HdO

Music of the Ottoman Court

Makam, Composition and the
Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire

Walter Feldman

BRILL
Music of the Ottoman Court
Handbook of Oriental Studies
Handbuch der Orientalistik

section one

The Near and Middle East

Edited by

Maribel Fierro (Madrid)

M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Princeton)
D. Fairchild Ruggles (University of Illinois)
Florian Schwarz (Vienna)

volume 177

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 Music of the
Ottoman Court
Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman
Instrumental Repertoire

By

Walter Feldman

LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Tanbûr (Cantemir ca. 1700). Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul.

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Contents

Preface to the New Edition ix

1 Chronologies and “Local Modernity” xi
2 Instrumental Music: Mehterhane and Fasıl-i Sazende xviii
Acknowledgements xxii
List of Figures, Tables and Music Examples xxvi

The Structuring of the Book 1

Introduction 4
1 Turkish Classical Music and Ottoman Music 4
2 Ethnomusicology and History in Ottoman Turkey 9

The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750 16

Part 1
Musicians and Performance

1 Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 29

1 The Ottomans and the Turco-Mongol Courtly Heritage 29
2 The Emergence of Ottoman Court Music 36
3 Vocalists and Instrumentalists 38
4 The Geographical Origin of the Musicians and Location of
Musical Centers 44
5 Changes in the Ruling Class and in the Organization of Music
in the Palace 46
6 Unfree Musicians 56
7 Free Musicians in the Palace Service and the Bureaucracy 65

2 Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court: Dervishes and

Turkish Art Music 78
1 The Mevleviye 78
2 Music in the Other Sunni tarikats 93
3 Conclusion 96
vi Contents

3 Instruments and Instrumentalists 99

1 Sources for the Instrumentation of Ottoman Music 99
2 Organ and Genre 101
3 The Ottoman Court Ensemble of the Sixteenth Century 104
4 The Ottoman Ensemble from the Seventeenth to the
Mid-Eighteenth Century 123
5 Social Contexts of the Turkish Lutes 167
6 Conclusion 173

4 The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasıl and Ayin 176

1 The Structure of the Ottoman Fasıl 179
2 The Fasl-i Sazende 183
3 Structure of the Fasl-i Sazende 186
4 The Mevlevi Ayin 187

Part 2
Makam

5 The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 195

1 Nomenclature of Scale Degree and Mode 197
2 Cantemir’s General Scale 201
3 The Problem of the Note Segah 207
4 Saba, Uzzal, Beyati, Hisar 215
5 Conclusion 219
6 A Note on Symbols 220

6 Makam and Terkib 221

1 Other Modal Entities 232
2 Terkib and Şube Structures 240
3 The Terkib in the Eighteenth Century 252

7 Melodic Progression 258

1 Seyir in Compositions 263
2 Cantemir’s Terminology for Melodic Progression 266
3 Hızır Ağa and Harutin 271

8 The Taksim and Modulation 278

1 The Generic Nature and Origin of the Taksim 280
2 Turkish and Persian “Taksim” in Cantemir’s Treatise 291
Contents vii

3 Modulation and the Taksim 295

4 Modulation and the Küll-i Külliyat Genre 301
5 Conclusion 305

Part 3
Peşrev and Semai

9 The Peşrev/Pishrow 309

1 The Peşrev as Genre 309
2 Origin and Structure of the Peşrev/Pishrow 314
3 Generic Variation within the Ottoman Peşrev 321

10 The Ottoman Peşrev 327

1 Periodization of the Turkish Peşrev 331
2 Factors Leading to Change in the Formal Structure of the
Peşrev 335
3 Conclusion 347

11 Peşrevs and Analyses 348

1 Period 1 (1500–1550) 348
2 Period 2 (1550–1600) 359
3 Period 3 (1600–1650) 364
4 Period 4 (1650–1690) 371
5 Neyzen Ali Hoca 373
6 The Peşrevs of Cantemir 379
7 Muhayyer Muhammes 381
8 Buselik-Aşirani Berefşan 389
9 Conclusion 396

12 The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 398

1 Peşrevs and Analyses 401

13 Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 412

1 Transmission of the Peşrev during the Seventeenth Century:
Peşrevs and Analyses 422
2 The Nazire (“Imitatio”) 434
3 Conclusion 442
4 Transmission of the Peşrev in the Eighteenth Century 444
viii Contents

14 The Instrumental Semai 451

1 Semai-i Sazende in the Later Seventeenth Century 454
2 Periodization of the Semai-i Sazende/Saz Semaisi 457
3 Analysis of the Seventeenth-Century Semai Documents 457
4 Semai-i Lenk/Aksak Semai 468
5 Transformation of the Old Semai 476
6 Conclusion 481

15 Conclusion 484
1 The Departure of Turkey from the “Persianate” Musical
Sphere 484
2 The New Ottoman Style of the Eighteenth Century 488

Glossary 495
Figure Credits 500
Bibliography 501
Index 519
Preface to the New Edition

The present book grew out of my English translation of the Book of the Science of
Music According to the Alphabetic Notation, written in Ottoman Turkish toward
the beginning of the eighteenth century by the Moldavian Prince Demetrius
Cantemir (1673–1723). Cantemir’s theoretical treatise—coupled with his sub-
stantial notated Collection—documents and attempts to explain the artistic
music of his and of the previous generation within Istanbul. The most essential
sections of my translation appear throughout the book, where they are framed
within a musicological context. The second significant musical corpus are the
western-notated collections of the Polish convert and court servant Bobowski
or Ali Ufki/Ufuki Bey (1610–1675), to which I will refer below.
While remaining something of a social “outsider” as a royal hostage within
his palace in the Ottoman capital, Demetrius Cantemir was initiated into both
music and philosophy by illustrious teachers. All of them represented different
facets of the Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Jewish societies, interacting with
one another in a uniquely dynamic period of Ottoman history.
As the work progressed it became clear that much historical and social
documentation needed to be examined in order to present the role of music
within the intersection of the courtly, the religious and Sufistic cultures of
Istanbul and other major Ottoman cities. Since this period also displayed sig-
nificant changes in musical instrumentation, much visual evidence needed to
be included. In addition, both the words and images of Western visitors of vari-
ous categories sometimes provided critical evidence. Of these the most salient
was the work of the French interpreter Charles Fonton’s Essai sur la Musique
Orientale Comparee a la Europeene from 1751. But other diplomats and mer-
chants sometimes contributed unique observations.
This is a revised version of the original publication from 1996; it is in no sense
a new book. The reappearance of this book after a gap of over twenty-five years
affords me the opportunity to articulate my intentions in writing it, and also to
clarify how the present book should be read in the light of ongoing musicologi-
cal and historical research. My initial research and writing was accomplished
during much the same time that Owen Wright of the University of London was
preparing his excellent edition of the notated Collection (1992a) appended
to Cantemir’s treatise. It was to be followed by his analysis of the Collection
in 2000.
In order to revise the original work, first of all it was necessary to bring the
underlying musicological chronology into line with the newer advances in
scholarship, particularly in the music of Safavid Iran. This has been examined
x Preface to the New Edition

in the more recent research of Wright and Hosein Ali Pourjavady. Throughout
the book newer scholarship within both Ottoman history and musicology will
be referred to, and of course references to these publications will appear in
the revised bibliography. Perhaps the biggest addition to our knowledge of
the Ottoman music of the seventeenth century is Judith Haug’s edition and
study of Bobowski’s Paris Manuscript (Turc 292; Haug 2019–20). But to inte-
grate all of this recent and ongoing research would require far more than the
revision of my existing book; it would in fact constitute a new monograph.
And lastly, where lack of sources during the initial writing of this book led to
smaller or larger inaccuracies of interpretation, the reader will observe many
small deletions, and a couple of larger ones.
The title of the book refers to the concentration of a variety of native and for-
eign sources on the musicians of the Ottoman Court, rather than on other social
institutions. During the period covered by this book these other institutions—
with the exception of the lodges of the Mevlevi dervishes—remain on the
periphery of the existing sources. The term “early” in the title refers to the musi-
cal repertoire, rather than to the history of the Ottoman state, in which “early”
would describe a much older historical period. It also refers to the earliest
surviving musical notations from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
rather than to any pieces in the modern Turkish repertoire which are attrib-
uted to pre-nineteenth century Ottoman musicians but had gone through two
or more centuries of oral transmission.1
We may note a significant difference in focus between the title and the sub-
title of the present book. Due to the fact that the initial subject of research was
the treatise and collection of Prince Cantemir, which records only instrumen-
tal music, comparisons with the Bobowski London Collection (Mecmua-i Saz
ü Söz) could only treat the instrumental peşrev and semais. Unlike Cantemir,
Bobowski also included a substantial number of vocal items, both in his London
Mecmua and in the unnamed manuscript housed in the Paris Biblioteque
Nationale (Turc 292). Sections of this latter were published only in 2008, as
the result of Cem Behar’s long-standing research. We now understand that the
Paris Manuscript was not an earlier version or “copy” of the Mecmua-i Saz ü
Söz—as I had originally stated in “The Major Sources” (1996:29)—following
earlier Turkish musicologists. “Turc 292” was in fact an independent collec-
tion, complete with the author’s own remarks in a variety of languages, from
Latin, to Italian, Polish, and English. Judith Haug—now of the Orient Institut
in Istanbul—has been accomplishing far-reaching research into Bobowski’s
biography and musical documents. These began to appear only after 2010,

1 Owen Wright is currently preparing a monograph precisely on the latter topic.

Preface to the New Edition xi

culminating in her masterful three-volume edition (Münster, 2019–20). A more

thorough comparison of the structure of the vocal repertoire in the Bobowski
materials with the instrumental repertoire there, leads to conclusions that are
more extensive than what is suggested by the instrumental repertoires alone.
But to attempt to integrate the vocal repertoire in Bobowski into the discussion
would have been well beyond the scope of my initial book. While the begin-
ning of such stylistic comparison does appear in the opening pages of Part 3
chapter 10 of the present work, the larger implications for the “music of the
Ottoman Court” are made more explicit only in my 2015 article, “The Musical
‘Renaissance’ of Late Seventeenth Century Ottoman Turkey: Reflections on the
Musical Materials of Ali Ufki Bey (ca. 1610–1675), Hafiz Post (d. 1694) and the
‘Maraghi’ Repertoire.”2
I develop several of my ideas on musical chronology in chapter 6 of my recent
book From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes: Music, Poetry, and Mysticism in the
Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh: 2022). This work also explicates the unique role
of Mevlevi musicians in influencing the development of much of the secular
art music within the Ottoman state, beginning in the second half of the seven-
teenth century, and continuing well into the nineteenth century. This research
also introduces yet other aspects of the earlier affinities of Anatolian Muslim
art music with the transnational Persianate musical traditions. All of these
repertoires refer to historical Persianate genres which have not existed within
Iran proper since the close of the eighteenth century. This earlier “Persianate”
music appears in musical documents and “resonances” both in Ottoman musi-
cal sources of several historical eras, and in aspects of the current Bukharan
Shashmaqom. Thus, all of this research must be regarded as work in progress.
We can only hope that it will bear further fruit in the coming decades.

1 Chronologies and “Local Modernity”

Within the past thirty odd years the study of Ottoman history and society
have created new paradigms to explain what actually happened between
the Ottoman “classical age” and the period of the Tanzimat Reforms of the
mid-nineteenth century. Whereas earlier historians had often characterized
this long era as one of overall “decline,” today a much more nuanced picture is
emerging. Baki Tezcan has termed most of the Post-Classical Era “the Second
Ottoman Empire” (2007), during which the older “patrimonial state” gave way

2 This paper emerged from the conference “Osmanlı Musikisi Tarihini Yazmak” sponsored by
ITÜ and the Orient-Institut-Istanbul, November 2011.
xii Preface to the New Edition

to new centers of power within the Ottoman Ruling Class. And by focusing
particularly on the period stretching roughly from the latter part of the reign
of Sultan Mehmet IV (1648–1687) until the accession of Sultan Mahmud II in
1808—more or less the “long eighteenth century”—we can see that the Empire
demonstrated unexpected strength as well as cultural and political innova-
tions. Turkish and Western scholarship had long attributed these innovations
to a turn toward the West during the so-called Tulip Era of Sultan Ahmet III
(1718–1730). Contrary to this view, in the early 1990s, the Ottoman historian
Rifa’at Abou-El-Haj (1933–2022) employed the term “locally generated moder-
nity” for a process that began in the seventeenth century, continued through-
out the eighteenth century, and partly conflicted with attempts to modernize
Ottoman society along Western lines in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Viewing the modernity of the “long” eighteenth century as being “locally
generated” has been gaining wide acceptance among the new generation of
Ottoman historians, such as Christine Philliou, Edhem Eldem, and Baki Tezcan,
as well as historians of science such as Harun Küçük.
The relations of these musicological issues to some current paradigms
of Ottoman history and society were explored in the conference “A Locally
Generated Modernity: the Ottoman Empire in the ‘Long’ Eighteenth Century,”
organized by the author under the auspices of NYU Abu Dhabi in February of
2018. And it is through the prism of this newer paradigm in understanding the
“long” Ottoman eighteenth century that the broader implications of the musi-
cal theory of Prince Cantemir and of the music it was designed to describe can
be better integrated into an understanding of the unfolding of Ottoman civili-
zation. Part of the function of this preface to the new edition of the book is to
adjust the chronology presented in the first edition to more current interpreta-
tions of the history of the Ottoman state and society in this era.
Although both the historians Halil İnalcık and Abou-El-Haj had read and
critiqued the historical sections of the present book in the early 1990s, no con-
sensus had yet been reached among Ottoman historians about the significance
of this era. Like most Ottoman historians of that generation, I had used the
term “Early Modern Era” to refer to the period from the later sixteenth to the
later eighteenth centuries. However, such terminology is no longer relevant.
The “Modern Era” that I had used in the book with reference to Ottoman music
from the later eighteenth century and through the nineteenth, is less problem-
atic. Now, however, I would place this dating a generation later. It is becoming
clear from the examination of the early Hamparsum manuscripts conducted
under the auspices of the CMO project in Münster, that significant stylistic dif-
ferences separated a leading composer such as Tanburi Isak (d. 1814) from the
Preface to the New Edition xiii

following generation of musicians, who really did represent the “Modern Era”
in Ottoman music.
It is only through the developing research into the literary, philosophical,
visual as well as musical aspects of the culture of this era, that the full signifi-
cance of the new developments in musical composition, theory and notation
can be more fully understood. Without these changes within the Ottoman rul-
ing class, it is highly doubtful that the Muslim aristocrats cited by Cantemir as
his “students”—Daul İsmail Efendi and Latif Çelebi—would have requested
a Christian prince, born on the outskirts of the Empire, to create a treatise in
their literary language in order to explain their own music to them! And in his
attempt to logically organize his material, it is likely that the young Cantemir
was aided by his study of new developments in Aristotelian philosophy, taught
to him by the renowned Esʿad of Ioannina (Küçük 2013:135–38).
By placing side by side statements in Cantemir’s Book of the Science of Music
and then his later remarks on music in his History of the Growth and Decay of
the Ottoman Empire, it is clear that he felt he needed to create a new theory
of music. This was both because “its practice is vulgar and hackneyed, and its
theory is very much ignored and neglected” (1700: II:17), and because there had
been a significant break in transmission which was remedied by a new start
made under the direction of a coterie of musicians in the capital.
In my 2015 article I had stated that “the problematic of the present work
was articulated as far back as 1992 by Owen Wright in his groundbreaking
study of the Hafız Post Mecmuası and its antecedent musical anthologies.”3
Wright was able to create far-reaching conclusions concerning the relation-
ship between the music performed in a courtly setting between the fifteenth
century and the later seventeenth century, when the Hafız Post Mecmuası was
created. All of the manuscripts in question would appear to be of Ottoman
provenance, but only the very latest one—that of Hafız Post (HP) from some-
what before 1694—presents a courtly vocal repertoire that agrees with the
genres that Cantemir described a decade or two later, and then with all the
Ottoman sources of the eighteenth century. This difference also extends to
language. Almost all lyric texts of the earlier collections are in Persian and
Arabic, and it is only in HP do we see a predominance of Turkish. Thus, Wright
comes to the conclusion that HP on the one hand, and all the “antecedent”
musical collections on the other, are presenting two fundamentally different
musical repertoires. Given what we know in general of the Ottoman court as

3 Owen Wright, Words Without Songs: A Musicological Study of an Early Ottoman Anthology
and Its Precursors. London: SOAS Musicology Series, vol. 3.
xiv Preface to the New Edition

partaking in many aspects of the culture of the Eastern portion of the Islamic
world—termed by the historian Marshall Hodgson as “Persianate”—it is not
very surprising to find the Persian language and musical forms predominat-
ing in Istanbul during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Indeed, they were
still dominant during the reign of Murad IV (1623–1640). But in the following
generations they were replaced in several discrete stages by different forms of
a local, Turkish musical culture. The gradual demise of the Persianate musical
repertoire and its co-existence with a local repertoire using the Turkish lan-
guage, followed, after the middle of the seventeenth century, by the emergence
of a rather new and more sophisticated vocal repertoire using a somewhat
higher “register” of Turkish, is not so easy to explain.
Within the past four decades, during which the notations of Ali Ufki Bey/
Bobowski, as well as other Ottoman musical sources have been subjected to
increasing scholarly scrutiny, it has become clearer that his work is important
not only because it is the earliest substantial corpus of notation of Ottoman
music, but also because it documents the earliest phases of what was to
become a distinct Ottoman musical culture. Bobowski’s musical career lay
squarely within an earlier generation in which this process was far from com-
plete, whereas Prince Cantemir lived in a world in which it—while still chang-
ing and developing—was well underway.
Part of the “missing link” connecting the various elements of this story lie
outside of the Ottoman Empire, within Greater Iran. While the general his-
torical and social features of this era were known to historians, it is only since
roughly 2000 that the Safavid musicological sources have been subjected to
careful analysis. Summarizing this research, in 2015 I had characterized the
situation in the following manner:

While initially the Iranian Safavids sought to preserve the musical heights
that had been reached by the Timurids, by the following generation, in
1533 the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp decreed an absolute ban on music,
even murdering some of the leading musicians. This ban seems to have
been enforced throughout western and central Iran for five decades! Even
toward the end of his reign, in 1571–72 Tahmasp “ordered a royal farman
to kill instrumentalists and singers of all the cities and in particular Ostad
Qasem Qanuni.” Only the Safavid princely governors of Khorasan and the
semi-independent rulers of Gilan on the Caspian Sea still patronized
music openly, thus allowing the Timurid repertoire and style to flourish
for almost a century longer. (Feldman 2015:120)
Preface to the New Edition xv

While it is true that the great Shah Abbas I (1567–1629) restored the royal
patronage for music, by this time Iranian music seems to have been moving
away from the earlier nawba suites and toward the more popular entertain-
ment style propagated by the female courtesan musicians and dancers. The
shift to a more populist repertoire was evident from the mecmua collection
of Agha Momin, the Chalchi Bashi (chief musician) under Shahs Safi and
Abbas II, who was in the royal service until 1655, studied by Pourjavady (2005).
As I noted in 2015, the repertoire described there uses similar modality to
what we see in the exactly contemporary Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz of Bobowski in
Istanbul. One generation later, Amir Khan Gorji’s mecmua features Turkish
popular forms, such as varsagi, which were apparently sung at court by Turkish
speaking courtesans from the Southern Caucasus.
The fact that the older classical repertoire was preserved better in Gilan,
Khorasan, and in the South Caucasus proved to be extremely significant for the
later history of music from Samarqand to Istanbul. Even as late as 1626, when
the Transoxanian musician Mutribi Samarqandi visited the Mughal Emperor
Jahangir, the latter was able to request a performance of a sawt al-ʿamal in the
complex rhythmic cycle nim-saqil (nīm-thaqīl), that had been composed a gen-
eration earlier, during the reign of Abdullah Khan in Bukhara (r. 1583–1598),
as well as even older and equally sophisticated rhythmic items created by
Sultan Husein Bayqara and Mīr ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī in late fifteenth century Herat
(Foltz 1998:63). The evident preservation of this complex repertoire in both
Bukhara (as a part of “Khorasan”) and Mughal India conforms with the devel-
oping distinction between metrically free and pre-composed metrical music
within the Safavid musical culture, to which I will refer at several points later
in the book. As will be noted below (Part 1:1), during the reign of Murad IV
(1623–1640) several major Iranian musicians from the South Caucasus and
from Baghdad were brought into the Ottoman service.
Chapter 1 of Part 1 of the present book discusses the cultural indebted-
ness expressed by the Ottomans toward the Timurid culture of “Khorasan”;
the mid-seventeenth century traveler Evliya Çelebi used the formula Hüseyin
Baykara faslı (“a fasıl of Husein Bayqara”), who ruled in Herat from 1469 to
1506. But the degree to which this Persianate composed metrical repertoire
had been undermined within Safavid Iran proper was not generally known to
scholarship at that time. The fact that both of the major Ottoman sultans who
reigned from 1512 to 1566 (Selim I and Süleyman I) had little interest in, or at
times actively persecuted musicians, could only have had a negative effect on
the creation of a new artistic repertoire as well as the transmission of the older
xvi Preface to the New Edition

one. And, as Owen Wright had noted in 1992, this repertoire was “performed
by professional musicians trained elsewhere,” giving it less cultural grounding
within Turkey. The combination of these two negative factors, the one coming
from within the Ottoman court in Istanbul, and the other from the Safavid
court in Isfahan, seems an adequate explanation for the break in transmission
between all of the “antecedent” musical collections from the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries with the Hafız Post Mecmuası from the latter part of the sev-
enteenth century.
Cem Behar’s recent (2020) publication of three later sixteenth-century
Ottoman mecmua manuscripts contain a mixture of Persian and Turkish lan-
guage texts. Musical genres are only rarely indicated, although some compos-
ers’ names are mentioned. In the following generations (circa 1650) a number
of Turkish-language songs in the murabba genre were notated by Bobowski/Ali
Ufki Bey. Yet, according to the primary evidence of the poet İbrahim Cevri
(d. 1654)—who wrote a detailed mesnevi poem on the “Singers of the Imperial
Court”—even in the 1630s the basis of the official music for Murad IV was
still the Persianate repertoire of kar, amel, and naqsh (see Ayan 1981:113 and
Feldman 2022:149–150). According to Prince Cantemir these Persian genres
still had an important place at the Ottoman courtly concerts almost one cen-
tury later (ca. 1700 X:98–101). It is equally significant that none of the Turkish
items cited by Behar in the three late sixteenth century manuscripts appear
in any of the mecmuas of the seventeenth century. They are not mentioned in
the two works by Ali Ufki Bey, nor in the later seventeenth century Mecmua
of Hafız Post. The Turkish-language repertoire documented and referred to by
both Hafız Post and Prince Cantemir was evidently not a direct descendent of
the Turkish repertoires mentioned in these three late sixteenth century mec-
muas, nor in the notated documents of Bobowski.
Writing in Latin for a Western readership, Cantemir stated clearly that the
middle of the seventeenth century represented not continuity, but a significant
break and the start of local “renaissance” for Ottoman music. In his History
he wrote the following about music during the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV
(1648–1687), in Tindal’s charming English translation: “The art of musick almost
forgot, not only revived, but was rendered more perfect by Osman Efendi, a
noble Constantinopolitan” (Cantemir 1734, I. 15–52). Cantemir himself had
studied with Osman’s student Buhurizade Mustafa Itri (d. 1712)—whom he
quotes in his book of theory—but Cantemir was a tanbur player, not a vocal-
ist. In his History, among his teachers he noted only instrumentalists: Koca
Angeli, Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi, Tanburi Çelebi (“Chelebico”), Kemani Ahmed
and Neyzen Ali Hoca. Due to its connection with the official mehter ensembles,
the instrumental repertoire did not undergo the same degree of decline and
Preface to the New Edition xvii

generic change as the vocal repertoire had; there seems little chance that it had
been “almost forgot.”
Cantemir had been taught by some of the greatest musicians in the Ottoman
capital, and he undoubtably saw himself as a part of a musical “lineage,”
reaching through his teacher Buhurizade Mustafa Itri to Kasımpaşalı Osman
Efendi. Cantemir fails to mention a few other major composers and teachers
of music, such as Sütçüzade İsa and Ama Kadri, active at more or less the same
time as Osman. But it would seem that Osman Efendi was indeed the most
influential of the creators and teachers of secular art music within his gen-
eration. Cantemir mentions five of Osman’s eminent students: Hafız Kömür,
Buhurcuoğlu (Itri), Memiş Ağa, Küçük Müezzin, and Tesbihçi Emir. Hafız Post
(ca. 1630–1694) was yet another major student of Osman’s, who included sev-
eral of his compositions in his famous anthology Mecmua. Unfortunately, no
source gives dates for either Osman’s birth or his death; we can only surmise
the probable span of his life and career by tracing those of his students.
Earlier, Evliya Çelebi in his Seyahatname had placed “Hanende Kasımpaşalı
Koca Osman Çelebi” as the first in his list of eminent singers (hanende):
“he was a perfect master, a venerable imam, who resembled an angel in the
heavens.”4 In his biographical dictionary Esʿad Efendi who was contemporary
with Prince Cantemir—lavishes the highest praise upon Osman, calling him
“the saint of the tarikat (Sufi order) of mastery and the guide in the valley of
connoisseurship, he was the master (üstad) of most of the masters of Rum.”
He also notes his specialization in composing the most serious compositional
forms (the murabba, kar, and nakış) as well as the şarkı, and mentions his “over
200 compositions.”5 Koca Osman—evidently a “noble” member of the military
bureaucracy, mütefferika—was part of the first generation of Turkish compos-
ers whose works are remembered in the later Turkish oral tradition, along with
his contemporaries Ama Kadri and Sütcüzade İsa. Osman’s influence seems to
have passed largely through his students, who were more involved with courtly
patronage.6
In Esʿad Efendi’s biographical dictionary Atrabü’l-Asar (Aṭrab al-āthār,
ca. 1725–1730) the contrast in musical creativity between the first half of the sev-
enteenth century and its third quarter is striking: the reigns of Sultans Ahmet I,
Murad IV and İbrahim (comprising the years from 1603 to 1648) can boast only

4 Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, I, Istanbul, 1996, p. 302, quoted in Cem Behar, Şeyhülislam’ın
Müziği: 18 Yüzyilda Osmanli/Türk Musikisi ve Seyhülislam Es’ad Efendi’nin Atrabü’l-Asar’ı,
Istanbul, 2010, p. 125.
5 Cem Behar, Şeyhülislam’in Müziği, Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 2010, p. 263.
6 Cem Behar treats Koca Osman in Behar, 2018:75–85.
xviii Preface to the New Edition

nine well-known composers, whereas the reign of Mehmet IV alone (1648–1687)

has 59!7 This was the period when the great compositional and teaching activ-
ity of Koca Osman (as well as that of Sütçüzade İsa and Ama Kadri) bore
fruit, along with that of several other native and imported musicians of note.
Esʿad Efendi wrote his tezkire over 20 years after Cantemir’s defection from
Turkey—and neither mentions the other—but they must have shared rather
similar views of the relative musical significance of the first as opposed to the
second half of the seventeenth century.8
Despite his rather erratic character—which finally led to his deposition in
1687—Sultan Mehmed IV seems to have been a keen connoisseur of music,
although he was not a composer himself. And his contemporary on the
Crimean throne, Selim Giray Khan (d. 1704)—who was both a great warrior
and a poet—patronized the major Ottoman composers during his frequent
stays in Istanbul, and also invited them to his palace in Bahçesaray. The era
of this Ottoman sultan and Crimean Tatar Khan was one in which the more
independent creativity centered around the aristocrat Osman Efendi, as well
as Mevlevi and other Sufi composers, led to a major musical renaissance, from
which the Ottoman court greatly profited.

2 Instrumental Music: Mehterhane and Fasıl-i Sazende

The evident break-down in the transmission and new creation of the interna-
tional “Persianate” courtly vocal repertoire in Istanbul between the second half
of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century did not seem to
have a similar effect on the instrumental repertoire. Thus the “early Ottoman
instrumental repertoire” represented a particular sub-species of the “music
of the Ottoman court.” Unlike the courtly vocal repertoire, the instrumental
genres peşrev and semai could not be described as having “high prestige but
limited diffusion” (Wright 1992:285) due to one central factor—these genres
were the basis for the official and public music of the Ottoman state, known as
the mehterhane (or mehter) which was linked to the Janissary (Yeniçeri) Corps.
While in the present book I refer on several occasions to the mehter institu-
tion in the course of the discussion of the Ottoman peşrev, and to the classic

7 Behar, 2010, p. 138.

8 Behar, 2010, chapter V—“‘Eskiler’ ve ‘Yeniler’ Meselesi: Osmanlı/Türk Musikisinin Özbilinci”
(“The Ancients and the Moderns: the Self-Definition of Ottoman Turkish Music”), treats
some of these issues, including Cantemir’s reference to Koca Osman and the question of
Ottoman pseudographia.
Preface to the New Edition xix

Turkish study of the music of the mehter by Haydar Sanal (1961), in the light
of our current knowledge, it is worthwhile to state the cultural implications of
this situation. More recently Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol has treated many aspects in
his monograph Musician Mehters (Çalıcı Mehterler, Istanbul 2011).
The instrumental genre known as “pishrow” was already a staple of the music
of the Timurid court in fifteenth century Herat, but within Ottoman culture it
became characteristic also of the military and ceremonial music of the mehter.
The mehter musicians appear to have been originally of devşirme origin, at
least until the early seventeenth century, and they were trained in the Palace
school. It appears that the mehteran (plural of mehter) trained in the capital
were sent to the provinces. Alongside this official mehter was another type of
ensemble called the mehter-i birun which formed part of the urban musicians’
guilds. This “unofficial” mehter received no salary but performed at public and
private festivities. The mehter-i birun differed somewhat in orchestration and
in size from the tabl ü alem, and its repertoire was somewhat distinct.
The offical mehter had three distinct functions: (1) The mehter played con-
tinuously during battle. The alem (Ar. ʿalam, standard) was located near the
mehter, so that silence from the direction of the mehter could lead to the
Janissaries abandoning the field. (2) The sultan was greeted every afternoon
by a mehter performance which was accompanied by prayers for the ruler and
the state. In the course of the Ottoman period, this ceremony seems to have
become highly ritualized. In addition, the vizier, provincial governors, and vas-
sal rulers (such as the khans of the Crimea and the voyvods of Moldova) all
had their own mehter ensembles and were therefore referred to as ṭabl-u alem
ṣaḥibi (“possessor of drum and standard”). (3) A mehter ensemble played every
morning and night from a tower within the garden of the Ṭopḳapı Palace, from
other towers in the capital and in many other cities of the Empire. These per-
formances occurred before the morning prayer (ṣabāh namāzı) and after the
night prayer (ʿishāʾ namāzı). Thus, these outdoor mehter performances were
heard by much of the urban population of the capital. The substance of the
mehter repertoires for all three of the above functions was the peşrev, the semai
and also the improvised taksim. During the eighteenth-century instrumental
versions of the courtly vocal murabba beste and ağır semai were also performed.
The basic melody instrument of the mehter was the zurna, a double-reed
shawm with seven holes (six in front and one behind). Subsidiary to the zurna
was the trumpet known as boru or nefir (nefīr). The boru had no holes and
could produce five notes within an ambitus of one and a half octaves. Pieces
described as nefir-i dem apparently employed the borus to hold the drone. The
basic percussion instrument of the mehter was the tabl or davul, a rather large
wooden double-headed drum held slantwise by a strap and beaten with two
xx Preface to the New Edition

sticks of uneven dimensions and shape, thus producing the bass düm and tre-
ble tek sounds which are essential to the Ottoman conception of rhythm.
Although the official mehter was clearly an out-door wind, brass and percus-
sion ensemble, there was considerable cross-over between the “official” military
peşrev and the indoor courtly peşrev. Indeed, without this “cross-over” between
“official” outdoor and artistic indoor instrumental music, it is doubtful that
Bobowski, Cantemir, or Osman Dede would have notated their Collections, as
none of these musicians were involved with the mehter per se. Throughout
the “long” eighteenth century, almost all of the Muslim and Armenian notated
documents are of instrumental music. During that time, it was only the Greek
Orthodox psaltes (cantors) who employed their Byzantine notation to tran-
scribe courtly vocal music.
One of the most outstanding “cross-over” musicians was Mıskali Mehmed
Çelebi, usually referred to as “Solakzade” (d. 1658). He stemmed from a Janis-
sary origin, but he became both a musician and a painter (nakkaş), a poet, as
well as a historical writer. With such an array of talents he was chosen to be a
“boon-companion” (nedim) of Sultan Murad IV. As I point out in the present
chapter on “Instruments and Instrumentalists,” Solakzade’s primary instru-
ment was the mıskal, or panpipes. Nevertheless, his peşrevs were performed
by the official mehter ensemble. Altogether twenty-nine of Solakzade’s peşrevs
and semais appear in the Collections of Bobowski, Cantemir, and Kevseri,
making him the best-documented instrumental composer of the first half of
the seventeenth century. In Part 3 of the present book, in the periodization
and analysis of the peşrev repertoire, I point out certain stylistic developments
from the early to the later seventeenth century. In Solakzade’s peşrevs and in
others of what I describe as “period 3” (1600–1650), the use of usul, relations
of usul and melody, melodic progression (seyir) and modulation are clearly
the products of an artistic tradition. There was apparently no break in the
transmission of the official mehter instrumental repertoire. They are not com-
parable to the numerous türkü, varsaği, raksiye, some of the murabba and
other quasi-popular vocal pieces that dominate Bobowski’s two notated docu-
ments (see Behar 2008; Feldman 2015:101–107). The fact that a rather full use
of makam, terkib, and usul characterized the instrumental repertoire of the
earlier seventeenth century, demonstrates that a developed series of musical
techniques existed within this repertoire. These techniques could then be inte-
grated into the vocal repertoire, thus transforming it, in the course of the musi-
cal “renaissance” of the latter part of the century.
When Cantemir writes about the fasıl-i sazende, or “instrumental suite,” he
apparently had in mind both the indoor courtly suites (illustrated fifty years
later by Charles Fonton), and the less common outdoor suites by the more
Preface to the New Edition xxi

generally “indoor” instruments, such as ney, tanbur, kemançe, mıskal, and san-
tur, illustrated by his contemporary Levni. The emergence of the new Ottoman
courtly repertoire—as documented first in the Hafız Post Mecmuası—is
co-terminus with the new dominance of two instruments—the ney and the
tanbur. Cantemir points this out indirectly in his description of the fasl-i meclis
(“concert gathering”): “When there is a concert gathering the vocalist sits in
the middle. The neyzen is below the vocalist; the tanburi is below the neyzen.
Below the tanburi the places of the other instrumentalists are not specified.”
(Cantemir 1700: X:103).
The removal of the highly prestigious oud from the ensemble, as well as the
çeng (harp)—both of which occur prominently in visual illustrations of court
music in the first half of seventeenth century—symbolize a very specific aes-
thetic choice which differentiates the music of the “long” eighteenth century
from anything that had preceded it in Ottoman Turkey. This “duet” as it were
of the ney and the tanbur seems to symbolize the cultural dialogue of the Sufi
and the secular Turkic elements within the formation of the newer form of
Ottoman culture.
Acknowledgements

My goal in writing Music of the Ottoman Court was to concentrate on the sev-
enteenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. This was the era that was
“antecedent” to the better documented modern phase of Ottoman music. But
the larger question of both my motivations and technical competencies must
involve biographical, cultural, and academic issues.
My personal involvement with various levels of Turkish urban music goes
back to my surroundings in New York, within the Sephardic, Greek, and Arme-
nian immigrant communities. All this was in addition to my own Moldavian
background. Since my teenage years I had some speaking and reading abilities
in both the Turkish and Romanian languages. While still in graduate school
at Columbia University, I chanced upon Eugenia Popescu-Judetz’s 1973 Roma-
nian translation of Prince Cantemir’s musical treatise (Cartea ştintei muzicii)
at the Manhattan Biblioteca Romana, then run by the Romanian government.
I am grateful to have been able to meet Dr. Popescu-Judetz in New York during
those years.
I was not yet playing the tanbur, which was Cantemir’s instrument. But
even through the medium of the small cimbalom and the Persian santur (both
of which I did play to some extent) something of the musical qualities of
Cantemir’s peşrevs came through. And these qualities were intriguingly differ-
ent from the peşrevs that I had heard on old recordings of Tanburi Cemil Bey
or in concerts in Turkey. In addition, the tuning and intonation of the Persian
santur resonated with how Cantemir described his own tuning on the tanbur.
When I started my first teaching position at Princeton University in 1981,
I was equally drawn to poetic and musical aspects of the Ottoman civiliza-
tion. At Princeton I had the good fortune to become acquainted with the
Music Professor Harold Powers (1928–2007), who had written extensively on
the concepts of modality, and its uses in early Western music, in South India
and elsewhere. He became interested in my explorations of Cantemir’s theory
and provided expert guidance on musicological methods. In 1982 I gave my
first paper on Professor Powers’ panel for the Society for Ethnomusicology in
Washington DC, about Cantemir’s treatise. Princeton also became a produc-
tive Ottomanist center thanks also to the teaching visits by the pre-eminent
Turkish historian Halil İnalcık (1916–2016), who took an active interest in
my research.
In 1983 I obtained grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the Princeton Committee on Research in the Humanities to work both on
the position of music in nineteenth-century Ottoman Turkey and on the lyric/
Acknowledgements xxiii

musical form “murabba.” To these ends, I studied the Hafız Post Mecmuası, at
the Topkapı Palace Library. It was through this manuscript that I discovered
the gazels of Naili (d. 1666), which his student Hafız Post had set to music. This
led me to an enduring interest in the Ottoman Sebk-i Hindi or “Indian” style of
poetry. I began to take vocal lessons in the classical repertoire with Fatih Salgar,
who was then a chorister in the State Turkish Music Chorus (later its director).
At one of their concerts, I was approached by the preeminent tanburi Necdet
Yaşar (1930–2017), who offered me his help. Over the years this turned into an
enduring teacher-student relationship and friendship. I returned to Istanbul
for the following summer on another grant, and in this period I met the profes-
sors Yalçın Tura and Haydar Sanal (1926–2003). I entered into productive con-
versations with the latter about his research into the music of the mehter. I was
also able to study küdum with the master Hurşid Ungay, who also had many
wise perspectives. I met and interviewed the great vocal master Dr. Allaettin
Yavaşça and attended his rehearsals for the radio. I formed a collegial relation-
ship with Cem Behar at Boğaziçi, and I also struck up a long-lasting friendship
with the graphic designer Ersu Pekin, who later provided me with lavish copies
of musical album paintings.
In 1985 I obtained a National Endowment Translation grant to translate
Cantemir’s Book of the Science of Music from Ottoman Turkish into English.
This was a two-year grant, so it allowed me to enter into comparative work
on the instrumental sections of Bobowski’s manuscript in London. In the
later 1980s I gave a paper on the peşrev repertoire in Cantemir at the ICTM
Maqam meeting in Berlin. There I met Professor Owen Wright as well as sev-
eral leading Central Asian ethnomusicologists from the Eastern bloc, such
as Angelika Jung (E. Berlin), Slawomira Kominek (Warsaw), and Otanazar
Matyaqubov (Tashkent). In particular Dr. Jung’s 1989 German book on the
sources of the Bukharan Shashmaqom shared several perspectives with my
own work-in-progress.
In 1986 I was approached to teach in the Oriental Studies department at
the University of Pennsylvania. This was a largely Iranist department, which
allowed me deeper exposure to the Persian poetry of India, especially through
the then chairman William Hanaway (d. 2018) and our friend and teacher
Shams ur Rahman Faruqi (d. 2020) from Allahabad, India.
The later 1980s was also the era of the Bosphorus Project, led by the late
Nikiforos Metaxas (1944–2015) and by kemençist İhsan Özgen (1942–2021).
I shared my early transcriptions from the Cantemir Collection with this group,
attended their rehearsals in Istanbul, and flew to the historic 1989 concert
in Athens. In this period, I also met Cinuçen Tanrıkorur (1938–2000) with
whom I could share queries about the musical structure of the Mevlevi ayin.
xxiv Acknowledgements

I interviewed him extensively after our joint performance of his Evçara Ayini
at Princeton University in 1991.
This period was also the twilight of the Soviet Union. I was thus finally
enabled to travel freely in the Central Asian Republics, permitting me to do
research in several musical genres both of the cities and of the steppes. It also
resulted in close contacts with Soviet ethnomusicologists from Petersburg to
Tashkent, who supplied theoretical approaches that were quite distinct from
those prevalent in the US or western Europe. Until today I maintain close
connections with Izaly Zemtsovski and his wife the Kazakh ethnomusicolo-
gist Alma Kunanbaeva (both now in San Francisco). Theodore Levin—Harold
Powers’ former graduate student from Princeton—had preceded me in
Tashkent by over a decade. His book on Central Asia, The Hundred Thousand
Fools of God, came out in the same year as Music of the Ottoman Court. He later
became a Senior Advisor to the Aga Khan Music Initiative. In that capacity
he advocated for and edited my recent monograph From Rumi to the Whirling
Dervishes: Music, Poetry and Mysticism in the Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh 2022).
While at U Penn, I learned a more developed approach to historical organ-
ology through my colleague, the sitarist Allyn Miner. Her pathbreaking book
Sitar and Sarod in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries had been published
in 1993 by the International Institute for Traditional Music in Berlin. Three
years later they would publish my book Music of the Ottoman Court. The final
stage of the publication was facilitated by a generous grant from the Ottoman
music foundation named the Sema Vakf, based in Maryland and directed by
the late Altan E. Güzey. In 1995 the Sema Vakf had put out the long unpub-
lished remaining items from the early twentieth century Darülelhan Külliyati
(nos. 181–263) and began the rich collection of Turkish Classical Music housed
in the Loeb Library at Harvard University. A few years later I was able to col-
laborate with Sema Vakf on various projects, such as the four-CD recording by
the major Ottoman group Lalezar, led by the kanunist Reha Sağbaş and his wife
the vocalist, the late Selma Sağbaş (d. 2016). Mr. Güzey’s death in 2009 ended a
possibly far more fruitful collaboration.
The early 1990s was also the period of the mass emigration of the musicians’
class of the Bukharan Jews, largely to New York, as well as to Tel-Aviv. My close
collaboration with them opened a window on a distantly related branch of
the Turco-Persianate makam family of art musics, which I had known through
earlier contacts in Tashkent, Bukhara, and Khiva and through the research of
Dr. Jung.
While all of these activities—plus regular teaching—certainly slowed down
the writing of my book, the result was far richer than what I had initially envis-
aged. My continued contact with leading Ottoman historians allowed me to
Acknowledgements xxv

delineate the unique Ottoman patterns of musical professionalism. I was also

fortunate in having the perspective of Necdet Yaşar on the possible perfor-
mance of my transcriptions from Cantemir. Among the various Turkish musi-
cians with whom I shared these pieces, Necdet Bey’s interpretations were both
the most insightful and the most musical.
The historical sections of Part 1 of the book had been reviewed by Halil
İnalcık, then of the University of Chicago, and Cem Behar then of Boğaziçi
Üniversitesi. The historical introduction had been critiqued by the late Rifa’at
Abou-El-Haj of the University of California, Long Beach. In the chapter on
musical instruments the relevant sections of the Evliya Çelebi manuscripts
had been furnished me by Robert Dankoff of the University of Chicago. Several
illustrations for this chapter reached me through the courtesy of Robert Martin,
Esin Atıl of the Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC, and Ursula Reinhard. I am
indebted to Ersu Pekin for the newer versions of these illustrations.
In Part 2 (Makam), the chapters on the general scale were read by Jean During
of the CNRS, Strasbourg. The argument and writing of the chapter on the tak-
sim and modulation were tightened by the criticisms of Steven Blum of the
Graduate Center, City College of New York, and Dieter Christensen, Columbia
University, who edited a version of it for publication in the “Yearbook for
Traditional Music” (1993). The analyses of the peşrev genre in Part 3 owes much
to the careful reading and criticisms of my wife, Judit Frigyesi, then of Princeton
University. The book had utilized Owen Wright’s (1988) path breaking analysis
of the diachronic aspects of the relations of usul (rhythmic cycle) and melody.
However, my current collaboration with the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae
Project at the University of Münster under Professor Ralf Martin Jaeger has
opened up new perspectives on this crucial issue.

