Author
Ṣafī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Mu’min ibn Yūsuf ibn Fākhir al-Urmawī
Publication Date
792 (AH, Hijri)
Publication Place
Cairo, Shrine of Shaykhūn -
Type
Book
Language
Arabic
Digital
Yes
Manuscript
Yes
Pages Count
1
Physical Dimensions
174 x 126 mm
Library
Qatar Digital Library
Library Asset ID
Or 136
Record ID
vdc_100085098732.0x000001
Library Location
British Library: Oriental Manuscripts
Date
792 (AH, Hijri)
Notes
The
Book of Cycles
(Book of Adwar), a succinct but extremely influential treatise on musical theory by Ṣafī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Mu’min ibn Yūsuf ibn Fākhir al-Urmawī (Safi al-Din Abd al-Mu’min ibn Yusuf ibn Fakher al-Armawī, d. 1294). The title page gives the author's name as Ṣafī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Mu’min (Safi al-Din Abd al-Mu’min).
The title derives from the use of circular diagrams as graphic representations of the interrelationships of notes within a mode in Section Six, and of rhythmic cycles in Section Thirteen (see Diagrams and Tables below for details).
The copy was finished during daylight hours on Thursday, 20 Ramaḍān 792/1 September 1390 by al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf ʿUthmān al-Rūmī (Al-Hasan Ibn Yusuf Othman Al-Rumi), who completed his copy at Cairo in the Shrine of Shaykhūn (Maqam Shaykhūn, see
colophon
Section at the end of a manuscript text.
, f. 39v, transcribed below). Annotations to some of the tables indicate that the scribe (or later annotator) was familiar with a copy belonging to al-Urmawī's pupil al-Suhrawardī (see ff. 22r and 23v; compare Bodleian MS Marsh 521 dated 734/1334 and collated with a copy written by al-Suhrawardī).
Contents:
Title, introduction and contents (ff. 1r-3r);
Section One: Definition of the Notes and Explanation of High and Low Pitch (Chapter One: Definition of the Notes and Explanation of High and Low Pitch, ff. 3r-3v);
Section Two: The Division of the Frets (ff. 3v-5r);
Section Three: The Ratios of Intervals (ff. 5r-8r);
Section Four: The Causes of Dissonance (ff. 8r-8v);
Section Five: On Consonant Harmony, ff. 8v-11r)
Section Six: The Modes and Their Relationships (Chapter Six on Roles and Their Relatives, ff.11r-18r);
Section Seven: On Two Stringed Instruments (ff. 18r-18v);
Section Eight: Tuning the Strings of the Lute, and Deriving Scales from It
Section Nine: The Names of the Common Modes (ff. 19v-21r);
Section Ten: Tone Sharing of the Modes (ff. 21r-23r);
Section Eleven: Transposed Cycles (Chapter Eleven on Class Roles, ff. 23r-30r);
Section Twelve: Unusual Tuning [Scordatura] (Chapter XII on Unusual Tuning, ff. 30r-31r);
Section Thirteen: Rhythmic Cycles (ff. 31r-37v);
Section Fourteen: Influence of the Modes (ff. 37v-38r);
Section Fifteen: Musical Practice (Chapter Fifteen, ff. 38r-39v);
Various poems organized by musical modes (ff. 40r-55v).
Diagrams and Tables:
Diagram showing intervals within an octave (f. 6r);
Diagram showing intervals within two octaves (f. 6v);
Circular diagrams showing the number of consonant intervals within modes (ff. 12r, 12v (two), 13r (two), 14r (mutilated);
Table of the eighty-four possible tetrachord and pentachord species combinations (ff. 14r-17r);
Linear representation of the notes in five tetrachords (Sail, f.17v);
Diagram of the stringing of a lute (lute, f.19r);
Table of secondary modes (ozones, f.21r);
Diagram concentric circles depicting the progression of notes of each of the twelve main modes (f. 21v); and tabulation of fingering (f. 22r);
Transposition table for the six secondary modes (Ouazat, f. 23v);
Transposition tables for the twelve main modes (f. 24r-29v);
Circular diagrams of rhythmic cycles (ff. 33v, 35r, 36r, 36v, 37r (two), 37v (three);
Sample notation (ff. 38v-39v).
