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Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 Music, Sound,
and Architecture
in Islam

Edited by
Michael Frishkopf
and Federico Spinetti

Foreword by
Ali S. Asani

The University of Texas Press Austin

Copyright © 2018 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2018

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of

ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Names: Frishkopf, Michael Aaron, editor. | Spinetti, Federico, editor.
Title: Music, sound, and architecture in Islam / edited by Michael Frishkopf and
Federico Spinetti.
Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017036820| ISBN 978-1-4773-1245-2 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 978-1-4773-1246-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4773-1247-6 (library e-book) |
ISBN 978-1-4773-1248-3 (nonlibrary e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Music and architecture—Islamic countries. | Art and architecture—
Islamic countries. | Music—Social aspects—Islamic countries. | Music—Islamic
countries—History and criticism. | Architecture—Islamic countries—History and
criticism.
Classification: LCC ML3849 .M9393 2018 | DDC 700.917/67—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017036820
doi:10.7560/312452
 CONTENTS

List of Figures, Plates, Charts, and Tables vii

Foreword xiii
Ali S. Asani
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction: Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam 1
Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti

Part One: Transregional

1. Listening to Islamic Gardens and Landscapes 19
D. Fairchild Ruggles

Part Two: The Ottoman Empire and Turkey

2. A Sound Status among the Ottoman Elite:
Architectural Patrons of Sixteenth-­Century
Istanbul Mosques and Their Recitation Programs 37
Nina Ergin
3. A Concert Platform: A Space for a Style in Turkish Music 59
John Morgan O’Connell
4. Articulating Otherness in the Construction of Alevi-­Bektaşi
Rituals and Ritual Space in a Transnational Perspective 85
Irene Markoff

Part Three: The Arab World

5. Venerating Cairo’s Saints through Monument and Ritual:
Islamic Reform and the Rise of the Architext 111
Michael Frishkopf
6. Nightingales and Sweet Basil:
The Cultural Geography of Aleppine Song 146
Jonathan H. Shannon
vi Contents

7. Aural Geometry: Poetry, Music, and

Architecture in the Arabic Tradition 166
Samer Akkach

Part Four: Andalusia and Europe

8. Tents of Silk and Trees of Light in the Lands of Najd: The Aural
and the Visual at a Mawlid Celebration in the Alhambra 199
Cynthia Robinson
9. Aristocratic Residences and the Majlis in Umayyad Córdoba 228
Glaire D. Anderson
10. Sounds of Love and Hate: Sufi Rap, Ghetto Patrimony,
and the Concrete Politics of the French Urban Periphery 255
Paul A. Silverstein

Part Five: Central and South Asia

11. Ideal Form and Meaning in Sufi Shrines of Pakistan:
A Return to the Spirit 283
Kamil Khan Mumtaz
12. The Social and Sacred Microcosm of the Kiiz Üi: Space and Sound
in Rituals for the Dead among the Kazakhs of Mongolia 308
Saida Daukeyeva

Part Six: Iran

13. Listening to Pictures in Iran 339
Anthony Welch
14. Of Mirrors and Frames: Music, Sound,
and Architecture at the Iranian Zūrkhāneh 356
Federico Spinetti