Walter Feldman
New York City
Figures, Tables and Music Examples

Figures

1.1 Eighteenth-century kemançe/keman (Fonton 1751: fig. 4) 107

1.2 Şahrud, two neys, kopuz, kemançe. “Surname” of Murad III (1582). H1344 18b 109
1.3 Sixteenth-century ud: “Süleymanname” (1558: fol. 412a); ud, two neys, miskal,
kemançe 110
1.4 Rabab, Seljuk painted bowl (Metropolitan Museum of Art), no. 57.61.16 113
1.5 “Surname” of Murad III (1582), fol. 404a: ud, çeng, kemançe, kopuz with curved
tuning-board, and straight tuning-board 115
1.6 “Surname” of Murad III (1882): Çeng, şahrud, two neys, two mıskals.
H1344 19a 120
1.7 Çeng (Hızır Ağa) 121
1.8 Kanun, Bukhara 1571 (Vyzgo 1980: pl. 43) 124
1.9 Kemançe (Hızır Ağa) 126
1.10 Lyra (kemençe): a) de Blainville (1767:64); b) Yekta (1921:3015) 129
1.11 Neyzens from “Surname” of Ahmed III (1720–30) in Mevlevi
costume (fol. 58a) 136
1.12 Neyzens from “Surname” of Ahmed III (1720–30) in secular costume
(fol. 106b) 137
1.13 Ensemble (Fonton 1751: fig. 5) 138
1.14 Ney (Fonton 1751: fig. 1) 139
1.15 Tanbur from fifteenth-century Herat “Shahnamah” (Vyzgo 1980: no. 45) 142
1.16 Tanbur (Cantemir ca. 1700) 148
1.17 Tanbur (Fonton 1751: fig. 2) 149
1.18 Tanburi (Hızır Ağa) 150
1.19 Masked dance with çeng (Album of Ahmed I, fol. 408b), 1603–1617 152
1.20 Kanun (Hızır Ağa) 156
1.21 Santur (Hızır Ağa) 160
1.22 Musikar in mehter-i birun, folio 97b from “Surname” of Ahmed III 164
1.23 Musikar (Fonton 1751: fig. 3) 167
1.24 Abdullah Buhari; court woman with bozuk 169
1.25 A bozuk from the treatise of Hızır Ağa 171
2.1 Development of the taksim 306
3.1 Seventeenth-century Transoxanian pishrow (after Jung 1989:187–8) 320
3.2 Neva devr-i kebir (Acemi) hanes, terkibs and cycles 350
3.3 “Gülistan” hanes, terkibs and cycles 354
3.4 Osman Paşa, hane, terkibs and cycles 357
3.5 Hane, terkib structure 369
Figures, Tables and Music Examples xxvii

Tables

1.1 Occupational categories of musicians as mentioned by Esʿad Effendi 71

1.2 Instruments and musicians from the “Cemaat-i mutriban” of 1525 105
1.3 The twelve ney sizes of the modern system 138
2.1 The fretting of the Ottoman tanbur. Cantemir: “Kitabu İlmu’l Musiki Ala
Vechi’l-Hurufat” (Cantemir ca. 1700) 203
2.2 General scale according to Seydi (late fifteenth century) 205
2.3 Intervals between B (buselik) and A (dügah) on the modern Turkish tanbur,
the seventeenth-century tanbur, and the modern Iranian setar, expressed
in commas 209
2.4 The ʿUzzal/Hicaz tetrachord 210
2.5 Çargah (c) to hüseyni (e) in Cantemir and modern practice 216
2.6 Comparative chart of the general scale according to Cantemir and Abdülbaki
Nasır Dede 217
2.7 Frequency in the use of modal entities, 1650–1700 236
2.8 Frequency of makams in modern Turkish music (after TMA) 237
2.9 Makam classification of Kemani Hızır Ağa 253
2.10 Verbs employed by Cantemir to describe melodic movement 267
3.1 Formal structure of the seventeenth-century peşrevs 328
3.2 Düyek peşrev 337
3.3 Devr-i kebir peşrev 337
3.4 Hüseyni, düyek, Hasan Can (Bobowski ca. 1650:24) 359
3.5 Compositions of Cantemir 381
3.6 Hane and terkib structure of Hüseyni, “Büyük Muhammes,” (Bobowski
ca. 1650:21–2 and Cantemir Collection: no. 82) 431
3.7 Pençgah semai 477

Music Examples

2.1 Teslim of Beyati peşrev by Emin Dede, showing alternation of segah and uşşak
notes (after Karadeniz 1984:337) 213
2.2 Positions of the first six independent makams along the degrees of the
fundamental scale 226
2.3 Older and newer forms of the makam Neva 226
2.4 Comparison of the makams Dügah and Hüseyni 227
2.5 The three descending makams of the basic scale degrees 228
2.6 The makams using secondary scale degrees 228
2.7 Makam Zengüle 230
2.8 Scales of Mahur and Nişabur, showing secondary scale degrees 231
xxviii Figures, Tables and Music Examples

2.9 Scales of Uzzal and Nikriz 231

2.10 Structure of the makam Sünbüle 232
2.11 Structure of Baba Tahir 242
2.12 Isfahan from küll-i külliyat, first hane 243
2.13 Nazire-i Isfahan, usul remel, Kantemiroğlu, serhane, mülazime 243
2.14 Nühüft: a) Buhurcioğlu; b) Ali Hoca; c) Angel 245
2.15 Nühüft, Harutin 246
2.16 Nühüft, düyek, serhane (Collection: 122) 247
2.17 Nühüft, darbeyn; Mehmed Çelebi (Eyyüblü), serhane (Collection: 113) 247
2.18 Hüzzam, from küll-i külliyat peşrev, third hane 248
2.19 Türkü from Konya, “Yeşilim, yeşilim aman,” nakarat 249
2.20 Şiraz, from küll-i külliyat, serhane 250
2.21 Kuçek, from küll-i külliyat, first hane 252
2.22 Movement of Nişabur from küll-i külliyat, third hane 252
2.23 Ambitus of Irak and Evc 263
3.1 Kürdi darbeyn, Ermeni Murad (Cantemir Collection: no. 154) 325
3.2 a) Neva, devr-i kebir, Acemi (Cantemir Collection: no. 52) 349
b) Neva, devr-i kebir, Acemi, serhane and mülazime A 349
c) Neva, devr-i kebir, Behram, serhane A, B 349
3.3 Pençgah, “Gülistan,” düyek, Acemlerin (Cantemir Collection: no. 27) 352
3.4 Uzzal “Bustan”, düyek, ʿAcemi, serhane and mülazime B (Cantemir Collection:
no. 29) 353
3.5 Dügah-Hüseyni, düyek, Osman Paşa el-Atik (Bobowski ca. 1650:1) 356
3.6 Osman Paşa, H I and “Gülistan,” H I 356
3.7 Terkib-i intikal from Cantemir’s H I 357
3.8 Comparison of Bobowski’s MA and Cantemir’s H I B. (Hüseyni, Küçük
Muhammes, Osman Paşa, Cantemir Collection: no. 316) 358
3.9 Hasan Can, düyek, serhane, mülazime, hane II (Bobowski ca. 1610:24) 360
3.10 Hasan Can, H III (Bobowski and Cantemir) 362
3.11 Acem, “Gül-i Rana” düyek (Bobowski ca. 1630:159, and Cantemir
Collection: no. 138), H I, M, H II 365
3.12 “Gül-i Rana,” H III 366
3.13 (Uzzal), devr-i kebir, Şah Murad (Bobowski ca. 1650:319–20) 367
3.14 Seyir of Uzzal in Şah Murad’s peşrev 370
3.15 Nühüft düyek, serhane/mülazime (Cantemir Collection: no. 230) 372
3.16 Neva, devr-i kebir, Ali Hoca, (Cantemir Collection: no. 231) 374
3.17 Irak, devr-i kebir, Ali Hoca (Cantemir Collection: no. 229) 375
3.18 a) Bestenigar, Numan Ağa, teslim; b) “Bülbül-i Irak,” (Cantemir
Collection: no. 35), serhane; c) “Irak devr-i kebir,” Ali Hoca, serhane 376
3.19 Melodic nucleus in serhane, cadential formula and M C (Irak, Ali Hoca) 377
Figures, Tables and Music Examples xxix

3.20 Muhayyer, düyek, Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi, “Margzar,” (Collection: no. 235).
Serhane and mülazime 382
3.21 Muhayyer, muhammes, Kantemiroğlu (Collection: no. 285). Serhane 383
3.22 Muhayyer muhammes, mülazime 384
3.23 Muhayyer seyir in serhane and mülazime 384
3.24 Muhayyer muhammes, H II and H III 385
a) Seyir of Hüseyni, after Yekta 1921:2997–8 385
b) Seyir of Buselik, after Yekta 1921:9001–2 385
c) Seyir of Muhayyer, after Yekta 1921:3003–4 385
3.25 Opening half-cycles of cycles 1, 2, 3 (II A) 387
3.26 Rhythmic pattern of H II B 387
3.27 MB and H II C 388
3.28 Cadences of H II B, C and MA 388
3.29 H II C and transposition in H III A 388
3.30 Buselik-Aşirani, düyek (Collection: no. 112) 390
3.31 Kürdi, usuleş berefşan, Tanburi Angeli (Collection: no. 304), serhane 391
3.32 Buselik-Aşirani, berefşan, Kantemiroğlu (Collection: no. 279), serhane 391
3.33 Buselik-Aşirani, mülazime 393
3.34 Hicaz Evç Zengüle 394
3.35 Buselik-Aşirani, H II 395
3.36 Buselik-Aşirani, H III 395
3.37 a) H II B; b) H III A; c) H III B 395
3.38 Buselik pentachord, Zengüle pentachord 396
3.39 Beyati, sofyan, Acemleriñ (Collection: no. 286) 402
3.40 Beyati, düyek, Acemleriñ, M (Collection: no. 100) 403
3.41 Turkish cadences in Beyati and Uşşak: a) Nefiri Behram, sakil (Cantemir
Collection: no. 159); b) Nefiri Behram, fahte (ibid.: no. 58); c) Solakzade, devr-i
kebir (Bobowski ca. 1650:106) 404
3.42 Beyati, semai-i, Ahmed Çelebi, H I, M (Cantemir Collection: no. 264) 405
3.43 Beyati, düyek, Acemleriñ, H II and H III (Collection: no. 100) 405
3.44 Beyati, devr-i revan, Acemleriñ (Collection: no. 102) 406
3.45 Arazbar, devr-i revan, Eyyubi Mehmed (Cantemir Collection: no. 283), H I 407
3.46 Evç, devr-i revan, Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi (Cantemir Collection: no. 328), H I and
MA and B 408
3.47 Neva, fer-i Muhammes, Acemleriñ (Cantemir Collection: no. 68) 409
3.48 Sivas halayı 410
3.49 Esfahan: “Pishdaramad-e qadim,” version of Montazam Hokama 411
3.50 a) Peşrev-i Hünkar, Irak, Emir-i Hac (Bobowski ca. 1650:134), H I, MA, B, C;
b) Same (Cantemir Collection: no. 299) 423
3.51 a) Kız düyeki, H I, MA interlinear 424
xxx Figures, Tables and Music Examples

3.52 “Gül-i Rana,” serhane, interlinear 425

3.53 “Gül-i Rana,” MB 426
3.54 “Gül-i Rana,” MD 427
3.55 “Bülbül-i Aşık,” (Bobowski ca. 1650:63) “Bülbül-i Aşık” (Cantemir
Collection: no. 71) 427
3.56 H I B 428
3.57 H III B, Bobowski and Cantemir 429
3.58 “Son Peşrev” (Bülbül-i Uşşak), Heper 1979:67 430
3.59 “Büyük Muhammes” (interlinear) 432
3.60 Serhane-mülazimes of Neva fahte 436
3.61 Buseliķ, Sakil-i Acemi (H I) 437
3.62 Acemi, Nazire-i sakil-i Acemi (serhane, mülazime) 438
3.63 Der makam-i Hüseyni usuleş düyek, “Gamzekar” (Collection: no. 327) 439
3.64 Der makam-i Hüseyni usuleş düyek, nazire-i “Gamzekar” (Collectìon
no. 314) 440
3.65 a) Cadential phrase of M of “Gamzekar”; b) H I A of nazire 441
3.66 Der makam-i Isfahan, usuleş remel (Collection no. 277) 441
3.67 Nazire-i Isfahan, usuleş remel, Kantemiroğlu (Collection no. 278) 442
3.68 Saba, hafif, Edirneli Ahmed Çelebi (Cantemir Collection no. 94 and Fonton
1751: no. 5) 446
3.69 Bestenigar, berefşan, Kamtemiroğlu (Collection: no. 281) “Air de Cantemiŗ,”
(Fonton 1751: no. 4; Hane I, A, B, C, D) 447
3.70 Usul and opening cycles peşrevs in berefşan; (pattern of berefşan) 449
a) Kürdi, Angeli (Cantemir Collection: no. 304) 449
b) Bestenigaŗ, Kantemiroğlu (Collection: no. 281) 449
3.71 Nühüft saz semai (Cantemir Collection: no. 266) 453
3.72 Semai, Beyati, Şah Murad, Fatih-i Baghdad (Bobowski ca. 1660:134) 454
3.73 Segah nefes: “Şol cennetin ırmakları” 454
3.74 Tuvan khomei tune sung by Genady Chash (1988) 454
3.75 Ambitus of Neva (after Yekta 1921) 458
3.76 Tonal centers of Neva 458
3.77 Neva taksim (opening), Necdet Yaşar (after J. Frigyesi) 458
3.78 Seyir of Neva (after Yekta 1921) 459
3.79 Neva (semai), H I (Cantemir Collection: no. 257) 459
3.80 Neva (semai), mülazime 459
3.81 a) (Neva) Semai-i Solakzade, H I (Bobowski ca. 1650:100); b) (Neva) Semai,
(Cantemir Collection: no. 257), H 1 460
3.82 (Neva), Semai-i Solakzade, mülazime 461
3.83 (Neva), semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:76), H I 461
3.84 (Neva) semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:76), MA, MB 462
Figures, Tables and Music Examples xxxi

3.85 (Neva) semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:77), H I, MA, MB 462

3.86 (Neva) semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:75), H I, M and H II 463
3.87 Mevlevi son yürük semai (after Cüneyt Kosal) 464
3.88 Kürdi, semai (Cantemir Collection: no. 265), H I, M A, B, C 466
3.89 Kürdi semai, H II 467
3.90 Kürdi, semai, H III 467
3.91 Semai usul patterns 468
3.92 Aksak semais from Cantemir (serhanes) 470
a) Acem; b) Hüseyni; c) Rast (Gazi Giray); d) Geveşt (Cantemir);
e) Buselik-Aşirani 470
3.93 Şirvani (halay), Gaziantep 472
3.94 Hüseyni, semai-i Baba Mest (Cantemir Collection: no. 268) 473
3.95 Uzzal, semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:323) 476
3.96 Son yürük semai (Heper 1979:115) 477
3.97 Pencgah, semai (Cantemir Collection: no. 243) 478
3.98 “Pençügah makamıda saz semaisi Kantimir oğlu’nun” (Yekta 1924: no. 171) 479
3.99 Melodic nucleus in Yekta’s version 480
3.100 Cantemir and Yekta versions, partial interlineal transcription 481
The Structuring of the Book

The first part of the book, “Musicians and Performance,” deals with changes in
patterns of professionalism, musical genre and musical instrumentation which
can be correlated with the changes in the Ottoman elite and hence with the
organization of music at the court. Part 1, Chapter 1, “Professionalism and the
Music of the Ottoman Court,” employs biographical dictionaries, literary refer-
ences, court documents and European travelogues to portray changes in the
role of professional musicianship at the Ottoman court between the sixteenth
and the mid-eighteenth centuries. The salient issues here are the emergence of
the distinctive pattern of musical professionalism among the Ottomans, which
differed substantially from patterns known from the Islamic Middle Ages, and
then the linking of these distinctive patterns with the repertoire and even the
personnel of court music in the Persianate world. This was followed, during
the course of the seventeenth century, by the decline of these patterns which
had featured unfree male musicians, as well as foreign musical specialists. The
seventeenth century witnessed the emergence of an important class of secular
singers among the mosque cantors, the entry of dervishes into courtly musical
life, the increasing prominence of free local composers and instrumentalists,
and of non-Muslims among them. This was the period which saw the develop-
ment of a distinctively Ottoman genre-system, repertoire and instrumentar-
ium. Chapter 3, “Instruments and Instrumentalists,” treats the organological
repercussions of these changes, by which several classic instruments of the
Islamic Middle Ages were replaced by Ottoman instruments, especially the
long-necked lute tanbur and the dervish reed-flute ney. Its final section, “Social
Contexts of the Turkish Lutes,” assesses the significance of the adoption by the
elite classes of certain lutes of popular origin, as well as the diffusion among
the people of originally urban lutes by professional or semi-professional musi-
cians. Chapter 4, “The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasıl and Ayin,”
describes the new Ottoman conception of musical cycles or suites, divided into
courtly and dervish genres, the former (the fasıl) subdivided into mixed vocal
and instrumental, and purely instrumental sub-genres, During the course of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the vocal suite was increasingly
based on the Ottoman forms beste and semai, while the instrumental suite
expanded with the development and sophistication of the newly codified
Ottoman instrumental improvisation, the taksim.
The second part of the book, on makam, treats the tonal basis of seven-
teenth/eighteenth-century Ottoman music, beginning with discrete pitches
and culminating in the mixing of modal entities in improvisation (taksim).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_002

2 The Structuring of the Book

Part 2, Chapter 5, “The General Scale of seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music,”

attempts to solve crucial problems in the interpretation of Ottoman pre-
sentations of pitch and scale, for which the most important sources are the
treatise and notations of Prince Cantemir (ca. 1700). Chapter 6, “Makam and
Terkib,” analyzes the conceptions of principal and subsidiary modal enti-
ties found in the treatises of Cantemir, Tanburi Harutin and Hızır Ağa. These
eighteenth-century treatises, and the contemporaneous repertoire collections
(mecmua) document the breakdown of this theoretical distinction and the
increase in the number of compositions based on subsidiary modal entities
(terkib or şube). Chapter 7, “Melodic Progression,” documents the increas-
ing sophistication in the description of this feature—which came later to be
called seyir—in the eighteenth-century treatises. The theoretical discussions
of the period emphasize a codified melodic progression and frequent modula-
tion both in composition and in the improvised genre taksim. Chapter 8, “The
Taksim and Modulation,” explicates the central position of this genre in the
treatise of Cantemir who viewed it as the most appropriate vehicle to demon-
strate the possibilities of modal relationships in both a theoretical and practi-
cal manner. It also suggests the importance of modulation and transposition
within the taksim to the adoption of the “open-ended” modal system charac-
teristic of Turkish and Arabian music in the Modern Era.
The third part of the book, “Peşrev and Semai,” provides an analysis of the
historical development of the compositional principles in the two instru-
mental genres which were extensively documented in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. A basis for a chronological classification for most of
the peşrevs in the notated collections is introduced, and this classification is
related to issues of mode, rhythm, and compositional style characterizing the
Early Modern era.
Part 3, Chapter 9, “The Peşrev/Pishrow,” traces the origin and structure of the
late medieval Iranian/Transoxanian genre pishrow, and its later adoption by
the Ottomans in both vocal and instrumental forms. Chapter 10, “The Ottoman
Peşrev,” employs the two major notated collections, that of Bobowski/Ali Ufkî
(ca. 1650) and Cantemir (ca. 1700), as well as later sources, to create a stylis-
tic periodization of the Ottoman peşrev, beginning with the earlier sixteenth
century, through the well-documented seventeenth century, and up until the
Modern Era. The basis for this periodization is discussed in detail, focusing on
the usage of usul (rhythmic cycle), tempo, melodic density, modulation, large
scale form, modal entities, and melodic progression found in the peşrevs in the
notated collections. Chapter 11, “Peşrevs and Analyses,” presents detailed anal-
yses of several peşrevs. Chapter 12, “The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev,”
analyses the four notations in the Cantemir Collection which constitute the
The Structuring of the Book 3

only known documents of Iranian instrumental music of the seventeenth cen-

tury. Chapter 13, “Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire,” treats sev-
eral related issues in the transmission of a composed instrumental repertoire
within an essentially oral musical culture. There is a close look at the principle
of the “parallel,” or “imitative” composition, the nazire, and its implications for
the identity of later compositions attributed to earlier composers. Differences
in the degree and rate of change in the transmission of peşrevs in the seven-
teenth century are contrasted with the eighteenth century, leading to conclu-
sions about the new developments within Ottoman music during the latter
period. Chapter 14, “The Instrumental Semai,” traces the development of the
shorter Ottoman instrumental genre, focusing on the bifurcation of an appar-
ently Turkic genre into vocal and instrumental forms, within both Sufi and
secular contexts, and the critical transformation of the genre at the turn of the
eighteenth century.
Chapter 15, the “Conclusion,” sums up the significance of the developments
within musical professionalism, composed and improvised genres, instrumen-
tation, mode, melodic progression, compositional form and style from the
early seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, demonstrating how
Ottoman Turkey developed a unique musical character. It attempts to assess
the importance of this new synthesis both for the conceptualization of music
and its cultural grounding within Ottoman society.
Introduction

1 Turkish Classical Music and Ottoman Music

Turkish art music (Türk sanat musikisi) or Turkish classical music (Türk klasik
müziği) survives today as one of the major art musics of the non-Western world.
It is also among the most structurally intact of all the art musics of the “core
Islamic world,” including Western Asia, North Africa, and southern Central
Asia, most of which use today, or have used the Arabic term “maqām” (Turkish
“makam,” Azerbaijani “mugham,” Uzbek/Tajik “maqom,” Uighur “muqam”) to
define their art musics since the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Turkish art
music has preserved a voluminous repertoire, multiple generic distinctions,
brilliant standards of performance, and high development of both composi-
tion and improvisation. The functioning repertoire was composed mainly
between the last third of the eighteenth and the first decades of the twentieth
centuries. Both vocal and instrumental music play a major role, and the musi-
cal lineages of the principal performers on instruments such as the lute tanbur
and the reed-flute ney can be traced back to the masters of the nineteenth and
even the later eighteenth centuries.1
The relative strength of this music seems paradoxical considering the many
serious blows to its integrity which have arisen in the last one hundred and
seventy years. As Nettl had noted in 1977:

1 The use of the name “Turkey” for the area of the Republic of Turkey created in 1923 is clear,
but in this book Turkey will also be employed in another sense for the pre-Republican
period. In the historical period covered by this book (ca. 1600–1750) it is justifiable to refer
to Ottoman music as “Turkish music,” not because its diffusion corresponded exactly to the
area of the modern Republic of Turkey, but because the patterns of Ottoman musical culture
became grounded only in those areas where the secular literary language of the Muslim pop-
ulation was Turkish. While Ottoman music had a strong impact elsewhere within the Empire
other cultural patterns relevant to music were dominant, especially among Arabic-speaking
Muslims. Among the non-Muslim groups, urban Greeks and Jews in Macedonia, Thrace,
and elsewhere and Greeks in the Danubian Principalities created their own versions of the
Ottoman musical culture. The spatial extent of Ottoman music may be thought of as con-
centric circles emanating from the capital; during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
the musical high culture was centered first of all in Istanbul, and secondarily in such major
cities as Edirne, Salonika, or Izmir. During the seventeenth century it also had centers in East
Anatolian cities such as Diyarbekir and Bitlis (where it evidently received input from the
Persian art music of Baghdad) as well as in Kaffa in the Crimea. During the eighteenth cen-
tury its secular component found a home in the cities of the Danubian Principalities, espe-
cially Bucharest and Iasi. The degree to which Ottoman music was practiced in this period in
other Balkan cities (i.e. in Bulgaria, Serbia, or Bosnia) is not well attested at present.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_003

Introduction 5

Turkish art music is very much alive today, and its practitioners are great
artists who are continuing a tradition in new and often hostile contexts.
The very fact that Turkish music is now different from what it was, struc-
turally and functionally, in the days of the Ottoman Empire, underscores
its viability (in Signell 1977:xiii).

The “hostile contexts” in which Turkish art music has survived began to appear
as early as 1826 when the Ottoman military music was proscribed along with
the obsolete Janissary Corps. During the reigns of Abdülmecid (1839–1861) and
Abdülaziz (1861–1876) Ottoman music was still patronized, but its integrity was
undermined from within as the focus of composition shifted from the cyclical
concert, termed fasıl, to the light classical song şarkı, and to the lighter genres
of Western music.2 Already in 1846 the great composer İsmail Dede Efendi
had become disillusioned with the musical life of the court, and embarked
on the pilgrimage to Mecca, where he died (Yekta 1925:166). At approximately
the same time his major student Hoca Zekai Dede left Istanbul for Cairo,
where he lived for twelve and a half years as the client of an Egyptian prince
(TMA I 1969:405; Yekta 1900:18). During Abdülhamid’s long reign (1876–1908)
Ottoman art music maintained little presence at the court and rested largely in
the hands of aristocratic amateurs and Mevlevi dervishes. The greatest musi-
cian of the early twentieth century, Tanburi Cemil Bey (d. 1916) was only asked
to perform at court once, and the performance ended when Abdülhamid fell
asleep (Cemil 1946:54).3 We may take the sleeping Ottoman sultan as an apt
image for the abdication of the traditional role of musical patron on the part
of the secular authorities in Turkey, a somnolence which became increasingly
sound from the second half of the nineteenth until well into the twentieth cen-
tury. After his deposition by the Young Turks in 1908 several private initiatives
in pedagogy and collection of repertoire were attempted, of which the most
important were those of Rauf Yekta Bey (TMA III 1976:344). However the politi-
cal conditions which ensued—the Balkan Wars, the First World War, and the
Allied occupation of Istanbul—were hardly propitious for musical initiatives.

2 Although biographies of two of the leading musical figures of the nineteenth century had
been written by Rauf Yekta early in this century (Yekta 1318/1900 and 1925), and an even fuller
biography had been written by the son of another (Cemil 1946), a monographic treatment
of the period has never been attempted. Many of the primary sources are referred to by Cem
Behar in several of his articles on specific aspects of music in nineteenth-century Turkey.
3 The author, who was Cemil Bey’s son, also writes; “The fact that Sultan Hamid did not like
Turkish music, or more accurately, did not understand any good music abetted Cemil’s desire
to keep away from the court” (Cemil 1946:54). See also Aksoy 1994:105.
6 Introduction

The establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 put Ottoman music, or

“Turkish classical music” as it was now called, into a new situation. The radio
replaced the court (which in any case had shown no interest in art music after
1876) as a new source of patronage. But the three-decade old debate among
the general Turkish intelligentsia about the respective merits of Turkish art
music, Western art music, and Turkish folk music now took a seriously politi-
cal turn. The closing of the dervish lodges, including those of the Mevlevi
order, by Kemal Atatürk in 1925 removed one of the most important patrons
of traditional art music. Although Atatürk himself had considerable affection
for secular Ottoman music and respect for its leading practitioners, includ-
ing the singer Münir Nurettin Selçuk and the synagogue cantor İsak Algazi,
both of whom had sung for him at the Yıldız Palace, his early death in 1938
allowed several members of his government to restrict the public performance
and teaching of Ottoman music.4 From that time until the 1970s, Turkish art
music underwent an era of not-so benign neglect on the part of the various
Republican Turkish governments. As noted by Signell: “Turkish art music …
is clearly the product of the Ottoman civilization and, as such, suffers from a
conscious opposition by those who reject that culture for ideological reasons”
(Signell 1977:1). This attitude on the part of the Turkish government only began
to change somewhat after 1976 and particularly after 1980.5
For the last thirty years or so classical Turkish musicians have predicted
that their music would not survive another ten years. Karl Signell heard such
remarks in 1970–1972, and I heard them twenty years later, in 1989. Nevertheless,
Turkish art music is still being performed and composed, and it manages
to attract a new generation of students and performers, several of very high
quality. During the past half-dozen years, the audience for Turkish art music
seems to be gradually widening, not only in Turkey, but also in Greece, where a
number of Greek musicians have become serious students of Ottoman music,
some of them traveling to study in Istanbul. To these Greek musicians, and
to their audiences, Ottoman music is their own pre-modern secular art music
tradition, and they are proud to point to the large number of Ottoman musi-
cians of Greek or Greek Orthodox origin who had a profound role in shaping

4 The status of Ottoman music under Atatürk and his successor Inönü are still sensitive topics
in Turkey and tend to be approached from a polemical point of view, when they are men-
tioned at all. The degree to which the restrictions on this music had begun during Atatürk’s
lifetime is assessed variously, but thus far no writer has attempted to view all the available
sources for the period.
5 The reasons for the alienation of much of the Turkish elite and several governments from
Turkish art music since the later nineteenth century have been analyzed in Behar 1987,
Aksoy 1989, and Feldman 1990–91.
Introduction 7

the music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (cf. Brandl 1989;
Feldman 1990–91; Behar 1994). The evident fact that a significant minority of
non-Turks and non-Muslims feel a certain affinity with Turkish/Ottoman art
music is apparently a source of legitimation and pride to some in contempo-
rary Turkey, while causing embarrassment to others.6
As Nettl had noted, the fact that there are performers and composers of
Ottoman music at all in the second half of the twentieth century suggests
that some form of cultural grounding has been at work to enable it to sur-
vive the many social and political changes which have overtaken the late
Ottoman Empire and its major successor state, the Turkish Republic. This
negative evaluation of Ottoman art music had begun in the later nineteenth
century and appears like a mirror image of the critiques leveled against other
maqām musics at the same time or even earlier, in Egypt or Syria, where the
“Turkishness” of the local art musics was viewed as a liability by the newly
Westernized intelligentsia (Aksoy 1989; Feldman 1990–91; Racy 1983a). In
searching for some explanation for the continued vitality of Ottoman music
in the present century, the second half of the previous century will not fur-
nish much positive evidence, but rather, many cogent reasons why the music
should have disappeared entirely.
Ottoman Turkish music has demonstrated “continued vitality” in that it has
produced acknowledged master performers in every generation until the pres-
ent. However, since the middle of the twentieth century there has been an evi-
dent dislocation in the area of composition; for the most part the core genres
of the classical fasıl are no longer composed, new composition being confined
to the light şarki on the one hand, and to the Mevlevi ayin on the other. That
is to say, the lightest and the most serious elements have survived, while what
might be called the secular core of the repertoire, while still performed, is no
longer composed. Thus a musical polarization has occurred, creating an oppo-
sition between the component of the repertoire which bordered on entertain-
ment music and that which was linked to mystical expression. The middle,
which had mediated between these two extremes, is in a much weaker state.
Between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries several social
groups became prominent in the creation and transmission of the music, but
master-student relations frequently crossed class boundaries. While several

6 I base these remarks on many observations in Istanbul between 1982 and 1989, and on conver-
sations in Athens in 1989, where I attended large public, concerts of Ottoman music directed
by the kemençe virtuoso İhsan Özgen. I also refer to the publications of and conversations
with the Israeli musicologist Edwin Seroussi, who has accomplished major work in retrieving
the Ottoman Jewish musical heritage in Turkey and Greece (cf. Seroussi 1989, 1990, 1991).
8 Introduction

social groups, e.g. Mevlevi dervishes, Jewish synagogue cantors (hazzanim),

Greek church cantors (psaltes), and others tended to have distinct lines of
musical transmission, none of them was entirely closed to outsiders.7 Until the
middle of the twentieth century a musician would not be considered a master
unless he had studied with one or more acknowledged masters. While he might
be a brilliant self-taught performer, he could not be in control of the details
of a large repertoire without expert instruction. The very slow acceptance of
any form of musical notation during the nineteenth century, documented by
Behar (1993), seems to have been largely due to the perception of the necessity
for lengthy rote-learning in order to assimilate both musical detail and style.
However, by the middle of the twentieth century the acceptance of both musi-
cal notation and a consistent form of theory for pedagogical purposes led to
the existence of two forms of legitimation, one through conservatory instruc-
tion and the other through master-pupil training. These might be combined in
a single individual, but this was often not the case. Thus, the past forty years
have seen significant changes in musical training and composition, which have
worked against important areas of both musical vitality and continuity. The
situation is by no means resolved, and changes in both patterns are quite pos-
sible within the coming decades.

…
The present study aims in part to discover what the musical and cultural
sources of the cultural grounding were that have enabled Turkish art music, the
direct descendant of Ottoman music, to survive through the twentieth century,
and apparently on into the twenty-first. It will explore musical genre and the
transformation of musical form, social function, and professionalism, as well
as the conceptualization of music in words to determine the changing atti-
tudes toward this cultural tradition during the seventeenth and the first half
of the eighteenth centuries. It was during this period that the musical forms,
practices, theoretical conceptualizations, and social grounding of Ottoman
music seem to have crystallized, after which they retained much of their shape
until the beginning of the twentieth century. While the close analysis of the
book will take as its terminal point the middle of the eighteenth century, I will
contend that only by understanding what had occurred roughly between 1600
and 1750 can the continued vitality of Ottoman music be explained. Although
many of the social and cultural conditions which had been beneficial to the
creation of this music began to change drastically after the middle of the

7 On the eighteenth-century Greek cantors, see Bardakçi 1993:15.

Introduction 9

nineteenth century, evidently there were social, philosophical, and aesthetic

factors which allowed crucial elements of the music to be perpetuated. It is
not my intention here to trace how the influence of all these factors may have
continued, albeit somewhat transformed, until the fall of the Empire, or how
some of them had become embedded in the worldview of significant elements
of the elite of Republican Turkey. However, it would appear that the revival of
musical theory beginning with Rauf Yekta at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, which continued in rather different forms under the leadership of Suphi
Ezgi and Sadettin Arel should be seen as part of a centuries-old process by
which art music was legitimized within Turkish culture.

2 Ethnomusicology and History in Ottoman Turkey

At the end of the twentieth century the cities of Western Asia and North Africa
are still the home to many musical styles which may be described either as “art”
musics or as urban musics which share or have shared certain structural and
generic features with art musics of the recent past (cf. Powers 1979). There has
not yet been an accepted methodology to study the musics of these complex
societies in their diachronic development. Several studies of urban musics in
the Middle East have concentrated on the “horizontal” interaction of genres
(Racy 1987, 1981a, 1981b, 1983, 1991; Danielson 1991), or on how the “tradition”
defines itself in relation to Western music and to its own past (el-Shawan 1979,
1984; Schuyler 1991). Other studies seek to isolate the practice of a single
classical or religious genre (Guettat 1980, Nelson 1985, Jones 1977), while yet
others analyze the musical expression of structural principles (Signell 1977;
Touma 1968, 1971; Elsner 1973; Tsuge 1970, Farhat 1965; During 1985, 1987, 1988;
Nettl 1973, 1974).
However, most of the genres studied above are wholly or partly descendants
of earlier genres which had been practiced in the same cities for centuries,
although usually for different social patrons. Thus far very few studies have
dealt with the nineteenth-century musical culture from a historical perspec-
tive, linking relevant historical evidence with present-day practice in a man-
ner comparable to the studies of style and musical lineage done in India
(Neuman 1980; Silver 1976; Higgins 1976; Miner 1993). Notable exceptions are
Racy 1981a and Behar 1993. Instead, there have been several essentially musi-
cological studies of the treatises of the Muslim Middle Ages (Wright 1978;
Sawa 1989). Significant attempts at linking up historical evidence and recent
practice have been made by Oransay (1966) for Turkey and more recently by
Jung (1987, 1989) for Transoxiana.
10 Introduction

In 1987 Timothy Rice, following the anthropological work of Clifford Geertz,

proposed an alternate model for ethnomusicology which would allow more
scope for the historical construction, social maintenance and the individual
creation and experience of music which might “move ethnomusicology closer
to the humanities and historical musicology” (Rice 1987:476), More recently
early nineteenth-century European notations have been employed in the
reconstruction of regional styles of Indonesian gamelan repertoires (Brinner
1993). In the case of the Ottoman courtly repertoire the possibility of connect-
ing musical documents and musical practice is quite strong, since the practices
of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries are directly antecedent to a modern
performed repertoire. In essence, this project is at the center of the present
study of a specific early Ottoman repertoire, for the records of this repertoire
and the theory surrounding it can become a window through which to view
much of the Ottoman musical culture created between roughly 1550 and 1750.
While many (but not all) the sources for Ottoman music of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries have been known for many decades, it is only very
recently that any of them have been used for either musicological or ethnomu-
sicological purposes, particularly by Oransay, Sanal (1961) and Wright. Harold
Powers has succinctly outlined part of the problem:

There is of course a considerable gap between the methods of philol-

ogy and sociology … and both are often taken as homophormous with
some sort of cultural chasm between the native Great Tradition and the
Westernized modern world. In many fields of Asian studies, however,
these gaps, lags and chasms are gradually being bridged. … In the musi-
cology of Asian high cultures such bridges are harder to build. What the
music historian takes for granted as the ultimate document in his par-
ticular field—the notated Monument of Art Music—hardly exists. … All
that can be directly known of the musics of Asian high cultures are the
current stages of continuing transmissions that are, with a few curious
and isolated exceptions, without notated remains of their previous stages
(Powers 1980b:181).

