Ishaq al-Mawsili

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Ishaq al-Mawsili was a Persian musician of the Abbasid era: composer, singer and music theorist. He was born around 767, although some sources give 772, and died in March 850 in Baghdad. His father was the well-known singer Ibrahim al-Mawsili. Ishaq received a broad education in music and Islamic sciences and learned from, among others, the singer Atika bint Shuhda and the lutenist Zalzal. He also wrote poetry in a traditional style.

Music and breakthrough

For more than forty years he was court musician and companion to six caliphs, from Harun al-Rashid to al-Mutawakkil. Like his father, he led the conservative current that held to the classical tradition of the Hejaz. As a result he stood opposed to innovators such as Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi and Ziryab, a pupil of his father, whose style later became more popular. It is told that on hearing a group of players he recognised a single out-of-tune string. Later he went blind.

Influence

Later sources attribute two to four hundred songs to him, but all his music has been lost. His roughly forty books on music have also not survived, among them the Kitab al-aghani al-kabir, the Great Book of Songs, which became the basis for the work of Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani. Ishaq is seen as the one who set up a theoretical system for Arabic music. He is therefore important above all as an early voice in the history of music theory in the Arab world.

Listening