References 385 Contributors 422 Index 426

Image and sound files to accompany this volume are available at

https://archnet.org
I L L U S T RA T I O N S

Figures
1.1. Court of the Lions and the Patio de la Acequia in 2007 25
1.2. Bayad plays the ʿūd to the lady, in the Bayad wa Riyad 28
1.3. Chihil Situn in 2011 31
2.1. Mimar Sinan, Kara Ahmed Paşa Mosque, and ground plan of the
mosque 46
2.2. Mimar Sinan, Hadım İbrahim Paşa Mosque, and ground plan of the
mosque 49
2.3. Mimar Sinan, Ferruh Kethüda Mosque 51
3.1. Münir Nurettin Selçuk (c. 1939) 60
3.2. The Darüttalimi musical ensemble (c. 1930) 64
3.3. Fransız Tiyatrosu, interior (2006) 67
3.4. Program of the “first” concert in the Fransız Tiyatrosu 70
4.1. Interior of the Nurtepe Cemevi congregational hall 92
4.2. Ziyaret töreni (visitation service) at the tomb of the Bektaşi saint
Deniz Ali Baba, Denizli, northeastern Bulgaria, 2012 99
4.3. Interior of the cemevi next to the tomb of Deniz Ali Baba, Denizli,
northeastern Bulgaria, 2012 100
5.1. Most prominent figures of the Ahl al-­Bayt in Cairo 128
5.2. Ziyāra day at the maqām of Sayyida Zaynab; visitors reciting prayers
and touching the maqṣūra (lattice) 129
5.3. Location of Sidi ʿAli Zayn al-­ʿAbidin’s mosque-­shrine in Cairo 130
5.4. Saturday ziyāra and ḥaḍra at the mosque-­shrine of Sidi ʿAli in 1998;
ziyāra and ḥaḍra schematic 135
5.5. The mosque-­shrine of Sidi ʿAli in 2015 136
5.6. The mosque-­shrine of Sidi ʿAli in 2015 (cont.) 137

vii
viii Illustrations

5.7. A munshid and his ensemble perform for his café audience; the
munshid turns to perform for aḥbāb (zuwwār) on the other side of
the gate; ziyāra and ḥaḍra schematic 138
6.1. Old City, Aleppo, 1997 151
6.2. New City, Damascus, 1997 152
6.3. Aleppo Citadel amphitheater, 2004 153
7.1. Folios from Safi al-­Din al-­Urmawi al-­Baghdadi’s Kitab al-­Adwar fi
al-­Musiqa (Book of modes), thirteenth century 169
7.2. Spatial representation of a poem showing the recurrence of a
threefold prosodic circle 183
7.3. Spatial (two- and three-­dimensional) expressions of the rotational
symmetry of regular geometry 184
7.4. Two folios from Safi al-­Din al-­Urmawi al-­Baghdadi’s Kitab al-­Adwar
fi al-­Musiqa (Book of modes) 189
8.1. Plan, Alhambra Palace, Granada 200
8.2. Esplanade leading to the Cuarto Dorado and the Palace of Comares,
Alhambra Palace 201
9.1. Remains of the Central Pavilion opposite the Hall of ʿAbd
al-­Rahman III, Madinat al-­Zahraʾ 231
9.2. Triple-­arched façade, House of the Pool, Madinat al-­Zahraʾ 232
9.3. Garden scene, Bayad wa Riyad 233
9.4. Plan, al-­Rummaniyya 234
9.5. Hypothetical visualization, al-­Rummaniyya, western reception
hall 235
9.6. Imaginative visualization, al-­Rummaniyya 237
9.7. Interior view, Dar al-­Mulk 238
9.8. Tapestry, dyed wool and undyed linen, Egypt, ninth–­tenth
century 241
9.9. Pyxis of al-­Mughira, seated figures with musician; Davillier Pyxis,
late tenth CE 242
9.10. Detail with musicians, Pamplona (aka Leyre) casket; Musicians
Capital, ʿūd player 243
 Illustrations ix

9.11. Ivory, carved and inlaid with quartz and pigment, probably Córdoba,
tenth to early eleventh century 244
9.12. Musicians Capital, female (?) figure; marble tombstone of Umayyad
jariya ʿUqar 247
10.1. Housing project in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-­sous-­Bois, 2007 258
10.2. The former Masjid El Fath on rue Polonceau, Paris, future site of a
branch of the Institut des Cultures d’Islam, 2014 267
10.3. Future site of the main branch of the Institut des Cultures d’Islam on
rue Stéphenson, Paris, 2014 268
11.1. Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore, and parapets with mudakhil and eight-­
pointed star 285
11.2. Dome medallions and quotations from Sufi masters, Wazir Khan
Mosque, Lahore 286
11.3. Banyan tree and clouds; cypresses in a garden signifying the Lovers
in Paradise, Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore 287
11.4. Cypress with intertwined vine, signifying the Lover and the Beloved,
Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore; muqarnas inside the mosque 288
11.5. Calligraphy with “Allah” and “Muhammad,” the Beloved and the
Lover, Wazir Khan Mosque; Persian inscription above the mosque’s
exit 289
11.6. Jalāl, Jamāl, and Kamāl, Badshahi Mosque, Lahore; interior of
mosque 295
11.7. Taj Mahal, Agra, elevation and plan 297
11.8. Tomb of Hazrat Dawood Bandagi, Shergarh, Pakistan 299
11.9. Pak Wigah Mosque, Gujrat, Pakistan 303
11.10. Volunteers working at the Pak Wigah Mosque 304
12.1. Yurts (kiiz üi), Tsengel sum, Bayan-­Ölgii, August 2015 311
12.2. Wooden structure of a yurt, Ulaankhus sum, Bayan-­Ölgii, August
2015 312
12.3. Ring at the top of a yurt, Ulaankhus sum, Bayan-­Ölgii, August 2015 313
12.4. A mourning kiiz üi next to a mud-­and-­brick house, Ölgii, Bayan-­Ölgii,
August 2004 315
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x Illustrations

12.5. Layout of the kiiz üi during memorial feasts in Bayan-­Ölgii 317

12.6. Photograph of the deceased and his clothes hung along the wall,
Ölgii, Bayan-­Ölgii, August 2004 318
13.1. Great Iwan, Taq-­i Bustan, Kermanshah, Iran 340
13.2. Ceramic bowl with musician and verse of Persian lyric poetry, Iran,
late twelfth to early thirteenth century 343
14.1. Zūrkhāneh shields (sang) and clubs (mil), Zurkhaneh Nirumand,
Kashan, 2006 361
14.2. Athlete performing the kabbādeh exercise, Zurkhaneh Shahid Doktor
Chamran, Mashhad, 2006 362
14.3. Exterior of the Zurkhaneh Astan-­i Quds, Mashhad, 2006 364
14.4. Gowd-­gunbad axial relationship, Zurkhaneh Abi Talib, Sabzevar,
2006 365
14.5. Sardam (rostrum), Zurkhaneh Sahib-­i Zaman, Yazd, 2006 366
14.6. Traditional zūrkhāneh low doorway, Zurkhaneh Sahib-­i Zaman, Yazd,
2006 368
14.7. Painting of the fight between the Shahnameh’s hero, Rustam, and his
son, Suhrab, Zurkhaneh Astan-­i Quds, Mashhad, 2006; portraits of
Ghulamreza Takhti and Imams ʿAli and Hussein, Zurkhaneh Sahib-­i
Zaman, Yazd, 2006 370
14.8. Sardam built as a meta-­architectural representation of a mosque,
Zurkhaneh Takhti, Sabzevar, 2006 371

Plates (following page 108)

1 and 2. Babur plants a garden at the Bagh-­i Wafa, in the Baburnameh,
ca. 1590 CE
3. Rustam fights Barzu without recognizing him, in the Shahnameh,
painted in Isfahan, 1648 CE
4. Barbad the concealed musician, Shahnameh, made in Tabriz between
1525 and 1535 CE, attributed to the painter Mirza ʿAli
5. Traditional courtyard home (bayt ʿarabi), Damascus, 2004; Cuarto
Dorado, Alhambra Palace, Granada, fourteenth century; interior, Hall
of ʿAbd al-Rahmen III, Madinat al-Zahraʾ
 Illustrations xi

6. Andhrayaki Ragini, ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper.

Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh, India, ca. 1710 CE
7. Panchama Ragini, ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper. Bikaner,
Rajasthan, India, ca. 1640 CE
8. Shri Raga, ink and opaque watercolor on paper. Bundi, Rajasthan,
India, mid-­seventeenth century
9. Male and female sections of the kiiz üi, Ölgii, Bayan-­Ölgii, August
2004
10. Death of Zahāk, illustration by Sultan Muhammad in the Shah
Tahmasp Shahnameh, ca. 1522–1542 CE
11. Young man playing the kamāncheh, painting attributed to Mirza ʿAli,
ca. 1575 CE
12. The feast of ʿĪd al-­Fiṭr begins, illustration by Sultan Muhammad in
the Divan of Hafiz for Sam Mirza, ca. 1526–1527 CE
13. Lovers’ Picnic, folio from a manuscript of the Divan of Hafiz,
ca. 1526–1527 CE
14. Earthly Drunkenness, folio from a manuscript of the Divan of Hafiz,
ca. 1526–1527 CE
15. Murshid Alireza Hojjati, Zurkhaneh Takhti, Yazd, 2006; murshidhā
Qasim Qasimi and Murtaza Namayandeh playing zang and żarb,
Zurkhaneh Astan-­i Quds, Mashhad, 2006
16. Disposition of athletes in the gowd and their relation to the sardam,
Zurkhaneh Valiʿasr, Sabzevar, 2006

