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MUSIC AND MUSICIANS IN ISLAMIC ART by Walter Denny In the conventional Western approach to Islamic society, music has formed a focus for the makers of images of the exotic East, and for those who sought seriously to learn about the East. In both cases, the visual arts of the West have since the sixteenth century included musical imagery as an essential aspect of the depiction of Islamic civilization, and at times depictions of Islamic music in Western art have offered important insights into the role of music in the various strata of Islamic society. Music has been depicted as a part of the exotic and often heavily erotic atmosphere of the stereotypical Islamic harem; it has been shown as a part of Islamic folk ceremonial and royal ritual; Western artists have depicted the musical instruments of Islamic lands with careful attention, just as travelers often attempted to give some idea of the poetry and melodies of Islamic music in their travel accounts.' The wealth of information on aspects of Islamic music contained in certain works of Western art should come as no surprise; Western paintings are after all the major form of documentation for the history of certain groups of early Islamic carpets, and many of the early Western histories of Islamic lands were written largely from Western travel and diplomatic accounts. But the focus of this essay is not the documentation of music and musicians in Islam as perceived through the vision of Western artists, however that vision may have either clarified or distorted the subject under its scrutiny. Rather, this paper will concentrate on questions about the roles of music and musicians in Islamic culture and society, as those roles are documented in the art of Islamic peoples themselves. The use of Islamic art as documentation for Islamic social and cultural history may involve the same basic methodology that one employs in dealing with similar questions in the Western tradition, but the basic relationships between art and society, and the parameters by which we may measure the documentary effectiveness of the visual arts in Islamic history, are of course unique to the Islamic tradition, and should inspire in the prudent scholar a sense of caution and humility.2 This essay will not treat the rather unusual position of figural art in the Islamic theological and legal tradition (a subject which has been competently and creatively treated elsewhere)3, nor will 37This content downloaded from 130.43.141.16 on Tue, 23 Apr 2019 22:19:57 UTCAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms