The Science of Music: Knowledge Production in Medieval Baghdad and Beyond
By Mohammad Sadegh Ansari
Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781009502542
Did you know there was a vibrant music scene in 13th-century Baghdad, even during the time of the Mongol conquest? This book traces the life of a prominent musical scholar and explores what his works reveal about education and intellectual life in the medieval Islamic world.
Excerpt:
This book attempts to investigate what made music a science in the medieval Islamic world. In doing so it tangentially investigates what music – or rather, premodern science – lost in the modernization process that rendered it something other than science. The immediate question of this book addresses how the science of music, as a body of knowledge, was appropriated from its Greek origins, how this science was then produced and reproduced throughout Islamic civilization, and how Muslim societies situated it vis-à-vis Islamic tradition and cosmology. I examine the ontological debates surrounding the nature of music as a scientific discipline as well as the epistemological tools and techniques that contributed to the production of musical knowledge during the medieval period (third/ninth–ninth/fifteenth centuries).
Who is this book for?
This book is ideal for scholars and students of Islamic history, music theory, and the history of science, particularly those interested in how knowledge was produced and taught in medieval Baghdad. It offers valuable insight for anyone studying Safi al-Din al-Urmawi and his approach to music as a scientific discipline. Those interested in Baghdad and its conquest by the Mongols will also find useful information in its pages.
The Author
Sadegh Ansari is Assistant Professor of History of the Pre-Modern Islamic World at SUNY Geneseo. His research interests include the history of science, music, and the intellectual life of the pre-modern Middle East. This is his first book.
The Science of Music: Knowledge Production in Medieval Baghdad and Beyond
By Mohammad Sadegh Ansari
Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781009502542
Did you know there was a vibrant music scene in 13th-century Baghdad, even during the time of the Mongol conquest? This book traces the life of a prominent musical scholar and explores what his works reveal about education and intellectual life in the medieval Islamic world.
Excerpt:
This book attempts to investigate what made music a science in the medieval Islamic world. In doing so it tangentially investigates what music – or rather, premodern science – lost in the modernization process that rendered it something other than science. The immediate question of this book addresses how the science of music, as a body of knowledge, was appropriated from its Greek origins, how this science was then produced and reproduced throughout Islamic civilization, and how Muslim societies situated it vis-à-vis Islamic tradition and cosmology. I examine the ontological debates surrounding the nature of music as a scientific discipline as well as the epistemological tools and techniques that contributed to the production of musical knowledge during the medieval period (third/ninth–ninth/fifteenth centuries).
Who is this book for?
This book is ideal for scholars and students of Islamic history, music theory, and the history of science, particularly those interested in how knowledge was produced and taught in medieval Baghdad. It offers valuable insight for anyone studying Safi al-Din al-Urmawi and his approach to music as a scientific discipline. Those interested in Baghdad and its conquest by the Mongols will also find useful information in its pages.
The Author
Sadegh Ansari is Assistant Professor of History of the Pre-Modern Islamic World at SUNY Geneseo. His research interests include the history of science, music, and the intellectual life of the pre-modern Middle East. This is his first book.
You can learn more about this book from the publisher’s website.
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