Charts
7.1. First circle: Dāʾirat al-­Mukhtalif 175
7.2. Second circle: Dāʾirat al-­Muʾtalif 177
7.3. Third circle: Dāʾirat al-­Mujtalab 178
7.4. Fourth circle: Dāʾirat al-­Mushtabih 180
7.5. Fifth circle: Dāʾirat al-­Muttafiq 182
xii Illustrations

Tables
2.1. List of mosques, construction dates, patrons, reciters, and suras
recited according to social rank 42

2.2. List of mosques according to number of reciters 48

2.3. List of mosques according to total salaries paid to persons reciting
the Qurʾan 53
3.1. Program of the concert in the Fransız Tiyatrosu 71
3.2. Receipts from the “first” concert in the Fransız Tiyatrosu 75
7.1. Representation of Faʿūlun and Mafāʿīlun 172
7.2. Eight verbal units (prosodic feet) 173
7.3. Linear sequencing of the three meters of the First Circle 175
7.4. Linear sequencing of the two meters of the Second Circle 177
7.5. Linear sequencing of the three meters of the Third Circle 178
7.6. Linear sequencing of the six meters of the Fourth Circle 180
7.7. Linear sequencing of the single meter of the Fifth Circle 182
Foreword
Ali S. Asani

It is a great privilege and honor for me to write a foreword to this volume—

an innovative exploration of the relationship between the aural/sonic arts
and the visual/spatial arts in Muslim societies. Comprising contributions
from scholars working in an array of disciplines, the collection examines how
the sonic arts, such as music, shape and are shaped by the physical spaces in
which they are performed. In so doing, it provides us with new perspectives
on the dynamic relationship between various forms of art in cultural, socio-
political, and religious spaces. More important, the volume’s essays demon-
strate how a multisensory approach—one that combines sound with built
structure, music with architecture, time with space—can lead to a deeper
and more nuanced understanding of Muslim cultures.
Professor Mohammed Arkoun, the influential Arab intellectual, often
called for audacious, free, and productive thinking about Islam and indeed
Islamicate civilizations. He writes that our understandings of Islam as a reli-
gious phenomenon are woefully inadequate since we do not pay sufficient
attention to a crucial element: “silent Islam.” He defines “silent Islam” as “the
Islam of true believers who attach more importance to the religious rela-
tionship with the absolute of God than to the vehement demonstrations of
political movements.”1 Instead of focusing on this aspect, Professor Arkoun
argues, scholarly discussions about Islam are monopolized by sociopolitical
ideologies, such as Islamic revivalism. These, he claims, are in reality secu-
lar movements “disguised by religious discourse, rites, and collected behav-
iors.”2 Given Professor Arkoun’s definition of “silent Islam,” we may posit
that these ideologies and their discourses of power, orthodoxy, and hege-