In the case of Turkish music, these “curious and isolated exceptions” form a
considerable corpus documenting at least one major musical genre (and with
it the system of modes and rhythmic cycles) over a period of almost four cen-
turies. The sources for Ottoman Turkish art music in the seventeenth and
the first half of the eighteenth century are unique among West Asian musics
because they include extensive notations in addition to treatises, historical,
biographical, literary, and organological documents. The Turkish treatises
Introduction 11

also have a special ethnomusicological value because they are based on con-
temporaneous practice more than on earlier theory and because they reflect
a continuous musical development which can be linked up with the music
known from modern times. The fact that the notations are predominantly of
instrumental music, especially the peşrev genre, dictated the focus of the book
on the instrumental repertoire. The comparison of the notations and treatises
permits a broad analysis of the relationship of mode, modulation, rhythm, and
compositional form over a period of over two centuries, almost (but not quite)
up to the repertoire of the late eighteenth century, which is the beginning of
the documented continuous tradition of modern Turkish music. As sources for
musicological analysis, these notations together with several musical treatises
provide ample material of the sort which is largely absent for the musics of the
other branches of the maqām art music tradition during the Early Modern era
(ca. 1580–1780).8
Before setting out the evidence and arguments concerning musical profes-
sionalism, genres, theory, and structures it may be helpful to briefly outline
the kinds of issues which will be dealt with in greater detail in the follow-
ing chapters.
In addition to the musical notations various native and foreign written
sources provide some information on the development of musical genres,
patronage, and the relationships of social classes and music making. These
social conditions were unique to the Ottoman state and society after the
middle of the sixteenth century; they do not closely resemble earlier stages of
Ottoman or pre-Ottoman Anatolian Turkish society or the contemporaneous
Muslim societies elsewhere. The later sixteenth and early seventeenth centu-
ries appear to have been a time of musical change in the musical practice and
definitions of genres. They marked the definitive transition from the classi-
cal Ottoman to the post-classical/early modern pattern in the social organi-
zation of music. After the middle of the seventeenth century, when musical

8 Despite my use of terms like “maqām” and Great Tradition I am not proposing that the Early
Modern Ottoman evidence be used as a model for other Middle Eastern art traditions. The
art music of Pre-Ottoman Muslim Anatolia seems to have been largely part of a “Persianate”
world. However the relationship of art music to Ottoman society and culture was never iden-
tical to such countries as Iran, Transoxiana, or Egypt. Nevertheless, although the social func-
tion and “meaning” of music may have been quite different in Turkey than elsewhere, the
central position of Istanbul as the capital of the largest Muslim empire of modern times
meant that the musical developments in Istanbul were “exported” throughout the empire,
and also that the capital was to a more limited degree a “consumer” for musical develop-
ments in the peripheral centers and in certain periods also for the musics of the older centers
of the maqām outside of the Empire. On the latter issue see Feldman 2020.
12 Introduction

documents become more numerous, Ottoman genres and forms become rela-
tively fixed and mutually exclusive.
In Islamic religious thought there had long been a firm distinction between
mūsīqā (T. musiki), i.e., the musical art, on the one hand, and the chanting of
the Qurʾān, on the other. The first might, and usually did, involve instruments,
fixed rhythmic cycles and compositions, while the second must be purely vocal
and could not include any of the above features (Nelson 1985; al Faruqi 1985).
On a deeper level was the underlying belief that the Qurʾānic chant emerged
essentially from the sacred text, although it might appear to have a tonal and
temporal structure. References to methods of chanting the Qurʾān in the early
centuries of Islam are difficult to interpret, but it seems clear that the ʿulamāʾ
rarely appear as secular singers, although there are occasional references to
secular singers chanting the Qurʾān in exceptional situations.
With Prince Cantemir’s treatise, written around the beginning of the eigh-
teenth century, the term “musiki” covers all musical genres which fit into the
makam system; here it is not religious chant but rural folkmusic which is
excluded from usul-i musiki (“the rules of music”), whether musical instruments
are involved or not. All Turkish musical treatises after Cantemir, whether writ-
ten by Muslims or non-Muslims, have a similarly broad conception of musiki.
This Ottoman conception viewed music as a continuum between religious and
secular forms. Perhaps the clearest expression of this reality is furnished by the
thoroughly non-theoretical writing of the great traveler Evliya Çelebi. Evliya
was a professional singer at the court of Murad IV who had begun his career
as a Qurʾānic chanter. Throughout the ten volumes of the “Book of Travels” he
is fond of listing the musical genres which all the musicians whom he knew
had performed. Less fastidious than the aristocratic Cantemir, he includes
everything from the Qurʾān to Sufi hymns of various types, the courtly fasıl,
improvised taksim singing and several types of folksong (e.g. türkü, varsaği).
The only treatise to discuss musical genres was Cantemir’s, but this discussion
was confined to the fasıl genres. However, it is clear from the surviving reper-
toire that by the later seventeenth century (if not earlier) this musical con-
tinuum allowed for, and even encouraged clear generic distinctions, by which
the makam music was divided into four main categories: court music ( fasıl),
military/ceremonial music (mehter), Sufi music (ayin, ilahi, tevşih, durak, naat)
and mosque music (tecvit, ezan). Nevertheless, all of these were considered to
be within the rules of musiki. (Cantemir’s “usul-i musiki”).
By the nineteenth century the learning of the Qurʾānic chant was consid-
ered part of the primary musical education for secular singers, while the higher
level of müezzins were expected to learn the courtly repertoire and usually an
instrument as well. Thus, it would seem that in Turkey the concept of musiki
Introduction 13

has gradually extended to all domains of music, including the Qurʾānic chant.
Turkish müezzins today, unlike their counterparts in Egypt, for example, do not
usually argue that the Qurʾānic chant is something essentially different from
other musical phenomena.
It appears that the social and cultural underpinnings of the developments
which led to this uniquely Ottoman conceptualization of music had their
beginnings when the modern generic and professional systems came into exis-
tence, i.e. not later than the end of the sixteenth century. After this starting
point, development appears to have been incremental until the early eigh-
teenth century when the musical surface began to undergo a radical transfor-
mation, leading, by the last decades of the century, to the system and style of
Modern Turkish music.
The beginning of the process of change in the concept of music was paral-
leled by the transformations which overtook Ottoman society as a whole at
this time. A new aristocracy came into being who were to become the con-
noisseurs, patrons and amateur practitioners who supported much of the new
art music. The barriers between the secular culture of the court and the aris-
tocratic (vizier and pasha) households and the religious culture of the ʿulamāʾ,
the religious learned classes, broke down. By the middle of the seventeenth
century the higher ʿulamāʾ became a major support for secular art music as
they made their way into the ranks of the new grandee class. This social devel-
opment was the cause of great unrest among the masses supported by the
lower clergy (see Zilfi 1986, 1988), but it proved to be irreversible. The virtual
erasure of the distinction between the secular and religious musical special-
ist had enormous implications not only for the social organization of musical
performance but for the perception of the nature and significance of music. In
addition, there is good reason to believe that the conception of genre, which
developed in the later seventeenth century and which remained in place
thereafter for over three centuries, enshrined the secularization of the central
genre of religious music, the Qurʾānic chant, in the form of the taksim impro-
visation. At the same time, the Sufi musicians of both the Mevlevi and the
Halveti orders achieved unprecedented prominence at the court. The mutual
influence of Sufi and courtly musics reached its apogee during the reign of
Selim III (1789–1808).
The partial secularization of Ottoman society in the later seventeenth and
eighteenth century explains the significant entry of non-Muslim musicians
of Greek, Jewish, Armenian, and Romanian origin into secular court music.
While non-Muslims often occupied prominent positions in Muslim art musics
(in Morocco, Tunisia, Bukhara, etc.), the Ottoman situation was considerably
different. Outside of the culturally Turkish part of the Ottoman Empire, the
14 Introduction

non-Muslim (usually Jewish) musicians formed rather closed guilds of pro-

fessionals, whereas in Turkey several groups of non-Muslims participated
along with influential elements in Muslim society, often as both students
and teachers.
The principal areas of musical change consisted of:
1. musical genre,
2. cyclical performance,
3. primary and secondary or compound modal entities (makam/terkib),
4. codified melodic progression (seyir), modulation and the improvised
taksîm,
5. rhythmic cycle (usul), tempo, melodic density,
6. compositional style, and
7. instrumentation.
A most important result of these eighteenth-century changes was the creation
of an open modal system in which the hierarchical relationship between the
modal entities became loosened, as had occurred de facto by the end of the
eighteenth century.
While the novel social organization of music alone may not account for
all of these musical developments, it seems likely that the reorganization of
musical professionalism created new social alignments in the musical sphere
and facilitated experimentation in a way that the older system had not. During
the sixteenth century the makam art music seems to have been supported
mainly in the imperial court, and most musicians were either palace servants
or Iranian free musicians. Musical genres and instrumentation were identical
to those of Safavid Iran. All of these patterns changed between the last third
of the sixteenth and the second half of the seventeenth century. By this time
the Ottomans themselves seem to have become conscious of the difference
between their musical system and that of Iran, and no longer looked toward
foreign (mainly Iranian) specialists to provide models.
Many of the structural and stylistic changes which had occurred between
1600 and 1750 are documented in the notations and treatises which form the
material for the present study. Although there is a dearth of notated documents
dating from the second half of the eighteenth century, and although certain cru-
cial documents of the first half of the eighteenth century are presently unavail-
able to scholarship, the final results of these developments of the eighteenth
century can be judged by assessing the Turkish repertoire and performance
practice of the Modern Era. This is well known thanks to a continuous series of
notations starting in the early nineteenth century (i.e., the Hamparsum note-
books 1813–1815) which record repertoire of several key instrumental musi-
cians of the end of the previous century, a major treatise written in 1795, the
Introduction 15

first notation of a Mevlevi ayin from the same date, and a continuous lineage
of performers spanning the period from the reign of Selim III (1789–1808)
until the present day. Several important structural changes were occurring
during the course of the seventeenth century, but it was the eighteenth cen-
tury which constituted the period of the greatest change in Ottoman music.
While the style of the late eighteenth century presents some characteristics
which cannot be understood as a simple evolution from the Early Modern to
the Modern era, in general, Turkish music seems to have moved along a rather
straight path from the generation of Cantemir until the reign of Selim some-
what less than a century later. However, the speed with which it accomplished
several crucial structural and stylistic changes during the eighteenth century
seems to have been without precedent or parallel either in the seventeenth or
in the nineteenth century. Compared to the eighteenth century, the preced-
ing and following centuries were periods of stability and consolidation. Thus,
Blacking’s term “goal-oriented change” (1977:15) seems eminently appropriate
for Ottoman music of the eighteenth century, for its “goal,” apparently reached
in the first half of the nineteenth century, was not a radical break from, but in
many ways, a culmination of the musical developments of the century which
had preceded it.
The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750

The fifteenth century had witnessed outstanding musical and musicological

creativity throughout the Persianate world, from Samarkand, to Tabriz and to
Konya and even further west in Anatolia. The outstanding figure of the first
half of the century was the illustrious musician and musicologist Abdülkadir
Meraği (ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī), who died in 1435. Even following the break-up
of the Anatolian Seljuk state, the smaller “beylik” principalities—such as
Karaman, Germiyan, and several others—maintained a high musical level.
One important factor was undoubtably the continuity of the prestigious
Mevlevi dervish order, founded by Mevlana Rumi’s son Sultan Veled (d. 1292).
It maintained its central organization in Konya (under Karmanid rule) but
with many important Anatolian centers such as Kütahya and Karahisar. The
poem by Ayni (quoted in Part 1: chapter 1) testifies to the sophisticated musical
life of Konya in this period. The Persian-language Kitabül Edvar by Kırşehiri
Yusuf in 1411 was a major Mevlevi contribution to musicological writing. Other
major theoretical works (in both Turkish and Persian) were Bedr-i Dilşad’s
Murad-name (1427), Ladiki Mehmed’s Zeynü’l Elhan (1494), Hoca Abdülaziz’s
Nekavetü’l Edvar (n.d.). The last in this series of works was Seydi’s El Matla fi
Beyani’l Edvar ve’l Makamat from 1504.
Compared to the strong development of musical writing in fifteenth-century
Turkey (cf. Akdoğu 1989:14–20), the sixteenth century has left much less evi-
dence of its musical life and thought. “With the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury, theoreticians become rare to the point of disappearing altogether, while
practitioners dominate the epoch” (Popescu-Judetz 1973:62). The decline in
treatise-writing was probably caused primarily by the general decline in all the
sciences in most of the Islamic world during the sixteenth century, augmented
in Turkey by a stretch of over half a century during which the rulers (Selim I,
1512–1520, Süleyman, 1520–1566) had little interest in music.1 However, despite
the more favorable attitude of several succeeding sultans, Selim II (1566–1574),
Murad III (1574–1595), Ahmed I (1590–1617) and Murad IV (1612–1640), the hia-
tus in treatise writing continued.2

1 The oft-repeated tale of Süleyman’s destruction of musical instruments at his court is given
in Aksoy 1994:27–8.
2 After the almost total gap in the sixteenth century only very minor and unoriginal treatise
writing was attempted during the seventeenth century, e.g, the work of Ahizade cited in
Oransay (1966:83). The most significant work was the Risale-i Edvar of the Mevlevi sheikh
Çengi Yusuf Dede, ca. 1650. The somewhat more elaborate risale of Müneccimbaşi (1631–1702)
belongs to the musical “revival” of the second half of the seventeenth century.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_004

The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750 17

Cantemir considered that the “Art of Musick” (i.e. composition and perfor-
mance) was at a low ebb until it was “revived” during the reign of Mehmed IV
(1642–1693) (Cantemir 1734:151). This claim is somewhat exaggerated, as the
memory of significant musical activity in the first half of the seventeenth
century was recorded by Cantemir’s contemporary Esʿad Efendi (1685–1753)
and others. However, the names of very few Turkish musicians and com-
posers have been preserved from the sixteenth century. The major figure of
sixteenth-century Ottoman music was not himself an Ottoman, but rather the
Tatar Khan of the Crimea, Gazi Giray (1554–1607), to whom a significant instru-
mental repertoire is ascribed in later Turkish notated collections. While the
majority of these pieces are almost certainly misattributions, it appears that
his reputation as a composer was essentially historical (Feldman 1990–91:95).
The fact that the best-remembered composer of instrumental music was a
foreigner highlights the weakness of the indigenous development of music in
sixteenth-century Turkey.
As will be described in detail in the following chapter, the sixteenth-century
Ottomans used the opportunities provided by the wars with Iran to enlist
well-known Persian musicians into the Ottoman Imperial orchestra.
The other major factor in Ottoman music was the music of the Mevlevi der-
vishes, whose three anonymous compositions known as the beste-i kadimler
(“ancient compositions”) probably date from the sixteenth century (Heper
1979:534; Feldman 2022). However, no Mevlevi theoretical writing survives
from this period. The Konya-trained Çengi Yusuf Dede (d. 1669) later became
a neyzen in the Beşiktaş Mevlevihane in Istanbul, and then its sheikh. In the
1630s he appears as court musician for Sultan Murad IV (Feldman 2022:150).
In 1650 he wrote a short Turkish-language Risale-i Edvar that summarizes the
makams and terkib modal entities in use in his time—which would have been
contemporary with the period of Ali Ufki Bey/Bobowski. It was recently pub-
lished by Recep Uslu (2015). Nevertheless, the overall dearth of musical writing
continued through most of the seventeenth century.
However, in the first half of the century, an historical accident resulted in the
entry of a multitalented and musically educated European into the Ottoman
Palace Service, first as a slave-musician (from 1633 to 1651–1657) (Behar 1991:17),
then as an interpreter. The converted Pole, Wojciech Bobowski (1610–1675),
who took the Turkish name Ali Ufki Bey, recorded a significant sample of the
courtly and other Ottoman musical repertoires in Western staff notation. His
Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz (“Collection of Instrumental and Vocal Works”) by was cre-
ated before the cultural developments of the later seventeenth century, and
evidently was removed from Turkey so that it could not play any part in later
musical thinking there. While Bobowski wrote several other works, including
18 The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750

musical settings for the Biblical Psalms (Behar 1990) and a brief description of
the Palace and its musical life, much of his significance rests on this “Mecmua.”3
The “Mecmua” is a collection, without a treatise. It contains over 300 pages
of Western staff notation written right to left and the texts of the vocal pieces.
There are 195 instrumental pieces, of which 145 are peşrevs and 40 are semais.
Bobowski evidently wrote this work for himself alone, as he says at the begin-
ning of the book:

This book is like my son, the product of my life,

I fear that when I die it will fall into the hands of the ignorant,
I beg of you, oh Lord, may it fall into the hands of friends,
And may they remember its author kindly.

The great value of Bobowski’s collection lies in its inclusion of a broad rep-
ertoire, including vocal fasıl and Sufi compositions, constituting the only
seventeenth-century documents for the beste, vocal semai and ilahı (dervish
hymn), as well as specimens of several popular genres.4
The “Mecmua” is located in the British Museum. It has a cover page, not
written by the author, in which the original is dated 1650. The “Mecmua” itself
appears to reflect the years when its author was actually working as a musi-
cian, i.e., the repertoire of the 1630s to 1650s.5 As I had noted at length in the

3 For descriptions see Popescu-Judetz 1973; Elçin 1976; Behar 1990; and Wright 1988.
4 On the mehterhane cf. Sanal 1961 and Feldman 1990; on one popular genre cf. Sanal 1974, and
Sanlıkol, 2011.
5 The datable musicians represented in the “Mecmua” lived in the later sixteenth and míd-
seventeenth centuries, the most important figure being Solakzade who died in 1658. While
many other musicians’ names are otherwise unknown, those who were known to be active
in the last third of the seventeenth century are not represented. For example, Koca Tanburi
Angeli (“Old Tanburi Angeli”), Cantemir’s teacher who was mentioned by Evliya Çelebi
(d. 1682) does not appear in the “Mecmua,” nor do other famous musicians of the genera-
tion preceding Cantemir, e.g. Neyzen Ali Hoca, Çelebiko, or Kemani Ahmed. While the latter
is spoken of by both Cantemir and Evliya, the keman player appearing in the “Mecmua” is
not Ahmed but rather Kemani Mustafa. According to Cevri (d. 1654) Mustafa had been the
teacher of his contemporary Kemani Hüseyín, and thus apparently a musician of the early
years of the seventeenth century (Giiltaş 1982–34). Thus, although Bobowski was alive until
1675, the repertoire in his “Mecmua” represents the period of his life when he was an active
musician, i.e. 1633–1657.
Elçin’s note (1976:xix) of an apparently interpolated peşrev by a certain “Kantemir Han” in
the “Mecmua,” whom he identifies with Cantemir, is doubted by Wright (1988:3). The identi-
fication is impossible as Han/Khan in the seventeenth century was a title of the ruler of the
Crimea or of the Ottoman sultan; it could not be borne by a Moldavian voyvod. Cantemir
never used this title and was known as a beyzade, and he referred to himself as Kantemiroğlu
(i.e. a son of the Kantemir lineage). According to Cantemir’s own statement, his family
The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750 19

Preface to the New Edition, yet another manuscript by Bobowski exists in the
the Bibliothèque Nationale (Turc 292). Thanks to the research of both Cem
Behar and Judith Haug, it is possible to integrate this crucial material. But at
the time when I wrote Music of the Ottoman Court, I had access only to the
London manuscript. Fortunately, the instrumental repertoire—which was the
topic of my research—is also quite rich there as well.
While the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” of Bobowski includes notation, as a rule the
term mecmua refers to a volume containing only the texts of the vocal reper-
toire. Many of these survive from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
and despite their obvious limitations, they do furnish important informa-
tion on the nature of the repertoire, the usage of modes and rhythmic cycles,
and the attribution of specific items to various composers. These collections
appear to have been part of a tradition held in common in Transoxiana and
Kashmir, where they were termed bayaz (bayāḍ). However, the Eastern bayaz
did not supply the names of composers or detailed information on the musical
composition. Important mecmua collections were written by major compos-
ers such as Hafız Post (d. 1694) and Ebu-Bekir Ağa (d. 1759). Although most
are anonymous, they are often dated or otherwise datable. The majority of
mecmuas contain lyrics for the fasil genres, but several have ilahi poems for
the zikr with comparable information about the musical compositions (cf.
Akdoğu 1982; Wright 1992b).
A major source for biographical information about the musicians of the sev-
enteenth century are the ten volumes of the “Seyahatname” (“Book of Travels”)
of Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682). Evliya, a student of the dervish musician Ömer
Gülşeni, had been a court singer in his youth for Sultan Murad IV (d. 1640).
The first volume of his book, devoted to Istanbul, has a long section on con-
temporary musicians of various classes, and in his other volumes he frequently
comments about the Turkish and foreign music which he had heard while trav-
eling. The value of this work for the history of Turkish music has long been rec-
ognized, and it has been studied by both foreign musicologists such as Henry
Farmer and Turkish musicologists such as Rauf Yekta, Suphi Ezgi, Haydar
Sanal, and Yılmaz Öztuna.6

remained in contact with the Muslim Tatar branch of their old clan in the Crimea, who were
Chingisids; i.e, there were other Kantemirs still in the Crimea.
6 The late nineteenth-century Ottoman edition of the “Seyahatname” was considerably mod-
ernized and altered. In recent years early manuscripts have been used to extract information
of specific topics (Ozergin 1972; Dankoff 1991) or geographical regions (van Bruínessen &
Boeschoten 1988; Dankoff 1990). Several volumes which contain information on the musical
life of Ottoman provinces outside of the capital and Anatolia have not yet been edited.
20 The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750

Facts pertaining to musicians are scattered among the financial documents

preserved in the palace. Ottoman court records relevant to the payment of
both palace and mehter musicians have survived from the early sixteenth cen-
tury and have been used on occasion by Turkish historians and musicologists
(Uzunçarşili 1977; Meriç 1952; Kam 1933).7
The most important musicological materials created in the eighteenth cen-
tury, and arguably in the entire Ottoman period, are contained in The Collection
of Notations and musical treatise of the Moldavian voyvoda Prince Demetrius
Cantemir (1673–1723), known in Turkish as Kantemiroğlu.8
The autograph manuscript of Cantemir’s “Kitabu İlmu’l Musiki ala Vechi’l-
Hurufat” (Kitāb-ı ʿilm-i musīkī ʿalā vech ül ḥurūfāt) and his Collection, bound
in one volume is undated but it is generally assumed that the work was writ-
ten toward the beginning of the eighteenth century.9 It was apparently writ-
ten at the request of two high bureaucrats of the Treasury, Daul İsmail Efendi
and Latif Çelebi, who were both Cantemir’s students (Cantemir 1734:151). The
Collection contains only instrumental works, in total 352 items, of which 315
are peşrevs and 37 semais. Almost all of these items were written in Cantemir’s
hand, while a few were added later using the identical notational system, we
may assume by one of his students. One hundred of the pieces in Cantemir’s
Collection are also found in Bobowski’s “Mecmua,” but these reached Cantemir
through an oral transmission as he was certainly unaware of Bobowski’s manu-
script (Wright 1988:10). The differences between nominally identical items in
both collections are discussed in Part 3 below and can be analyzed in the notes
to Wright’s edition of Cantemir.
Cantemir’s Collection of Notations includes only instrumental genres. While
Bobowski, like Cantemir was an instrumentalist (a santur player) he notated
the range of courtly vocal genres as well as other vocal music. He was also a
Celveti dervish, so he came to know the ilahis of the Sufis (Oransay). Cantemir,

7 Unfortunately, most of this material has not been catalogued, and so cannot be used effi-
ciently, and thus far the seventeenth century has not been well-represented in identified
musical documents. Nevertheless, they have sometimes provided concrete information on
the status of particular instruments and musicians.
8 Cantemir’s musical works have been described by Popescu-Judetz (1981) and Wright (1992).
The treatise has been translated into Romanian (Popescu-Judetz 1973), modern Turkish
(1976) and English (Feldman, unpublished). Partial transcriptions of the collection have
appeared in Sanal 1961, Popescu-Judetz 1973 and Tura 1976. The complete transcription was
published by Wright (1992a).
9 In the author’s “History of the Growth and Decline of the Ottoman Empire” (1714; English edition
London 1734), he stated that the book was dedicated to “the present Emperor Ahmed [III]”
(ruled 1703–1730). As Cantemir left Turkey in 1710, the book evidently was written between
1700 and 1710.
The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750 21

on the other hand was an aristocratic amateur and a composer of instrumental

music. He wrote of the difficulty of learning the vocal beste except from vocal-
ists who were familiar with the item (Popescu-Judetz 1981:103). His teachers
were only instrumentalists, and he would not have been obliged to accompany
entire fasıl performances, including their vocal components.
Cantemir appears to have had two major concerns when writing his trea-
tise and Collection. One was the accurate representation of the principles of
melodic movement which structured the makam system of his day, and the
way in which makams related to one another in musical practice. The title
of Cantemir’s treatise, “Kitabu İlmu’l Musiki Ala Vechi’l-Hurufat” (“The Book
of the Science of Music According to the Alphabetic Notation”), introduces
the other major emphasis of his thinking, the “affirmation of the theoretical
importance of musical notation” and the “propagation of music as materi-
als” (Popescu-Judetz 1981:107). The new importance of musical notation was
echoed in the contemporaneous creation of a notation and collection by
Osman Dede and a generation later by the Armenian musician Harutin.
Apart from the second chapter, which is devoted to the principles of nota-
tion, his third, fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters, the bulk of the treatise, is con-
cerned exclusively with the modal system described as scales and melodic
progressions. In the seventh chapter he expands upon the improvised taksim
genre which he viewed as the most important vehicle for both the practical
and theoretical exposition of the entire modal system. Cantemir never men-
tions the older Arabic and Persian musical terms (buʿd, irkhāʾ, jamʿ, jins, etc.),
although the books of the Systematists were available to him in Istanbul, and
they are mentioned later in the century by Abdülbaki Nasir Dede. Cantemir’s
theory does not show any awareness of the Turkish theorists of the fifteenth
century. His eighth chapter “The Theory of Music According to the Ancient
System,” which contains exclusively basic melodic progressions in prose form,
must be based on minor treatises of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries,
similar to that of Ahizade (ca. 1650) (Oransay 1966:83). Commenting on the
situation of his own time he wrote:

Be aware of the fact that until this time those who created explanations
of the makams and theories of music dealt only with the practice: they
composed nothing about the laws and regulations of the science. They
did not really show what a makam comes from. This may be because
they did not know, or perhaps they knew but they neglected science and
were satisfied with practice. Although I do not know why the science of
music has remained in this state until now, I do know that its practice is
vulgar and hackneyed, and its theory is very much ignored and neglected
(Cantemir ca. 1700:II:17).
22 The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750

The question of Cantemir’s influence upon later Turkish theorists has been
debated. In the following generation only the Mevlevi dervish Mustafa Kevseri
(d. 1770?) seems to have learned his notational system, and neither his notes
nor his theory were referred to by the later eighteenth-century theorists. The
Frenchman Charles Fonton was unable to locate a copy of Cantemir’s trea-
tise in 1750. Cantemir’s fame as a musicologist seems to have been better
established among European visitors such as Fonton or Toderini, and among
the local Greeks than among the Turks. During the nineteenth century two
copies of Cantemir’s treatise were made without the notated collection, but
with additional comments about transposition, which would later be taken
over by Haşim Bey (1864), who plagiarized much of the treatise. Greek writ-
ings on Ottoman music in the nineteenth century show a strong influence of
Cantemir’s work, which was translated into Greek in 1881 (by Kiltsanides of
Brusa). Nevertheless, Cantemir evidently set the theory of Turkish music on
the track from which it did not depart significantly until the writings of Rauf
Yekta Bey in the early twentieth century. Essentially, Cantemir created a theory
for Turkish music as it had developed in the seventeenth century, in which
he stressed those elements which were novel and which would prove to be
most productive.
Cantemir was aware of the compositions of his older contemporary, the
Mevlevi composer and neyzen Şeyh Osman Dede (1652?–1730) and included
several of the latter’s peşrevs in his collection, referring to him as Kutb-u Nayi
(for his Sünbüle, devr-i kebir; Hüseyni, Külliyat, fahte), or Osman Dede (for
his Neva, devr-i revan). Nevertheless, he failed to mention his musicological
work, claiming to be the first to invent musical notation among the Turks
(Cantemir 1734:151). Osman Dede wrote a notated collection using his own
system of alphabetic notation, whose alphabetical symbols are distinct from
those of Cantemir (TMA II 1974:98). It is not known whether Osman Dede’s col-
lection is earlier or later than Cantemir’s. Osman Dede also composed a short
mesnevi entitled “Rabt-ı Tabirat-ı Musiki” (“The Connection of the Musical
Terms”), which is written within an older quasi-literary tradition, and is not a
true work of theory (see Akdoğu 1991; Doğrusöz 2006; Feldman 2022).
The “Tulip Period” (Lale Devri) of Ottoman history closes with a major
musical document—the first Ottoman tezkire (Ar. tadhkira; biographical dic-
tionary) of musicians. The “Atrabü’l-Asar fi Tezkirati Urafa’l-Edvar” was writ-
ten by the Shaykh al-Islam (Şeyhülislam, the highest religious dignitary in
the Ottoman bureaucracy), Mehmed Ebu İshakzade Esʿad Efendi (1685–1753).
The undated work was written in Turkish and dedicated to the Grand Vizier
Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Paşa, who was in office from 1718 to 1730. The book
The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750 23

contains brief biographical notices, more in the nature of eulogies for compos-
ers only of the vocal fasıl genres from the reign of Ahmed I (1603–1617) until
the time of Ahmed III (1703–1730). This work is one of the principal sources of
information for many of the seventeenth-century composers, although Esʿad
Efendi’s main purpose was to memorialize, not to record biographical facts.
Prior to Esʿad Efendi, however Ottoman authors had mentioned musicians in
biographical dictionaries of poets and in occasional poetic works in praise of
court or Sufi musicians (Ergun 1943; Gültaş 1982).
After Cantemir’s treatise, two smaller treatises were written in Turkish in
the first half of the eighteenth century by two professional musicians of the
court. The earlier is a treatise in Armeno-Turkish (Turkish in the Armenian
script) by the Armenian Tanburi Harutin, who was a court tanbur player for
Sultan Mahmud I (1730–1754). In 1736 he was sent with the embassy of Mustafa
Paşa to the Persian court of Nader Shah. After spending several years in Iran
and India he returned to Turkey where he wrote the treatise as well as a his-
tory of the Persian ruler. The treatise survives in a single manuscript of the
late eighteenth century, which has suffered interpolations, incorrect ordering
of chapters and other disfigurations, including the loss of its title page. It was
edited in Yerevan by Nikoghos Taghmizian (1968) and published in Russian
as “Rukovodstvo po Vostochnoi Muzyke” (“Handbook of Oriental Music”). The
Armeno-Turkish text was later published by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz in 2002 in
modern Turkish transliteration. Harutin also was the inventor of a notational
system based on the Armenian alphabet which he included in his book, but
without providing any notated examples of repertoire.
The first part of the book explains the origin and significance of music using
a peculiar mixture of mystical and occult figures, most of whom are of obscure
origin (e.g. Kheyaz, Noiza, Shahbeder, Turkhan) in addition to the more famil-
iar Socrates and Seth. This section offers a rare insight into the manner in
which Sufi conceptions of music were integrated into the Armenian society of
the Ottoman capital. Most of the remainder of the book defines the modal and
rhythmic systems, paying particular attention to codified melodic progression
(seyir) and transposition.
A few years after the treatise of Harutin another Turkish treatise was writ-
ten by another court musician and boon-companion (musahib) of Sultan
Mahmud I, Kemani Hızır Ağa (d. 1760?), a noted composer and the founder of
a lineage of court musicians. His little treatise entitled “Tefhimü’l Makamat fi
Tevlid-in Neğamat” (“The Comprehension of the Makams in the Generation of
the Melodies”) is undated, but the earliest copy is dated 1749 (1162). The treatise
is concerned both with the occult relationships of the modes with the planets,
24 The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750

minerals, etc. but also with their “generation” from the tones of the general
scale and melodic progression.10
The first half of the eighteenth century also witnessed the creation of two
treatises in the Greek language, comparing the “exoteric” (i.e. secular Ottoman)
music with the “esoteric” music of the Orthodox Church. The first was writ-
ten in the second decade of the century by Panagiotis Chalatzoghlu, the
Protopsaltis of the Cathedral in Phenar. It is only ten pages long and is untitled,
and was appended to a much larger manuscript housed in Mt. Athos. A genera-
tion later his student Kyrillos Marmarinos—the Archbishop of Tinos—wrote
a longer treatise entitled Eisagoge Mousikes, dated 1749. This work utilizes the
current Byzantine notation and Greek text to compare modal usages between
the Byzantine echos and the Ottoman makam. Both of these treatises furnish
important evidence for the integration of the class of Greek cantors and clergy
into a broader Ottoman secular music, and hence of its significance for a
broader segment of at least the upper strata of Greek urban society. Both texts
were published in Istanbul 2000 by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz together with
Adriana Ababi Sırlı.
The only extensive source of notation during the middle of the eighteenth
century (ca. 1750) is a copy of Cantemir’s collection made by the Mevlevi dervish
Nayi Ali Mustafa Kevseri (d. 1770), to which he added a number of instrumental
pieces on his own, using Cantemir’s system of transcription. This manuscript
is now in private hands and for many years had not been used for scholarly
research. The recent edition by Mehmet Uğur Ekinci (2016) represents a major
contribution to the sources for eighteenth-century Ottoman music.
Apparently within a decade of the writing of the treatises of Harutin,
Hızır Ağa, and the collection of Kevseri, in 1751, the French dragoman Charles
Fonton (1725–?) wrote an “Essai sur la musique orientale comparée à la musique
européenne.” Fonton who spent seven years in Istanbul (1746–1753), and later
was resident in Izmir, Aleppo, and Cairo was a sympathetic and keen observer.
Although there is little musical theory in the work, he includes several valu-
able remarks about performance practice, Turkish attitudes toward music, and
the shape and construction of musical instruments. In addition, he documents
the fundamental scale of Turkish music and the rhythmic cycles, and appends
six notated examples: an anonymous peşrev, a peşrev of Cantemir (Bestenigar,

10 Akdoğu (1989) gives different dates for both the book (1763–1770) and its author (1725–
1795). These seem less likely if Hızır Ağa was indeed a companion of Mahmud I who com-
menced his reign in 1730, and if there is a basis for the specific manuscript date supplied
by Öztuna (TMA 1969).
The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750 25

berefşan), an “Air de Cantemir” (apparently a beste), a “Chanson Turque”

(a şarkı), an “Air Arabe,” and a “Danse Grecque.”11
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth century many European travelers,
merchants, and diplomats left writings which contain concise but significant
references to music and musicians, despite the usually contemptuous style in
which they are written. Some of the most valuable are those written by Postel
(1530), Della Valle (1614), du Loir (1654), Poullet (1668), Covel (1670–1679),
Donado (1688) and Niebuhr (1792). To these may be added the insider’s view
provided by the description of the Topkapı Palace written in several European
languages by Bobowski (1665), and several comments in the “History of the
Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire” by Cantemir (1734).12
The last European traveler of the eighteenth century to make a significant
contribution to the study of Turkish music was the Venetian Jesuit Giambatista
Toderini (1728–1799). Although Abbe Toderini was a near contemporary of
Fonton, he came to Turkey toward the end of his life in 1781, staying in Istanbul
until 1786. Thus, his observations concern the Turkish music of forty years
later, and the music which he describes appears to show significant structural
changes from the music which Fonton had heard. The sixteenth chapter of the
first volume of Toderini’s “Literatura Turchesca,” published in Venice in 1787,
(then in France in 1789, and in Germany in 1790), contains twenty-eight pages
about Turkish music, mostly derived from the treatise of Prince Cantemir. Of
particular value are Toderini’s description of the court orchestra, a transcription
of one instrumental item (“Concerto turco nominado izia semaisi,” identified by
Rauf Yekta with the Mevlevi Hicaz son yürük semai), and a description of the
fundamental scale of Turkish music with a drawing of the tanbur. Toderini’s
division of the Turkish scale into twenty-four quarter-tones does not appear
to be based on any native source, nor does he give the Turkish note-names, as
Fonton had done. Nevertheless, the fact that the nature of the Turkish scale
suggested this interpretation to him, together with the fact that his contem-
porary, the Damascene Ibn al-ʿAṭṭār, was interpreting the fundamental scale
in exactly the same way (while adducing essentially the modern note-names)
(cf. Shiloah 1979:64–6) would seem to indicate that in the 1780s what Toderini
heard was no longer the seventeen-note scale described in detail by Fonton
and Cantemir, but rather something more akin to the modern Turkish scale

11 The French original was published with an extensive introduction by Neubauer (1986); a
Turkish translation by Behar (1988) and an English translation by Martin (1988–89).
12 These are currently being researched by Bülent Aksoy in Istanbul and Robert Martin of
Columbia University, to whom I am grateful for the copies which he provided me. As this
book goes to press I have seen the publication of Bülent Aksoy (Aksoy 1994).
26 The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750

with its single-comma intervals. This and the next source, the treatises of
Abdülbaki Nasır Dede, are transitional to the Modern Era of Turkish music.
Between 1794 and 1795 the Mevlevi Şeyh Abdülbaki Nasır Dede (1765–1821)
created a musical treatise entitled “Tetkik ü Tahkik” and notated a score for a
Mevlevi ayin written by his patron Selim III using a new notational system
in a work entitled “Tabririye” (cf. Akdoğu 1989:34–5). “Tetkik ü Tahkik” is the
first document of a new system based more than previously on the com-
pound modal entities in which the older modal hierarchy was giving way to
the “open-ended” modal system of Turkish classical music of the Modern Era.
It is only here that we see a Mevlevi theoretical work that begins to show an
interest in some critical analysis, in addition to musical notation. Nasır Dede’s
discussion of usul shows an awareness of the profound changes in tempo and
rhythmic structure that had occurred over the last half century. And for the
first time an Ottoman author attempts to classify all existing modal entities
according to their period of origin, altogether presenting nine historical peri-
ods (Tura 2006:21; Doğrusöz 2015:84). Even though the chronology of these his-
torical periods is left rather vague, this attempt to envisage an internal process
of change and development was a novelty within the Ottoman musical culture.
And it is surely not accidental that it was produced within a central Mevlevi
environment in the capital. It has also been the topic of Behar’s most recent
monograph (Behar 2022).
 Part 1
Musicians and Performance

∵
 Chapter 1

Professionalism and the Music of the

Ottoman Court

The material which has survived about art music in pre-nineteenth-century

Turkey is mainly connected with two institutions, the Ottoman court and the
Mevlevi and some other dervish orders. Various facts also exist concerning
the musical life of cities other than Istanbul or of other institutions, but the
Ottoman court and the dervish orders must be the two relatively stable areas
around which a somewhat coherent picture of musical life may be drawn.

1 The Ottomans and the Turco-Mongol Courtly Heritage

An opinion widely found in modern Turkey links the Timurid capital Herat and
Istanbul in the chain of “Turkish” courts which patronized “Turkish” music:

During those times Istanbul was actively trying to occupy the place of
Herat as a cultural center. … However, Istanbul was only able to take the
place of Herat in the last years of Sultan Bayezid II (1481–1512). This was
only possible due to the very great political patronage of culture by the
Conqueror and his son Bazeyid II, and it was completed by Selim I Yavuz
(1512–1520) (TMA I 1969:263).