Begins (f. 1v, lines 3-5):
Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and may His prayers be upon our Master Muhammad
And his entire family. As for what follows, I have been ordered by someone who is obligated to do so
Complying with his orders and striving to fulfill the goals of his thoughts
Ends (f. 55v, lines 12-13):
And in it too
My thoughts are fixed on you, and on you my gaze is fixed, O you who have been staying for a long time, you who live in quarries.
Colophon
Section at the end of a manuscript text.
(f. 39v, line 14 and continuing in tail and edge margin):
We conclude the book by thanking God Almighty...
Alone, and prayers be upon the one after whom there is no prophet, and we ask forgiveness from God Almighty for what leads to misguidance
The day of Thursday the twentieth of Ramadan in the year seven hundred and ninety-two has passed
In Cairo, guarded by the shrine of Sheikhoun, thank God
At the hands of the guilty slave who confessed to his sin and negligence, Al-Hasan Ibn Yusuf Othman Al-Rumi Al-Hanafi, may God forgive him
Erişim Koşulları
Unrestricted
Bulma Yardımcıları
Cureton, William and Charles Rieu,
Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium qui in Museo Britannico asservantur. Pars secunda, codices arabicos amplectens
(London: The British Museum, 1846-71), Item 1660, pp. 746
Shiloah, Amnon,
The theory of music in Arabic writings (c. 900-1900): descriptive catalogue of manuscripts in libraries of Europe and the U.S.A.
G. Henle Verlag, Munich, (1979), p.309-310.
Edinme Kaynağı
Purchased from the widow of Colonel George William Hamilton (1807-68), Commissioner in Delhi (1823-67), April 1868.
Köken
Mīr ʿAlī Hassanī al-Bukhārī (مير علي حسني البخاري): his seal, without date (ff. 10r and f. 28r, 43v, 53v)
Seçilmiş kaynakça
Editions:
Urmawī, ʻAbd al-Muʼmin ibn Yūsuf,
Kitāb al-Adwār fī maʻrifat al-nagham wa-al-adwār
, ed. by Ḥusayn ʻAlī Maḥfūẓ (Baghdād: Mudīrīyat al-Funūn wa-al-Thaqāfah al-Shaʻbīyah bi-Wizārat al-Irshād, 1961)
Urmawī, ʿAbd al-Muʼmin ibn Yūsuf,
Kitāb al-Adwār
, ed. by Hāshim Muḥammad al-Rajab ([Baghdad]: al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʿIrāqīyah, Wizārat al-Thaqāfah wa-al-Iʿlām, Dār al-Rashīd, 1980)
Urmawī, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn Yūsuf, al
-Adwār fī al-mūsīqá
, ed. by Ghaṭṭāṣ ʿAbd al-Malik Khashabah and Maḥmūd Aḥmad al-Ḥifnī (al-Qāhirah: al-Hayʾah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʿĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 1986)
Facsimile edition:
Urmawī, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn Yūsuf,
Book on the Cyclic Forms of Musical Modes Kitāb al-adwār, and Treatise Dedicated to Sharaf al-D
īn on Proportions in Musical Composition al-Risāla al-Sharafīya fī 'l-nisab al-taʾlīfīyah
, ed. by Fuat Sezgin (Frankfurt: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1984).
Studies:
Farmer, Henry George,
The Sources of Arabian Music. An Annotated Bibliography of Arabic Manuscripts which Deal with the Theory, Practice, and History of Arabian Music
(Leiden: Brill, 1965), no. 252, p.48-49.
Wright, Owen, 'A Preliminary Version of the Kitāb al-Adwār',
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
58.3 (1995) pp. 455-78.