xiii
xiv Ali S. Asani

mony underlie a “loud Islam” whose voice has been greatly amplified in po-
litical, social, and cultural spaces, including the media.
The arts are particularly well suited to provide us access to “silent Islam.”
Historically, the vast majority of Muslims have experienced and understood
their faith principally through the aural, visual, and literary arts, and they
continue to do so today. Traditionally, the arts have provided important ve-
hicles through which religious ideas and teachings are transmitted and given
expression; indeed, for many Muslims, the arts aptly evoke the complexity,
beauty, and aesthetic power of their faith. The arts thus constitute not only
a form of religious experience but also a type of knowledge that is emotive.
Most Muslims do not derive knowledge of Islam simply from a close read-
ing of scriptures and works of theology. Instead, their knowledge is inextri-
cably enmeshed in the experience with and production of various arts. In
this regard, the arts have played a pivotal role in shaping the development
of the Islamic tradition. Ultimately, Islam experienced and understood in a
multisensory way through the arts is not “silent” at all. On the contrary, it is
a “strong” voice, many centuries old, still confident and beautiful.
Let us take, for example, the Qurʾan, which is connected in significant
ways with various arts in Muslim societies. While we commonly conceive of
it as a book, its verses were actually transmitted by the Prophet Muhammad
to his followers not in writing but orally, as a performance—a fact reflected
in its name, “The Recitation.” Early Muslim accounts provide vivid depictions
of the experiential aspect of the revelation of the Qurʾan to Muhammad. If
we look in particular at accounts of the first revelation, the Prophet heard
these words: “Recite in the Name of Your Lord!” He then found that it was as
if they had been “written on his heart.” The Qurʾan’s form and style shows
great sensitivity to the poetic sensibility of Arab culture, one that prized the
beauty of oral expression. Not surprisingly, Muhammad’s opponents accused
him of being a poet, inspired by jinn, to which he responded by asserting that
he was a prophet receiving revelation from the one God.
Even though the oral revelations the Prophet received were codified as
a written text after his death under the auspices of a state-­initiated project,
the Qurʾan continued to be manifest as sacred sound that should be person-
ally experienced by each individual. Its emotionally transforming and inimi-
table aesthetic qualities came to be seen as proof of its divine origin. For the
believer, the sound of a Qurʾan recitation is immediately a personal, intel-
 Foreword xv

lectual encounter with meaning as well as an aesthetic encounter with the

transcendent.
The aural/oral and written forms of the Qurʾan have complemented each
other in this way from the very beginning and continue to do so today. In
fact, the medium through which most Muslims today interact with this
holiest scripture of Islam is still sound, with the written text serving as an
aide de memoire. Although some Muslims devote themselves to the art of taj-
wid—the rigorous study of the correct articulation and elongation of Arabic
phonemes—many more encounter Qurʾanic recitation more organically,
whether in the home, in the mosque, or through recordings played in mar-
kets, on buses, and in hospitals throughout many Muslim-­majority coun-
tries. Indeed, the Qurʾan is at the center of an Islamic soundscape that per-
meates the arts of poetry, music, and dance.
Engagement with the Qurʾanic revelation, of course, is not only aural ex-
perience. Calligraphic representations of its verses grace the covers of greet-
ing cards, appear on bumper stickers, and adorn the walls of many Muslim
homes. Indeed, the arts in Islam extend beyond its central text. They appear
also in architecture, pottery, film, and literature; in short, Muslims may en-
counter religious meaning in almost all spheres of their lives through diverse
forms of art appealing to multiple senses.
Although the arts provide us significant insight into the multisensory
nature of Muslim devotional life, it is uncommon to find them being in-
corporated into the study and teaching of Islam as a religious tradition. As
Professor Arkoun has pointed out, this is the result of a strong bias toward
constructing Islam as a sociopolitical ideology, neglecting the Islam of faith
experienced by millions of Muslims around the world every day. Frequently,
artistic expressions of faith and their experiential dimensions are either dis-
missed or considered peripheral to the study of Islamic religion. “The arts
are icing on the cake,” one scholar explained to me, while another remarked,
“If I taught Islam through the arts at my university, it would not be toler­
ated—I would be laughed out of the classroom.”
Notwithstanding such biases, for many years I have sought to foster lit-
eracy about Islam and Muslim societies through a multisensory approach
incorporating the arts.3 Instead of following the conventional orientalist
narrative of Islam as a religion of empire associated with various dynasties,
my approach is premised on the notion that religion as a cultural phenome-
xvi Ali S. Asani