It appears that the Ottomans viewed the Herati court of Sultan Husein
Bayqara (1469–1506) as a model of royal patronage for all the arts. The Turkic
verse of Mīr ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī, Husein Bayqara’s leading poet, had achieved
great fame in Istanbul, and in the later sixteenth century the relationship of
the two was viewed as an ideal of poet and patron (Fleischer 1986:186). Evliya
Çelebi frequently speaks of a “fasıl of Husein Bayqara” (Hüseyin Baykara
faslı), i.e. a concert-suite fit for Sultan Husein Bayqara, when praising a musi-
cian of Iranian heritage. In Cantemir’s “History of the Ottoman Empire,” this
Timurid ruler appears as “Hiusein, The Moecenas of the Oriental Musicians”
(Cantemir 1734:151). In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Turkey, Husein
Bayqara was wrongly considered to be the patron of ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī
(Abdülkadir Meraği, d. 1435), who was the mythical “founder” of Turkish music
(Feldman 1990–91:92). Thus, to the Ottomans, Husein Bayqara became an

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_005

30 Chapter 1

idealized figure under whose patronage both the greatest Turkish poet and the
greatest Turkish musician had flourished.
While in a general sense, it is true that later fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Istanbul continued the courtly repertoire and style of Herat, i.e. of the Persian-
ate cultural world, this formulation obscures the social and generic differences
which existed between courtly music in Turkey on the one hand, and in the
Persianate world proper on the other.1 The most important difference in this
regard concerns the role of the free professional performer of the courtly rep-
ertoire. It is therefore worthwhile to pause and examine these differences.
Despite the enormous amount of material in al-Iṣbahānī’s “Kitāb al-Aghānī”
(tenth century; cf. Sawa 1989) and some biographical data on later Abbasid
musicians (e.g. Ṣafī al-Dīn Urmawī), the social history of the performers (as
opposed to the performance) of medieval Near Eastern courtly music is obscure
in the extreme.2 Much of what is known about the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, including the growth of makam centers in southeast Anatolia (e.g.
Mardin) is presented by Neubauer (1969).
The short-necked lute ud had developed into an important vehicle both
for the learned “art” repertoire and for musical theory. Apart from the singing
slave-girls, often playing the harp, çeng (who were so much a part of the court
music of Caliphal times, as they were of pre-Islamic Arabian music), by the
Abbasid period we meet with male professional musicians, usually both singers
and instrumentalists, the most illustrious of whom were also composers and
sometimes musical theorists. Throughout this period new composition was
highly valued. From the “Kitāb al-Aghānī” until the records of Timurid musical
life, references to male professional musicians at Muslim courts often com-
bine (in the same individual) singing, instrumental ability, and composition.
Ṣafī al-Dīn Urmawī combined all of these skills, as did many famous musicians
of the Mongol period. The best musicians, like Ṣafī al-Dīn, were sometimes
musical theorists as well. In the records of the Mongol period the ʿulamāʾ gen-
erally have nothing to do with the music of the court. During this period the

1 I employ the term “Persianate” in the sense in which it had been used by Marshall Hodgson
in connection with literature: “Most of the mote local languages of high culture that later
emerged among Muslims likewise depended upon Persian wholly or in part for their prime
literary inspiration. We may call all these cultural traditions, carried in Persian or reflect-
ing Persian inspiration, Persianate by extension. … For some purposes we may distinguish
there an ‘Arabic zone’ to be set off from the ‘Persianate zone’ to north and east” (Hodgson
1974–11:293). As will be seen below, the inclusion of the music of Ottoman Turkey in the
Persianate cultural zone was not always unambiguous, and ceased to be valid during the
course of the later seventeenth century.
2 Sawa’s excellent study of Abbasid performance practice and theory (1989) presents virtually
no information about the social origin of the performers.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 31

closest professional and master-student relationships were maintained over

a wide geographical area, linking Egypt, Syria, and southern Anatolia in the
West, with Iraq, Iran, and Transoxiana in the East. Instrumentation appears
to be very similar (although not entirely identical) over a broad geographical
area. The types of musical linkages described above could only have led to a
very high degree of systemic unity in the maqām music, perhaps considerably
higher than what had existed previously.
The most illustrious of the post-Mongol musicians was ʿAbd al-Qādir
Marāghī. The career of the latter, which ended in 1435 at the court of Shahrukh
at Herat, brings us quite close to the fabled court of Husein Bayqara. The locus
classicus for the musical life of the court of Husein Bayqara is found at the end
of the Emperor Babur’s description of that court in his “Babur-Nameh,” writ-
ten before 1530. Babur enumerates Husein’s amīrs, his chief justices (ṣudūr),
his wazīrs, his learned men, his poets, his artists and his musicians or vocalists
(ahl-i naghmah). This passage is worth examining closely, because it reveals
several similarities with as well as certain crucial differences from the Ottoman
court as it is known from the early seventeenth century onward:

Another [musician] was Qul Muhammad Udi He also played the ghiççäk
well. He added three strings to the ghiççäk. Among the vocalists (ahl-i
naghmah) and the instrumentalists (ahl-i saz) no one has composed so
many and such fine peşrävs.
Another was Şayxi Nayi. He also played well on the ud and the ghiççäk.
Apparently, he had played well on the nay (flute) since his twelfth or
thirteenth year. On one occasion (bir nävbät) at the gathering (suhbät)
of Badiuzzäman Mirza he performed a kar (bir işni)3/28 beautifully.
Qul Muhammad was unable to perform that kar on the ghiççäk, saying
that the ghiççäk was a deficient instrument. Immediately, Shayxi took
the ghiççäk from the hand of Qul Muhammad and performed that kar
beautifully and perfectly on the ghiççäk. They also relate something else
about Şayxi: he was so expert in melodies (naghamat) that whenever he
would hear a melody (naghmah) he would say “this is so and so’s tune
in such and such a mode” ( fälaninin̄ fälan pärdäsi mungha ahängdur).
Nevertheless, he did not compose many kars; they say that one or two
näqş are his.

3 The Chaghatay text has “įş” for the genre usually known as “kar.” The Persian translation
substitutes kar where iş occurs in the original. The literal meaning of iş (“work”) caused
Beveridge to mistranslate, e.g. “He composed few works” (Babur 1922:291).
32 Chapter 1

Another was Şah-Qulï Ghiççäki. He was a native of Iraq [i.e. S.W. Iran],
He came to Khorasan to study the instrument (saz mäşq qïlïb) and became
quite accomplished. He composed many näqş and peşräv and kar.
Another was Husein Udi. He used to play the ud and sing exquisite
pieces (mäzälik nimälär aytur edi) …
Another one of the composers was Ghulam Şadi. He was the son of
Şadi the singer (xanändä). Although he played instruments (ägär saz
çalur edi) he did not play on the level of these instrumentalists (sazändä).
There are good sävt and fine näqş of his. At that time there was no person
who composed such näqş and sävt. In the end Şaybani Khan sent him to
Muhammad Amin, the Khan of Kazan; no further news has been heard
of him.
Another was Mir Arzu. He did not play an instrument (saz çalmäs edi)
but was a composer (musännif ). Although he composed few kars, some
of his kars are exquisite (“Babur-nama,” Babar 1905:fol. 182).4

Baily has noted the importance of composition in this Timurid court:

A clear distinction was drawn between the activities of performer and

composer, and men were remembered by the excellence of their musi-
cal compositions. The Timurids obviously had a well-articulated con-
cept of composition as a distinct activity, and new work was presumably
regarded as the product of individual talent and genius, like a new poem
or a new painting (Baily 1988:14).

Babur used the word musannif (muṣannif ) for composer. Ghulam Şadi evi-
dently was able to perform his works, but he was primarily a composer, while
Mir Arzu was unable to perform on a professional level at all. Other individuals
were both performers and composers. Babur comments both on the quality and
the quantity of a composer’s output; it seems clear that a premium was placed
on productivity. Most of the musicians mentioned are instrumentalists; only
Ghulam Şadi is said to be the son of a singer (xanändä). Nevertheless, most of
them composed in both instrumental and vocal genres. Only Qul Muhammad
the ud player is credited with the peşräv and no purely vocal items. The other
ud player, Husein Udī is described as both playing and singing “exquisitely.”
Ensemble performance is not mentioned; in one instance, the competition

4 I have retranslated the passage from the Chaghatay original. Neither Erskine’s translation
from the Persian (1921) nor Beveridge’s translation from the Chaghatay (1922) are reliable for
musical detail. See also Jung 1989:131.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 33

between Şayxi Nayi and Qul Muhammad, the performance appears to be solo.
It should also be noted that here both musicians are attempting to play a vocal
kar upon the bowed ghiççäk. This probably should be interpreted as an instru-
mental accompaniment for their own singing, although a purely instrumental
performance cannot be ruled out.
The compositional genres mentioned are few; only the vocal kar, sävt, and
näqş, and the instrumental peşräv.5 This indicates that the courtly repertoire
was concentrated on a few items, implying a clear distinction between an art
and a popular repertoire. It appears that the kar was considered the most pres-
tigious and “serious” genre. For that reason, Şayxī’s “one or two” näqş did not
compensate for the absence of kars among his oeuvre.
Nowhere in Babur’s description of the music at the Herati court is there
any mention of dancing boys, singing girls, or any genre or musical instrument
which is not part of the art tradition of the Muslim Middle East. This does
not mean that these other genres and performers did not exist in the context
of courtly life, but the exclusivity of the description indicates that the courtly
genres and their performers maintained an independent status which was
supported by the major court of the period.
Although the genres mentioned at the beginning of the century by ʿAbd
al-Qādir Marāghī were considerably more numerous (twelve items appear in
his treatises), only these four were considered essential in the Herati court. It is
also significant that there is no cyclical genre. The nawbat al-murattaba, a small
cyclical genre in the late fourteenth century (Jung 1989:141) is not mentioned
here, and its principal component, the qävl is absent as well. The word nävbät
(nawba) occurs twice in this passage, and it means only “occasion,” “time.” To
Babur nävbät could not have meant a cycle or “concert-suite.”
In Marāghī’s time the ʿamal genre was also a mini-cycle, with an instru-
mental prelude, but it is not mentioned by Babur. Both the qävl and the
ʿamal appear in the early sixteenth-century treatise of Kaukabi and the early
seventeenth-century treatise of Darvish Ali (Jung 1989:156). The nävbät is men-
tioned by Kaukabi, but not by Darvish Ali. In the seventeenth-century treatise
of Nayini, the qävl still exists, but not the ʿamal or nävbät, which this author
knew only from earlier treatises (ibid.:159).6

5 At this period the peşräv could be either instrumental or vocal. The relation of the earlier
peşräv (pishrow) to the Ottoman instrumental peţrev will be treated at length in Part 3 of the
present work.
6 Considering the appearance of the qävl and ʿamal in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century
Bukhara, their absence form the “Babur-Nameh” requires some explanation. One possibility
is that Marāghī was describing the repertoire of western Iran and Iraq, not Khorasan and
Transoxania, and that these two genres spread eastward only after the Timurid era.
34 Chapter 1

As Baily has observed, most of the musicians mentioned were “servants of

the court, not men of noble birth” (1988:13). Nevertheless, although they were
“servants,” they were not slaves. None of the musicians is described explicitly
as having unfree status. At least two of the musicians were attracted to the
Herati court from elsewhere; Şah-Qulï the ghiççäk player was a native of “Iraq,”
and the famous Ghulam-i Şadi was also not a Khorasanian. Şah-Qulï had come
to Khorasan to improve his knowledge of music, and evidently he had lived
there for some time before he was called to the courtly circle. He seems to have
moved from there to Tabriz and then spent the latter part of his life in Istanbul
(see below, pp. 111–113). It is known that Timur had transported many artisans
and artists back to Samarqand, including Marāghī. Nevertheless, none of the
musicians mentioned in the “Babur-Naheh” have any familial relationship to
musicians of that era, nor were any of them captured on military campaigns.
The national origin of Ghulam Şadi is obscure. Cantemir calls him “Gulam
the Arabian,” and refers to him as a “Scholar” of ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī. Fonton
relates a legend in which Ghulam is an Arabian slave of Marāghī (Fonton
1751:30–1). The later Ottoman tradition preserved this relationship, although
the dates of the two men make this impossible. The later Ottoman legend of
Ghulam’s unfree status may be a reflection of a historical reality, in that Şaybani
Khan is able to “send him” to Kazan’s ruler as a present. However, his father
is described as a “singer” (xanändä), not a slave-entertainer.7 The musicians
described in this section of the “Babur-Nameh” were all professional musi-
cians. None of them were bureaucrats, clergymen, or dervishes. Those individ-
uals who composed or performed music, but whose primary occupation was
something else, are also mentioned in other sections of Babur’s description of
the court. Thus Banāʾī’s musical compositions are mentioned in greater detail
under the section on poets (Babur 1905:fol. 179b), and those of Mīr Alī Shīr
Navāʾī under the section on amīrs (Babur 1905:fol. 171). Both Banāʾī and Alī Shīr
were apparently known as composers, not performers.8 Yet the genres which
they composed were the same as those of the professional musicians. Alī Shīr
Navāʾī composed näqş and peşräv, and the poet Banāʾī, who played no instru-
ment, is credited with vocal näqş and sävt. It seems that musical skill was not
uncommon as an amateur accomplishment; Banāʾī is chastised by Navāʾī for
his ignorance of music, and the former responds by learning to compose in the
vocal genres. Nevertheless, there is no indication that the music of the court
was provided by people whose primary profession was something other than

7 It is possible that Şah-Qulï was the very same individual who was later captured by Selim I at
Tabriz, and brought back to Istanbul (see next section).
8 Banāʾī was also the author of a musical treatise, cf. Wright 1994–95.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 35

music. There is also no suggestion that members of the ʿulamāʾ, in particular

the singers of the mosque, had any close relationship to the music of the court.
In Babur’s chapter on the ʿulamāʾ, not a single one is described as possessing
either a practical or even a theoretical knowledge of music.
On the basis of the “Babur-Nameh” it does not appear that the Herati royal
court itself bore any responsibility for the transmission of courtly music. There
is no mention of any musical institution comparable to the naqqāshkhāna,
where miniature painters were trained. It would seem that music was transmit-
ted more after the model of poetry, i.e. the general structure was transmitted
“at a distance,” through observation and imitation, and certain more specific
aspects might be transmitted by direct master-student relationships. The royal
(and lesser) courts functioned as the patronage-center and consumer for the
finished product, both in the case of music and poetry.9 While some poets and
musicians were attached to a single court, most travelled from one to another
as opportunities presented themselves.
We may summarize the information provided by Babur about music at the
Herati court by noting the following points:
1. Serious music was provided by professional male musicians.
2. These musicians were apparently free individuals employed by the court,
whose only or primary occupation was music.
3. Musical instruction was not one of the functions of the court; musicians
learned privately from masters.
4. Musicians sometimes came from long distances to enjoy courtly patronage.
5. Amateur musicianship existed among the upper classes, but it was not
significant in the performance of music at the court. Musical items com-
posed by amateurs may have been performed professionally at times.
6. None of the religious classes, whether orthodox or Sufi, appear to have
any relationship with the music of the court.
7. Professional musicians usually performed on an instrument, of which
the most common were the ud, the nāy, the ghiççäk and the qanūn.
8. Most of the instrumentalists were singers as well.
9. Some of the musicians were also composers, but the function of com-
poser (musännif ) was recognized as being distinct from performance.
Some composers were not known as performers.

9 The non-involvement of the courts in musical education is stressed in contemporary

ethno-musicology in Soviet Central Asia. For this reason the term “professional music
of the oral tradition” has been preferred over “court music” or “classical music.” However
nineteenth-century Khiva presented a different picture, as musicians at the Khivan court
also functioned as bureaucrats, goldsmiths, etc. for the khan (O. Matyakubov, oral communi-
cation 1990).
36 Chapter 1

10. There were distinct vocal and instrumental genres which defined the
courtly repertoire. Popular genres were not the responsibility of the per-
formers or composers of courtly music. The most important vocal genre
was the kar (iş), followed by the näqş and the sävt. The only (partly)
instrumental genre was the peşräv. No improvised or non-metrical genre
is mentioned.

2 The Emergence of Ottoman Court Music

At the time that Babur was writing his memoirs, Constantinople had been
the Ottoman capital for almost eighty years, and Suleyman the Magnificent
(Kanuni) was beginning his long reign (1520–1566). The Ottomans were well
aware of the high culture of the Timurid court at Herat, and the Chaghatay
divan of Mīr Alī Shīr Navāʾī was being copied and read in Istanbul. Until the end
of the sixteenth century the musical genres performed at the Topkapı Palace
in Istanbul were the same ones performed in Herat. The compositions of ʿAbd
al-Qādir Marāghī and Ghulam Şadi were certainly staples of both courtly rep-
ertoires, and it is possible that at least one of the court musicians (Şah-Qulï)
from Herat performed later in Istanbul. The memory of Marāghī, who died
in 1435, was continually fresh in the Turkish musical memory. He had tran-
scended his major historical role as the leading composer, theorist, and per-
former of the later fourteenth and early fifteenth century to become a mythical
figure combining the attributes of Pythagoras and Orpheus. Cantemir begins
his brief description of Turkish music in his “History” (Cantemir 1734:151), with
ʿAbd al-Qādir (“Hoje Musicar”) and his “scholar” “Ghulam the Arabian,” and
then skips to Osman Efendi, the “noble Constantinopolitan,” who flourished
in the first half of the seventeenth century. Cantemir obtained his informa-
tion from the musicians of Istanbul, and it seems that in their opinion, there
was not much really memorable between the early fifteenth and the early
seventeenth century. Fonton likewise devotes much attention to Marāghī and
Ghulam while ignoring the succeeding Ottoman musicians up until Cantemir.
In Cantemir’s time the Turkish musical tradition had jumped from the early
fifteenth to the early seventeenth century as though nothing of great impor-
tance had occurred during the interval. The Turkish oral tradition leapt over
almost two centuries in order to link up the current musical situation with
the end of the medieval Great Tradition, thereby erasing the caesura which
must have separated these two phenomena. The considerable gap separating
the death of Marāghī in 1435 from the Turkish musicians of the early seven-
teenth century is filled by very few figures who were remembered in the later
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 37

tradition. Among these are Prince Korkut (1467–1513), who was a major fig-
ure in Turkish music, his contemporary, the Iranian ud player Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn,
Hasan Can, the boon-companion of Selim I (d. 1520) and of Süleyman, and the
Crimean ruler Gazi Giray Han (1554–1607). All of these figures are mentioned
in several sources, and specific compositions were attributed to all but Zayn
al-ʿĀbidīn.
A major composer in the Persianate style was a certain Abdül Ali, whose
biography long remained obscure. It seems that a number of his kar composi-
tions were later ascribed to ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī, and by the end of the sev-
enteenth century Abdül Ali himself had been forgotten in order to increase
the prestige of ʿAbd al-Qādir (Feldman 1990–91:92–3). Thanks to research by
Oransay and Aksoy, we now know that Abdül Ali was a Shiite composer from
Basra, who died in 1644 (Aksoy 2015:30–31). Thus, he was not a sixteenth-century
composer, and the period of his florescence again demonstrates the continued
vitality of the Persianate repertoire among the Ottomans in the first half of the
seventeenth century. In addition, the names of the composers of three Mevlevi
ayins which survive from the sixteenth century are no longer remembered (see
Feldman 2022:200–201).
This “amnesia” in the Turkish memory of musical history was caused by
the crucial event, or complex of events which resulted in the creation of new
modal structures, a new series of musical genres, a more extensive cyclical
performance, a new relationship between composed items and performance
generation, a new instrumental ensemble, new social patterns of professional-
ism and new relations with the non-Ottoman musical world. That is, Ottoman
Turkish music properly speaking came into existence.
In the instrumental collections of Bobowski, Cantemir, and Hamparsum,
very few compositions are ascribed to musicians who were active before 1600.
These early instrumental items are mainly mehter pieces (by Nefiri Behram,
Emir-i Hac), several peşrevs by Sultan Korkut, and three by Hasan Can. Eigh-
teen pieces in Cantemir are ascribed to the “Persians” and the “Indians.” These
appear to be sixteenth-century pieces, and there are a number of anonymous
items which are stylistically very close to them. There are also a few peşrevs
and semais by the Crimean Gazi Giray Han. None of the musicians whose
names are mentioned in the 1525 court document, listing the musicians at the
accession of Süleyman I (“Cemaat-i mutriban”; Uzunçarşılı 1977) are remem-
bered by any surviving repertoire, even in the relatively early Bobowski and
Cantemir Collections. The mecmuas do not mention their names, and the
later oral tradition ascribes nothing to them. The earliest substantial instru-
mental repertoire by a named professional musician are the twenty-nine items
by Miskali Solakzade (d. 1658) recorded by Bobowski, Cantemir, and Kevseri.
38 Chapter 1

The Hamparsum Collections contain a number of instrumental items ascribed

to mid seventeenth-century musicians, such as Şerif and Muzaffer, who also
appear in Bobowski and Cantemir, but nothing earlier. The instrumental rep-
ertoire finds its earliest major composer in Gazi Giray Han, the Crimean ruler
(1554–1607). Gazi Giray was a major instrumental composer, but as a royal
amateur, and a non-Ottoman, he was not a product of the Ottoman musical
education and culture.
The vocal repertoire ascribed to Turkish composers begins in the early to
mid-seventeenth century, with the few surviving bestes and semais of Ama
Kadri, Sütcüzade İsa and Koca Osman (see texts in Ungör 1981). It is only the
Sufi musical genres which do go back somewhat before the seventeenth cen-
tury. The Halveti Zakiri Hasan (1545?–1623) is credited with a number of com-
positions, and the Mevlevis ascribe the three “ancient compositions” (beste-i
kadimler) to some time prior to the seventeenth century (Feldman 1992:190–1).

3 Vocalists and Instrumentalists

When our sources become relatively more plentiful, during the seventeenth
century, we see that the classical repertoire is largely dominated by a group of
musicians and composers who are in part amateurs and are members of vari-
ous bureaucracies with differing connections to the Palace, or artisans who are
also partly amateurs in music.10 The most important group of “professional”
musicians performing the courtly repertoire are in fact the müezzins, members
of the ʿulamāʾ whose work is involved with the religious, rather than the courtly
repertoire. There is a sharp division between vocal musician-composers,
and instrumentalists. These latter are not usually in the front rank of musi-
cal creativity or in the propagation of the classical repertoire, unless they are
members of dervish orders (especially the Mevleviye), aristocratic or royal
musicians (Gazi Giray Han, Murad IV, Prince Cantemir), or, in some cases,
members of the religious/ethnic minorities. These patterns become more
pronounced during the following two centuries. This dichotomy between

10 The major source for the lives of Ottoman musicians prior to the nineteenth century is
the biographical dictionary “Atrabü’l-Asar fi Tezkireti Urefai’l-Edvar” (Aṭrab al-āthār fī tad-
hkirat ʿurafāʾ al-adwār, “The Most Delightful Works in the Commemoration of the Experts
in Musical Theory”), written by Şeyhülislam Mehmed Ebu-İshakzade Esʿad Efendi
(1685–1753) between 1725 and 1729, hereafter referred to as “Atrabü’l-Asar,” In addition,
some information can be found in the “Seyahatname” of Evliya Çelebi, and other literary
sources, and from the various mecmuas and court documents. These sources speak of
musicians who lived no earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 39

vocalist and instrumentalist became a characteristic feature of the Ottoman

musical culture. The personality who is entirely absent is the free professional
musician-composer, both a singer and an instrumentalist, who was so much in
evidence in earlier Muslim courts.
The social environment of art music was different in Ottoman Turkey and
in Timurid Central Asia. These social differences helped to bring about pro-
found differences in the music that was to emerge in Turkey after the sixteenth
century. The musical characters who populate Babur’s description of Husain
Bayqara’s court at Herat have no close parallels in Ottoman history after the
fifteenth century. The professional vocalist/instrumentalist composer, who
may at times also be a musical theorist does not seem to exist in the Ottoman
records. Esʿad Efendi presents us with ninety-seven biographies, most of which
are of Palace functionaries and members of the ʿulamāʾ, who also composed
music. A considerable number were Mevlevi dervishes, and several were arti-
sans, who seem to have performed at court at times. Very few of these musi-
cians, apart from the Mevlevis, are explicitly described as instrumentalists. The
only individual described as ʿavvād (ud player) is an Iranian.
Esʿad Efendi distinguishes between singers (hanende) and instrumental-
ists (sazende). The same distinction is found in Evliya Çelebi and in Cantemir.
Essentially, “Atrabü’l-Asar” is a record of the vocalists; instrumentalists are
mentioned very rarely. This fact is seen in the alternative name for this book,
“Tezkire-i Hanendegan,” the “Biographical Dictionary of the Singers.” (TMA I
1969:199). When a singer/composer also played an instrument, Es’ad Efendi
notes this specifically. For example, the chief müezzin (müezzinbaşı) in the first
part of the reign of Ahmet III, Çarşeb Mustafa Ağa, is noted for his instrumental
playing (sazendelik) in the “Türkmen style” (eda-i Türkmenani). “Türkmenani”
in this context must mean some sort of Anatolian rural style, which was cer-
tainly unusual since the müezzin in question was born in Istanbul (Esʿad
ca. 1725:fol. 10). In the “Atrabü’l-Asar,” the only group of musicians who are con-
sistently associated with musical instruments are the dervishes of the Mevlevi
and several other orders. For example, Derviş Ali from Damascus (ibid.:fol. 15) is
called the “Chief Ney-Player” (serneyzen), Derviş Ali (ibid.:fol. 17) from Plovdiv
(Filibe) is called the “Kettle-drummer” (küdumzen), a Mevlevi sheikh is called
“the Harpist” (çengi). Three non-Turkish secular musicians are mentioned;
of these, two, the Iranian ʿavvād (ud player) Mehmed (ibid.:fol. 25) and the
North African tanburi Hacı Kasım (ibid.:fol. 12), are noted for playing instru-
ments. These two figures very likely corresponded to the more widespread
type of Muslim art musicians, who were vocalists, instrumentalists, and com-
posers. Only a few Turkish-born secular musicians are described as possess-
ing all three skills on a professional level (e.g. Küçük Müezzin, who was also
40 Chapter 1

a tanbur-player) (ibid.:fol. 28). Of course, it is likely that some of the müezzins

and other singers played instruments at home, but the use of an instrument is
not mentioned as forming part of their public musical presentations. We may
assume that during the court fasıl performances, they were accompanied by
the resident court instrumentalists, or by free professional musicians.
Non-Muslims are never mentioned in the “Atrabü’l-Asar.” Aside from any
prejudice that the clerical author may have held, an important factor in this
omission may have been the fact that the non-Muslims at that time were
known almost exclusively as performers, and as composers of instrumental,
but not vocal music. Evliya Çelebi, mentions prominent non-Muslim players of
the miskal (Yahudi Yako) and the tanbur. He mentions “Rum Angeli,” “Ermeni
Avih” and “Yahudi Kara Kaş” as three of the seven tanbur players whom he
regarded as possessing “delicacy and elegance in their stroke” (mizrablannda
letafet ve zerafet), which should be taken as a measure of the importance of
the non-Muslims among the tanbûr players. By the second half of the seven-
teenth century, several non-Muslims (or “renegades”) had become prominent,
such as Yahudi Harun (Aron Hamon), who was known as an instrumental
composer, (vocal compositions of his also existed, but only in Hebrew) as well
as Cantemir’s teachers, the Jew Çelebiko, the Greek Tanburi Angelos and the
Greek Muslim Kemani Ahmed. Cantemir’s Collection also contains a peşrev
by a certain “Ermeni Murad,” about whom nothing is apparently known. In
the reign of Mahmud I (1730–1754), the leading court tanbur player was a
rabbi named Haham Musi (Moshe Faro, d. 1770?), while at the same period
the Armenian Tanburi Harutin also became prominent at the court. Although
certain Turkish instrumentalists, such as Eyyubi Mehmed, were highly appre-
ciated, Cantemir wrote, in his “History” (Cantemir 1734:151): “but for instru-
ments, two Greeks excelled.” Nevertheless, there is hardly a single reference to
a non-Muslim as a composer of vocal pieces for the fasıl (aside from one dubi-
ous attribution to Cantemir) until the middle of the eighteenth century. After
that time non-Muslims become quite prominent in this field as well.
Esʿad Efendi’s biographical collection is essentially concerned with com-
posers, and almost all of these were vocalists, not instrumentalists. Evliya
Çelebi, who was not a composer, distinguishes only between vocalists and
instrumentalists; many of the names in his book are not those of composers.
Nevertheless, the vocalists have pride of place. After beginning his section
on the musicians with the vocalists (hanendegan), he adds a page entitled,
“Newly Appeared Vocalists” (hanendegan-i nevzuhur), but there are no “newly
appeared instrumentalists.” The later Turkish oral tradition is exclusively con-
cerned with composers. There is no memory of great performers who were
not also composers (Feldman 1990–91:90). For example, the viola d’amore vir-
tuoso, the Moldavian Kemani Miron, although living as recently as the end of
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 41

the eighteenth century, is remembered only because of his interaction with

Tanburi Isak. Isak is remembered primarily because of his substantial con-
tribution to the instrumental repertoire, and secondarily because his style of
tanbur-playing has been preserved in part down to the present day. Although
Miron probably did more than any other single individual to develop the “ala
Turca” style of violin-playing, his name is known only to a handful of special-
ists (Yekta 1921:3014).
“Atrabü’l-Asar” is the only biographical dictionary of Turkish musicians
written before the nineteenth century. The fact that it was written by a ranking
member of the religious establishment might cause us to question its repre-
sentativeness. However, once we appreciate the distinction between the com-
posers of vocal and instrumental music, and the generic distinctions within
vocal music, it does not seem that Esʿad Efendi was showing undue favoritism
or prejudice. “Atrabü’l-Asar” is a record of vocal composers, and within this cat-
egory it is only concerned with compositions in the fasıl genres. Therefore, the
numerous and influential vocal genres of dervish music, such as the Mevlevı
ayin, the naat, durak, temcid, miraciye, tesbih, cumhur, or ilahi are of no con-
cern for this particular collection.
For example, “Derviş Mustafa,” also known as Köçek Mustafa Dede (d. 1683),
who composed the Mevlevi ayin in makam Beyati, today the most well-known
example of that genre, the most elaborate in all of Turkish music, is mentioned
in “Atrabü’l-Asar” only as a composer of classical bestes. In Cantemir’s collec-
tion, which contains only instrumental music, Derviş Mustafa is known as a
composer of peşrevs. Thus, these two major near-contemporaneous sources
say nothing about what was perhaps the most important aspect of the musi-
cal output of this composer. Today Derviş Mustafa is known only for his Beyati
ayin—his secular vocal and instrumental compositions have been forgotten.
The same is true of Ali Şirügani, who was probably the most important
composer of music for the Halveti tarikat during the seventeenth century. He
appears in “Atrabü’l-Asar” as a fasıl composer, although his having composed
in the dervish genres is briefly mentioned. In other cases, musicians who com-
posed only for the dervish tekke or the mosque (e.g. Osman Dede) are not men-
tioned at all by Esʿad Efendi. These cases illustrate the separation of genres
which was an important reality in Turkish musical life until the early twentieth
century, even though the same individuals sometimes composed in more than
a single genre.
However, during the period covered by “Atrabü’l-Asar,” there was already
a growing corpus of compositions in the fasıl genres created by Jewish com-
posers, using Hebrew texts. This movement seems to have originated not in
Istanbul, but in Edirne in the later sixteenth century (Seroussi 1990:56). By
the middle of the seventeenth century, the Istanbul synagogue had a major
42 Chapter 1

composer in this genre, Aron Hamon (“Harun Yahudi”), which included both
original compositions and contrafact from the existing Turkish repertoire.
While Cantemir included an “encyclopedia peşrev” by Aron in his collection,
Esʿad Efendi makes no mention of him because his bestes and semais were
composed exclusively in the Hebrew language and were only performed in
Jewish circles.
It is only in the middle of the eighteenth century, with the appearance of the
Greek church singer Zaharya Efendi, and later, Tanburi Isak, that non-Muslims
enter into the “inner sanctum” of the fasıl vocal repertoire. Esʿad Efendi seems
to have included every composer who composed in the core genres during
the period of roughly a century, from the 1620s until the 1720s. The represen-
tativeness of the figures in “Atrabü’l-Asar” can be checked by referring to the
collections of fasıl lyrics (mecmua), written in the later seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries—e.g. the seventeenth-century “Hafız Post Mecmu‘ası,” or the
eighteenth-century “Müneccimbaşı Mecmuası,” among others, and to the vocal
repertoire as it was documented during the earlier part of the present century.
The early repertoire known today represents a small part of what had been
composed between 1600 and 1750. The modern texts, makams, and compos-
ers’ names agree with the contemporaneous mecmua sources. There is virtu-
ally no composer’s name appearing in the modern and the mecmua sources
which is absent from “Atrabü’l-Asar.” On the contrary, “Atrabü’l-Asar” includes
several individuals who composed very little, and whom the author regarded
as mediocre. Likewise, Esʿad Efendi cannot be considered an Istanbul chauvin-
ist, because he included a number of musicians who lived in the cities of the
south-east. It would appear that Esʿad Efendi recorded the names of anyone
whose secular fasıl compositions were known in Istanbul during the 1720s.
The most appreciated and prestigious musicians in seventeenth-century
Turkey were those singers who were also composers. In many cases it seems
that the primary value of these musicians was their ability in composition.
For example, the most important composer of the later seventeenth century
was Mehmed Çelebi, known as “Hafız Post” (d. 1694). He was a prolific com-
poser, and his own mecmua collection has survived (“Hafız Post Mecmu‘ası”;
cf. Wright 1992b:147–206). Of his many compositions, ten are known today.
He was employed in the scribal service. He was a poet and a fine calligrapher,
yet despite the term “hafız” in his lakab (sobriquet) Esʿad Efendi writes that
his voice was poor (Esʿad ca. 1725:21). It is clear, therefore, that his fame rested
upon his compositions, not on his performances. The same was true of his stu-
dent Buhurizade Itri.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 43

In terms of biographical and musical documentation, there is a fundamen-

tal gap between what is known of the vocalists and the instrumentalists. For
the vocalists, collections of repertoire with their texts (without notation), and
some basic biographical facts have survived, while for the instrumentalists
there is a continuous chain of notated documents starting in the middle of the
seventeenth century, but very little biographical data. Evliya Çelebi mentions
only a few of the individuals named by Esʿad Efendi, but he mentions a great
many instrumentalists, almost none of them appearing in “Atrabü’l-Asar.” The
instruments ud, şeşta (şeştar) and çarta (çartar) were played almost exclu-
sively by Iranians. With the exception of Şeştari Murad and Mehmed Ağa,
none of these non-Ottoman musicians left any mark on the later Turkish vocal
repertoire. It is, of course, of interest that these two instrumentalists were also
able to compose the vocal genres. This would have been commonplace in Iran,
but it was unusual in Turkey. Cantemir and Bobowski recorded instrumental
items by an earlier generation of Iranian and Turkish musicians (Çengi Cafer,
Çengi İbrahim, Çengi Mustafa) whose names do not appear in “Atrabü’l-Asar.”
Some rather minor vocal composers are mentioned in this work, so the omis-
sion of these names must be due to the fact that they had composed only in
the instrumental genres.
Musical treatise writing came to a halt in Turkey at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, not to be continued significantly until the Risale-i Edvar of
1650 by the Mevlevi Çengi Yusuf Dede (d. 1669). As will be explained in greater
detail in Part 2 of this book, Cantemir’s initiative had little to do with any of
these earlier works. Thus, the musician/theorist, who was the highest exemplar
of the “science of music” in the earlier Muslim world, barely exist in sixteenth
century Turkey. Most of the figures whom we do see then, and in the earlier
seventeenth century are Mevlevi or Gülşeni dervishes. Such figures become
increasingly prominent later in the century and early in the following one.
Perhaps the closest Ottoman approximation of this type of figure is the
Mevlevi Osman Dede (d. 1730), who was a major composer of both religious
and secular genres, a master neyzen, and the inventor of a system of musical
notation, as well as a poet and calligrapher. It appears to be characteristic of
the Ottoman cultural situation of the seventeenth century that such a figure as
Osman Dede would emerge outside of the court, among the Mevlevi dervishes.
Earlier Çengi Yusuf Dede had functioned both as a tekke and a courtly neyzen
(for Sultan Murad IV), before returning entirely to the Beşiktaş Mevlevihane,
following the death of that Sultan in 1640.
44 Chapter 1

4 The Geographical Origin of the Musicians and Location of

Musical Centers

In the core Muslim world there had long been a lively musical intercourse
between the musicians of several areas. These movements of musicians are
documented from Abbasid times and seem to have become even more fre-
quent and long-ranging in the post-Mongol era (Neubauer 1969). The cities of
south-eastern Anatolia, e.g. Mardin, Diyarbekir, were part of this oekumene in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, being closely linked to Syria and Iraq. To
what extent this was true of other parts of Anatolia in the pre-Ottoman period
is unclear. The original Ottoman territory was situated on the edge of Anatolia
and then in the predominantly non-Muslim Balkan lands. There is little sur-
viving evidence to show whether the fourteenth-and earlier fifteenth-century
Ottomans drew heavily on the musical resources of Anatolia. It is probable that
the peripheral position of the early Ottomans suggested the utility of including
music within the palace service which was filled by military slaves (ghulam,
kul) of non-Muslim origin (see below, p. 56, pp. 64–65).
Following the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the incorporation
of the smaller Anatolian states into the Ottoman realm in the course of the
fifteenth century, the new seat of the Ottoman Emperor came to overshadow
all other cities of the Empire. Although the Thracian city Edirne (Adrianople)
functioned as the Imperial residence during parts of the seventeenth century,
Istanbul retained its central position throughout Ottoman history. Extremely
little is known of the musical life of other Ottoman cities outside of the major
Arab metropolises such as Damascus, Aleppo, and Cairo. We know of no secu-
lar institutions which supported Muslim art music in any of the Ottoman cities
of the Balkans—the sources do not mention famous musicians or composers
living in Plovdiv, Salonika, or Sarajevo. There was evidently some continuous
patronage for art music through religious institutions, the Mevlevihanes of
the major cities and the larger synagogues, particularly in Edirne and Izmir
(Seroussi 1989).
In the “Atrabü’l-Asar” Esʿad Efendi always mentions the place of birth
(müvelled) and settlement (muvattan) of every musician in his book. Out of
ninety-seven musicians, fifty-three were born and worked in Istanbul. However,
the remaining twenty-three show a rather peculiar pattern. The largest group,
eleven out of twenty-three, were born in the region of southeast Anatolia
described by Evliya Çelebi as “Kurdistan.” Of the other Anatolian cities there
is mention only of Manisa and Bursa, with one musician each. Of the Balkan
cities, two musicians are from Salonika and one from Filibe (Plovdiv). One
musician is from Baghdad, one from Aleppo, one from Tripoli (in Lebanon),
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 45

and one from the “Maghreb.” Two musicians are Iranians from outside of the
Empire. The cities of Diyarbekir, Mardin, Urfa, and Ayntab (Antep) account for
fully half of the non-Istanbullu Ottoman-born musicians.11
Two generations earlier Evliya Çelebi had singled out towns in “Kurdistan”
as the birthplace of several major musicians:

Kara-Oğlan. He was a matchless, well-trained student of Yahya of Diyar­

bekir (Amid). Having left the Khan of Bitlis, Abdal Khan, he came with
the author to Iran (Acem), and from there, in the year fifty-six [i.e. 1646],
to Erzurum, he performed the fasıls of Hüseyin Baykara in the presence
of Defterzade Mehmed Paşa (“Seyahatname” I, cf. Evliya 1896:633).
Hanende Zeyni-zade. He was from Diyarbekir. He possessed a talent in
the style of Khorasan (ibid.).

By reason of their geographical location, these cities of southeastern Anatolia

were in the proximity of such major centers of the maqām tradition as Baghdad
and Aleppo. There also may have been some continuity of the notable devel-
opment of maqām music in Mardin since its apogee in the fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries. In the seventeenth century, Baghdad was still a cen-
ter of Persian music (a number of musicians described as “Persian,” Acemi,
were taken by Murad IV from Baghdad). Further south, Basra was the home of
the famous Persianate Ottoman composer ʿAbd al-ʿAlī (Abdülali), who died in
1644. Evliya’s mention of the “style of Khorasan” (tarz-i Horasan) and the fasıls
of Husein Bayqara means that these musicians played in both a very high, and
a very Persian style. Es’ad Efendi employs the term Acemane (“in the Persian
style”) to describe the singing of several of the musicians from Diyarbekir,
such as Mahmud Çelebi (ca. 1725:fol. 31), and Seyyid Nuh (ibid.:fol. 20). Evliya’s
phrases “the style of Khorasan” and “the fasıls of Hüseyin Baykara” seem to
have been equivalent, and both equaled Esʿad Efendi’s “in the Persian style.”
As the urban life of the entire region declined in the eighteenth century, the
sources no longer mention major musicians from these areas. It appears that
the small city of Kilis (near Ayntab) continued to produce major performers of
art music into the twentieth century (e.g. Dr. Allaettin Yavaşça, İhsan Özgen)
because of the Mevlevi cloister which was active there. The leading tanbur
virtuoso of the later twentieth century, Necdet Yaşar (1930–2017), was born in
Nizip, near Ayntab and Kilis.

11 For a comparison of the distribution of musicians’ birthplaces in Esʿad Efendi and in the
antecedent medieval tradition, see Wright 1992b :18–9.
46 Chapter 1

The relative importance of these cities at the southeastern edge of Anatolia,

and the relative insignificance of other Anatolian and Balkan cities, points to
the lack of wide support for the makam and the courtly repertoire in the lat-
ter, despite the fact that they were much closer to the Ottoman capital. In the
seventeenth century it was possible for musicians like Seyyid Nuh and Yahya
Çelebi to win fame in Istanbul for their classical compositions, while still resid-
ing in Diyarbekir. It was only in the eighteenth century and thereafter that the
city of Istanbul came to be the sole locus for the classical repertoire. After the
first third of the eighteenth century there is no mention of such musicians
outside of the capital, except for the major Arab cities, which maintained close
musical relations with Istanbul. However, in the latter case what we see are
elements of the Istanbul repertoire being transported to the Arab cities, rather
than musicians residing in these cities contributing to the growth of the clas-
sical repertoire in the capital, as had occurred earlier. During the eighteenth
century the far away Moldo-Wallachian Principalities were more closely linked
musically to Istanbul than were many Anatolian cities, thanks to the activities
of the Constantinopolitan Greek princes (Phanariots), a process which seems
to have begun even before their installation in 1711.

5 Changes in the Ruling Class and in the Organization of Music

in the Palace

The centering of secular art music in the Ottoman capital imparted a spe-
cial significance to the Ottoman court, which had few rivals in the distribu-
tion of patronage, with the possible exception of the court of the Crimean
khans in Bahçesaray, to which Turkish musicians were frequently invited in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Very little is known of the Ottoman
musical life of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but the rather numer-
ous primary and secondary descriptions of the structure of the court all agree
that the arts and crafts were primarily the responsibility of the palace service,
i.e. of the unfree pages who had been trained in the palace itself (içoğlan). By
the end of the sixteenth century this entire system of service was in disarray,
and the patterns of musical professionalism at the court were quite different
from whatever might have existed previously. Before going into detail about
the seventeenth-century patterns, we should briefly review the system of pal-
ace service and the state bureaucracies as they had existed in the “classical”
Ottoman state (1350–1600).
Within the Ottoman state the basic social categories or classes consisted
of the reaya (tax-paying subjects) and the askeri (the ruling class). The
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 47

former included both Muslims and non-Muslims, while the latter were a small
group among the Muslims. The askeri class was originally divided into two
groups—the Men of the Sword (seyfiye), the elite military class, and the Men of
Learning (ilmiye), the clergy. By the mid-sixteenth century a new bureaucratic
specialization, the Men of the Pen (kalemiye), had emerged from the Men of
Learning. While the Men of Learning and the Men of the Pen all came from
Muslim families, the Men of the Sword were not predominantly of Muslim ori-
gin. The Men of the Sword were divided into two broad groups, a landed cav-
alry (sipahi), who might be of Turkish Muslim or various Christian origins, and
the Yeniçeri (Janissary) who were all the slaves of the sultan and of Christian
origin. Another part of the ruling class was formed by the Palace Service, for
which no single Ottoman term existed (İnalcık 1973:76–85; Findley 1980:13–15).
The Janissaries were part of a broad system of imperial military slavery
which had its origins in earlier Islamic states. In these earlier states these
military slaves, known in Arabic as ghulam had often been of Turkish origin
(İnalcık 1973:76–85). In the Ottoman state the Janissaries were chosen through
a system known as the devşirme. The devşirme was the system of selection
of young boys from the Balkan provinces, mostly Christian, but also includ-
ing Muslim Bosnians. The majority of these boys entered the army, either as
ordinary Janissaries, or in a higher military capacity. Court records speak of
this broad category of individuals as “kul” (“slave”) but only in the special con-
text of the devşirme, the Janissaries and the Palace Service. A personal slave is
described as köle or mamluk, but sometimes also “kul.” Several kul individu-
als owned one or more “köle.” For example, Evliya Çelebi records the fact that
the famous musician and courtier Solakzade was of kul origin and was at the
same time the owner of the musician “Yusuf” who was his “köle.” According to
Esʿad Efendi, the court musician İsmail Ağa was the owner of a famous mosque
singer, Yusuf Çelebi, who is described as a mamluk.
After a series of selections a group of boys entered the palace as pages
(içoğlan). They were trained in sports and martial arts as well as in a variety
of intellectual skills and practical crafts. In the sixteenth century the palace
service might number 700 people (Inalcik 1973:79). These pages included indi-
viduals who demonstrated an aptitude for the arts, such as poetry, calligraphy,
or music. The secondary literature usually refers to the instruction given to the
içoğlan pages within the palace as the “Palace School.” The Palace School had
originally been under the supervision of the chief white eunuch (bāb al-saʿāda
ağası). At the end of the sixteenth century he lost his function to the chief of
the black eunuchs (dār al-saʿāda ağası) (Findley 1980:49). Very little is known
about the musical instruction in this school prior to the nineteenth century. We
may infer that instruction was on a rather individual basis from the fact that no
48 Chapter 1

specific space was allotted for musical education until 1636, when the Seferli
Oda was designated as the “practice-room” (meşk-hane). It is so described by
Evliya Çelebi and Bobowski (Behar 1988:87). The seventeenth-century court
documents reveal that the slave-girls were sometimes instructed outside of
the Palace by musicians of the city. Apart from the school, the salaries of the
regular musicians of the court were part of the palace expenditures. The biog-
raphies of the major musicians of the seventeenth century reveal different pat-
terns in relation to the Palace.
While the military needed to exact this human tribute of the devşirme for sev-
eral military and political reasons, the need for this military-bureaucratization
of culture can possibly be explained by the fact that the core territory of the
Ottoman state was at the edge of Muslim Anatolia and in the Balkans. Both
maqām music and other elements of the Muslim high culture were not accli-
matized in these largely Christian areas, and so the state took on the responsi-
bility of training involuntary candidates to perpetuate and develop this culture.
While the religious culture was initially developed largely by foreign-born spe-
cialists (from Iran, Transoxiana and elsewhere), the secular arts were left, to a
large extent, to the Christian-born youths who were educated in the Palace. In
the capital, this centralization of the musical high culture seems to have been
relatively effective well into the sixteenth century. On the other hand, until the
early seventeenth century, the Ottoman princes were sent to govern several
Anatolian cities, such as Manisa and Amasya, where they set up small courts.
It does not appear that the Palace Service was responsible for their musical
life, and we do know of one case, in the fifteenth century, where an Iranian
professional musician, the ud player Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, sought employment in
both of these provincial courts. The existence of these courts, no doubt helped
to acclimatize the maqām in these Anatolian cities. However, their eclipse in
the early seventeenth century reversed this process, in the direction of greater
centralization in the capital.
The palace service was divided into several chambers, whose number varied
somewhat over time. There were the Privy Chamber (Has Oda), the Treasury
(Hazine), the Pantry (Kiler) and the Falconry Chamber (Doğancı Odası). The
latter was abolished in the mid-sixteenth century. In the mid-seventeenth
century the Campaign Chamber (Seferli Oda) was instituted. There was also a
Large Chamber (Büyük Oda) and a Small Chamber (Küçük Oda) whose mem-
bers supervised the education of the new pages. According to the “classical”
Ottoman theory of government, the entire palace service should have been
reserved for these devşirme candidates, to the virtual exclusion of native or
foreign born Muslims (İnalcık 1973:76–88; Shaw 1976:112–123). This situation
seems to have continued until some time after the death of Süleyman in 1566,
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 49

after which the monopoly of the devşirme seems to have been broken. The
Ottoman campaigns in Iran in the later sixteenth century seem to have facili-
tated the entry of untrained and unqualified Turkish and Azerbaijani person-
nel into the elite levels of the military, a situation which was blamed for the
decline and instability of the state by Ottoman intellectuals such as Mustafa
Ali (Fleischer 1986:155). While the military results of the decline of the devşirme
may well have been pernicious, the opening up of the palace service to a wider
spectrum of candidates evidently changed the organization of musicianship
in the palace and seems to have been one factor which led to significant struc-
tural and generic changes in courtly music.
The modern term “palace service” referred to a broad spectrum of types of
service, from lowly pages to individuals whose physical proximity to the sul-
tan allowed them to possess considerable political influence, in accordance
with the model of the “patrimonial household,” and who could be described as
“slave grandees of the ruling class” (Findley 1980:30):

The state-imposed character of this servile elitism had several other

important consequences. It meant that the ruling class was in principle
deprived of corporate autonomy, and thus was in a position radically dif-
ferent from that of the estates or privileged corporate bodies of medieval
or early modern Europe. While assimilation of the imperial culture and
access to the material perquisites of high station created in the upper ech-
elons of the ruling class a sort of “grandee mentality” and a style of life to
go with it, no member of the ruling class could be sure how long he or his
family would enjoy the means to support such a style (Findley 1980:14–5).

The other major branches of the ruling class were formed by those who
acquired a religious higher education in the medrese schools, and who either
went on to enter the clergy (ʿulamāʾ) or discontinued their education at a cer-
tain point and entered one or another branch of the scribal service (kalemiye).
The higher level of the medrese-educated became judges (kadı), professors
(müderris), or experts in Islamic law (mufti). During the Ottoman period all of
them were increasingly drawn into the imperial bureaucratic pattern:

Although the medreses were supported by private foundations and were

initially independent of government, the Ottomans recognized that the
religious and legal institutions necessary to an Islamic state could, in a
frontier polity, flourish only with imperial patronage. The Conqueror
[Mehmed II, d. 1481] established a strict hierarchy of schools through
which students and professors had to progress in order to qualify for
50 Chapter 1

appointments to a judicial or pedagogic post. The sultan himself con-

trolled such appointments and thus co-opted and bureaucratized the
traditionally independent ulema, the specialists in religious science
(Fleischer 1986:7).

Studies of Ottoman culture frequently question the degree to which the impe-
rial culture, with its secular and religious elements, was internally coherent
and integrated into the society at large. Findley’s characterization of this cul-
ture is characteristic of many modern assessments:

the Ottomans set about building an imperial cultural synthesis of vast

integrative power. Inevitably, this effort encountered a number of obsta-
cles. … One arose from the very artificiality of the synthesis. This was and
could only be a culture of the palace and ruling class. … Of perhaps greater
moment was the uneasiness with which certain elements—sultanate
and Islam, religious-legal and mystical tradition, religious studies and
worldly adab—coexisted within this would-be synthesis. In fact, the
imperial cultural tradition was polymorphous, a juxtaposition more than
a coherent blending of elements from the traditions out of which it had
been forged (Findley 1980:9–10).

This general assessment is the one which has prevailed in literary studies con-
ducted in Turkey (e.g. the works of Köprülü, Gölpınarlı, Tarlan et al.). More
recently it has been questioned vigorously by Andrews (1985), This model might
be fairly applied to much of the sixteenth century (the reigns of Selim I and
Süleyman) during which the patronage of art music became quite centralized
in the court and somewhat dependent upon foreign-born experts. However,
the musicological evidence presented here would tend to oppose this view if
it is taken to apply to Ottoman society throughout most of its history. Both the
fifteenth century and the period from the mid-seventeenth century onward
show a vigorous musical life which was not confined to the court and certainly
not a “polymorphous juxtaposition” of elements. While the nature of music
and its social organization seem to have been significantly different in these
two eras, neither fit the model shown above. The material to be presented
here describes the inability of the Ottoman court-centered and “international”
musical high culture of the first half of the sixteenth century to perpetuate
itself and the transformation of the musical culture in the succeeding period.12

12 A rare glimpse of the musical life of the pages (içoğlan) of the palace service during the
“classical age” is provided by the “Risale-i Mimariye” edited by Crane (1987:24–29,8r–14r).
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 51

While the basic structure of the Ottoman palace service, the civil and reli-
gious bureaucracies, and the dervish orders were already well-established by
the fifteenth century, the social organization which coincided with the new
structures and genres of Ottoman music came into existence only after the
mid-sixteenth century. Several independent elements seem to have coalesced
to produce the social conditions which were characteristic of the post-classical
Ottoman state and the social organization of art music. Sometime after 1560
or 1580 the internal structure of the ruling class began to undergo significant
change. While the nature of this change is currently debated among historians,
differences between the Classical and Post-Classical ages in Ottoman history
are crucial in understanding the music which was created during the follow-
ing century.
Historians today disagree on the extent to which individuals were able to
move from a career in one branch of the government to another during the
Classical Age, but it does appear that in the Middle Period many Men of the
Pen ended up wielding the governmental Sword (Itzkowitz 1962). By the later
seventeenth century many of these careers became hereditary, so that the
Ruling Class as a whole became a limited group of families who preserved
their privileges mainly in one branch or within several branches of the Palace
Service or government bureaucracies. This pattern contradicted the theory of
government of the Ottoman Classical Age, which generally opposed the emer-
gence of hereditary aristocracies, and especially the creation of aristocracies
out of government service. Several historical studies13 emphasize the existence
of a constant social stratum throughout much of the Ottoman Middle Period
(especially after 1650), a small group of families who were able to retain many
of their privileges for generations, regardless of apparent shifts in their career
and fortune. This was a significant change from what appear to have been the
conditions of the Classical Age when Imperial service involved greater depen-
dence on the sultan, so that ruling class (askeri) status could not be inherited.

According to this story, soon after his transportation to Istanbul in 1562–1563 the young
recruit became the student of a music teacher from within the Janissary Corps, who
employed the medieval esoteric explanation of the astrological meaning of music. Soon
after his apprenticeship began he was dissuaded from pursuing a musical career by an
alim and Halveti sheikh, who disapproved of the art of music. It is difficult to draw a con-
clusion from the opinion of this individual (Vişne Mehmed Efendi) in this particular situ-
ation, which related to a personal query, but it may typify the rather low opinion of music
held by the ʿulamāʾ and Sufì sheikhs favored by the ruling sultan, Suleyman, who was not
very favorably disposed toward music. In any case this rather orthodox and exoteric view
was soon to be eclipsed as the devşirme ceased to be a major source for palace musicians
early in the following century.
13 Itzkowitz 1962; Zilfi 1988; and Abou-EI-Haj 1991.
52 Chapter 1

The emergence of a virtual aristocracy out of the higher levels of the

medrese-educated ilmiye was institutionalized by 1715 (Zilfi 1988:56–60), but
Abou-El-Haj has found evidence for this development from the second half of
the seventeenth century (1991:119). He writes:

It is clear that the Ottoman state formation passed through two distinct
phases. The first phase continued from the mid-fifteenth century to the
mid-sixteenth century. During this period, the ruling elite by consen-
sus allowed a limited number of public service appointments based on
merit. By restricting public service to members of the ruling class, the
major benefits of the system accrued to those people who belonged to the
same class and who partook of its culture. Whatever autonomous insti-
tutional structures existed were set up by the ruling class to facilitate a
regulated and legitimized exploitation of material and human resources.
The second phase, beginning in the late sixteenth century and proceed-
ing through the seventeenth, saw the erosion of one consensus within
the ruling elite and the rise of another. The state formation of the first
period underwent changes in the face of intensifying competition within
the ruling elite for access to resources and revenues. If it ever existed as
an historical phenomenon, the well-regulated society, with the clearly
defined social orders so much favored by [the Ottoman social critics] ʿAli
and Koçu Bey, had broken down and ceased to provide insight into the
actual social formations of the day. The second period (from at least the
1560s through the 1700s) is characterized by social mobility, fluidity of
practice and flux in fortunes. Flexibility is evident even in the application
of şeri’at [Islamic law] and the ad hoc nature of its enforcement. In most
instances, the religious law seems to have been tailored to meet the needs
of the ruling class whenever its interests demanded such an adjustment
(1991:59–60).

These changes in the ruling class created new relations between the state and
its “servants,” who now came to function as a kind of aristocracy. While his-
torians have long noted the breakdown in the Ottoman political system and
military prowess beginning some time after the death of Süleyman Kanuni in
1566, the Middle Period which ensued has usually been treated as a long era of
“decline” preceding the reforms of Selim III (1789–1808) and the Era of Reform,
or Tanzimat, initiated by Mahmud II (1808–1839).
The effects of these patterns on the Ottoman state and society may be
interpreted variously, but the implications for cultural studies, and for musi-
cology in particular, seem apparent. The altered relations between the various
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 53

elements within the ruling class, and the new and higher status to which sev-
eral of them aspired changed the relationship between secular and religious
elements within the court culture.
During the Ottoman Middle Period the musical elements within this cultural
synthesis appear to allow the Palace Service, bureaucracy, the religious estab-
lishment and the dervish orders to interact in a rather novel manner, which
gave rise to new constellations of the secular, the religious and the mystical, as
well as the local (i.e. both Turkish and Greek, etc.) and the foreign (Persian and
Arab) within musical expression, and the professional organization of music.
The new Ottoman aristocracy drawn from the sultan’s servants and the ilmiye
constituted the kind of group which was necessary to maintain the “cultural
grounding” of an art music which was “patronized by individuals or groups,
belonging to the ruling elite, who profess connoisseurship” (Powers 1979:11).
The culture propagated by these Ottoman grandees differed in many respects
from that of the Ottoman Classical Age. As noted above, the Islamic şeriat had
little force over them, and one of the main results of these developments was
a kind of secularism or a “locally generated modernity” (Abou-El-Haj 1992).
“Modernity” in this usage refers to several interrelated phenomena, such as the
abandonment of many elements of the medieval Ottoman state and social pat-
terns, including many earlier imperial legal decisions (kanun), lack of enforce-
ment of the Holy Law (şeriat), increased participation of non-Muslims in many
areas of Ottoman life, and blurring of the distinctions between secular, reli-
gious and Sufi culture. By the early eighteenth century these patterns seem
to have facilitated an increased receptivity to Western cultural features, but
this receptivity appears to have been an important consequence and not the
initiator of the process:

The shift from a feudal economy was also reflected in the creation of a
new social formation. In the urban centers, the entry of members of reli-
gious and ethnic minorities into public service was one trend that paral-
leled the appearance of secularism in the society at large, and a tacit, but
nevertheless significant approach to equality. … Ottoman modernity, a
process already set in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, forged
bridges across cultural and social divides, and managed to accommodate
some of the diversity found among the various ethnic, heterogeneous
groups of which the society was composed … (Abou-El-Haj 1992:27–8).

Until quite recently, however the view usually expounded by figures as vari-
ous as the historian Niyazi Berkes (1964) and the poet Yahya Kemal Beyatlı
(1898–1958) dated the beginnings of Turkish secularism with the so-called
54 Chapter 1

“Tulip Period” (1717–1730) during the reign of Ahmed III (1703–1730). The secu-
larization initiated by Ahmed III was usually held to be a secondary phenom-
enon fundamentally influenced by the Western Enlightenment and/or the
wealth and ostentation of the French court (Shaw 1976:234–5). While historians
and other students of Turkey (at least as far back as Gibb) have long pointed
out the remarkable creativity of this Tulip Period, it has usually been viewed as
something utterly exceptional: “It was a highly cultured world never to recur
in Ottoman history” (Atıl 1969:351). According to this prevailing view the Tulip
Period was only the brilliant but momentary flash of an Ottoman moon reflect-
ing a Western sun. The dearth of studies of Ottoman culture during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries has allowed this judgment to pass with little
question. However, the musical data in the present work does not allow for
any abrupt cut-off point after 1730, nor does the period between 1717 and 1730
appear without precedent. The musicological data reveals the Tulip Period to
have been a major efflorescence of the art of music which, however, was con-
sequent to at least two generations of development and which continued and
gained in strength, with only a twenty-year interruption (between 1754 and
1774) until the early nineteenth century.
İnalcık has noted the importance of the Moldavian Prince Demetrius
Cantemir (1673–1723) in the intellectual side of the secularization of the period:
“Cantemir’s genius in the first stage of his life was a vehicle through which
various facets of western culture infiltrated Ottoman society” (1973:9). The
parallel between the development of a distinctively Ottoman form of makam
or “Oriental” art music and the secularization of the Ottoman high culture
was noted by Popescu-Judetz in her study of the musical work of Cantemir
(Popescu-Judetz 1981). While acknowledging the brilliance of the Tulip Period
she saw the beginnings of this process as lying at least one generation earlier:

The late seventeenth century witnessed the development of Turkish art

music as a distinctive body of materials after two centuries of depen-
dence upon Persian practice. … At that time, the intellectual scene in
Constantinople was at the crossroads of Eastern and Western schools of
thought. Various trends of philosophy and spirituality were crossing ide-
ologies and aesthetics. A new Renaissance, rooted in Neo-Aristotelianism,
evolved from Levantine cosmopolitan ways of thought. This Renaissance
combined Byzantine cultural traditions with Islamic theology and
absorbed trends of Western classicism (1981:99–100).

Cantemir himself felt that the Art of Music in Turkey was “revived” during the
reign of Mehmed IV (1648–1687), a generation before his birth in 1673. The fact
that Cantemir’s musical theory, which was thoroughly non-traditional and
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 55

moreover created by a Christian, was written at the request of members of the

Ottoman aristocracy testifies to the degree of secularization which was preva-
lent at the court by the end of the seventeenth century. Because of the limited
role of secular music (musiki/Ar. mūsīqā), the sharp differentiation between
it and all forms of religious chant, and the concomitant professional differ-
entiation of the performers of these musical genres in most Muslim societ-
ies, this legitimation and general “opening-up” of music in seventeenth-and
eighteenth-century Turkey is a significant indication of the secularization and
modernization of the society.
This secularization did not pass unnoticed by European writers. Some, like
Lady Montagu in the early eighteenth century, praised the liberal mindedness
of the upper-class Turks, while others were shocked by what they perceived as
a turn toward atheism (Cantemir 1973:6). What some Europeans regarded as
“atheism” would be called today secularism or even a step toward modernity.
This incipient modernity which affected elements of the Ottoman Ruling
Class was reflected in the relationship of the bureaucracy, the ʿulamāʾ and the
Sufis to secular art music. By the early seventeenth century, both higher and
lower members of the large scribal service (kalemiye), the medrese educated
class who went on to become governmental bureaucrats, were often involved
in secular art music. The close social contact between the Mevlevi, and some
elements in the Halveti and Celveti (and other) dervish orders, on the one
hand, and the secular elite, on the other, brought many dervishes into the court
service as singers and instrumentalists. Both the dervishes, and the unofficial
mehter-i birun ensembles, helped to diffuse the system and repertoire of art
music among the urban population. By the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury, the most successful musicians of artisanal origin were able to become
court singers and musicians, and some of them were rewarded with pensions
or appointments in one of the bureaucracies.
Several independent elements seem to have coalesced to produce the social
conditions which were characteristic of the Middle Period Ottoman state and
the social organization of art music. During its classical period, the Ottoman
state, apparently alone among the Muslim states, took the responsibility to
train its own musicians within the palace. These musicians were predomi-
nantly of devşirme (kul) origin and became part of the palace service. By the
last third of the sixteenth century, the system of the palace service was in a
state of decline and came to include many individuals who were not originally
eligible for the service. Family connections were crucial, and the people of
devşirme origin became only one among many elements in the service.
The decline of the system of the devşirme/slave (kul) service in the pal-
ace, and in particular in the musical sphere, led to the introduction of a sys-
tem of sinecures or pseudo-service in the palace to accommodate the newer
56 Chapter 1

musicians of various Turkish Muslim origins. The decline of the kul system in
the palace service corresponded to a fundamental change in the nature of the
Ottoman ruling class and its relationship to the state. During the seventeenth
century several dozen families with long ties to the service of the state began
to constitute themselves as a virtual aristocracy who were able to secure high
government positions for their members and to appropriate formerly public
sources of revenue for their own support. The higher level of the ilmiye became
part of the new aristocracy.
Even in the Classical Age the bureaucratization of the religious establish-
ment gave them greater social access to the members of secular bureaucracies.
But during the Middle Period many of the higher ʿulamāʾ came to share the
secular musical and poetic tastes of the other bureaucrats, spreading the culti-
vation of secular art music all through the religious bureaucracy. The decline in
the slave element in the palace service seems to have allowed a greater number
of mosque singers (müezzin) to receive training and official appointments in
the palace. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the müezzins partici-
pated freely as secular vocalists and even instrumentalists, becoming one of
the most important groups of professional musicians. The merging of secular
and religious culture which affected both the higher members of the ilmiye
and the müezzins blurred the distinction between these two spheres which
had been much more distinct during the Ottoman Classical Age.
These social conditions appear to have been unique to the Ottoman state
and society after the middle of the sixteenth century; they do not closely
resemble earlier stages of Ottoman or pre-Ottoman Anatolian Turkish society
or the contemporaneous Muslim societies elsewhere. The following section
will describe the emergence of these patterns in greater detail.

6 Unfree Musicians

The unfree musicians were of four general categories: members of the devşirme
selection (kul), captured foreign Muslim professional musicians, captured
Christian musicians, and slave women of the palace.

6.1 The kullar

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Ottoman Empire had been
expanding mainly in Europe. Whatever musicians might have been present
in Bulgaria, Serbia, or Wallachia, they could not have been experts in the
makam music which carried prestige among the Ottomans. It was only with
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 57

the great West Asian conquests of Selim I (1512–1520) that the Ottomans began
to invade or occupy cities and courts in which musicians of the Muslim art
tradition were to be found. This new pattern of warfare changed the composi-
tion of the courtly musicians’ corps in Istanbul. An important document of the
period is the payment record of the palace musicians (“Cemaat-i mutriban”)
five years after the accession of Süleyman I in 1520 (Uzunçarşılı 1977:84–6)
(see p. 110). This document mentions forty names, of which ten are certainly
Iranian. It is written that most of these musicians were brought “from Tabriz
by Sultan Selim.”
The number of musicians of kul (devşirme) origin is still substantial. The
key phrases in the document are “içeriden çıkmıştır” and “Sultan Bayezid
zamanindan mutriptir.” The first, literally “he emerged from the inside,” indi-
cates devşirme origin and training in the Palace School. The second, “he has
been a [paid] musician since the time of Sultan Bayezid,” certainly expresses
the same, only with seniority, as Bayezid had died in 1512. Kopuzi Hüsrev is
described with both formulas: “He has been a [paid] musician since the time
of Sultan Bayezid; he emerged from the ‘inside’ (Palace Service).” Kemençeci
Nasuh is described in the same way, while Kopuzi Şaban, Kanuni Şadi, Kanuni
Muharrem Seydi, Kanuni Muhyiddin are described only as having been mutrip
since the time of Sultan Bayezid.
The five students of the ud player Hasan Ağa are all described as “Hünkar
kulları,” “Slaves of the Sultan,” i.e. pages of devşirme origin. Three former kuls
of the court of Şehzade Ahmed in Amasya (1494–1512) appear on the list with
the formula “Sultan Ahmed’ın kullarındandir” (“he is one of the kuls of Sultan
Ahmed”). This formula is employed for Avvad Nasuh and Çengi Behram. The
most prestigious kul was the ud player Hasan Ağa, paid forty-five akçe daily. His
title of ağa indicates that he had risen through the devşirme. According to the
notes following his name he had been the mir-i alem of Sultan Ahmed, gover-
nor of Amasya between 1494 and 1512. The mir-i alem was an important and
ancient office in the Ottoman court, associated with the mehterhane and the
bearing of the standard, as well as the reception of envoys (Pakalin 1971:543).
The office of mir-i alem was the highest-ranking nexus between the musical
function of the mehter and the patrimonial household of the sultan or prince
(şehzade). We may surmise that when Hasan Ağa was integrated into the
court of Sultan Selim he had a multiple status, perhaps partly as a musahib
(boon-companion), although this is not specified; in any case he was not sim-
ply a professional musician.
The last kul in the document is the mehterbaşı, (called here sermehteran)
named Ali bin Elvani, who received the high salary of thirty akçe daily.
58 Chapter 1

Altogether there are ten adult musicians of kul origin, plus five şagirds (appren-
tices) among the kul pages. This is a quarter of the adult musicians plus the five
evidently young pages.

6.2 The Persians (Acemler)

The later Turkish tradition claims that the Iranian musicians were the most
important element at the court during the sixteenth century and somewhat
later. Prince Cantemir included a repertoire of peşrevs described as “Acemi”
(“Persian”) or “Hindi,” which seem to be among the oldest repertoire in these
collections. The later oral tradition contains a small vocal repertoire with
somewhat similar musical characteristics which are believed to date from this
period. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Charles Fonton stated that:

Gulam was succeeded in Persia by Mir Alam, Mir Abdullah and Mir Ali,
and many other great personages who maintained the honor of music.
Then the Turks learned it [music] from the Persians and even became
their masters. Sultan Selim I was the one who, in his wars against the
Persians, began bringing back to Constantinople many musicians.
Süleymân, his son and successor, imitated his father’s example, and ever
since then all the Emperors who have been to Persia have done likewise
and taken all the most talented people in every genre (Fonton 1988–89
[1751]:33).

Whether they remained officially slaves or not, the introduction of these for-
eign captive musicians certainly helped to end the monopoly of the slave
musicians of devşirme origin in the Ottoman court. Unfortunately, we know
little about the living and working conditions of the foreign musicians apart
from their salaries. From the 1525 document we see that, while the highest paid
musician was the grandson of the Iranian Abdülkadir (forty-seven akçe daily),
the Anatolian kopuz player from Trabzon was also very highly paid (forty akçe).
Thus, in fact it does not seem that at this time the Iranian musicians completely
dominated the court. It is known, however, that later in the reign of Süleyman,
the chief of the court ensemble was a certain Hasan Can (1490–1567), a musi-
cian of ʿulamāʾ origin who had been brought with his father from Tabriz by
Selim I, indicating a pattern of Iranian influence (Sanal 1961:160). It is appar-
ently this pattern which is reflected in the later tradition.
Our document of 1525 distinguishes between those musicians who had been
“brought” and those who had “come” to the palace. Thus, all the musicians
from Tabriz had been “brought”: “Tebriz’den Sultan Selim merhum getirmiştir”
(“The late Sultan Selim brought him from Tabriz”). At the same time, Kopuzi
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 59

Zeyni “came from Trabzon with the late Sultan Selim” (“Sultan Selim merhum
ile Trabzon’dan geldi”). We may suppose that someone who had been “brought”
might have been less than free, while someone who “came” remained a free
professional musician.
There was a new influx of Iranian musicians during the reign of Murad IV
(1623–1640), particularly after the occupations of Erivan (Revan) and Tabriz
in 1634, and the conquest of Baghdad in 1638. While the seventeenth-century
sources have forgotten the names of most of the Iranian musicians of the pre-
vious century, lumping them all together as the “Acemler,” these newer arrivals
are better remembered, e.g. Çengi Cafer, the ud player Mir Mehemmed, the
singer Murad Ağa, and the Nakhchivanian Şeştari (or Çartari) Murad:

Murad Ağa. His birthplace was the land of Acem, and his place of settle-
ment was the Abode of Exalted Rulership of Constantinople. His fame
extended from the time of the bellicose Murad Han [IV] until the felici-
tous era of Sultan Mehmed Han [IV], In the year forty-eight [1638], when
Sultan Murad Han conquered the Paradisical fortified city of Baghdad,
with a mighty sword-stroke, twelve individuals of encompassing knowl-
edge were taken prisoner. Ten of them were instrumentalists, and two of
them were singers, of whom one was Mir Mehmed, and the other was the
aforementioned Murad Ağa (Esʿad Efendi ca. 1725:57).
Nahçevenli Murad Ağa. He is a priceless instrumentalist; Murad Han
brought him with Emirgun Han from Revan (Erivan) and settled him in
Istanbul in Beşiktaş (“Seyahatname” I, cf. Evliya 1896:637).14

This last sentence in Evliya Çelebi’s “Seyahatname” is our only indication

that, during the seventeenth century, captive foreign musicians were not nec-
essarily settled in the palace, with the içoğlan musical personnel. Evidently,
Murad Ağa was given a private house in the Beşiktaş district on the western
Bosphorus, quite far from the palace in Topkapı. His former master, Emirgun,

14 The later Turkish tradition seems to have conflated these two musicians. Öztuna believes
them to have been a single individual (TMAII 1971:40), and gives the dates 1610–1673 for
“Murad Ağa [Şeştari].” These dates seem to belong to the Şeştari Murad mentioned by
Evliya. Apart form the difference in location (Baghdad in Esʿad and south Caucasus in
Evliya) in the two sources, Esʿad specifies that Murad was a vocalist. Today five vocal items
in the Persian genres kar, nakş and nakş semai with Persian texts are ascribed to “Şeştari
Murad.” This ascription also appears to confuse the instrumentalist and the vocalist.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the one or both Murads represent the last generation of
Iranian musicians at the Ottoman court.
60 Chapter 1

had been settled further up on the Bosphorus, in a village which today bears
his name (Emirgan).
After the death of the singer Murad Ağa in 1688, we hear no more about
Iranian musicians at the Ottoman court who were well-remembered enough to
have been named specifically in a written source. By this time the importance
of the slave musicians of the court seems to have drastically declined. Our
sources for the music of the seventeenth century begin to mention the names
of many Turkish Muslim musicians who performed at the court and had noth-
ing to do with the devşirme system. Evliya Çelebi wrote an account of his own
introduction into the palace music in 1635. This autobiographical anecdote
is practically the only known description of how a Turkish Muslim musician
entered the Imperial system. Evliya’s father (a well-connected court jeweler)
arranged for him to chant the Qurʾān while the Sultan, Murad IV, was visiting
the Aya Sofya mosque. The sultan was impressed with the young Evliya’s vocal
abilities and allowed him to be enrolled in the music school which functioned
in the Imperial Palace.

6.3 The “Franks” and Other Male Slaves

During the seventeenth century there was apparently a substantial number
of captured European males with musical talent and training who functioned
as slave musicians in the Court. One of the only slave musicians about whom
anything concrete is known is the Pole Bobowski (Ali Ufki Bey), the compiler
of the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” and author of several small books. Born Wojciech
Bobowski in Lwow (Lemberg), he was captured by marauding Tatars in 1633
and sold as a slave in Istanbul. His musical talent was soon recognized, and he
was bought by the Palace officials and assigned to the music school, probably
in 1634 (Behar 1990). He converted to Islam, taking the name Ali Ufki Bey. He
later became attached to the Celveti dervish order, which was influential at
the Court during the early seventeenth century. In his writings on the Court
he mentions the existence of other slave musicians of European origin. In
addition, his musical collection, the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz,” contains a number
of instrumental pieces by “Firenk Mustafa” and “İfrenci” who were evidently
European “renegades.” In his description of the Imperial Palace (published in
German in 1667 and in Italian in 1679), he has a few remarks about the lot of the
slave musicians, both male and female:

Another officer is the sazendeh baschy [sazende-başı] or Master of

Music … whose function only obliges him to accompany the musi-
cians when the Sultan wishes to listen to them. This dignitary opens the
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 61

entrance to him and quickly approaching from the khas odah [has oda],
he lets the others play and sing without being obliged to take part him-
self. This post is ordinarily held by foreign renegades because there are
often found among them those who have experience and can give rules
to this music, which consists of nothing more than the raising and lower-
ing of the voice, the same as that which we call plainchant.
The lesser officers are the kalfah [kalfa] or Masters of Sciences, who
give lessons in this room. These Masters are ordinarily chosen from
among the most famous musicians, mathematicians, poets, etc. and take
their meals in the Small Hall with the Eunuchs (Bobowski 1990 [1665]:1).

It is not entirely clear that these Masters of Sciences were in fact slaves, but
the homely detail about their taking their meals with the eunuchs strongly
suggests that these men were part of the permanent staff. The identity of the
sazende-başılar as foreign renegades is of extreme interest and forces us to
ponder whether these Turkicized Europeans could have imparted anything
of their previous musical experience to the Turkish musicians. Bobowski tells
of an Italian captive, who now “served the Sultan in music,” and who had
recorded the courtly repertoire in Western notation for his own use, but he
was not, apparently a Master of Music:

He did not want them to learn his skill, making the excuse that it takes so
long to perfect, fearing that if he were too esteemed and considered too
necessary to the instruction of the Pages, then he would have too much
difficulty obtaining his liberty and would be condemned to spend all his
life in servitude (ibid.:2).

Ali Ufki also wrote a very curious paragraph about one of the major functions
of the slave musicians:

The musicians of the chamber normally go every Tuesday to play before

the Sultan while his head is shaved. There are no other days in which
they are required to present themselves before him. But he sometimes
has them come to the apartments of the Sultanas where they are brought
in blindfolded and constrained to sing in that state and play their instru-
ments in order that they be unable to see the lovely Sultanes, and they
always have the Eunuchs beside them who observe them to prevent them
from raising their heads and give them a good whack if they budge even
a little. I assure you that it is very tiresome and uncomfortable to be a
62 Chapter 1

musician at this price, and to be deprived in this situation of the pleasure

of sight. Rarely, it also happens that other music is used at the Sultana’s
place than that of the girls and Eunuchs (ibid.:3).

“The musicians of the chamber” are apparently the male slave musicians. It
would seem that only such unfree and ever-present musicians could be relied
upon to entertain the Sultan at his occasional whim under such circum-
stances. Neither Bobowski nor his contemporary Evliya Çelebi tell us who was
primarily responsible for the courtly “symphonies” during the seventeenth
century—whether the slave musicians of the chamber, or the free musicians
of the city. From Bobowski’s last sentence it would seem that other music, i.e.
including the courtly fasıl, was not in the normal repertoire of the slave-girls.
What music the Eunuchs may have played is completely obscure.
Bobowski himself played the santur in the Palace ensemble, and his book
shows that he was familiar with a very wide repertoire—starting with both
the instrumental and vocal sections of the courtly vocal repertoire (mainly
in Turkish), going through the dervish vocal genres, ilahi and tevşih, but also
including the şarkı and türkü. Evliya Çelebi also mentions a wide variety of
genres in connection with the music of the court and his own repertoire. This
contrasts with Cantemir, writing only fifty years after Bobowski, who evinces
neither knowledge of nor interest in the “non-classical” genres. Likewise, Esʿad
Efendi rarely mentions these “non-classical” genres. This is important evidence
for the fundamental change in the courtly vocal repertoire after ca. 1670, doc-
umented by Hafız Post (d. 1694). Nevertheless, the music of the court could
never consist exclusively of the “classical” courtly genres—whether in Persian
or in Turkish—and the musicians of the court, i.e. the slave-musicians of the
Palace, were always obliged to entertain the Sultan with various genres of
dance, erotic and other “light” music.
The increasing importance of the musicians of the city as repositories of the
classical repertoire can be seen in the fact that the music teachers of the female
slave-musicians were often not the resident Masters of Science, but free musi-
cians. A large number of court records from the second half of the seventeenth
century record the salaries of free professional musicians who gave music
instruction to the slave-girls (Uzunçarşılı 1977:101). Most of the teachers were
paid to put up the slave-girls in their homes for prolonged periods (ibid.:90–3).
In the nineteenth century the slave-girls seem to have been restricted to the
Palace, but nevertheless the numerous love-affairs of the singer Hacı Arif Bey
(1831–1885) with his students among the Circassian slave-girls seem to have
been the talk of Istanbul for some time—as late as 1982 they were dramatized
on Turkish television.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 63

The continued existence of the three types of musicians in the Palace—the

unfree “musicians of the chamber,” “the slave girls and the musicians of the
city,” is documented as late as 1788 by Mouradgea d’Ohsson;

Nearly all the Sultans have two corps of musicians, one among the Itsch-
Aghassys [Iç-Ağasi], or palace pages, and the other group among the slave
girls of the harem, who are under the command of the Sultanas and of
the Cadinns [kadın] of his Highness. Those among the Monarchs who
had the strongest taste for this pleasant art, such as Bayezid I, Selim II,
Moustapha I, Mourad IV, Ibrahim I, Mohammed IV, Mahmoud I, etc.,
never dined or supped without the sound of instruments. Even today it is
still a kind of protocol, whenever the Sultan dines in the Keoschks built
among the palace gardens, that his orchestra must follow him and play
different pieces of music, nearly every hour; frequently in addition to
these are musicians from the city who enjoy a certain reputation [my
emphasis] (d’Ohsson 1788:23).

None of Cantemir’s informants or teachers were from among the “musicians

of the chamber,” whether Turkish or Iranian—all of them were free city musi-
cians. His tanbur teacher, the Greek Angelos, was one of the regular instructors
of the Palace School, whose pay receipts have been preserved in the Topkapı
Palace Archives (Uzunçarşılı 1977:111).

