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The Philosophy of Music by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi. Saida Daukeyeva. Alma-Ata: Fond of Soros-Kazakhstan, 2002. 352 pp., in Russian, English; summary and table of contents, 3 colored photographs, Russian- Arabic glossary of terms, diagrams and tables of tones, melodies, modes, and forms; bibliography. ISBN 9965-13-819-2.
For eleven hundred years scholars from distant world regions, working in and across scholarly disciplines and writing in different languages, have been allured to the monumental philosophical works of Al-Farabi (870-950). At the roots of the Islamic Renaissance, Al-Farabi navigated and shaped the humanistic thoughts of a period now perceived as the golden age of Eastern literature and sciences. From Turko-Persian historical cultural roots, Al-Farabi and other scholars of Khorosan made a fundamental contribution to Arabic literature, producing Arabic translations and interpretation of Aristode, Plato, and other ancient classics at a time when Medieval Europe had neither knowledge of the Greek language nor a taste for this culture. Two hundred years later AlFarabi's works, translated into Latin, inspired and stirred Europeans toward the Risorgimento and later movements marked by fascination with and appropriation of ancient Greece as the origin of Western cultural history.1
The discursive, interpretive mode of Al-Farabi's translation and adaptation of Greek texts was embraced by scholars who translated and annotated his works. A founder of political philosophy, Al-Farabi was a music theorist and a performer, an ud player (praised as the inventor of the 5-string ud). Among his surviving writings on music are treatises on tuning, rhythm, and the philosophy of music (Kitabfi'l Nuqra, Kitab al ti Ihsa al-iqa, Kitabfi'l Musiqa) as well as a monumental work, The Grand Book on Music, Kitab al-musiqi al-kabir- the focus of Saida Daukeyeva's The Philosophy of Music by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi. Daukeyeva's monograph belongs to the steadily expanding literature on Al-Farabi's theory of music and specifically on his masterpiece, reissued in many languages and with multiple commentaries.2
Few scholars have Daukeyeva's background and capacity to write about Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzlagh al-Farab at-Turku.3 Al-Farabi, an ethnic Turk from the Central Asian city Farab in Persia's Great Khorasan, traveled and resided in the Arabic cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, and Baghdad, also spending years of study in Constantinople. Daukeyeva, 1 1 centuries later,...