non is intricately embedded in and constantly being shaped and reshaped

by various interrelated contexts—political, social, economic, literary, and
artistic. We therefore need multiple lenses through which to understand its
multivalent social and cultural influences.4 Employing the arts as the pri-
mary lens to study Islam and Muslim cultures allows students not only to
appreciate their seminal role in the tradition but also to situate them within
historical and sociopolitical contexts. For example, it enables students to
question widely prevalent conceptualizations of Qurʾan as scripture based
on assumptions of Christian theology and Old Testament scholarship in par-
ticular. I also employ a broad range of artistic expressions to discuss notions
of the sacred, authority, theology, and mysticism, as well as issues affecting
contemporary Muslim societies, such as colonialism and its aftermath, re-
form and revival movements, and globalization. Through such discussions,
the students learn that the arts often play a subversive role in societies and
become powerful means of expressing dissent by critiquing constructions of
orthodoxy and power. Since I encourage students to respond to the course
material through creative assignments that engage them in making art, they
come to realize that the arts, as they are both experienced and practiced, are
“irreplaceable instruments of knowledge.”5
In embracing this arts-­based pedagogic approach, I have been inspired
by the work of my own teacher, the late Professor Annemarie Schimmel,
who introduced me to the potential of the arts as lenses for understanding
Muslim societies. During her distinguished career, she was widely recog-
nized and honored by universities, governments, and civic organizations
for promoting better understanding of Islam and Muslim cultures. Pro-
fessor Schimmel’s scholarship and teaching about Islam straddled and ex-
plored the intricate and complex relationships among many distinct fields
(including history of religion, phenomenology, theology and mysticism,
numerology, languages and literatures, and Islamic art history). Since she
was fluent in several languages—including Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu,
and Sindhi—and had lived and traveled extensively in different Muslim-­
majority countries, she developed an intimate familiarity with different as-
pects of Muslim cultures. A strong advocate of the power of the arts to edu-
cate and transform, she endorsed the perspective of the German philosopher
Johann Herder (d. 1803), who wrote, “From poetry we learn about eras and
nations in much greater depth than through the deceitful and miserable
ways of political and military war-­histories.”6 During a speech she delivered
 Foreword xvii

at a March 1996 ceremony where she was awarded the 1995 Peace Prize of
the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels) for her
achievements in generating understanding between East and West, Profes-
sor Schimmel cited the importance of poetry in her own development as a
scholar:

I have discovered Istanbul corner by corner through the verses which

Turkish poets had sung for five centuries about this wonderful city;
I have learnt to love the culture of Pakistan through the songs that
resound in all of its provinces, and when one of my Harvard students
had the misfortune to be among the American hostages in Tehran, he
experienced a great change in his jailers’ attitude when he recited Per-
sian poetry; here, suddenly, a common idiom emerged and helped to
bridge deep ideological differences.7

She published more than a hundred books in English and German, many
of which were translations and commentaries on Arabic, Persian, Turk-
ish, Urdu, and Sindhi poetry. Here she followed the model of her hero, the
Romantic poet and orientalist Friedrich Rückert, for whom world poetry
offered a means of global reconciliation and peace. Like Rückert, she also
wrote her own poetry, in German as well as in English, often in an oriental-
ized style inspired by Rumi, the poet-­philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal, and
many of the Sufi folk poets of South Asia. Professor Schimmel was firmly
convinced of the potential of not only poetry but also other forms of art,
particularly calligraphy, as pedagogic bridges to approach the study of Islam
and Muslim societies.
While Professor Schimmel’s engagement with the arts focused on the
appreciation of their religious and literary dimensions, the strength of this
volume is that it significantly expands the discussion to the sociocultural di-
mensions by drawing on various disciplines such as sociology, history, art
history, ethnomusicology, and anthropology. This multidisciplinary ap-
proach focused on the arts is a particularly important contribution, for it
pro­jects the fostering of literacy into a broader civilizational framework, rec-
ognizing the pluralistic dimensions of Muslim civilizations and their mul-
tiple identities. It plays a key role in dismantling unidimensional discourses
about Muslim societies—discourses often steeped in the polarizing and de-
humanizing language of civilizational superiority, nationalism, and patriot-
ism, premised on the notion of the Muslim as “the other.”
xviii Ali S. Asani