6.4 The Slave-Women

By the eighteenth century there is very little mention of the male musicians
of the chamber. However, the institution of the musical slave-girl contin-
ued throughout the next two centuries up until the end of the Empire. Like
the male oğlans of the palace, the slave-women were of non-Muslim origin,
selected from the slave-market (rather than the devşirme). They went through
four stages, comparable to those of a craft-guild; cariye, şagird (student), gedikli
(journeyman), and usta or kalfa (master). They practiced a variety of skills,
such as sewing, embroidery, dancing, and music.
Most of the entertainment music of the Seraglio seems to have become the
responsibility of the slave-women and they are frequently depicted in a variety
of Turkish and European paintings, engravings, and (eventually) photographs,
as instrumentalists, dancers, and singers, who entertained themselves as well
as the Sultan. In the later eighteenth century one such slave rose to great prom-
inence as a classical composer and music teacher.
Dilhayat Hanim, or Dilhayat Kalfa (1710?–1780) was the most important
woman composer in the history of Ottoman music. According to the evidence
64 Chapter 1

of the mecmuas she had composed over a hundred items in both the vocal
and instrumental genres, which was itself unusual. Twelve of these pieces are
still known, and a few, such as her bestes in Rast and Mahur, and her peşrev
and saz semai in Evçara, are considered to be among the great classics. She
composed very fine poetry for her own fasil items. She was apparently a singer
and tanbur player, and she was also the first musician to employ the makam
Evçara. Nevertheless, Abdülbaki Nasır Dede, writing in 1794, claimed that this
makam was “invented” by Sultan Selim III. There is a tradition that she had
been one of the music teachers of the young Prince Selim (1761–1808), before
his accession to the throne in 1789, and so it may be assumed that the Mevlevi
sheikh Abdülbaki credited the then reigning Sultan, rather than the humble
slave-woman, with the invention of this very beautiful compound makam.15
Her mastery of the classical fasıl repertoire appears to have been unusual; and
there is no early or contemporaneous reference to the vocal fasıl ever having
being composed by women.
Recent research suggests that one peşrev notated by Cantemir may be that
of a cariye tanbur player from the time of Mehmet IV. This item is the “Saba-yi
Reftar, usuleş Düyek.” Comparing this item with others in the Hamparsum
notations, Zehra Değirmenci has suggested that Reftar Kalfa may have been
a student of Tanburi Angelos, and it was through the latter that Cantemir had
learned this peşrev (Değirmenci 2021).
The numerous paintings of the female musicians of the Palace always
depict them in connection with dancing or with musical instruments, or com-
binations of instruments which were not typical of classical playing. Several
pictures show female soloists playing a variety of classical and non-classical
instruments, and these depictions are also capable of various interpretations
(see Tuğlaci 1985:106–19). Levni’s famous painting of a four-piece female Palace

15 The term “kalfa” had been used for different kinds of male and female specialists. The
word was derived from the Arabic “khalīfa” (“successor”). In its original form, pronounced
halife, it came to mean a leader of a Sufi brotherhood. In the form kalfa it meant: (1) in
the crafts, the intermediate level between the master (usta) and the apprentice (şagird),
(2) an assistant to an elementary school (mekteb) teacher; (3) for a woman, a Palace slave
woman, usually one no longer youthful.
“Kalfa. A term for slave-women in the Palace and in aristocratic residences (konak).
In the aristocratic residences this term was more frequently employed for the older
ones. The young ones were referred to as ‘girl’ (kız), and were called by their names”
(Pakalın 1971–11:150).
Meaning no. 1 is probably the origin of the term employed by Bobowskí for the
“Masters of Science” resident in the Palace. Neither the female nor the male meaning of
kalfa necessarily referred to a musician. In the modern Khwarezmian dialect of Uzbek,
xalpa refers to a professional female singer and instrumentalist.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 65

ensemble, dating from the early years of the eighteenth century, shows a zurna
(double-reed oboe), miskal (pan-pipes), tanbur and daire being played together.
While the tanbur, miskal and daire could have been part of the ensemble for
a fasıl-i sazendeler (instrumental fasıl), there is no evidence that a zurna, an
instrument of military and dance music, could ever have been part of such an
ensemble. If Levni’s picture reflects reality, it could only represent an ensemble
for instrumental dance-music.
The genre scenes depicted in a 1671 collection, painted by a Turkish painter
for an Italian patron, are probably typical examples of the musical function
of the slave-women of the Palace. In one scene a Black Eunuch is presenting
the concubine favorite of the night to the Sultan. The concubine is preceded
by five cariyeler, two of whom are playing the bağlama (tambura) and one the
rebab (Tuğlaci 1985:111). Another scene depicts a celebration in the harem. On
the right a group of Palace women is seated, gossiping, smoking and drinking
coffee, while on the left a five-woman ensemble sings and performs on the çeng
(harp), rebab, miskal, daires and nakkara (kettledrums) for two dancing-girls
who are entertaining the women on the right (ibid.).

7 Free Musicians in the Palace Service and the Bureaucracy

In the “Cemaat-i mutriban” list of 1525 the most highly paid musician was Derviş
Mahmud bin Abdülkadirzade, i.e. the grandson of Abdülkadir Meraği (Marāghī).
The latter’s youngest son Abdülaziz seems to have found his way to Anatolia,
where he presented his treatise “Nekavat al-Advar” to Sultan Mehmed II.
Derviş Mahmud was apparently born in Anatolia, and had presented his own
musical treatise “Maqasid al-Advar” to Sultan Beyazid II (Bardakçi 1986:43).
Thus, Derviş Mahmûd seems to have come out of the older Muslim tradition of
performer-theorists. In addition there was Çengi Nimetullah, the son of Avvad
Zeynülabidin, the Iranian ud player who had been at the provincial courts of
Amasya and Manisa. Nimetullah was evidently not as high status a musician
as Derviş Mahmud, as he received only fifteen akçe daily. His son Halil was
a kemançe player who received eight akçe daily. These three individuals were
free Muslims of foreign origin who had evidently become Ottomans. They
were unusual in that they represented a link with the late medieval tradition
of free professionalism associated (at least in Mahmud’s case) with some theo-
retical knowledge of music.
A number of musicians are described as having come with Sultan Süleyman:
“He came with His Imperial Majesty Sultan Süleyman” (“Hünkar hazretiyle
Sultan Süleyman’la bile gelmiştir”), or with the late Sultan Selim. However, only
66 Chapter 1

in the cases of the kopuzi Zeyni and the singer Ali Sultan do we know from
where these musicians had come; both were “from Trabzon” (“Trabzon’dan
gelmiştir”) with Sultan Selim. This indicates a surprising development of
makam music in a region which had been under Byzantine rule until 1461. The
only apparent explanation may be the relative proximity of the city of Tabriz
to which it was connected by frequent caravans. The only other Anatolian
city which, although not mentioned is implied, is the city of Amasya where
Sultan Ahmed had maintained his court. Other than these, there is no hint
of where the other three musicians (Kemançeci Mustafa, Guyende Hasan and
Guyende Çerkes Hasan, two different individuals with different salaries) had
come from. Altogether there are seventeen apparently free musicians, all of
them Muslims. This includes three students (şagird)—Çengi Hasan (şagird of
Kopuzcu Şaban), and two students of Derviş Mahmud bin Abdülkadirzade.
Other than the musicians who had come from Amasya or Trabzon, and the
three who “came” from unspecified places, the other students and other
free musicians probably were native to Istanbul. The seventeen free musi-
cians are the largest single group, as compared with ten kuls, and ten unfree
Persians. Thus, even in the first half of the sixteenth century the free Muslim
musicians were a substantial group within the Palace system of employ-
ment. It is probable that most of them lived in the city but were supported by
the Court.
The musical situation in the later sixteenth century, after the death of
Süleyman in 1566, is little known, except through miniature painting. We know
of a troupe of Egyptian (free) popular mehter musicians who were brought to
Istanbul for the sur-i Humayun of 1582. One of these musicians, known by the
lakab (sobriquet) Emir-i Hac, evidently remained in Istanbul. Bobowski men-
tions another Egyptian musician, Kase-Baz-i Misri, who may have arrived in
Turkey in that generation. In general, the relationship of kul, foreign and free
musicians is not well known. However, by the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury several social factors apparently came into play which together eclipsed
the centrality of the kul içoğlans and the Iranian captive musicians in the prop-
agation of makam music. The situation as revealed by the seventeenth-and
early eighteenth-century sources was a complex one, in which the içoğlans
still played a role in musical life, but not quite the role which the system would
have dictated. It was this middle period, after the end of the Classical Ottoman
period and before the nineteenth-century reforms, which saw the creation of
the system of Turkish art music which is documented, and which is partly the
source of the system and repertoire known today. During this period, the free
professional art musician, as he was known in the medieval Muslim courts,
does not appear. The major impetus in the creation of Turkish art music was
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 67

accomplished by several types of musician who had differing relationships to

the Palace.
Evliya Çelebi’s autobiographical description of his entrance into the Palace
School in 1635 presents a rather peculiar bureaucratic organization of musi-
cal instruction:

Afterwards Murad Khan left the Aya Sofya Mosque amidst lamps and
torches, and the author mounted a horse and entered the Inner Palace
(Saray-i Has) through the Gate of Cypresses (Bab-i Servi). The Sultan
himself entered the Privy Chamber (Has-Oda), and he entrusted me to
the Chief of the Privy Chamber (Has-Oda-başı). He ordered that I be
dressed in a kaftan in the Privy Pantry (Kiler-i Has), and then entered the
Privy Harem (Harem-i Has). In the morning he entrusted me to the Chief
of the Pantry (Kilerci-başı), the Hadim-i Sefid Ali Ağa. He appointed
a place for me in a cell for the ağa’s in front of the Privy Pantry. They
[named] the Chief Pickler (Turşucu-başı) Ahmed Ağa as my pedagogue
(lāle), the Imperial Jar-holder (Gügüm-başı) Ahmed Efendi as my callig-
raphy master, in the Science of Music my [spiritual] father the Imperial
Companion (muṣāḥib) Derviş Ömer, in general studies (ders-i ʿām) Keçi
Mehmed Efendi, and in the science of grammer and rhyme, once again
my old Quranic chant (tecvīd) master Evliya Efendi … (“Seyahatname” I,
cf. Evliya 1896:245).

Although there is no mention of Evliya Çelebi having any professional involve-

ment with anything other than music at the court, he was entrusted to the
Chief of the Pantry, and delegated to the Chief Pickler. His music teacher was
a well-known dervish musician, the venerable Ömer Gülşeni, but bureaucrati-
cally, Evliya was under the authority of the Imperial Pantry. In the “Atrabü’l-Asar”
there are several references to musicians who worked in the Imperial Pantry.
Enfî Hasan (d. 1729), one of the leading composers at the court of Ahmed III
(1703–1730), was an ağa of the Imperial Pantry (Esʿad ca. 1725:fol. 13).
The most likely explanation for this bureaucratization of the music of the
Imperial court is that the Ottoman palace functioned as a patrimonial house-
hold (İnalcık 1973:76; Findley 1980:30–40), in which many services which
involved physical proximity to the Sultan could result in a shift in the actual
function of the service. This phenomenon has usually been examined by his-
torians looking for shifting patterns of political influence within the palace.
In this case, what we are seeing is not so much a political shift as a bureau-
cratic reshuffling. By the early seventeenth century, the frequent admittance
into the Palace School system of individuals of free Muslim background (like
68 Chapter 1

Evliya) had to be accommodated into a system which had been designed for
the içoğlans who were part of the kul system. Possibly it seemed more conve-
nient to give the music candidates nominal jobs in another department of the
Imperial service, and to channel their salaries through that department.
During the reign of Murad IV (1623–1640) a new Palace chamber, the Cam-
paign Chamber (seferli oda) was created to house musicians and singers, as
well as laundrymen, bath attendants and barbers (İnalcık 1973:80). Neverthe-
less, musicians continued to be registered in the Pantry and elsewhere.
During the reign of Selim III (1789–1808), the court documents reveal that
there was a rather large group of musicians who were not listed with musicians,
but with the çavuşan-i enderun, who were officers in the palace service. We
see such names as: Neyzen Emin Ağa, Neyzen Said Ağa, Nakkarzen Mehmed
Ağa, Tanburi Tahir Ağa. There are also dancers, such as Rakkas İbrahim Ağa,
Rakkas Mustafa Ağa. A number of musicians and singers were connected with
the palace department to which they belonged, and through which they were
paid. From the Treasury (Hazine): Hazineli Hanende Ali Ağa, Hazineli Tanburi
Salih Ağa, Hazineli Kemani Ali Ağa, etc. From the Pantry (Kiler, Kilār): Kileri
Kemani Osman Bey, Kileri Kemani Sadık Ağa, Kileri Kemani Yusuf Ağa, etc.
(Uzunçarşılı 1977:108–9). Some of these individuals from both the Treasury
and the Pantry are described as musahib, “boon-companion” (of the Sultan).
This group of çavuşan from the Imperial Treasury and Pantry far outnumber
those musicians, who, although receiving monthly salaries, were not enrolled
in the palace service. A defter (account book) from 1818 lists the musicians
(musikişinaslar) among the çavuşan of three departments: the Treasury,
the Pantry, and the Seferli Oda (ibid.). Such a listing of the musicians gives the
impression that music was indeed the job of these nominal members of the
Treasury and Pantry.
This system may also have afforded some insurance for musicians when the
reigning sultan was uninterested in music. As Behar notes:

It can be concluded that the music instruction of the Palace, despite its
rather “institutionalized” appearance, in the final analysis was bound
up with the predilection for music of the Sultan. From time to time, it
was possible for the throne to be occupied by a Sultan who did not like
music, or who did not tolerate it on religious grounds. One of these was
Osman III who reigned from 1754–1757. During this period all of the musi-
cians who were educated at the palace were removed and dispersed. The
Enderûn practice-room (meşkhane) went on vacation. During the period
of the successor of Osman III, Sultan Mustafa (1757–1774), it cannot be
said that there was any musical activity worthy of note (1988:93).
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 69

In such periods, at least some of the musicians and music students who were
officially registered in the Privy Pantry, or in other services, may have been able
to hold onto their jobs.
The status and the living-conditions of the slave-women, the içoğlans,
and the mehter musicians appears to have been relatively fixed, although
individuals within these three unfree categories may have achieved unusual
privileges. The one slave-musician whose biography is somewhat known,
Bobowski, was probably unusual in that he was able to leave his musical posi-
tion as santur-player and become a court interpreter. However Ali Ufki was by
no means the only slave of European origin among the palace musicians (he
states that the Music Masters were often converts, and mentions one musician
of Italian origin), and it is certainly possible that other skills which they had
brought with them may have enabled them to transfer from one division of the
palace service to another.
Any musician who was outside of these categories was inhabiting a gray
area in which his status was ill-defined. His success was dependent upon
the sultan’s appreciation of music, his own talent, his personal qualities, and
his familial and professional connections. One way to advancement was the
establishment of a personal relationship with the sultan, i.e. being chosen as
a “boon-companion” (musahib). The best-known musical musahib in the sev-
enteenth century is Evliya Çelebi. Evliya began his career with good familial
connections—his father was the Chief Jeweler (Kuyumcubaşı) of the Palace,
and he was a member of an old and aristocratic family. Outside of the Palace
Evliya had been trained as a Qurʾānic reciter (hafız). At the age of twenty-four
he was accepted into the Palace School, while officially enlisted in the ser-
vice of the Imperial Pantry. Evliya describes in detail his first meeting with
Sultan Murad IV, and his witty exchanges with him and with Emirgun, the for-
mer Safavid governor of Erivan, who was already an Imperial musahib. Evliya
also became a musahib. The privileged lot which this entailed can be judged
from the fact that Evliya served in the Palace for only four years, after which
he was given a daily allowance of forty aspers (akçe), and allowed to begin
his life of travel, which he later immortalized through his multi-volume trav-
elogue (“Seyahatname”). Esʿad Efendi does not mention Evliya, and there is
no record of his having composed anything. While he must have been a tal-
ented singer, he was not one of the major musicians of his time. Evliya’s privi-
leges were the result of a variety of factors, of which his musical talent was
only one.
The most important musician of the later seventeenth/early eighteenth
century was Hafız Post’s student, Buhurizade Mustafa Itri (d. 1712). Esʿad
Efendi, who had evidently heard him—probably as an older man—states
70 Chapter 1

that his voice sounded like “a rusted out of tune harp, without notes and
without tonal center” (“misal-i çeng-i pür jeng etvar bi-aheng ve bi-perde vü bi
karar idi”) (Efendi ca. 1725:8a) and it is clear that Itri’s reputation rested on
his compositions, not his performances. It is the compositions which attract
the highest praise from Esʿad Efendi and from Evliya Çelebi, who describes
Itri as the “composer” (sahib-i beste) and “the perfect maestro” (ustad-i kamil,
Evliya 1896:634). He was also one of the main informants of Prince Cantemir,
who considered him one of leading authorities on makam and composition,
along with Tanburi Angelos and Tanburi Eyyubi Mehmed Ağa. The name “son
of the incense-dealer” (Buhurizade) suggests that Itri was of merchant, or pos-
sibly artisanal origin. He was attached as a muhibb (“follower”) to the Mevlevi
tarikat, but his musical education was not apparently at a Mevlevihane, as
he mentions (in his poetry) Hafız Post, Derviş Ömer, and Koca Osman as his
teachers. Hafız Post was a Halveti, Derviş Ömer was a Gülşeni/Mevlevi sheikh
from Anatolia, and Koca Osman was a secular aristocratic musician. Itri’s rela-
tionship to the court is not known. Esʿad Efendi does not mention any bureau-
cratic position in connection with Itri, so it is more likely that he sang his new
compositions for the Sultan at irregular intervals, and without any formal con-
nection to the Palace. According to Esʿad Efendi, Sultan Mustafa II granted
Itri his request to be the steward (kethüda) of the slave market (esirpazarı) in
Istanbul, which assured him a substantial income for the remainder of his life,
for at least twenty-five years, as Itri died in 1712.
Other famous musician/composers had some formal relationship with one
of the Palace bureaus, although we cannot be sure whether this was a “real”
position or a “cover” for their musical activities. Several of these composers
were rewarded by being granted an early retirement with a substantial income
derived from a zeamet (zeʿāmet), or fief. For example, the composer Enfi Hasan
Ağa (d. 1729) spent eleven years in the Imperial Pantry, after which, in 1704, he
was granted an income for life. İsmail Ağa was admitted into the Palace Service
as a Teberdar (“Axe-bearer”) in the reign of Mustafa II (1695–1703), and later
into the Imperial Pantry. He was appointed an Imperial müezzin. Later he was
granted a zeamet and retired, dying in 1723. In other cases the bureaucratic
position must have entailed real responsibilities, so that composition and per-
formance must have been secondary occupations.
Of the ninety-seven musicians mentioned by Esʿad Efendi, twenty-three
appear with no concrete biographical information except for the dates of
their deaths, nor is any biographical data available elsewhere. Sixty-four of
the remaining seventy-four musicians can be divided into several occupa-
tional categories:
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 71

Table 1.1 Occupational categories of musicians as mentioned by Esʿad Effendi

Dervishes 17
Kalemiye (scribal service) 13
Mosque singers (müezzin; naathan, naʿt-khwān) 11
Ilmiye (religious establishment, but not mosque singers) 9
Artisans 4
Ambiguous, possibly artisans 5
Palace service 5

The remainder include three sipahis, one mehter musician, one slave (mam-
luk of the Şeyhülislam), three foreign-born professionals, and two who are dif-
ficult to classify: Mustafa Ağa, who was one of the Chief Singers (hanendebaşı)
of Mehmed IV, but with no other indication of how he came to occupy this
position, and Mahmud Çelebi, who was the nedim of the local nobility (eşraf )
of Diyarbekir. Also, there are cases of multiple statuses, e.g. Yusuf Çelebi,
known as “Hafız Tiz” (“High-pitched Hafız”), who was the naathan of the
Selimîye Mosque, but is described as a “slave” (mamluk), or Ismail Ağa, who
was registered in the Imperial Pantry, worked as a palace müezzin, and retired
with a zeamet-fief.
Five other ambiguous cases in my list are individuals whose names testify to
an artisanal origin (Tesbihçizade—“son of the rosary-maker”; Tavukçuzade—
“son of the chicken-seller”; Sütçüzade—“son of the milkman”; Taşçızade—“son
of the stonemason”), but whose biographies contain no information as to
their actual professions. On the other hand, two of the Diyarbekir musicians
are described as “bookbinders” (mücellid esnafı), the hanendebaşı Receb
Çelebi was a “potter” (çömlekçi), Hasan Çelebi was a silk-weaver (kazzaz), and
Diyarbekirli Ahmed Çelebi was the steward (kethüda/kabya) of the jewelers’
guild. The sipahis were members of the semi-feudal cavalry who were sup-
ported by estates in the provincial countryside. The three individuals in ques-
tion were all from south-east Anatolia—Diyarbekir, Kilis, and Antep (Ayntab).
The Palace Service group includes individuals who probably had only a for-
mal relationship to their branch, e.g. Enfi Hasan Ağa of the Imperial Pantry,
or people with an ambiguous status dependent upon familial relationships
within the Palace Service, e.g. Musali Efendi, who was the son of the official
midwife of the Palace (ebeci), or Memiş Ağa, an unspecified “relative” of the
Kaftanci, the official who dressed the recipients of robes given as a gift by the
Sultan, as well as Vehbi Osman Çelebi, who actually served in the Bostanci
72 Chapter 1

corps of the Palace. By the later eighteenth century there is rather clear-cut
evidence that the Pantry and the Treasury contained a significant number of
people whose main responsibility was music-making.
As may be seen from the biographies above, during much of the seven-
teenth and the early eighteenth-century individuals of devşirme origin do not
seem to have played a major role in the musical life of the palace outside of
the military mehter ensemble. The kuls were far outnumbered by the members
of the religious establishment, the scribal service and the dervishes, and were
even less numerous than the artisans.
The kalemiye (scribal service) group includes both very high officeholders,
and (more often) workers in mediocre scribal/accounting positions. By the
seventeenth century the kalemiye had grown into a large bureaucracy whose
members were often chosen from the same families. In the “Atrabü’l-Asar”
they are the second largest group, even more numerous than the müezzins.
Examples of musicians in the scribal service are:
– Kasım Ağazade Ahmed Ağa was the Treasurer (haznedar) of Sultan
Mehmed IV.
– Aheni Çelebi, famous as a composer in the reign of Mehmed IV, was the
chief of the divan (divan efendisi) to the Governor (Vali) of Kafa in the
Crimea.
– Nazirizade Mehmed Emin Efendi (d. 1712) was the Defterdar (Chief Accoun-
tant) of Cyprus.
– Gülcübaşızade Mehmed Efendi was a scribe at the Armory in the Istanbul
Dock in the time of Mehmed IV.
– Mehmed Nalçe Efendi was at the same period the official letter-writer (mek-
tupçu) of Musahib Mustafa Paşa.
– Galatalı Osman Efendi was the divan efendi of the same individual.
– Reşid Efendi was employed in the scribal service of the Ministry of Finance
(kağıt-eminliği) under Grand Vizier İbrahim Paşa, during the reign of
Ahmed III.
Two very famous musicians were rewarded with the official super-visorship
(kethüdalık/kahyalık) of lucrative markets: Itri with the slave-market, and
Nazim Çelebi (d. 1727) with the dried fruit market (meyve-yi huşk bazarı). Both
of these events were highly remarkable, and, in the case of Nazim Çelebi, gave
rise to conflicting accounts. According to four different eighteenth-century
sources, Nazim was granted this kethüdalık by Sultan Mehmet IV (Şeyhi
Efendi), Mustafa II (Esʿad Efendi), or Ahmet III according to the Crimean
history “Es-Seb’ü’s-Seyyar Fi-Ahbar-ı Mülüki’t-Tatar,” and the notes in an early
manuscript of the divan of Nazim, who was a poet as well as a musician
(Kam 1933:17). According to the Crimean history, both of these grants were
given thanks to the influence of the Crimean Khan Selim Giray (d. 1704). This
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 73

Crimean ruler, who was a Mevlevi dervish and widely knowledgeable in Islamic
culture, was an important patron for Ottoman musicians, beginning with his
first reign in 1671. Evliya Çelebi had been a guest at his court. According to the
Crimean history, Selim Giray had spent his time at the hunt, and listening to
“musicians with an elegant style” (mutrib-i hoş-eda), who are also described
as “companions” (nüdema) and “maestros” (ustad). All of those mentioned
had come from Istanbul: “Buhurizade Itri Çelebi, and Nazim Çelebi, and Hafız
Post, and Şami [Damascene] Derviş Ali [“Derviş Ali Serneyzen” of the Galata
Mevlevihane], and Tanburi [Eyyubi] Mehmed, and Santuri Ali and Kemani
Hüseyin. …” The history continues:

Buhurizade had received the stewardship of the slave-market, and Nazim

Çelebi that of the dried fruit market, and Kemani [Hüseyin] and the oth-
ers had received sufficient income. Thanks to the influence [lit. “power”:
kuvvet-i bazu] of the Khan, they became free of the neediness of parasit-
ism and clear of the iron bow of poverty (quoted in Kam 1933:13).

It is of interest to observe Hafız Post, who was in the Palace scribal service, here
functioning as a professional musician, along with the chief ney-player of the
Galata Mevlevihane and two professional instrumentalists. Prior to their being
granted their market stewardships, we have no idea about the economic situa-
tion of Itri and Nazim Çelebi. Ruşen Kam, who made the rare attempt to gather
together all the available information on a pre-nineteenth-century Ottoman
musician, could find no reliable data concerning the previous economic sta-
tus of Nazim Çelebi. He criticizes the nineteenth-century historian Tayyarzade
Ata Bey, who put Nazim into the Imperial Pantry service: “In the main avail-
able sources there is no data about Nazim’s having been in the Enderun Palace
Service, his education there or his life” (Kam 1933:9). While it is possible that
Ata Bey, writing a century before Rüşen Kam, had access to materials or tradi-
tions now lost, it is also possible that he assumed that a musician who was
granted such a major bureaucratic appointment must have started his career
in the most likely branch of the Palace service—the Pantry.
By the early seventeenth century several social groups had eclipsed the
influence of both the palace pages (içoğlan) and the foreign experts in the
music of the court. The system which emerges seems fairly fluid in that indi-
viduals might enter the palace service, shift from one branch of the service to
another and perhaps leave the service after a relatively few years with a land
grant (zeamet) or other pension. Artisans with musical talent might perform at
the court, and sometimes receive a steady income or even a valuable pension.
These musicians and composers as a whole span a wide social gamut, from
the bottom to the top of each social hierarchy. There were mosque singers,
74 Chapter 1

preachers, and powerful muftis and kadıs; small clerks and chief scribes, hum-
ble artisans and guild stewards.

7.1 The ilmiye (ʿulamāʾ)

The participation of members of the ilmiye (religious institution) in secular art
music was a characteristic feature of Ottoman culture from the later sixteenth
century until the end of the Empire. The ilmiye group (sing. ʿālim, pl. ʿulamāʾ)
covers a wide variety of statuses, from the humble neighborhood imam (e.g.
“Tomtom İmamı”) to the military judges (kazasker) of Anatolia and Rumelia,
the Kadı of Egypt, and the Şeyhülislam. The significance of the ʿulamāʾ for
Ottoman music is connected with two different social spheres, the mosque
singers (müezzins) and the religious bureaucracy. The bureaucratization of the
religious institution was an innovation of the Ottoman state which had a pro-
found effect on the social organization of music.
Whereas in other countries the religious institution, or clergy (ʿulamāʾ)
remained separate and sometimes opposed to political authority, the Ottoman
sultans from the earliest times drew the clergy more and more into the service
of the state. Apart from the professors (müderris) who taught in the institu-
tions of higher learning (medrese), the religious institution was divided into
two tracks, that of the kadı or judge and that of the mufti, the interpreter of reli-
gious law. Although the kadıs had received a religious education, their duties as
practical executors of the law made them ultimately responsible to the sultan
who was able to issue decrees ( ferman) based on his “sovereign prerogative”
(örf ) in areas not covered by the religious law (şeriat). The kadıs might take
into consideration the legal opinions ( fetva) of the muftis, but these were not
necessarily binding.
The muftis had been essentially outside of the official bureaucratic system,
but beginning with the reign of Süleyman I (1520–1566), the head of the muftis,
known as the Şeyhülislam (Shaykh al-Islām), became more closely tied to the
state, and was able to appoint all kadis. Thus, by the later sixteenth century the
muftis as well as the kadıs were becoming part of a single bureaucratic system
(Shaw 1976:134–139). Students of the medreses who did not take the highest
degrees were able to enter the scribal service (kalemiye).
The musicians among the members of the higher ʿulamāʾ, whether members
of the kadi or mufti groups, were amateurs whose performances or composi-
tions received no financial remuneration. The same seems to have been the
case for the members of the scribal service, who had studied in the medreses
but chose a purely secular career. However the proliferation of musical practice
among the higher and the lower ʿulamāʾ, and members of the scribal service,
that is from the head of the muftis (Şeyhülislam) to the major and minor kadıs,
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 75

to the mosque preachers and singers and among the various degrees within
the scribal profession, can be best explained by the diffusion of the largely sec-
ular cultural ideals of the Ottoman bureaucrats among both the Palace service,
with its Imperial and military orientation, who were largely of non-Muslim
devşirme origin, as well as the medrese-educated Muslim-born group which
became kadıs, muftis, hatips, imams, müezzins, or scribes (katip).
The lower clergy did not become state bureaucrats but remained as preach-
ers (hatip, vaiz) and prayer-leaders (imam) in the mosques, their salaries were
paid from the endowments (vakf ) of these institutions, and not directly by
the state. Among the lower clergy there were the mosque-singers (müezzins),
who were chosen for their voices and musical abilities rather than their edu-
cation. Only the most prominent müezzins had the opportunity to sing for
the sultan in the palace and in the mosques in which he worshipped, thereby
attaining the rank of “hünkar imamı” (“imperial imam”), which was paid by
the state. However, by the seventeenth century, talented müezzins could enter
the imperial service in other capacities (in the Pantry, the Treasury, etc.) or as
“boon-companions” (musahip, nedim) of the sultan while becoming perform-
ers of secular art music.
A single individual might be able to move from one service to another. The
career of Tabi Mustafa Efendi (?–1770?), one of the most prominent ʿulamāʾ
musicians of the eighteenth century exemplifies this process. Mustafa Efendi
evidently began his career as a müezzin, but by the second decade of the eigh-
teenth century he was known as a composer who had worked together with
the court musician Kara İsmail Ağa (d. 1724). (TMA III 1976:294). He became
the chief müezzin of the palace under Osman III (1754–1757), but two and a
half years later he took a position in the Outer Service of the palace (the Birun)
in the scribal service.
Members of the lower ʿulamāʾ, either müezzins or imams, were sometimes
known as musicians and composers. However, the higher ʿulamāʾ, who were
essentially bureaucrats, took pains to conceal their musical abilities. In all
the cases of the higher religious/judicial dignitaries, Esʿad Efendi writes that,
“because of his position, he was ashamed to publish his compositions under
his own name” (Esʿad ca. 1725:7).
İmam-ı Sultani İbrahim Efendi (d. 1700), who became the Kazasker (Qāḍī
ʿaskar) of Rumeli, composed tesbih ilahi hymns which were sung in the
mosques, in addition to fasıl compositions. An earlier Imperial Imam and
Kazasker of Rumeli, Imam Yusuf (d. 1647), had composed tesbih ilahis. If he had
composed for the fasıl, these were not recorded, and so he does not appear in
“Atrabü’l-Asar.” Both of the above individuals had been müezzins in the Palace
before receiving higher religious/judicial appointments. Mosque singers are an
76 Chapter 1

important group in “Atrabü’l-Asar,” eleven of the total, plus certain individuals

who had been müezzins for part of their careers. I have grouped all individuals
described as müezzin, hafız, or naathan as “mosque singers.” During the seven-
teenth century, the müezzins in the Palace usually were also performers of the
vocal fasil. In one case, that of Muezzin Mustafa Ağa, a müezzin became the
Chief Singer (hanendebaşı) of the Palace.
Apart from the müezzins, I have no information about the economic struc-
ture of singing (hanendelik) as a profession during the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries. In Evliya Çelebi’s list of “Newly Appeared Singers,” almost half
of them are müezzins. In one case, Küçük Ali Çelebi (not in “Atrabü’l-Asar”),
is described as “both a singer and a müezzin” (“hem hanende, hem müezzin”).
Buhurizade Itri is described as a “hafız” (Evliya 1896:634–5). However, there is
no indication elsewhere that Itrî was ever employed as a mosque singer; the
term hâfiz probably indicates that he had memorized the Qurʾān, and could
sing it artfully, but it was never his profession.
In the 1525 “Cemaat-i mutriban” document several persons are listed as
guyende or hanende; these were evidently professional singers who were not
dervish zakirs or müezzins. Unfortunately, similar documents from the seven-
teenth century have not been identified. There is one document from 1682,
mentioned above, concerning the training of singing-girls, which testifies to
the fact that the hanendebaşı, Receb Çelebi “Abrizi” (“the potter,” d. 1701) was an
artisan who lived outside of the Palace (Uzunçarşılı 1977:91). It is of some inter-
est that the court documents of Selim III, at the end of the eighteenth century,
include a long list of instrumentalists, but only a single vocalist—İsmail Dede
Efendi, who was a Mevlevi musician/composer, not a professional singer. The
other singers from the court of Selim III, such as Şakir Ağa (1779–1840) and
Sadullah Ağa (d. 1801?), were court müezzins, so their salaries would have been
recorded on other documents rather than those of the mutriban (musicians).
Their names occur (without salaries) on lists of the çavuşans (“herald,” “mes-
senger,” “guard”) of the palace (Uzunçarşılı 1977:108).
Evliya speaks of the esnaf-i hanendegan, which could be translated as “sing-
ers’ guild.” Nevertheless, it does not appear that Evliya meant to imply that
such an organization existed. In his famous section on the “esnaf” in the first
volume of his “Seyahatname,” Evliya (1896) is describing the artisanal groups
who paraded together during public festivities in the capital. He is concerned
with the music that they played, the songs they sang, the languages they spoke,
the jargon they used, etc. The internal and economic structures of these groups
were of very little interest to him. Most of the groups whom he describes were
organized in “guilds,” but that is not his major concern. He uses the terms esnaf
and taife interchangeably. While the first can mean either a “class” of people
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 77

or an organized “guild,” taife is really a “tribe,” or other human grouping, not

a “guild.” In most historical discussions of the material provided by Evliya
Çelebi, the word “guild” is employed with justification, as there were guilds
of stone-masons, architects, potters, sausage-makers, etc. The use of the term
“guild” implies an economic group who made their primary livelihood from
the craft in question. However, there is no evidence of there ever having been
a guild of singers. With the instrumentalists, the only guilds seem to have been
the unofficial mehter ensembles of the city, which were formally organized
under the mehterbaşı of the Palace, the dancing/singing-girls called çengi, and
the dancing-boys called tavşan (Popescu-Judetz 1982). There is nothing to sug-
gest that the performers of the çöğür, karadüzen, ikitelli, etc. folk lutes which,
according to European travelers, were played by almost everyone, could have
been professionals. To return to the singers, there is no reason to believe that
the dervish zakirs, the müezzins, and the singer/composers who frequently
were employed by the court, named by Evliya, all belonged to a single “guild.”
It appears that the most important factor affecting professionalism in sing-
ing was the official government support for religious institutions, including
their musical personnel. This was a characteristic of the Ottoman state, and it
provided a career in singing for any talented male Muslim. The most success-
ful could hope to become either the Imperial Imam or the hanendebaşı. By the
seventeenth century, the müezzins and naathans were known to be adept in
both the makam system, and the secular classical repertoire, to which many of
them contributed as composers. Cantemir enumerates the five best students
of the “noble Constantinopolitan” Osman Efendi, who “revived” Turkish music,
and two of the five are mosque singers: Hafız Kömür, and Küçük Müezzin
(Cantemir 1734:151). Esʿad mentions both of them as noted composers (Esʿad
ca. 1725:23, 55). It therefore seems that the disappearance of the older type of
professional singer/instrumentalist was compensated for by the emergence of
the professional mosque singer who was both a performer and a composer
of the classical repertoire. While the high religious dignitaries felt compelled
to conceal their musical activities, the mosque singers had no such com-
punctions. This pattern of the combined müezzin/classical singer continued
without interruption until the early twentieth century, and it is abundantly
documented in the more recent periods.
 Chapter 2

Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman

Court: Dervishes and Turkish Art Music

1 The Mevleviye

1.1 The Mevlevi Conception of Music

The importance of music in the spiritual discipline of the Mevlevis can be
traced back to the founder, Maulana Jalaluddin al-Balkhi, (Mawlānā Jalāl
al-Dīn Rūmī, d. 1273), who used both vocal and instrumental music in his sacred
dance and audition seances (sema/samāʿ). The importance of the ancient der-
vish instrument, the ney, was immortalized by Rumi in the opening verses
of his “Mesnevi-i Manevi,” in which the wailing of the reed-flute symbolizes
the lament of the soul, cut off from its source. This work, often referred to as
“the Qurʾān in Persian” was one of the greatest religious classics of the eastern
Muslim world. The importance of music in the thinking of Rumi can be seen in
the very frequent appearance of musical imagery in his poetic divan. His use of
musical performance was very much in keeping with the practice of the musi-
cal samāʿ among the elite Sufis of the Middle Ages (Schimmel 1975:178–186;
During 1988a:169–206).
The actual music employed by medieval Sufis has left few traces. In modern
times metrical compositions performed cyclically form the basis for the Sufi
performances of the ʿIsāwiyya of Tunisia and the Sufiyana Kalam of Kashmir,
both of which constitute art repertoires quite distinct from the music of zikr
(dhikr) known in the same regions. It is not unlikely that the cyclical format
of the Mevlevi ayin ceremony is in some way related to commonly held tradi-
tions of singing mystical poetry to metrical compositions arranged in cyclical
form within a single maqām. Nevertheless, the stages by which the Mevlevi
ceremony developed, with its interrelated musical and choreographic aspects,
remain obscure. The earliest datable Mevlevi ayin is attributed to a musician
of the mid-seventeenth century (Mustafa Dede, d. 1683). Three other surviv-
ing anonymous ayins are attributed to the century preceding Mustafa Dede
(cf. chapter 4 on cyclical formats). Although the earliest notated document of
the ayin dates from 1795, there are reasons to accept that the ayin as a musical
form did not appear later than the sixteenth century. Thus, the Mevlevî ayin
experienced a continuous development which is no shorter and is probably
somewhat longer than that of the courtly fasıl (Feldman 2022:57–84).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_006

Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 79

In most of the Muslim world outside of Turkey the medieval Sufi samāʿ had
gradually disappeared, leaving only a few traces. The causes for this fundamen-
tal change in Sufi practice were numerous and complex, but two were valid
throughout the Muslim Middle East, e.g. the spread of tarikat Sufism as a mass
movement, and the decline of the medieval elite cultures. Among the local
phenomena which were relevant to the Turco-Iranian world were the suppres-
sion of the Sunni tarikats by the Safavids in Iran, and the Sunni puritanism of
the Şeybanid Uzbeks, both beginning in the early sixteenth century. While ʿAlī
Shīr Navāʾī in his late fifteenth-century treatise “Mahbub al-Qulub,” still spoke
of the samāʿ as the essence of music (Levend 1968:247), during the Şeybanid
era and thereafter, the Sufi samāʿ developed in a more restricted environment
within Central Asia.1 In contrast to these patterns, during the fourteenth to the
sixteenth centuries the Mevlevis in Anatolia had consolidated their elite Sufi
tradition, and succeeded in securing it by basing itself socially on the Seljuk,
and later Karamanid aristocracy and the elite ʿulamāʾ of Konya. Later in the six-
teenth century, they gradually shifted their focus to the new Ottoman capital,
by establishing themselves within the elite infrastructure of the state.
When the Ottoman state absorbed all of the older centers of Arab Islam
in the sixteenth century, the practices of the Mevlevis came to seem increas-
ingly anomalous. While some of these practices were curbed, e.g. the partici-
pation of women in the samāʿ (Gölpınarlı 1983:279), the elite connections of
the Mevlevis, their centrality to the Islamic high culture of Anatolia, and the
wide-spread popular faith in the sanctity of the founder of the order, protected
them from serious persecution (although not from criticism), and even per-
mitted them to expand into the Arab world. However, like other Sufi tarikats,
their ceremony was banned from 1666 until 1684 due to Kadizadeli pressure
on Sultan Mehmed IV. Nevertheless, for a period of roughly six centuries,
the Mevlevis never faced a serious threat to their existence; that is, up until
Atatürk’s prohibition of all Sufi Orders in 1925.
Rumi himself had been an opponent of the philosophical Sufism of Muhyi
al-Din Ibn al-Arabi (Muḥyi l-Dīn Ibn al-Arabī, 1164–1240), which was being
propagated in Konya by Sadr al-Din Kunevi, but the later Mevlevis came to
accept Ibn al-Arabi’s thought and sought to reconcile it with that of Rumi.
This integration of the Sufi thought of Ibn al-Arabi was typical not only of the
Mevlevis, but of the higher Ottoman ʿulamāʾ as a whole. The generally accepted

1 The vocal suvara has been developed in modern Khwarezm as a Sufi genre. This social envi-
ronment is not mentioned in Soviet transcriptions of suvara melodies, but was explained by
Dr. Otanazar Matyaqubov (Tashkent Conservatory) in his lecture “Music of Sufism in Central
Asia,” given at the University of Pennsylvania, October 1990.
80 Chapter 2

attitude of the higher ʿulamāʾ is seen in the writings of Ahmed Taşköprüzade

(1495–1561), the encyclopedist and müderris (professor):

From the earliest times the ulema in Ottoman medreses went a step fur-
ther in their mystical beliefs than al-Ghazâlî [1058–1111], and followed the
traditions of Ibn al-ʾArabî and al-Suhrawardî [1144–1234]. Taşköprüzâde
accepted that mysticism was the only road to divine gnosis and held
that it could be criticized only in the light of its own terminology. …
Taşköprüzâde did not regard music and dancing in the ceremonies of
mystic orders as contrary to religion, since they awakened in the soul a
love of God and divine ecstasy; the relationship between music and the
spirit is a divine secret and the soul aroused by dancing achieves divine
gnosis. Music and dancing were to be forbidden only when used to arouse
wordly desires (İnalcık 1973:183).

