Safi al-Din al-Urmawi
Safi ad-Din Abd al-Mu'min bin Yusuf bin Fachir al-Urmawi al-Baghdadi , also (for short) Safioddin al-Urmawi ( Arabic صفي الدين عبد المؤمن بن يوسف بن فاخر الأرموي البغدادي, DMG Ṣafī ad-Dīn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Yūsuf b. Fāḫir al-Urmawī al-Baġdādī ; * 1216 in Urmia or Baghdad ; † January 28, 1294 in Baghdad), was a musician at the court of the caliph and an important Arabic-speaking music theorist .
Life
Al-Urmawi's family came from Urmia in northwestern Iran . He himself grew up in Baghdad and received an excellent education in Arabic, writing , literature and history . He earned a reputation as a calligrapher and worked as a copyist and librarian in the library of Caliph al-Musta'sim bi-'llah in Baghdad. Because of his ability to play the lute , he caught the attention of the caliph and received 5,000 dinars a year. This enabled him to live in luxury.
When the Mongols conquered Baghdad a year later, he bribed a Mongolian officer and was introduced to the Mongol prince Hülegü , whom he was also able to impress with his virtuosity. Hülegü took al-Urmawi into his service for 10,000 dinars a year.
After the death of a patron, al-Urmawi fell into oblivion. He became impoverished and died in custody.
plant
The history of science knows him next to Al-Farabi and Avicenna as well as Abd al-Qadir Maraghi as one of the most important music theorists of his time. In his writing Kitāb al-ʿadwār ("Book of Modes") he presented a tone system based on the division of the octave into 17 sub-intervals, from which he created twelve modes and on what the Dastgah system, still used today in classical Persian music, is based . The twelve modes ( maqāmāt ) of Safi ad-Din still exist today as melody types ( guscheh-ha ) within the radif . Another book by al-Urmawi, which he dedicated to his disciple Sharafeddin Harun (died 1286), is called ar-Risāla asch-Sharafiyya ( Resāle al-Šarafiyye ). The first work has been translated into Turkish and Persian many times and has been considered a fundamental work in musicology for centuries . Like Farabi and Avicenna, he described connections between the modal tone systems and their psychological effects on humans. Al-Urmawi's pupils included Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi , the author of a Persian music encyclopedia, which contains, among other things, all the modes existing at his time.
literature
- Anas Ghrab: Commentaire anonyme du Kitāb al-adwār: Édition critique, traduction et présentation des lectures arabes de l'oeuvre de Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī. Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2009
- Gabriele Braune: Ṣafī ad-Dīn, ʿAbdalmuʾmin ibn Yūsuf ibn Fāḫir al-Urmawī al-Baġdādī. In: MGG Online , November 2016
- Jean During, Zia Mirabdolbaghi, Dariush Safvat: The Art of Persian Music . Translation from French and Persian by Manuchehr Anvar, Mage Publishers, Washington DC 1991, ISBN 0-934211-22-1 , pp. 16 and 40 f.
- Hormoz Farhat: The Dastgāh Concept in Persian Music. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, ISBN 0-521-30542-X , p. 4 f.
- Nasser Kanani: Traditional Persian art music: history, musical instruments, structure, execution, characteristics. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Gardoon Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86433-029-2 , pp. 108-112.
Web links
- Literature by and about Safi ad-Din al-Urmawi in the catalog of the German National Library
Remarks
- ↑ Oschagh ( oššāġ ), Nawa, Bussalik, Rast, Aragh, Esfahan, Zirafkand, Bozorg, Zanguleh (German "bell"), Rahawi, Hosseini and Hedschaz
- ↑ Safioddin: Risālah ash-Sharafiyya . Translated by Rodolphe d'Erlanger . In: La Musique Arabe. Volume 3, 1938.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Urmawi, Safi ad-Din al- |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ormawī, Safī ud-Dīn; Safi al-Din Abd al-Mu'min bin Yusuf bin Fakhir al-Urmawi al-Baghdadi; صفي الدين عبد المؤمن بن يوسف بن فاخر الأرموي البغدادي (Arabic); صفی الدین ارموی (Persian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Persian music theorist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1216 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Urmia or Baghdad |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 28, 1294 |
| Place of death | Baghdad |