Notes

1 Arkoun 2003, 19.

2 Ibid., 38.
3 Asani 2011.
4 For more on the cultural studies approach briefly outlined here, see Moore 2007.
5 Task Force on the Arts 2008, 1.
6 As quoted in Schimmel 2007, 296.
7 Schimmel 1996.
Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge support from Canada’s Social Sciences

and Humanities Research Council (Standard Research Grant 410-­2011-­0838)
for research and publication, as well as a publication subvention grant from
the University of Alberta, jointly funded by the Office of the VP of Research
and the Faculty of Arts. Our gratitude also to the editorial board and staff
at the University of Texas Press for their very collegial and supportive work
on this volume. We sincerely thank the Aga Khan Documentation Center at
MIT for hosting audiovisual content on their website, archnet.org. We are
most grateful to our authors, to the organizations who provided illustrations
reproduced in this volume, and to our families for their patience and help.
Finally, we would like to thank the many people around the globe—too nu-
merous to mention individually—who supported the research published
herein.

xix
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I n t rod u c t ion

Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam

Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti

This innovative, interdisciplinary collection explores the multiple relations

of music, sound, and architecture as socially lived and experienced in Mus-
lim cultures, both in the contemporary world and historically. It aims to
open a pioneering and productive forum for academic fields and domains
of intellectual reflection that have rarely been in dialogue, showing the pos-
sibilities offered by such an exchange for a greater understanding of both
musical/aural experiences and built environments. The collection brings
together a unique array of scholars, contributing perspectives from ethno-
musicology, anthropology, art history, architecture, history of architecture,
religious studies, and Islamic studies.
The book centers on Islamic contexts. We regard Islam as a broad histori-
cal, religious, and sociopolitical milieu of considerable complexity and diver-
sity. Rather than a preconfigured category or “value system” determining the
interpretive grid of our analyses, Islam is here explored from the ground up
as we scrutinize the specificity of a wide range of socio-­cultural, historical,
and geographical settings. At the same time, the present collection of essays
reflects a keen interest in shared historical linkages and heritages, as well as
coherent sociocultural traits across the Muslim world. These commonali-
ties are of great significance for a multiauthored exploration of the music-­
architecture nexus by enabling meaningful connections to be drawn. In par-
ticular, the volume explores and lays specific emphasis on the centrality of
sound production in built environments in Muslim religious and cultural
expression, as exemplified by the intimate relationship between prominent

1
2 Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti

Muslim sonic performances, such as the recitation of the Qurʾan or devo-

tional songs, and core Muslim architectural spaces, ranging from mosques
and Sufi shrines to historic aristocratic villas, gardens, or traditional gymna-
sia. In the process, we approach Islam as an ideal site for theoretical investi-
gations of the general relationship between sound and architecture and, in
parallel, propose this relationship as an innovative and particularly signifi-
cant angle from which to explore Muslim cultures.

We live in and through architecture, and we live in and through sound,

usually simultaneously. What is more, architecture is not only an eminently
spatial and visual configuration but also a temporal, auditory, and social
one: we access and inhabit architectural spaces in time, and we experience
and evaluate architectural structures through hearing, listening, and aural
communication within them. Conversely, music and sound utterances are
not only eminently temporal and auditory phenomena but also spatial and
visual ones: they guide our orientation and positioning; they demarcate so-
cial spaces; they are performed according to specific spatial and visual ar-
rangements among participants in sonic events; they may evoke visual nar-
ratives or be experienced visually as gesture and bodily movement. Music
and architecture thus emerge as interlinked temporal-­spatial phenomena,
affording coordinates for intersubjective meaning creation, as well as behav-
ioral and performative interaction.
The volume considers sonic performances broadly conceived as “aestheti-
cally meaningful”—ranging from poetry recitation to art, folk, popular, and
ritual musics, as well as religious sonic utterances not usually labeled “music”
from an Islamic perspective—in relation to built environments broadly con-
ceived as encompassing monumental, vernacular, ephemeral, and landscape
architectures, interior design, decoration and furniture, urban planning,
and geography. Here, the study of architecture moves beyond the analysis of
physical structures to consider the social interactions, historical narratives,
and cultural meanings that architecture defines, demarcates, or enables.
In exploring the sociocultural dimensions of the sound-­space nexus,
this volume is concerned both to elaborate theory and to ground it in spe-
cific ethnographic and historical evidence. We bring together research proj-
ects concentrating on selected regions and musical/sonic traditions of the
Islamic world, highlighting the diverse area expertise of our contributors and
offering a variety of ethnographic and historical perspectives while secur-
 Introduction 3