The later Mevlevi view of music came to reflect the ecstaticism of Jalaluddin
(and Şems-i Tebrizi), the medieval Islamic cosmology of music, and the relation
of music to Ibn al-Arabi’s ideas concerning divine transcendence and immi-
nence. Twentieth-century Mevlevi musicians often stress the essential unity
of secular and Sufi musics (e.g. Neyzen Halil Dikmen in Gölpmarlı 1983:465).
Judging by the attitudes expressed by contemporary Mevlevi musicians, the
relationship between Sufi and secular music could be described as follows:
Music is essentially one, but different purposes have led to the creation of dif-
ferent musical genres. While the Sufi genres may be said to be more spiritual,
and hence higher than the secular genres, these latter hold an important place
in life, and a Sufi musician can freely participate in them. Because the Divine is
neither wholly transcendent, nor wholly imminent in the Creation, a musical
life immersed entirely in mystical and religious genres would not reflect the
actual situation of man in the world. Furthermore, the structure of music is
ultimately of superhuman origin, and this origin can be made perceptible by
a performance of a Sufi or a secular genre (Kudsi Erguner, oral communica-
tion 1980).
The Mevlevis created a continuous poetic tradition in which music and
the samāʿ were frequently invoked. One of the most important authors of this
genre was Divane Mehmed Çelebi (d. 1529) who wrote a short mesnevi con-
cerning the samāʿ entitled “A Treatise or Mesnevi Concerning the Mevlevi
Mukabbele” (Gölpmarlı 1983:473–476). The integration of mystical and secu-
lar music is most brilliantly expressed in several verses by the later fifteenth-
century Karaman poet Ayni (Baki 1949). Little is known of the life of Ayni, who
was a courtly and not a Mevlevi poet. Nevertheless, in his works, Ayni refers
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 81

to the tomb of Mevlana Rumi which was located in Konya, the capital of the
Karaman state. Ayni’s poetry exemplifies the early integration of Sufi and secu-
lar conceptions of music in Anatolian Turkish culture:

1. Gel ey mitrib alip ağuşa tanbûr

Fürûğ-u nağmeden kil bezmi nûr
Come, oh minstrel, and take to your lap the tanbûr,
Through pleasure and melody, fill the party with light.
2. Getürsün zühreyi raksa sadâsi
Sipihre velvele versin nevâsi
Let its tones set Venus to dancing,
Let its sounds put the spheres in commotion.
3. Nevâ-i kilk ile minâ-i tanbûr
Olur neşvefşân rind-i mahmûr
The sound of the plectrum and gourd of the tanbur,
Spreads intoxication over the wine-besotted rind.
4. Dü ‘âlem sırrı var zîr-ü beminde
Elestü keyfi târ-i mülheminde
In its treble and bass are the mysteries of the Two Worlds!
In its inspired string is the pleasure of “Am I not your Lord?”
5. Makam-i Evç’den kilsa terâne
Çikar perde be perde lâmekâne
When it makes music in the makam of the apex
Note by note it ascends to the sphere Beyond Space
6. Kulaği bursa bir sâzende nâgâh
Eder bin̄ gâfili bir anda âgâh
When the player suddenly twists its ear,
A thousand dullards of the Truth are aware.
7. Hümâ-î nağmeye mizrabi perdir
Sa’âdet lânesi şeklinde zâhir
Its plectrum is a feather of the Bird of Paradise,
Which becomes manifest as the nest of felicity
8. Şarâb-i nağmesinden ey kadeh nûş
Muhit-i neşve-i ‘irfân eder cûş
Drink a cup of melody’s wine, and
The ocean of the intoxication of gnosis will overflow!
Levend 1943:243

In the opening couplet the poet locates the poem in the party or feast (bezm),
a multivalent term which is both secular and mystical. Mıtrib is the term both
82 Chapter 2

for the secular musician and for the members of the Mevlevi ensemble. The
rhyme word nur (“light”), however, adds a mystical element to this apparently
wordly feast. The second couplet refers to a standard topos of medieval Persian
poetry, in which Venus (Zuhra) dances to the music of the harp (çeng), which is
replaced here by the tanbur. In the third and fourth couplets the absence of any
apology for the use of the stringed instrument (not the dervish ney) is notewor-
thy; on the contrary, they emphasize the physical concreteness of the musical
instrument as a manifestation of the divine mysteries. “Keyf ” is a multivalent
term meaning “quality” but here “pleasure,” usually derived from some form
of intoxicant. “Elestü” is a Sufi hypogram, which conjures up the myth of the
time prior to the Creation, when Allah confronted the souls of mankind with
the query, “Am I not your Lord?” (Arabic: “Alastu bi rabbikum”). The rind is a
topos of Persian poetry and Sufism, who personifies the outwardly unorthodox
but inwardly liberated character. In the fifth couplet, the makams, located on
specific steps of the general scale, are identified with spiritual stages (makam),
culminating with Lamekan (lā makān, lit. “no place”), the stage of Union with
the Divine, in which the stages are transcended. The image is one of constant
musical/spiritual ascent. The sixth couplet combines the image of the musi-
cian (sazende) tuning his tanbur, with that of the Sufi teacher (murşid) twist-
ing the ear of his indolent disciple. No image could more graphically illustrate
the spiritual identity of the musical creator and the spiritually liberated mystic.
The following couplet refers to the Simurgh, the magical bird which was cred-
ited in Persian Sufi (and earlier Near Eastern) myth with the creation of music
(During 1989:95–102). The final couplet creates a Sufi image of gnosis as the
Ocean which surrounds the world, likened to the bubbling cup of wine, which
is in turn likened to musical melody.
In another of his gazels Ayni incorporates figures of the Biblical tradition in
order to defend not only music, but the instruments of music against puritani-
cal censure:

1. Rubâb ü ‘ûd ü mûsikâr ü tanbûr

Girift ü surnây ü tabl u santûr
The rebab, the ud, musikar, and tanbur
The girift, the zurna, tabl, and santur
2. Ney ü kanûn ile sînekemâni
Kudûm ü def ü deblek diñle ani
The ney, the kanun, and the keman
The girift, the def, and the dumbelek, listen to them!
3. Beilhâm i Canâb-i Rabb-i ma’bûd
O Dâvûd-i Nebîdir mucîd-i ‘ûd
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 83

By the inspiration of the Lord whom we worship

It was Davud the Prophet who invented the ud
4. O Buhtunasr-i seffâh ü muânid
Sefîh ü zâlim ü gaddâr ü câhid
But Nebuchadnezzar that obstinate shedder of blood
That butcher, that tyrant cruel and perverse
5. Harâbe itmeden Kuds-i şerîfi
O ferhûnde mekân cay-i lâtifi
Had he not laid waste Jerusalem the Noble
That auspicious abode and location of grace
6. Dururdu hücresinde ‘ûd ü mizmâr
Nevâ-yi sâzi gûş it kilma inkâr
The ud and the mizmar had remained in their chamber.
Give ear to the instrument’s tune, don’t reject it!
Levend 1943:242–3

Here Ayni links the Sufi conception of music with the high status of instru-
mental music as part of the Divine service in the ancient Hebrew Temple. This
is not a topos from Persian Sufi poetry, nor does it exist in this form in the
Jewish or Christian traditions, to my knowledge. This appears to be an original
synthesis of Sufism with the material which was available through a reading of
the Old Testament, one would assume in Greek. The opposition of the Prophet
Davud and the pagan Nebucadnezzar is not based on the level of history but
on the level of essence. Davud created the liturgy which would be used in the
Temple of his son Süleyman, and it was the pagan tyrant Nebucadnezzar who
would destroy this Temple and the service which it had housed. Similarly, in
the time of the poet, the musicians whose music constitutes either a direct or
an indirect form of praise and worship are opposed by the pagans masquer-
ading as Muslim zealots. As a poet in a region where the Mevlevi tradition
was vital, Ayni could readily identify the use of music in worship and create a
defense of music on the most polarized level of faith versus infidelity.
There is much evidence to demonstrate that these conceptions came to be
adopted by a wide spectrum of the Ottoman elite, outside of the specifically
Mevlevi environment. One example is the short poem written by Bobowski in
his “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz.” Bobowski (Ali Ufki Bey) was himself a member of
the Celveti tarikat, noted in the seventeenth century for its musical creativity:

Zehî sohbet ki bezm-i ma’rifettir

Çu sâki Hizr ola gûyende Dâvûd
Behold the feast whose wine is gnosis,
84 Chapter 2

Where the cup-bearer is Khizir, and the singer Da’ud!

Zehî meclîs ki rûhânî siffettir
Ne söyler nây-ü santûr ne çalar ûd
Behold the party whose nature is spirit,
How speak the ney and santur, how plays the ud!
Bobowski ca. 1650:fol. 23 a

The interpenetration of Sufi and secular concepts of music can be seen in

the writing and the career of Evliya Çelebi. Evliya came from a secular family
of free Muslims with high court connections and was not active in any Sufi
tarikat. Nevertheless, he names his principal music teacher as “Derviş Ömer,”
the famous Gülşeni/Mevlevi sheikh who was active at the court of Murad IV.
Thanks to Derviş Ömer, Evliya acquired elements of the Sufi repertoire, the
“zikr” and “tesbihat” which he offered to sing before Murad IV together with
a long list of other genres (“Seyahatname” I, cf. Evliya 1896:246). Evliya was
not primarily a specialist in dervish music, but he included these items in his
general repertoire. Likewise, he records the presence of similar items in the
repertoire of Abdal Khan, the ruler of Bitlis in Kurdistan (see Part 2, chap. 5,
p. 281). Moreover, Evliya’s references to various kinds of music sometimes con-
tain references to Sufism. A good example can be seen in his description of
a public performance of the official mehter before Murad IV, who was not a
sultan known as a Sufi:

They hold all their instruments on one note (perde) and perform the
peşrevs “küll-i külliyat” in the makam Buselik and in other makams, and
“Şeddül’asr” and “Şükufezar” and the sakil of Solakzade, they exclaim
“Hay” (“Allah Lives”) and “Hu” (“He exists”), so that those strangers in the
land will recall their home and country (garîbü’d-diyârlarun dâr ü diyâr-
larin hâtira getürürler: i.e. man’s soul will remember its divine origin)
(Özergin 1972:6050).

“Hay” and “Hu (Hū)” were the chants of the dervishes during the zikr cere-
mony, while “home” and “country” is the standard Sufi-gnostic terminology for
the alienation of the human soul in the body and the world. This example, in
which a secular musician characterizes a secular genre played by secular per-
formers for a secular ruler epitomizes the extent to which the Sufi discourse on
music had become the general Ottoman discourse.
These Sufistic attitudes toward music appear to have co-existed with the
more purely occult/astrological ideas, which are expressed all through the
Turkish treatises, such as the fifteenth-century writings of Ladiki, Seyydi,
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 85

Ahmetoğlu Şukrullah, and in the eighteenth-century treatises of Kemani Hızır

Ağa and the Armenian Tanburi Harutin. While the Mevlevi views are not nec-
essarily in conflict with these occultist concepts, they are not dependent upon
them for their intellectual legitimation. For this reason, they have been able to
survive to a considerable extent after the process of Westernization undercut
the widespread belief in astrology. It is not useful to attempt to find a historical
periodization of Mevlevi thought on music; the essential attitudes appear to
have been in place by the fifteenth century, if not earlier, and they appear to
have been fairly constant up to modern times (Feldman 2022:88–94; 135–143).
While the social position of the musicians of the palace service changed and
the foreign specialists ceased to be significant, while the non-Muslims entered
and eventually left the musical scene and the professional mosque singers
grew in importance (and finally disappeared in the twentieth century), and
while the role of the aristocratic and bureaucratic “amateurs” changed with
their place in society, the Mevlevi philosophy of music has demonstrated both
endurance and flexibility. It must be seen as a constant factor which helped
to define the nature of Turkish art music from its inception (even before the
creation of the Ottoman state), up until the present day.
The Mevlevi philosophy of music does not rest primarily on classical
texts. Such texts as do exist, e.g. the “Rabt-i tabirat-i musiki” of Osman Dede
(d. 1730), or the “Tetkik ü Tahkik” of Abdülbaki Nasir Dede, present the philoso-
phy of music in terms derived from the medieval elite Sufi tradition. Mevlevi
works dealing with the samāʿ, including its musical component, such as the
sixteenth-century work of Divane Mehmed Çelebi, expressed a more distinctly
Mevlevi position toward music. Much of the essence of this philosophy cir-
culated in the discourses of musical sheikhs and neyzens, up until our gen-
eration, and can be seen for example in the anecdotes about Neyzen Tevfik
Kolaylı (1879–1953), and in the casual writings of Neyzen Halil Can (1905–1973)
(Şehsuvaroğlu 1974; Feldman 2022:112–132).
This point can perhaps be made clearer by going forward in time to the
twentieth century. A scene from the novel “Huzur” by Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar,
written in 1949, demonstrates the continued relevance of the Mevlevi philoso-
phy of music over twenty years after the Order itself and its liturgy had been
banned. Of course, this work of fiction is not meant to be taken as a document
of the attitudes toward music of all the mid-twentieth-century upper-class
characters in Tanpınar’s novel, nor of the real Turkish readers of this author’s
work, who were largely of the same class as he and the characters in his works.
Istanbul in the middle of the twentieth century was a very different place from
the same city before the First World War, or in the middle of the nineteenth
century. For the people in question, as for Tanpınar himself, Turkish music
86 Chapter 2

had become, in his words, “the old music”; it was not the only music in their
lives. No doubt, the different contemporaneous readers of this scene may have
viewed it with attitudes ranging from devotion to nostalgia, or to cynicism, or
a mixture of all three.
The main character in this scene is Emin Yazıcı (1883–1945). Emin Dede had
been the neyzenbaşt of the Galata Mevlevihanesi and was employed as a cal-
ligrapher for military maps at the Ministry of War. He was the student of the
major neyzens of the Galata convent (Şeyh Fahreddin Dede, Aziz Dede, and
Hakki Dede) and he was the teacher of the leading mid-twentieth-century
neyzens Halil Dikmen and Halil Can (1905–1973). Emin Dede was thus the link
between the great neyzens of the nineteenth century and the generation of
neyzens who reached maturity after the closing of the Mevlevihanes. In the
scene he is performing the ayin in makam Ferahfeza by İsmail Dede Efendi
(d. 1846) for a secular social gathering:

Not only did Emin Bey speak of the old musicians and saints as though
they were living people, he would erase the distance between him and
the times of their deaths, and their personalities, by calling them “our
Master,” “our Patron Saint,” or “our Efendi.” In this way he himself, the
time in which he lived, the person of whom he spoke and the actual time
of his death became joined.
But the real miracle began with the ayin itself.
Dede’s Ferahfeza ayin is not simply a prayer, a cry of the believing
soul for Allah. Without losing the broad attack which is the hallmark
of the mystical inspiration, its mystery, or its great and ceaseless yearn-
ing, it is perhaps one of the most spectacular works of the old music
(Tanpınar 1949:320).

In the remainder of the scene, the author demonstrates a profound under-

standing and identification with the mysticism which had motivated the ayin’s
composer, İsmail Dede. Tanpınar distinguishes between the religious and mys-
tical perspectives, characterizing the former as “the cry of the believing soul
for Allah.” The author (in sections not quoted here) presents Emin Dede as a
model of a spiritually developed human being, and not as a reactionary, liv-
ing in a vanished world. I am adducing this quotation as evidence of how the
traditional mystical philosophy of music developed by the Mevlevis has con-
tinued as a stable factor in Turkish art music and has proved capable of expres-
sion in modern terms (Feldman 2022:123–27). What remains of the medieval
astrological language has been transmuted into a mystical quest taking place
among the stars. As in the older Mevlevi tradition, the technical aspects of
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 87

the music have been assimilated to a mystical discourse. At the beginning of

his description of the ayin, the author distinguishes between “religious” and
“mystical” musical expression. At the end he demonstrates an awareness of
the Turkish Mevlevi philosophy by emphasizing the conflict within the human
consciousness of the real possibility of union with the eternal, and despair at
the materiality of the terrestrial human condition.
While no medieval or earlier Ottoman Mevlevi would have expressed him-
self quite in these terms, which contain a degree of modernism, and which sty-
listically owe more than a little to Proust, much of what Tanpınar writes reveals
his familiarity with the oral tradition of the Mevlevi musicians.

1.2 The Mevlevis and Ottoman Court Music

Apart from their creation of a distinctive musical accompaniment for their Sufi
ayin ceremony, the Mevlevi dervishes had formed the most coherent and con-
tinuous institution that propagated a secular artistic music within Anatolia.
I treat this topic in somewhat greater detail throughout much of my newer
monograph (Feldman 2022), and in particular on pages 143 to 153.
At the time of the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Sultan
Mehmed II, Konya, the home of the central tekke of the Mevlevi Order, was
the capital of the independent Turkish state of Karaman. This independence
was only extinguished during the 1480s when the Karamanid Kasim Sultan
accepted the position of Ottoman governor. Mehmed II, the conqueror of
Constantinople, seems to have showed little interest in the Mevlevis. His son,
Beyazid II (1481–1511), was an ardent supporter of the Halveti tarikat. While
the pious sultan Beyazid (known as Veli, “the Saint”) did renovate the shrine of
Mevlana in Konya (Gölpmarlı 1983:153), he regularly attended the Haleveti zikr
(Martin 1972:282) and was not known to patronize the composers or musicians
of the Mevlevi samāʿ.
Ayni, the most important poet of Karaman, stayed away from Istanbul,
and remained loyal first to the Karamanid dynasty, and then to the Ottoman
prince Cem, the son of Mehmed II and rival of Beyazid. Although the Mevlevis
of Karaman established a presence in Constantinople almost as soon as the
city was taken from the Byzantines, there seems to have been an interval of
over a century until Mevlevi musicians became part of the performances of
the Ottoman court. The “Cemaat-i mutriban” document of 1525 mentions four
neyzens, two with Iranian names, but no Mevlevis.
The earliest Mevlevi institution in Istanbul was the Galata Mevlevihane,
founded in 1491, under sheikh Divane Mehmed Çelebi (d. 1529). However,
the latter could not establish good relations with the Ottoman government,
and after 1533 the tekke was placed under the control of the Halveti dervishes,
88 Chapter 2

who then had closer government connections. It was only in 1597 that a high
ranking pasha was able to construct a new Mevlevihane in Yenikapı, in cen-
tral Istanbul. Galata was finally returned to Mevlevi control in 1610. During the
following decade two new Mevlevihanes—Kasımpaşa and Beşiktaş—were
opened in Istanbul. Thus, before the middle of the seventeenth century the
Mevlevis were able to exert their influence as masters of the “science of music”
(ilmül musiki) over a wide swath of the educated Muslim population, and the
various bureaucracies in particular. Toward the end of the seventeenth century
the highly competent Grand Vizier Köprülü Amcazade Hüseyin Paşa (d. 1702)
was a Mevlevi follower (muhibb) who integrated a high level of artistic music
into his private meclis gatherings (Abou El-Haj 1984:89; Feldman 2022:44–45).
Evliya Çelebi mentions the names of ten neyzens, of whom six are Mevlevi
dervishes. There are no non-Muslim performers, and the only non-Ottoman
is a Crimean dervish from Kafa in the Crimea. While Evliya occasionally men-
tions secular foreigners who played the ud and kanun in Istanbul, the only
non-Ottoman neyzen was a dervish. Of the non-dervishes there are two arti-
sans, a sipahi and a pasha (Özergin 1972:6032). Many European travelers of
the seventeenth century devote a page or two to describing the rituals of the
Mevlevis, at which the ney, as well as other instruments are always present.
Neither these Europeans (e.g. Pietro Della Valle 1614; Paul Rycaut 1668; Michel
Febvre 1675; Dr. John Covel 1670) nor Evliya Çelebi say anything about Mevlevi
neyzens performing outside of the Mevlevi ritual. However, Esʿad Efendi men-
tions several Mevlevi neyzens (and one küdumzen) who composed secular
art music. One of these musicians, the Syrian-born Galata Serneyzen Ali, also
performed at the court of the Crimean Khan, Selim Giray (Kam 1933; Esʿad
ca. 1725:16). The Mevlevi Köçek Mustafa Dede (d. 1683) was a leading composer
both for the Mevlevihane and for the court, and in the generation following
him Osman Dede was a major composer in several Sufi and secular genres, as
well as the creator of a musical notation. Therefore, it can be stated that by the
middle of the seventeenth century and increasingly thereafter the Mevlevis
were influential, perhaps even dominant among the ney players, and that some
of them performed and composed in the secular courtly genres as well. (note:
I discuss this at length in 2022; chapter 6).
The paintings by the court painter Levni for the “Surname-i Vehbi” (1720)
depict the composition of Ottoman orchestras on public festivities. Several of
these paintings show neyzens dressed in Mevlevi costumes, performing along
with secular tanbur, miskal, rebab, and daire players. In one painting there is
also a Mevlevi tanbur player (Atıl 1969:309). The neyzens, whether Mevlevi
or secular, are always in groups. One painting has three secular neyzens per-
forming with a tanbur, a rebab, a santur, and two dairezens (see p. 137). In 1751,
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 89

Charles Fonton included a Mevlevi neyzen in his drawing of a secular ensem-

ble, consisting of tanbur, ney, rebab, miskal, and küdum (see p. 138).
Cantemir considered the tanbur and the ney to be the two leading instru-
ments of the fasıl, and wrote that one player of these two instruments sat
directly behind the singer during the concert (ca. 1700:10:97). Tanburi Harutin
mentioned that several neys of differing ranges were in use, and that all the
other instruments were tuned to the ney (Harutin 1968:119). In the course of
the eighteenth century, the Mevlevi neyzens came to eclipse all other perform-
ers on this instrument. By the later eighteenth century, there is very little men-
tion or depiction of a neyzen who is not a Mevlevi dervish, and by the end of
the century, the ney had become almost an exclusively Mevlevi instrument.
The Mevlevi impact on Ottoman music was not confined to the ney, or to
Mevlevi composers of courtly music. The personality of Kutb-u Nayi Osman
Dede (1652–?1730) reflects the prodigious influence of the Mevleviye upon sev-
eral aspects of Turkish musical life. Osman Dede composed ayins, other Sufi
vocal genres and the secular peşrev, but not vocal fasıls. For this reason, his
name does not appear in “Atrabü’l-Asar.” In his “History” Cantemir (1734) men-
tioned him as Derviş Osman (“Darwīsh ʿUthmān”), and considered him to be
one of the outstanding performing instrumentalists. As a composer, Osman
Dede is remembered today for his four ayins in the makams Rast, Uşşak, Hicaz
and Çargah, and for his peşrevs. His most elaborate composition, called the
“Miraciye,” survives only in fragments and is no longer performed. It is possibly
the most elaborate composition in Ottoman music and is a sort of oratorio on
the theme of the Prophet Mohammed’s Ascent (Mirac/Miʿrāj) to heaven.
In addition, Osman Dede applied the older Muslim notational concepts
to the practical task of notating the instrumental repertoire. His notational
system differs in some details from that of Cantemir, and it is unclear which
system had temporal priority. At the end of the eighteenth century, Osman
Dede’s grandson, Abdülbaki Nasir Dede modified his grandfather’s notational
system, and produced a new system, with which he notated the Mevlevi ayin
in makam Suzidilara, newly composed by Sultan Selim III. He also wrote the
most complete theoretical treatise of the later eighteenth century. In the mid-
dle of the century, the Mevlevi dervish Kevseri had made the only surviving
copy of Cantemir’s treatise with the notated Collection and added a number
of original transcriptions of his own (see Ekinci 2015). While the Mevlevis were
not alone in their interest in notating Turkish music, their initiative must be
regarded as the most consistent of any group in Turkish society.
Apart from those individuals who were active members or spiritual leaders
of the Mevlevi Order, several lay members were very active in several areas of
Ottoman music. In the later seventeenth century, the most famous of these
90 Chapter 2

was Buhurizade Itri. Esʿad Efendi gives a very prominent place to Itri, but he
mentions only his secular compositions in the beste and semai genres. Itri also
composed a Mevlevi ayin in makam Segah, and the naat which today opens
every performance of any ayin. His kar in the makam Neva (with a Persian text
by Hafız) may be considered the most influential secular work which has sur-
vived from the seventeenth century.
During the reign of Selim III (1789–1808), the Mevleviye attained even
greater prominence in the music of the court. The Sultan was himself a lay
member of the Order, and he patronized both Şeyh Galib, the Mevlevi sheikh
who was the leading poet of the period, and Ismail Dede Efendi (d. 1846),
neyzen of the Yenikapı Mevlevihane, and the leading composer of the first
half of the nineteenth century. The neyzen Ali Nutki Dede (d. 1804), Sheikh
of the Yenikapı Mevlevihane was a companion (musahib) of the Sultan, and
Ismail Dede attained the same position. Sultan Selim himself played the ney,
and composed one Mevlevi ayin, in addition to vocal fasıls, and instrumen-
tal peşrevs and semais. From the period of İsmail Dede until the end of the
Empire, the Mevlevi dervishes came to dominate the composition, perfor-
mance, and especially the transmission of most of the Ottoman court reper-
toire. When Niebuhr was in Istanbul in the late eighteenth century, he notes
that the Mevlevi dervishes were “esteemed the best musicians among the
Turks” (Niebuhr 1792).
There had been an instrumental component in the Mevlevi repertoire
from its very beginning. Jalaluddin Rumi is reported to have listened with
great pleasure to the rebab and the ney, among the other instruments (During
1988a:167–206). Both of these instruments had been used, along with percus-
sion, as accompaniment for the Mevlevi ritual from the earliest period. The
name semai (Ar. “pertaining to the samāʿ ”) suggests that these instrumental
tunes in 6/8 time had been part of earlier dervish sema rituals in Turkey. This
identification is strengthened by the presence of this term with very similar
music in both the Mevlevi and Bektaşî rituals, which can both be called “sema.”
In Turkey, only these tarikat rituals employ this musical form, and the term
sema, thus distinguishing themselves form the other Sunni tarikats, whose tra-
dition of zikr has been more open to popular Sufi musical forms outside of
Turkey. Thus the tradition of the instrumental semai in 6/8 time seems to reflect
an early tradition of Turkish Sufis. In the Mevlevi ayin, the semai appears at the
close of the ritual dance. By the later sixteenth century, the semai entered the
mehter nevbet.
By the later eighteenth century, the Mevlevis were using a group of peşrev
in the usul muzaaf devr-i kebir for the opening promenade of the ayin, called
the “Sultan Veled Devri.” While Owen Wright has traced the evolution of several
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 91

peşrev melodies in the modern Mevlevi repertoire from the seventeenth cen-
tury originals to their modern forms (1988), it is doubtful that these peşrev
melodies could have been used for this function in the seventeenth century.
If they were, the promenade would have been much more dancelike, because,
as he has shown, the tempos of that period were much faster than that of the
modern “Sultan Veled Devri.” Cantemir includes the peşrevs by Osman Dede
with no indication of any ritual use. Many of the peşrevs in the current Mevlevi
repertoire are of secular origin and were only taken into the ritual in recent
times (e.g. those of Gazi Giray, “Seyyid Ahmed” in Nihavend). Thus, it is prob-
ably not justified to speak of a Mevlevi peşrev until the later eighteenth cen-
tury. Despite this caveat, it is without a doubt that the Mevlevi musicians had
maintained a tradition of instrumental playing all through the earlier Ottoman
period. They were largely responsible for introducing the newer form of the
ney into courtly music and giving it an importance in the orchestra which it
had never had before (cf. below, chapter on instruments). While it is probably
exaggerated to speak of a specifically Mevlevi instrumental repertoire until the
later eighteenth century, it is likely that the style of Mevlevi ney playing had
come to permeate the courtly orchestra. In the long run, this stylistic devel-
opment was more influential on Turkish music than any specifically Mevlevi
instrumental repertoire.2
The improvised vocal and instrumental genre termed the taksim was devel-
oped during the later sixteenth century. While no literary reference has con-
nected the early taksim with the Mevlevis, in the modern Mevlevi practice, the
taksim is very prominent. The specificity of the Mevlevi ney taksim lies in its
rhythmic conventions and pulse. While to some extent these are dictated by
the nature of the instrument, their specificity goes beyond any such dictates,
and conforms to a distinctive aesthetic. Part of this aesthetic is an emphasis
on the overtones emitted from the ney, and the function of the breath of the
player. Some Mevlevi neyzens are articulate about this connection. For example
the late Aka Gündüz Kutbay (1934–1979), in his conversations, used to view the
breath of the neyzen as a symbol of the mystical syllable Hu (Hū), which articu-
lated the fact of divine existence in the universe. While some of the Sunni tari-
kats employed several singers to create a vocal overtone system during the zikr,
the Mevlevis preferred to use the ney for this purpose. The ney could express
these timbral relationships both in solo playing, and through the use of drones

2 The situation has changed considerably during the past thirty years. In these years, the peşrev
has almost disappeared from Turkish music, except for those which professional musicians
play in the newly revived touristic “Mevlevi” rituals in Konya and Istanbul. At this time it is
possible to speak of the influence of a specifically Mevlevi instrumental repertoire.
92 Chapter 2

(demkeş) held by the accompanying neyzens. This practice imparted a very dis-
tinctive sound both to the performance of peşrevs and taksims.
The taksim appears to have had a more restricted role in the Mevlevi ayin
than it had in the vocal fasıl. In the ayin it appeared after the naat hymn and
preceding the peşrev, and then again at the end of the composed ayin, while
the dervishes were still whirling. However, the neyzens could perform the tak-
sim apart from the ayin ceremony. The great neyzens of this century (Neyzen
Tevfik, Halil Can, Ulvi Erguner, Aka Gündüz Kutbay, Niyazi Sayin) were and are
known for their extended taksims, whose long duration and leisurely pace set
them apart from the taksims of the masters of the other instruments, which
are usually valued for their compression of material into a smaller space. Thus,
while there is no evidence to suggest that the taksim as a genre had originated
with Mevlevîs, the neyzens of that tarikat contributed a great deal to the wider
conception of the genre in Ottoman music (see Feldman 2022:104–106).
The Mevlevi ayin is a major contribution to the development of Ottoman
musical composition. During the nineteenth century, as the Mevlevis came
to dominate the transmission of the entire Ottoman repertoire, many secular
musicians began to learn the Mevlevi repertoire as part of their musical educa-
tion. Nevertheless, the compositional ideas of the ayin seem to have remained
within the sphere of Mevlevi music.
It may be concluded that the Mevlevis were one of the crucial elements in
the development and transmission of Ottoman secular art music. Their influ-
ence can be seen from several different viewpoints:
1. Their liturgical music, the ayin, appears to have been somewhat older
than the courtly fasıl. The ayin was the most complex compositional
form in Turkish music and represented the highest development of the
cyclical principle in Turkey or elsewhere in the Middle East, due to the
fact that it was always composed entirely by a single individual. In certain
cases (e.g. Derviş Mustafa, Itri), both ayin and fasıl were composed by the
same person, so that musical cross-fertilization took place. Nevertheless,
the Sufi and courtly compositional genres remained distinct.
2. Mevlevis were significant both as performers and as composers of the
courtly repertoire.
3. Mevlevis were crucial in the development of instrumental music as an
independent sphere within Ottoman music.
4. Mevlevis were probably responsible for the development of a distinctive
form of the reed-flute ney, which, by the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury, had become one of the two leading instruments of the Ottoman
fasıl ensemble.
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 93

5. Within Istanbul, their convents (Mevlevihanes) constituted the most

important institutions for the transmission of the classical repertoire,
outside of the Palace. In some cases, non-Muslims also were the students
of Mevlevi teachers.
6. Mevlevî convents in the provincial cities in Anatolian, Arab, Greek, and
Balkan areas were important institutions for the diffusion of the norms,
and some of the repertoire of Ottoman art music. In some cases, musi-
cians trained in the provincial Mevlevihanes, such as those of Baghdad,
Mosul, Damascus, Tripoli, or Filibe (Plovdiv) were able to participate in
the musical life of the capital.
7. Their mystical view of the value of music became part of the philosophy
of the Ottoman elite.

2 Music in the Other Sunni tarikats

The mystical philosophy of music had been most consistently developed by

the Mevlevis, but it appears to have been accepted by most of the other Sunni
tarikats as well. The major difference was that, whereas the Mevlevis intro-
duced the principles of the cyclical rhythmic composed suites and a variety of
musical instruments into their liturgy, the other tarikats remained (or perhaps
became) more consistent with Sufi music outside of Turkey, by prohibiting
melodic instruments in the liturgy. They concentrated on the zikr ceremony
consisting of a variety of musical genres, without a developed prearranged
order, and the ametrical genres durak, naat, temcid, etc. Outside of the liturgy,
however, the dervishes and lay members of the numerous Halveti and Kadiri
sub-orders were active both as singers and composers of secular art music, less
often as instrumentalists.3
Among the other Sunni tarikats, the Gülşeniye were the closest to the
Mevleviye in their cultivation of music, because the former was a combina-
tion of the spiritual lineages of the Halvetiye and Mevleviye, which had origi-
nated in the southeast of Anatolia (Gölpınarlı 1983:325). Although at least one
eighteenth-century Gülşeni tekke in Istanbul (Hasirizade) had added a sema-
bane and musicians’ gallery in the Mevlevi style (Tanman 1977:125), on the
whole it seems that the Gülşeni ritual was based on the Halveti zikr, rather than
on the Mevlevi sema. Evliya Çelebi speaks at some length about his musical
master, Derviş Ömer Gülşeni (1545?–1630?), a Gülşeni sheykh, who had been

3 For a general survey of this repertoire see Feldman 1992.

94 Chapter 2

the hanendebaşı under several Sultans, including Murad IV (1623–1640). Evliya

Çelebi mentions a very broad musical repertoire in connection with Derviş
Ömer, including the courtly fasıl genres, dervish genres, and several popular
genres, such as varsaği and türkü. According to Esʿad Efendi, Derviş Ömer was
also a Mevlevi, but no Mevlevi compositions are ascribed to him.
The period during which the Halvetiye had exerted its maximum influence
on the Ottoman court extended from the reign of Bayazid II (1481–1512), skip-
ping the reign of Selim Yavuz, and continuing again under Süleyman Kanuni
into the later sixteenth century. Sultan Murad III (1574–1595) even composed
dervish devotional poetry under the mahlas (nom de plume) Muradi. During
the early seventeenth century, the highly musical Celveti sub-group of the
Halvetiye became influential at court. Murad IV, however, was not involved in
any tarikat, and Mehmed IV (1648–1687) was under the influence of anti-tarikat
orthodox teachers. Nevertheless, he was an important patron of art music, and
several Mevlevi musicians were patronized during his reign. Individual Halveti
zakirs and lay members continued to be major bearers (although not creators)
of the secular vocal art tradition until the twentieth century. Due to the fact
that the period of greatest Halveti contact with the Ottoman court was quite
early, in an era which is poorly documented musically, the full extent of their
mutual interaction it not known.
Two of the musicians in “Atrabü’l-Asar” are described as zakir or zakirbaşı.
This musical function, the leading of the zikr, was an important position in
the Halveti tekkes. However, many of the dervish zakirs also held positions as
müezzins, naathans or preachers (vaiz) in mosques which were unconnected
with dervish tekkes. This dual function demonstrated the potential for both
vertical and horizontal social linkage which was inherent in the Sunni tarikats
(Findley 1980:35).
A clear example of the combination of official mosque müezzin and tekke
zakir is furnished by the career of müezzinbaşı Mustafa “Karaoğlan.” After mov-
ing from Istanbul to Bursa, he apprenticed himself to a timekeeper (müvakkit)
and müezzin of the Ulu Cami, the major mosque in Bursa. In 1669, at the death
of his teacher, he took over his position. In 1686 he became the müezzinbaşı
of the Ulu Cami, as well as its mevlidhan (singer of the Mevlid poem on the
Birthday of the Prophet). He became a dervish of the famous Halveti Şeyh
Niyazi-i Misri (1617–1694) while the latter resided at Bursa. During the long
exile of the sheykh in Lemnos, Mustafa was put in charge of the Halveti
tekke. He died in 1716 (Ergun 1943—I:146). Mehmed Nazmi, who had been
the preacher (vaiz) of the tekke mosque of Halveti Şeyh Abdülahad Nuri in
Istanbul, became the vaiz of the official Valide Cami in Usküdar in 1654. Nazmi
eventually became the sheikh of the Halveti tekke as well (ibid.).
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 95

Esʿad Efendi mentions a certain “Küçük Imam” (“Little Imam”), the naathan
at the Valide Cami, as a composer of the fasıl. He was evidently a companion of
Buhurizade Itri, who composed a poem on the date of his death (tarih) in 1674.
Küçük Imam was apparently also a member of either the Celveti or Halveti
tarikats (or both), as he composed a number of ilahi hymns to the poetry of
Şeyh Uftade (d. 1580), the founder of the Celvetiye, and the Halveti Niyazi-i
Misri. The “Little Imam” combined the three positions of mosque singer, der-
vish musician, and fasıl composer. Hafız Kumral (d. 1620) was a composer of
courtly fasıl and the zakir of the Celveti Şeyh Mahmud Aziz Hudayi (1543–1628).
This Celveti sheikh, a disciple of Uftade, achieved great influence at court dur-
ing the reign of Ahmed I (1603–1617), and was known as a major composer of
both dervish and courtly music.
The musical genres created by the Halveti, Celveti, and Kadiri (and other)
tarikats were not as monumental as the ayin of the Mevlevis, nor were they
arranged in a strictly cyclical format. Nevertheless, the unmeasured compo-
sitions known as durak, naat, mersiye and temcid were highly elaborate and
sophisticated pieces. In addition, some of the tevşih ilahi hymns were as
musically developed as the courtly beste genre, although these also were not
composed or performed as cycles (Oransay 1972). The earliest well-known
composer of these genres was Zakiri Hasan (d. 1622), and they continued to be
composed until the end of the nineteenth century. Ali Şir ü Gani (1635?–1714),
a shaykh of the Gülşeniye, mentioned by Esʿad Efendi, was probably the most
prolific composer of these dervish genres, whose opus exceeded six hundred
items. He was also a composer of the fasıl, although none of his secular com-
positions have long remained in the repertoire. Şir ü Gani is apparently the last
major composer of both dervish and courtly music who was not a member of
the Mevleviye. Most of these dervish genres were accepted into the orthodox
mosque service as early as the seventeenth century, and remained there until
the Republic banned the tarikats and discouraged the transmission of the der-
vish repertoire.
Apart from the direct participation of dervishes as composers or perform-
ers of courtly music, and the creation of the more musically developed genres
of the dervish rituals and the mosque, the influence on the secular music by
means of the training of musicians, and overall encouragement for secular
music was certainly considerable. During the seventeenth century, lay mem-
bers of the Halvetiye, such as Nazim Çelebi and Hafız Post were some of the
most important composers of the fasıl genres, and their students, such as
Buhurizade Itri, were crucial to the development of secular music in the early
eighteenth century.
96 Chapter 2

3 Conclusion

Several factors suggest that Eastern and Central Anatolia could not have been
far behind the musical development of the older centers of Muslim art music
in the fifteenth century. Among these are
1. the lively and original treatise production in Anatolia;
2. the continuity and cultural vitality of the Mevlevi dervishes based
in Konya;
3. the existence of major makam centers in the southeast of the country;
4. the frequent mention of Anatolia (Rum) alongside Iran and Şirvan in the
writings of Marāghī;
5. the contacts of famous foreign musicians with Anatolia.
However, the interest of the Ottoman court in integrating musical activity into
the Palace Service through the devşirme and military slave (kul) system was
apparently unique. There may have been two causes for this development.
On the one hand, the demographic situation of the Ottomans once they had
expanded into Europe necessitated the forcible incorporation of parts of the
non-Muslim population into the military machine which also furnished much
of the personnel for the Palace Service. On the other hand, the new and numer-
ically weak situation of Islam and Muslim civilization in the Balkanic lands of
the Ottomans probably reinforced their dependence on foreign experts and on
newly trained military slaves. This organized integration of the performance of
makam music into the Imperial Service distinguished the Ottoman from other
Muslim states.
Another crucial difference between the Ottoman and other states was the
thorough bureaucratization of the religious institution. This process, which
accelerated after the middle of the sixteenth century, tended to break down
the barrier which had separated the religious culture of the ʿulamāʾ and the
secular culture of the court in non-Ottoman states. A large section of the
ʿulamāʾ came to share many of the ideals and practices of the secular bureau-
cracy. The integration of the ʿulamāʾ into secular music began to occur during
the same period in which the military slaves began to have less influence over
the Palace Service.
Yet, another factor was the widespread expansion of the Sufi orders and
their propagation of music of various types. Several orders produced singers
and composers of major status, while well-known secular musicians were often
loosely affiliated with one of the orders. Instrumental music was developed in
particular by the Mevleviye, whose ney players came to dominate this instru-
ment and to acquire for it a newly expanded place in the Ottoman courtly per-
formance. Membership in the Sufi orders was not exclusive of membership in
Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court 97

the lower levels of the ʿulamāʾ, especially hatips, imams and müezzins. While
Sufism was important among some musicians in many other Muslim coun-
tries, this interlocking with the ʿulamāʾ and sometimes with the Palace Service
was much more characteristic of the Ottoman than of other Muslim states.
The prominence of the ʿulamāʾ musicians, mainly vocalists, encouraged the
growth of a sharp professional distinction between vocalists and instrumen-
talists. Major composers tended to emerge from the former group. This dis-
tinction contrasts with the situation in medieval Muslim civilization in which
singers were usually also instrumentalists.
The phenomenon of high-level amateur musicianship had been well-known
in Mongol and Timurid times, but this pattern was very much developed in
Turkey after the sixteenth century and came to be characteristic of several of the
higher social classes, including the upper bureaucracy, the timar-owning sipa-
his, and also the mercantile aristocracy of the Greeks of Istanbul (“Phanariots”)
and their Romanian kin. The Sephardic Jews developed a separate tradition of
Ottoman music created by professional cantors, and also considerable ama-
teur participation of the wealthy elements among the upper bourgeoisie by
the eighteenth century.
The upper-class amateurism of the Ottomans of all religions was not gener-
ally restricted or considered in any way illicit except for the members of the
higher ʿulamāʾ, both kadıs and muftis. This exception was apparently a gesture
toward the older Islamic tradition in which the ʿulamāʾ and musicianship were
antithetical categories.
On the highest level of society, many Ottoman and vassal rulers were
noted patrons of music, and some were also performers and composers. Later
Ottoman tradition held that certain pre-Ottoman Anatolian rulers had con-
formed to this pattern, e.g. Yakub, sultan of Germiyan (d. 1429). In the fifteenth
century the most notable Ottoman royal musician was Prince Korkut (1467–
1513). This pattern was dormant during most of the sixteenth century as the
rulers Selim I (d. 1525) and Süleyman (d. 1566) had little interest in music. The
Tatar ruler of the Crimea, Gazi Giray (1554–1607) was a major composer of
instrumental music, followed by the Ottoman sultan Murad IV (1613–1640).
Thereafter, there were only a few interruptions in the royal participation
in art music either as patrons or as composers. Royal patronage reached its
apogee under such rulers as Mehmed IV (1648–1693), Ahmed III (1702–1730),
Mahmud I (1730–1754), Abdülhamid I (1774–1789), and Selim III (1789–1808).
Equally important as the favorable attitude of most Ottoman rulers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the propagation of art music was the
transition from a bureaucratic meritocracy to a bureaucratic aristocracy, which
occurred during the course of the seventeenth century. As membership in the
98 Chapter 2

askeri ruling class became increasingly dependent on good familial connec-

tions, the higher-level palace servants, financial and bureaucratic administra-
tors, and kadıs began to view themselves as belonging to a largely hereditary
Ottoman class. Due to the increased incorporation of the higher muftis into
this class along with the higher kadıs, the ʿulamāʾ acquired many character-
istics of a religious bureaucracy, a part of the state apparatus. While the Sufi
orders were somewhat apart from this social structure, as they were not as
directly dependent upon the state, many members of the bureaucracy had
become lay members of several of the Sufi orders. In addition the ideas of
Sufism were entrenched within the standard curriculum of the medreses which
were attended by all candidates for higher ilmiye and kalemiye positions. Thus,
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an urban-based bureaucratic
aristocracy came into being, whose culture combined elements from the court,
from orthodox religion and from Sufism. This new aristocracy were patrons
and practitioners of three art forms—poetry, calligraphy, and music. Although
the Ottoman state service provided the material basis on which the aristocratic
lifestyle was built, and which had no firm basis outside of that service, this aris-
tocracy was sufficiently autonomous to propagate art music within its ranks
apart from the musical patronage of the court.
 Chapter 3

Instruments and Instrumentalists

1 Sources for the Instrumentation of Ottoman Music

A fundamental change overtook the instrumentation of Ottoman music

between 1600 and 1700.1 This change parallels those which occurred in musi-
cal genres, performance practice and the social organization of music during
the same period. The change in Turkey was the first of a series of changes in
instrumentation which occurred throughout the Turco-Iranian cultural zone
between 1700 and 1800, perhaps beginning somewhat earlier in some regions.
All of these transformations resulted in the development of typical instru-
mental ensembles which were not shared within a broader maqām region.
While various urban genres had long relied on local instruments as well as
combinations of local and international instruments, the courtly ensembles
had employed several instruments in common during various periods of his-
tory. From the Timurid era until the end of the sixteenth century, in an area
stretching from Transoxiana to Anatolia, there was a mixture of several core
instruments known to most Muslim musical cultures and more exotic instru-
ments of Central Asian or Chinese origin. During the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries there are references to new instruments invented by musicians or
scholarly rulers. However, the instruments depicted most frequently in art and
mentioned most often in literary sources are not these exotica but rather the
widespread, common instruments of the international maqām.

