The Science of Music
Knowledge Production in Medieval Baghdad and Beyond

This book expands our understanding of the place and tools of musical knowledge production in the Islamic world.

Mohammad Sadegh Ansari (Author)

9781009502542, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 January 2025

246 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.6 cm, 0.489 kg

'Ansari's rich monograph on the branch of Islamic mathematics known as music is a significant achievement. Patient textual analysis, careful social and intellectual history, and insightful reflections about the place of music in the history of science make this book an inviting entryway into a fascinating world awaiting discovery.' Alexandre M. Roberts, University of Southern California

How did the medieval Islamic intellectual tradition conceptualize, produce, and disseminate scientific knowledge? What can we learn about medieval Islamic civilizations from the way they examined and studied the universe? In answering these fundamental questions, Mohammad Sadegh Ansari provides a unique perspective for the study of both musicology and intellectual history. Widely considered to be an art today, music in the medieval Islamic world was categorized as one of the four branches of the mathematical sciences, alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; indeed, some philosophers and scholars of music went as far as linking music with medicine and astrology as part of an interconnected web of cosmological knowledge. This innovative book raises fascinating questions about how designating music a 'science' rather than an 'art' impacts our understanding of truth and reconstructs a richly holistic medieval system of knowledge in the process.

Introduction
1. Music and Mathematics in an Interconnected Web of Cosmic Relations
2. Learning the Science of Music in Medieval Baghdad
3. Al-Urmawi's Baghdad Before and After the Coming of the Mongols
4. al-Urmawi Goes to the Mustansiriyya: How to Learn the Science of Music
5. Note, Sharpness, and Heaviness
6. Ratio and Interval
7. Consonance and Dissonance
Conclusions
Epilogue
Appendix A
Appendix B
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]