ing thematic consistency through the study of related cultural settings. In

this way, the book aims at offering a significant contribution to scholarly
discourse across anthropology, ethnomusicology, Islamic studies, art his-
tory, and architecture. In particular, it sets out to provide ethnomusicology
with a groundbreaking, in-­depth study of the relationship between music
and the built environment, while offering the field of architecture a unique
perspective on music that goes beyond the usual concerns with architectural
acoustics or formal homomorphisms between visual and auditory domains.
The book fills a gap in both scholarly architectural and music studies. In
addressing the relationship between music and place, ethnomusicological
scholarship has interpreted “place” primarily as a dimension of cultural and
territorial belonging,1 often without considering music as a social and sym-
bolic practice operating in concrete, material environments. On the other
hand, scholarship devoting attention to music and architecture has predomi-
nantly focused on architectural acoustics,2 or on symbolic and structural
analogies viewed from the perspectives of music criticism, music composi-
tion, or architectural design,3 without full consideration of the sociocultural
aspects of the relationship between music performance and the architec-
tural frames in which it takes place.
Building on and moving past this literature, we propose a mediation be-
tween emerging new directions in both architectural and music studies.
On the one hand, we recapture anthropological antecedents in the cultural
study of architecture4 and further look with particular interest at architec-
tural theory that both problematizes the traditional understanding of archi-
tecture as an essentially visual art and explores the multisensory dimensions
of built environments,5 including aural perception.6 On the other hand, we
detect in various contemporary streams of music scholarship a fruitful grow-
ing interest, beyond music per se, in auditory cultures and soundscapes at
large and in aurality and hearing as forms of intersubjective action in, and
knowledge of, the world,7 with a few noteworthy contributions including
a consideration of architectural spaces, landscapes, and urban geography.8
By bringing these various theoretical streams and disciplinary approaches
together, we intend to illuminate making music and living in buildings as
profoundly interconnected social activities and the relationship between
them as directly affecting the ways in which both humanly organized sounds
and humanly organized spaces are experienced and interpreted.
Our theoretical frameworks are eclectic, drawing on a variety of perspec-
4 Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti

tives and disciplines, and geared toward the exploration of broad classes of
research problems. Three recurrent research themes, however, trace their
way across chapters, disciplines, and areas.
The first theme involves the relationship between cultural meanings en-
coded aurally in musical (and, more generally, sonic) performances, on the
one hand, and, on the other, cultural meanings encoded visually and spa-
tially in architecture (and, more generally, the built environment), especially
the ways in which meanings of sonic performance color architectural mean-
ing and vice versa.9 Here, moving from the contribution of studies highlight-
ing the multiple sociocultural and ideological dimensions of the arts and ar-
chitecture in the Middle East,10 we look at theoretical paradigms from music
semiotics11 and from the semiotics of architecture12 as a means to explore
how these ostensibly distinct processes of signification come to be combined
in architecturally framed performance events and to examine their inter-
sections in terms of correspondences and complementarities, as well as dis-
sonances and tensions. Drawing from performance theory and phenome-
nology,13 especially as applied to ritual and performance,14 we view musical
meanings as situational and their relationship to architectural meanings as
dependent on processes of embodiment, symbolization, and ritualization,
as well as of negotiation and interpretation on the part of performers and
participants.
The second pervasive theme comprises the implications of music perfor-
mance practices for the ways in which architectural space is constructed,
perceived, and experienced socially and pragmatically, as well as the bearings
of architecturally framed space on the socio-­communicative interactions of
participants in sonic events. Here, architecture is viewed as an eminently
social space that affords possibilities, poses constraints, and provides frames
for specific social transactions. Germane to our discussion of the ways in
which specific architectural spaces define possibilities for interaction within
participatory musical performances are perspectives from nonverbal com-
munication theory,15 proxemics,16 and symbolic interaction theory,17 as well
as studies directly concerned with architecture.18 Social network theory pro-
vides another general paradigm for thinking about how communicative net-
works are established in performance under architectural constraints.19
The third theme concerns the politics of socio‐architectural landscapes
and their implications for musical life, situating the sound‐architecture
nexus in broader historical, sociopolitical, and economic contexts across the
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