamat) , or rhythms (iqa‘at) , but music per se , insisting that such audition “consists in hearing everything as it is in quality and predicament.”[^12] That doctrine takes us to the very core of Sufi teaching in which “listening to music” under such spiritual control conduces to ecstasy, which leads to a revelation of the Divine.

Did not Schopenhauer suggest that the world itself is but music realized, and was not that what the Ikhwan al-Safa had taught a thousand years earlier? Yet of all the great thinkers of Islam no one has probed to the heart of the problem with such power of persuasion and solicitude of purpose, and reached a conclusion of such profundity as al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111). How penetrating are his words, “Hearts and innermost thoughts are mines of secrets and treasuries of precious stones.

Within their confines are jewels which are as sparks contained in iron and steel...And there is no other way of extracting their secrets except by the flint of ‘listening to music’ (al-sama‘) , because there is no means of reaching the hearts except through the portals of the ears.[^13] ...Verily, ‘listening to music’ is a factual touchstone,… for as soon as the soul of music reaches the heart, it brings out whatever pre-dominates in it.”[^14] That was also the dominating thought of Abu Sulaiman al-Darani (d.