1 Reinhard (1981) had compiled the basic Ottoman visual materials for such a study. However,
the value of this compilation is decreased by the absence of the numerous European visual
sources and the lack of congruence with Ottoman and foreign literary and documen-
tary sources.
Within Turkey, historical organology has generally fallen prey to a version of the “Sun
Language Theory.” In many Turkish publications, even during the 1980s, Ottoman instru-
ments are explicitly connected with their Sumerian forebears. As a result, the nature of
Ottoman instrumentation prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, when it is described
so carefully by Charles Fonton, is virtually unknown in modern Turkey. Rauf Yekta and Henry
Farmer had made some educated guesses in the 1930s concerning Evliya Çelebi’s descrip-
tions, or rather enumeration of instruments. Some of these guesses have been developed
further by Lawrence Picken in his excellent study of modern rural Turkish instruments, but
these Ottoman instruments are not his topic. As recently as 1987 a catalogue for an exhibition
of Ottoman instruments (both actual and illustrations) could not be written because several
key instruments in the paintings could not be identified.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_007

100 Chapter 3

Several different kinds of sources can be used to trace the morphological

development and the use of the instruments of Ottoman music. The visual evi-
dence comprises several distinct types of indigenous sources—illustrations of
literary texts, visual records of specific events, such as the festivals of 1582, 1675,
and 1720, album paintings commissioned by Europeans or by the Ottoman
court, and a few musicological illustrations. There is also a rich corpus of
European paintings and drawings, usually depicting Ottoman life or individual
Europeans in the Ottoman environment. These latter range from schematic
generalizations to some of the most detailed depictions of Ottoman instru-
ments in existence. These hold a position analogous to European painting in
the history of Ottoman carpets (Denny 1985:37).
Indigenous visual depictions of historical events, sometimes involving
musical performance, were much more common in Turkey than they had
been in Iran or Transoxiana. Only Muslim India can match or even surpass the
accuracy of Turkish visual depictions of music. For example, the “Surname”
illustrations of 1582 have often been used for organological history, although
some other depictions of musical instruments from this period are more
schematic. The surviving album paintings of the seventeenth century include
some which attempted the realistic depiction of instruments. By the begin-
ning of the following century many Ottoman paintings show an interest in
the actual shape, volume, number of strings, color, and even the proportional
relationship of musical instruments and the human body.2 In contrast to this
Ottoman situation, the almost exclusive use of literary texts for illumination
in Iran and Transoxiana allowed a degree of conservatism in the illustration
of instruments which may render hazardous certain conclusions about the
use of specific instruments at a given historical point. With the exception
of the Baghdad school of Ottoman miniatures of the sixteenth century, the
Arab zones of the Ottoman Empire suffer from an extreme dearth of icono-
graphic documents.
Literary sources are divided into native and foreign groups, including
ambiguous texts like Bobowski’s or Cantemir’s. The native sources are lim-
ited, and some were certainly lost, such as the “Sazname” of Nihani Çelebi
(d. 1563). There had been major literary sources for Ottoman instruments in
the fifteenth century, such as the “Çengname” of Ahmed-i Dai and the appen-
dix on instruments by Ahmed bin Şukrullah. The most important source for

2 The overall accuracy of the illustrations in the “Surname-i Vebbi” (1720–1730), a major visual
source for musical instruments of the Tulip Age, may be gauged by the fact that the painter
Levni had been trained as a gilder and painter of instruments (Atil 1969:365).
Instruments and Instrumentalists 101

the seventeenth century is the section of Evliya Çelebi’s “Seyahatname” which

deals with musicians and instruments. The European literary sources are usu-
ally vague and repetitive, but several contain descriptions of striking veracity,
and a very few, such as the eighteenth-century books of Fonton and Toderini
contribute much significant data. In particular Fonton’s descriptions of the
principal instruments of the courtly ensemble cannot be compared in accu-
racy with any Turkish source until the past decades. There is also an additional
kind of written source which is not literary but purely of a documentary nature
and which has few parallels among the records of other Muslim states. These
are the records of payments of the musicians of the Ottoman court. Only a
few of these have been identified and published, but they contain significant
information about the instruments used and the social origins of some of
the musicians.
A problem for all the cultural zones in several periods is matching up the
literary and the iconographic evidence. Sixteenth-century Turkey enjoys a rich
fund of iconographic depictions, but the corresponding literary evidence is no
longer extant. The “Sazname” of Nihani Çelebi is known only through the sum-
maries of Evliya Çelebi. Conversely, Evliya’s extensive descriptions of musical
instruments are not matched by the rather meager surviving illuminations
and album paintings of the seventeenth century. It is only in the eighteenth
century that Turkish literary references, memoirs and other works of foreign
travelers, court documents and native and foreign iconographic depictions
combine to create a rather complete picture of the musical ensembles of the
court and the city.
Actual musical instruments of great antiquity do not survive in modern
Turkey. The oldest existing Ottoman instruments do not seem to predate the
end of the eighteenth century. Partly for this reason the following chapter will
not attempt to address purely organological issues of proportion or materi-
als. The emphasis here will be on the process of change which overtook the
instrumentation of Ottoman music from the sixteenth to the middle of the
eighteenth century, and the implications which many of these changes have
for the musical aesthetics of Ottoman music as it made the transition from the
late medieval to the early modern era.

2 Organ and Genre

Between 1600 and 1750 significant changes took place within the courtly
ensemble, so that generic distinctions expressed instrumentally must be
102 Chapter 3

correlated with each historical period. Several critical changes in musical

instrumentation correspond closely to the changes in musical form, genre and
performance practice which are associated with the emergence of Ottoman
Turkish music properly speaking.
At one pole stood the musical genres which employed no instruments of any
kind. This was the religious repertoire of the müezzin, principally the Qurʾānic
chant (tecvid), the ezan (adhān) and other non-metrical genres of dervish ori-
gin which had been accepted into the mosque, such as the temcid and muna-
cat. At the opposite pole was the meterhane, whose reed-oboe (zurna), trumpet
(nefir), drum and metallic percussion ensemble was designed exclusively for
outdoor performance. It was always performed instrumentally, using instru-
ments which could not be used in conjunction with singing. Almost its entire
repertoire was metrical and composed. The instrumentation (or lack of it) in
these religious and military genres remained essentially unchanged both prior
to and following the historical period being examined here. Both represented
institutions of the Islamic religion and the Ottoman state which were viewed
as fixed and prescribed for eternity. The music of the mosque underwent grad-
ual change after the sixteenth century as various dervish genres were accepted,
although none of these were allowed to alter the unaccompanied vocal and
non-metrical basis of the music. The structure of the mehterhane was not
changed but destroyed in toto in 1826 in the course of the drastic restructuring
of the military institutions of the state.
Both the music of the mosque and that of the mehterhane possessed generic
relatives whose instrumentation was somewhat less fixed, and which had an
intimate association with organized, metrical bodily movement. The music of
most of the Sunni dervish orders was focused on the zikr (dhikr) ceremony as
well as Islamic holidays such as the Birthday of the Prophet (Mevlid-i Şerif ).
The Turkish zikr represented a fusion of several disparate musical principles,
in which the unaccompanied chanting of religious poetry (in Turkish) by the
müezzin was only one. This mosque chanting was integrated into a metrical
context in which sound was divided into three timbral arenas: The müezzin’s
high pitched solo was the uppermost. The middle level was occupied by the
singing of the metrical hymns (ilahi) by a small group of dervishes (zakirs).
The lowest level was represented by the chanting and breathing of the Divine
Names by the mass of dervishes. The metrical basis of this chant was reinforced
by percussion, usually large frame-drums (daire, bendir), but also kettledrums
(küdum) and cymbals (halile). In the zikr, metricity coexisted with antiphonal
singing and a tendency toward polyphony. Another part of the zikr was the pre-
composed non-metrical genre known as durak which might be superimposed
Instruments and Instrumentalists 103

over the metrical chanting or sung separately. The music of the holidays was of
a fundamentally different character, featuring metrical hymns sung by a small
chorus of zakirs. Unlike the hymns of the zikr, these used complex meters
which were not associated with bodily movement. Only one timbral register
was represented, and percussion was considered essential.
The generic relative of the official mehter was the mehter-i birun, an unof-
ficial wind orchestra designed for dance and celebratory music. Like the offi-
cial mehter, the core of the ensemble was the zurna, but here it was always
played without the trumpets. The zurnas might be accompanied by the mis-
kal pan-pipes, but no other legato instruments. The only stringed instrument
indicated in connection with the mehter-i birun was the santur. Percussion
was much less elaborate than for the official mehter, consisting of small ket-
tledrums (nakkare) and/or large frame drums (daire). The dancers frequently
used large wooden castanets (çarpare).
An indoor dance repertoire also existed, which was associated mainly
with the professional dancing women known as çengi, and with dance per-
formances within the imperial harem, as well as other large harems, both to
entertain the sultan and the women themselves. As their name indicates, the
leading instrument of the çengi dancers was the harp (çeng), accompanied
by other instruments such as ud or keman as well as daire or dumbelek. Other
instruments might also be added with no fixed rule. The slave-women of the
court seem to have performed mainly dance music and urban songs (türkü,
şarkı) using the standard courtly instruments, and some popular instruments
of their time.
The sources have very little to say about purely rural performances in
Anatolia or the Balkans but there was an important link between rural per-
formances of the semi-professional type (the aşık), urban professionalism and
non-public performances of several urban classes. These performances all cen-
tered around metrical songs (türkü, semai) accompanied by one of a variety
of lutes, usually of the long-necked type. The rural aşık often had a partly Sufi
repertoire (nefes), and this was mirrored by the nefes and semai of the urban
aşıks associated with the ocaks (barracks) of the Janissaries. There were also
a variety of other genres and styles associated with the military life, such as
the ozanlama sung by professional bards who traveled with the army or navy
(Sanal 1974). Several lutes were considered typical of the levend (irregular
troops, militias) in south-eastern Europe (Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia)
and Anatolia. This repertoire of the unmarried men seems to have created an
important link between the countryside and the city, connecting the lower and
the highest classes. There was also a partly female repertoire associated with
104 Chapter 3

the lute tel-tanburası and bozuk. According to the evidence of Marāghī and
Evliya Çelebi several sophisticated lute types had been developed in Anatolia
at the courts of various Ottoman and pre-Ottoman princes, and these also
formed a link between the music and instruments of Anatolia and those of
the cities.
During the sixteenth century the Ottoman courtly ensemble was almost
identical to courtly ensembles elsewhere in the Irano-Turkic area. The courtly
ensemble began to change in the seventeenth century when several of its
older members disappeared and new instruments were introduced. By the
second half of the seventeenth century the Ottoman court had an essentially
new instrumental ensemble which would continue in that form into the early
nineteenth century. This ensemble was quite differentiated from the music of
the harem women or other entertainment ensembles as well as from courtly
ensembles outside of the Empire. The instruments of the court could be used
both as accompaniment for the vocal fasıl or for the purely instrumental fasl-i
sāzende, which featured the taksim, the peşrev, and the semai.
Yet another ensemble was constituted by the mutrip of the Mevlevi der-
vishes. This group was based on the ney and the percussion of the kudum with
one or more singers (ayinhan), the usual group being three neys, one küdum
and one ayinhan. Other instruments were used at times, but they were not
considered essential to the ensemble.

3 The Ottoman Court Ensemble of the Sixteenth Century

A convenient starting point is the “Cemaat-i mutriban” document of 1525, a

record of the salaries of court musicians which was discussed in the previous
chapter (cf. Uzunçarşılı 1977:84–86). The instruments mentioned here may be
compared with the visual sources of the century. Although most of the avail-
able illuminations of instruments date from the second half of the sixteenth
century, there was almost no change in the composition of the instrumental
ensemble. While an instrument may appear in an illumination for a literary
text decades or generations after it had fallen from use, the pieces of akçe
marked next to the name of a musician is a sure sign of the continued viability
of his instrument, just as the absence of an instrument in the list indicates that
it held at best a secondary status.
The highest paid musicians, receiving more than thirty akçe per day, were
Mahmud bin Abdülkadirzade (ud), forty-seven akçe; Hasan Ağa (ud), forty-five;
Zeyni (kopuz), forty; and Mustafa (kopuz), forty. Therefore, it would appear that
the ud and the kopuz had the highest status. All other musicians received no
Instruments and Instrumentalists 105

Table 1.2 Instruments and musicians from the “Cemaat-i mutriban” of 1525

Kemançe 7 Şah Kulu, Haydar bin Şah Kulu, Nasuh, Mustafa, Mehmed,
Halil, Hızır bin Ali Ekber
Ud 6 Derviş Mahmud bin Abdülkadirzade, Hasan Ağa, Nasuh,
Ayaş, Mehmed, Hasan Ağa (plus his five kul students)
Ney 6 Maksud, Hasan, İmam Kulu, Hasan Kulu, İmam Kulu (no. 2),
Hüseyin Kulu
Kopuz 4 Zeyni, Mustafa, Şaban, Hüsrev
Çeng 4 Nimetullah, Behram, Hasan, Mehmed
Kanun 3 Şadi, Muharrem Seydi, Muhyiddin

more than twenty-fıve akçe each. The kemançe players were the largest group,
with seven performers, but the highest paid, the Iranian Şah Kulu, received
only twenty-five akçe, which was a high salary, but far from the highest. This
Şah Kulu who was mentioned by Cantemir (1734) in his “History” (not to be
confused with another Şah Kulu from the time of Murad IV), was evidently a
famous musician. The fact that even he did not receive more than twenty-fıve
akçe probably indicates that the kemançe did not have as high a status as the ud
or the kopuz. All four kopuz players are among the thirteen highest paid musi-
cians (out of forty), receiving no less than twenty-fıve akçe each (the sums are
forty for two of them and twenty-five for two). No çeng player received more
than fifteen akçe.
The ensemble mentioned in this document is almost identical to that of the
Timurid courts. The “Baburnameh” (in the section quoted earlier) mentions
the ʿūd, the nāy and the ghiççäk (identical or closely related to the kemançe). In
addition, the çeng and the kanun (qanūn) are well-known from contemporane-
ous miniature paintings.
The similarity of the instrumentation is reinforced by the actual identity
of several musicians in the Iranian, Central Asian, and even Ottoman courts.
The famous Iranian ud player Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn had been employed at two
Ottoman courts in Amasya and Manisa, and later went on to perform at the
courts of the Akkoyunlu Sultan Yakub in Tabriz, and possibly at that of Husein
Bayqara in Herat (according to the Ottoman tezkire of Kınalızade; this it not
mentioned by Babur, however; cf. Uzunçarşılı 1977:83). The Iranian kemançe
player Şah Kulu, mentioned above, was almost certainly identical to the musi-
cian of the same name (“Şah Quli”) who had performed at the court of Husein
Bayqara. According to Babur, he was a native of “Iraq” (western Iran) and had
come to Khorasan to “study the instrument” (“saz mäşq qïlïb”), i.e. the ghiççäk
106 Chapter 3

(= kemançe). The 1525 Ottoman document mentions that he had been brought
from Tabriz by Sultan Selim. Husein Bayqara ruled in Herat until 1506, and it
is not at all unlikely that Şah Kulu was able to follow Selim to Turkey in 1514
after his occupation of Tabriz. The famous composer Ghulam Şadi was also an
instrumentalist, although Babur does not specify his instrument. The Ottoman
tradition as transmitted by Cantemir and Fonton considered him an “Arabian”
(Cantemir 1734, Fonton 1751). He was a musician at the court in Herat until
the Uzbek conquest when Sheybani Khan sent him to the Khan of Kazan
on the Volga.
The following section will treat the individual instruments which are docu-
mented in the Ottoman courtly ensemble of the sixteenth century.

3.1 The kemançe

Only one bowed instrument was part of the Ottoman courtly ensemble dur-
ing the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and up until the later eighteenth
century: This was the “spike-fiddle” known as kemançe or keman. Judging by
the visual representations it appears to have undergone much less structural
change than any other instrument of the courtly ensemble. The best descrip-
tion is that of Fonton, and even though it dates from 1751, it is probably appli-
cable to the instrument of the sixteenth century:

It is made of several pieces of different materials. The first and most

essential, which is called the resonating body of a violin, is a coconut
shell that has been emptied and well-dried. The shells are larger or
smaller depending on the size of the fruit. Some are up to three inches
in diameter. The opening made to empty it, which is large in its circum-
ference, is covered by a large bladder, fine and transparent. On the side
of the shell opposite the opening, there are small slits which are like the
rays of a circle, and which function like f holes of a violin. They also use
sometimes in place of a coconut, a small round dried gourd, which they
tint to the color of a coconut shell and use the same way. These latter
types of violins are much cheaper but are worthless and do not have the
sound of the others.
The neck of the kemân can be of any kind of wood. Fir is the best. It is
lathed like a pole, then smoothed and finished. It is thicker at the top end
than at the middle, where it is joined to the coconut at the middle by an
iron or brass bar which traverses it from one side to another, forming an
axis and extending out more than half a foot.
The upper extremity of the neck is surmounted by an ivory or whale
bone pomme. A little beneath that is a slot for the tuning pegs, which are
Instruments and Instrumentalists 107

Figure 1.1
Eighteenth-century kemançe/keman (Fonton 1751: fig. 4)

much fatter and hold much better than ours. There are only three pegs
because there are only three strings, which rest upon a bridge set upon
the bladder skin quite close to the neck. These strings must not be made
of gut, but rather of twisted silk … The Turks play their violin rather like
we play our bass … The bow of the violin does not differ from ours, except
that it does not have the nut which serves to hold the hair in equal ten-
sion. The hand performs this function and holds the hair which is passed
to a ring at the end of the stick (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:124–5).

According to Marāghī (d. 1435) the kemanche had been of two types, coconut or
wood, of which the latter was considered finer. Fonton states that the kemançe
was of two types, coconut or gourd, of which the former was preferred. In 1679
Dr. John Covel had noted that the gourd kemançe was used mainly by poor
Jewish musicians. It would appear that wood was no longer in use by the eigh-
teenth century. The material of which the sixteenth-century instrument was
108 Chapter 3

made is not known. Marāghī also specifies that the kemanche was a different
instrument from the ghichak (ghiççäk), in that the latter was larger and had
eight sympathetic strings in addition to two melody strings (Marāghī 1977:133).
Timurid paintings do not depict this type of fiddle, and it would seem that by
the late fifteenth century in Chaghatay ghiççäk referred to the same instru-
ment known elsewhere as kemanche (kemançe). The description of Şah Kulu as
a player of the “ghiççäk” in Herat and of the “kemançe” in Istanbul also suggests
this identification.
The fact that Şah Kulu had traveled from western Iran to Khorasan to study
the kemançe seems to indicate that Herat must have been viewed as a major
center for kemançe during the later fifteenth century. However, aside from Şah
Kulu and his son Haydar, the remaining five kemançe players in the Ottoman
court in 1525 do not seem to be Persians but rather Turks. Thus, it would seem
that there was something of a native school of kemançe playing in Anatolia
by this time. In the seventeenth century the performers of the kemançe in
Istanbul were predominantly local.

3.2 The ud
For many centuries previously the ud had been among the most stable mem-
bers of the instrumentarium of Muslim art musics. Originally an Iranian short-
necked lute which had emerged out of the Transoxanian barbat (barbaṭ), it had
been familiar to both Persians and Arabs prior to the rise of Islam. Marāghī had
distinguished between the ʿūd al-qadīm with four sets of double strings, and
the ʿūd al-kāmil with five sets. There was also a lute called the şahrud (shāhrūd)
whose neck and body were twice that of the ud and which was tuned one
octave lower. Uds had existed both in un-fretted and fretted form.
Sixteenth-century illuminations in Turkey, Iran, and Transoxiana display
very similar, sometimes identical forms of the ud. There is considerable variety
in the dimensions of the instrument in both areas. One illustration from the
“Süleymanname” shows an instrument of the size of a modern ud, while the
scenes from the “Surname” of 1582 usually depict much larger instruments. It is
possible that some of the larger instruments may in fact be the şahrud, but the
Ottoman documents mention only ud with no other qualification.
Safavid miniatures occasionally portray fretted uds, but the Ottoman
instruments seem always to have been unfretted. The number of pegs on both
Safavid and Ottoman miniature representation of uds do not usually seem
reliable, generally having too many pegs. The Ottoman miniatures are sel-
dom specific enough to clarify the method of plucking the strings. However,
Instruments and Instrumentalists 109

Figure 1.2 Şahrud, two neys, kopuz, kemançe. “Surname” of Murad III (1582). H1344 18b
110 Chapter 3

Figure 1.3 Sixteenth-century ud: “Süleymanname” (1558: fol. 412a); ud, two neys, miskal,
kemançe
Instruments and Instrumentalists 111

the Persian miniatures sometimes show the ud being struck with a long hard
plectrum as in “Feast of Id” in a “Divan of Hafiz,” Tabriz 1529 (reproduced in
Denny 1985:43).
In the sixteenth century the ud still maintained a central position in the
courtly instrumentarium. The two most highly paid musicians in the docu-
ment of 1525 are both avvad (ud players). The first, paid forty-seven akçe daily
was Derviş Mahmud bin Abdülkadirzade, the son of ʿAbd al-Qādir’s youngest
son ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Abdülaziz).
The second leading ud player was Hasan Ağa, paid forty-fıve akçe daily. His
title of ağa indicates that he had risen through the devşirme and the Janissary
corps. According to the notes following his name he had been the mir-i alem of
Sultan Ahmed, governor of Amasya between 1494 and 1512.
The importance of the ud at the court is further illustrated by the fact that
Hasan Ağa was given no less than five young devşirme boys serving the sul-
tan (called “Imperial slaves,” Hunkar kulları) to whom to teach the ud, each of
whom received only two akçe per day. The ud continued to be represented with
great frequency in miniatures into the early seventeenth century.

3.3 The kopuz

The kopuz was an important instrument of the court and was frequently rep-
resented in miniature painting. The lute-type to which the Ottoman kopuz
belonged had originated from several different morphological types which
seem to have become mixed repeatedly in a broad area from Central Asia
and India in the east to Anatolia, the Balkans and Arabia in the west. They
produced a variety of instruments, some of which remained stable in one
region for centuries or were transported to new regions with varying degrees
of success. There also seems to have been a transference of bowing and pluck-
ing techniques in an early and undocumented stage of the history of the
instruments.3
The names of the instruments are problematical. The Ottoman kopuz
belongs to a wider family of instruments which are called rabab (rabāb) almost

3 Unfortunately, the one Turkish monographic study of something called the “kopuz” is unreli-
able. Gazimihaľs study adopts the idiosyncratic meaning of “long-necked lute” for kopuz.
As a result, the work does not contain a single illustration of an Ottoman kopuz, which
was a short-necked lute. The author also ignores all of the evidence from Soviet Central
Asian dictionaries, which he quotes in translation. All of these definitions refer to a bowed
instrument, but he never tries to grapple with the question of how these Central Asian
short-necked bowed instruments relate to his Anatolian long-necked plucked chordophone
(cf. Gazimihal 1975).
112 Chapter 3

everywhere else. The two existing names for the instrument type are Arabic
and Turkic. The name rabab itself is of Arabic origin and seems to have referred
during several periods to a skin-faced fiddle. The name kopuz is of Turkic ori-
gin and used in modern Central Asia in the form qobyz for a fiddle used by
shamans and epical bards in Kazakhstan and Karakalpakia. The evidence
of Marāghī shows that Oghuz Turks had employed the name kopuz (qobuz)
for plucked lutes from pre-Ottoman times. There are a variety of shapes for
the instruments called rabab in the Turco-Iranian and Indic cultural zones,
and some of them may have been influenced by the type represented by the
Kazakh (Turkic) qobyz. A confirmation of this hypothesis is the presence of the
sorud, a fiddle with a close morphological affinity to the Kazakh qobyz, as far
south as Baluchistan (During 1989:83).
The plucked rabab/kopuz as a short-necked, unfretted lute whose face was
partly covered with skin was in existence since Seljuk times. In the thirteenth
century the Persian poetry of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī employs rabab as a lute. A
twelfth-thirteenth-century Iranian painted bowl in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art (Fig. 1.4) displays the essential characteristics of the rabab of later
Persian music as described by During:

Painters present the rabab as being made up of one spherical sound-box,

followed by a second oblong-shaped box that grows into a short neck. In
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ iconography as a whole, we can
clearly see that the first sound-box, on which the bridge rests, is covered
with clear parchment, whereas the second box is covered with a wooden
table within it and is often decorated (During 1991:123).

Greig (1987) has attempted a typology of rababs from the Indian perspective.
He refers to the rabab with a circular parchment over the lower sound-box as
the “Mughal rabab” (Greig 1987:472). Within Iran this type of rabab is docu-
mented as early as the twelfth century, long before its appearance in India.
We may note in passing that the Indians developed another shape of rabab
which had a single circular corpus which was entirely covered in parchment. It
was also characterized by two essentially non-functional horns or wings which
flared out from the top of the corpus near the neck (cf. Miner 1993:60–4). This
morphological type was transported to Central Asia in the past three centuries
and produced several hybrid rababs in East Turkestan and Transoxiana. In the
Pamirs and the mountains of Kashmir a pear-shaped rabab with an extremely
narrow waist and an extremely deep body developed in relatively recent times
Instruments and Instrumentalists 113

Figure 1.4 Rabab, Seljuk painted bowl (Metropolitan Museum of Art),

no. 57.61.16

(Greig 1987:473; Vyzgo 1980:pl. 85–6). These eastern types of rabab do not seem
to have traveled to Iran and Anatolia.
Marāghī mentioned one rabab type which was played in Fars, another
popular in northern Azerbaijan (Şirvan), called rud-i hani (rūd-i hānī), an
Anatolian rabab (kopuz-ı rumi) and a Turkic instrument called kopuz-ı ozan
or ozan (Marāghī 1977:129; Bardakçi 1986:104). The first three were tuned like
the ud. The last was evidently the lute of the ozan, the Turkic bard. It had only
three strings and its neck was longer than the other rababs. Marāghī notes
that parchment was stretched over the lower halves of the kopuz-ı rumi and
the Azerbaijani rud-i hani (Marāghī 1977:128–9). This detail indicates that
both of these are related to the second type of Persian rabab. However the
body of the kopuz-ı rumi resembled a little ud (“bar shakl-e udi-e kuchegi,”
Marāghī 1977:128), whereas the Persian rababs of type two were longer and less
114 Chapter 3

rounded. However, the body of the kopuz-ı rumi was hollowed from one piece
of wood, not strips like the ud. The kopuz-ı rumi had five double strings, like the
ud. The rud-i hani, however, had a peculiar arrangement of two brass strings
and four silk strings.
Sixteenth-century Ottoman miniatures depict two closely related types of
kopuz. It is not clear whether they had absorbed elements from the kopuz-ı
rumi of the late fourteenth century or of the Azeri rud-i hani. The dominant
type of kopuz in the miniatures seems much the same as the rabab depicted
in contemporaneous Safavid paintings. Like them it had a single corpus, the
lower half of which was covered with a semicircular piece of parchment which
supported the bridge. There was a rosette in the wooden part of the face. The
neck was somewhat longer than the corpus and it was unfretted. The head
of the instrument was curved backward like the ud. The number of strings is
difficult to determine, but some of the clearer paintings indicate between six
and eight double strings. Like the Persian instrument, it was played with a long
hard plectrum (Fig. 1.2).
The second type of Ottoman kopuz was identical to the first except that its
tuning board was not curved backward. This probably indicates some differ-
ence in the number and type of strings used (Fig. 1.5).

3.4 The ney

The reed-flute ney is one of the most ancient instruments of the Near East.
In Islamic culture it had several functions, as an instrument of courtly music,
as an instrument of popular music, and as an instrument of the Sufi sema
(samāʿ). The association of the ney with the sema as practiced by the Mevlevi
dervishes is attested in a poem by a fifteenth-century Halveti sheikh, Cemal-i
Halveti (d. 1494?):

Nâleden ney deldi bağrin Hû deyü nalân ider

Mevlevîler Mesnevîde eyledi işʿâr-i Hû

The wailing of the ney pierces his breast;

he lets out a groan with a cry of “Hû”!

In the Mesnevî the Mevlevîs

have communicated the meaning of Hu (Feldman 1993:256).

Instruments and Instrumentalists 115

Figure 1.5 “Surname” of Murad III (1582), fol. 404a: ud, çeng, kemançe, kopuz with (a) curved
tuning-board, lower left, and (b) straight tuning-board, lower right
116 Chapter 3

The ney itself may have gone through several developments in technique (such
as the one mentioned for late nineteenth-century Iran by During 1991:134), but
its construction seems to have remained quite constant until the Ottomans
took the step of adding a mouthpiece and creating sets of identical neys
to be played in different keys. The iconographic evidence suggests that the
mouthpiece may have appeared in the later sixteenth century. However, the
vagueness of many sixteenth-century representations of the ney precludes a
definitive judgment about the date of its appearance. It is possible that art-
ists may have ignored the mouthpiece or were unable to represent it. Starting
in the later sixteenth century there is also a tendency to represent the ney as
slightly wider than previously. While it is possible that the extremely slen-
der neys painted by Turkish and Persian artists are in part conventional,
there may well be an attempt to indicate the difference in the proportions
between the Persian and Turkish neys as they are known from later periods.
For example an illustration to the “Süleymanname,” dated 1558, seems to
show two ney players playing long, thin Iranian neys without mouthpieces
(Fig. 1.3).
Mustafa Ali, in his “Mevaidü’n-nefais fi kavaidi’l-mecalis” (written in the
1590s), still mentioned the ney-i Irakiye (nāy-i ʿIrāqiyya, “West Iranian ney”)
which was probably the older Iranian nāy without a mouthpiece (And 1982:168).
In the “Cemaat-i mutriban” list of Süleyman’s musicians none of the neyzens
are Ottoman Turks; all are evidently Iranian Azerbaijanis, members of a single
family and their Azeri students.4 In this list there are no dervish neyzens.5 In
many Turkish illuminations of the sixteenth century the neyzens are dressed in
courtly and not dervish clothing.
The “Surname” of 1582 shows both secular and dervish neyzens playing in a
variety of contexts. All of the neyzens, however are playing the newer type of
ney with a mouthpiece (Fig. 1.2).
Both Ottoman and European paintings of the sixteenth century depict
women of the court, probably cariye slaves, playing the ney. The illustration
from the sixteenth century “Codex Vindobonensis” clearly indicates a mouth-
piece on the ney played by the female performer.

4 The period when Maksud Nayi arrived in Istanbul is not mentioned, but his brother’s sons
both have Azerbaijani Shiite names as do his two students.
5 The only dervish in the list is Derviş Mahmud, grandson of Marāghī. However, he was an ud
player and the scion of a lineage of secular court musicians.
Instruments and Instrumentalists 117

3.5 The çeng

The çeng was the Persian descendant of an ancient Near Eastern harp, which
seems to have assumed the shape known in Islamic times at least by the
Sassanian era. Throughout the Islamic period, until its disappearance between
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its form changed relatively little
(Lawergren 1988:22). In medieval Islamic art the çeng and the ud were the
most frequently represented chordophones (cf. Denny 1985). However, the
cultural associations of the çeng were different from those of the ud. The ud
could be part of harem entertainments and drinking parties and is so rep-
resented in Muslim arts of many eras, but it was also an instrument of the
court and the principal instrument of the Science of Music (ʿilm al-mūsīqā).
The çeng on the other hand, while it could be played at the court, had strong
associations with the realm of Venus (Zuhra). In Persian and Turkish poetry it
is the çeng which plays while Venus dances (Mellah 1932:88). Hence, the çeng
was the archetypical instrument of the harem: “The harp or chang is gener-
ally associated with female players … and appears in interior scenes of harem
activity” (Denny 1985:63). In Turkey these associations led to the social institu-
tion known as çengi, professional women dancers who danced to the music of
the çeng.6
Evliya’s silence on the female çengiler evidently prompted Popescu-Judetz to
deny the existence of a public institution of çengi women outside of the harems
of the wealthy until the end of the seventeenth century (Popescu-Judetz 1982:54).
However, one of the earliest descriptions of the çengiler was written in 1530 by
a Frenchman, Guillaume Postel (published 1560):

The other pastime, and the most common because of its sweetness, is a
harp made like a big fish, with a transverse bar at the bottom, to which
is attached the strings, without dentons, in order to sound more sweetly.
This harp is played by young girls called Singuin, who hire themselves for
the day to whomever takes them, as one would with a band of minstrels.
When one of them plays the harp, there’s another who plays on a small
tambourin, stretched with skin on only one side, which has jingles made
of pieces of brass on the side. Another girl plays the bones or pieces of
hard wood. Two or three perform feats of agility more pleasing than it is
possible to say; and meanwhile they all sing together with the harp. Then,

6 The early disappearance of the çeng caused modern writers such as And to ponder the origin
of the name çengi. There can be little doubt that it is related to nothing but the harp, çeng.
The possible derivation of çingene (“Gypsy,” “Zìgeuner”) from çengi is doubtful.
118 Chapter 3

to vary the material, the eldest and most beautiful gets up to dance in
their fashion, leaving her scarf and gold cap, takes a turban, which is the
hat of a man, then does a mime without speaking, so strongly represent-
ing the affections of love that reciting it to men without seeing it would
excite more desire than pleasure … her company plays the harp which
she has planted between her legs, takes rhythm from her music, striking
the knees on the carpet, and other such things (Postel 1560:17).

Postel’s reference to a “carpet” probably indicates that he viewed this perfor-

mance in the home of one of the wealthier classes. However, these dancers
were not women of the harem, but rather “young girls … who hire them-
selves for the day to whomever takes them,” i.e. a professional troupe. Postel’s
“Singuin” seems to be a conflation of çengi and çingene (Gypsy). If the per-
formers whom Postel had seen were really çingene women they could not have
been part of a wealthy Turkish harem. Nor is it likely that a Turkish host would
have allowed an outsider to view his own harem women in erotic dance. This
implies that organized public performing troupes of Gypsy çengi women had
existed even in the sixteenth century.
Another reference to organized çengiler dates from 1686, when de Thevenot
stated that:

They have also a sort of Women, whom they call Tchinguenineinnes, who
are publick Dancers, that play upon Castanets and other Instruments
while they dance; and for a few Aspres, will shew a thousand obscene
postures with their bodies (de Thevenot 1686:35).

The key phrases here are “publick Dancers,” and “Tchingueninennes,” which
is evidently derived from çingene (Gypsy) rather than çengi. Descriptions
of the dancing, music, and social organization of the çengi women become
more explicit and numerous in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
(And 1976:142–6), one of the most important being the “Çenginame” written
by Enderunlu Hüseyin Fazıl Bey (1759–1810). Evidently the çengis were able to
survive and indeed flourish despite the demise of their ancient instrument,
the çeng.
The çeng was not an exclusively female instrument. The 1525 list contains
four performers on the çeng, all of them Ottoman Turkish males. The female
performers of the instrument among the cariyes of the Imperial harem, who
were probably more numerous, were not paid through the same bureau as the
male musicians, and so their names do not appear in these records.
Instruments and Instrumentalists 119

The multiple functions of the çeng was also a feature of Iranian musical
culture, as indicated by During:

Throughout the sixteenth century, the harp was the most depicted
melodic instrument, especially in the context of festivities. … No paint-
ing shows the harp at a darvish gathering (samāʿ), while other instru-
ments such as the ney, the kamanche, and the daf occupy a privileged
position, because of certain interdictions concerning the instrument (c.f.
During 1988, 246). On the other hand, it does not seem to have been illicit
in the other world, as it sometimes appears in angelic scenes. Grouped
together, the documents evoke an instrument for pleasure, mostly associ-
ated with festivities. In these refined, secular contexts, the harp is a clas-
sical instrument for the execution of elaborate music (During 1991:102).

Thus, the cultural associations of the çeng ran the gamut from the angelic
delights of Paradise, through the lofty and refined delights of the makam music;
the music accompanying the festivities of royalty and the rich; intimate scenes
of romance and sensual delight; and finally reaching the depths of dissipation
and drunkenness. In a sense the çeng exemplifies the highly ambivalent atti-
tude of Islam toward sensual pleasures. While avoiding the blanket condemna-
tion of these pleasures characteristic of Christianity, Islam seeks to define the
contexts in which they might be ḥarām (forbidden), mubāḥ (neutral), ḥalāl
(permissable) or mustaḥabb (recommended). Apparently, the sound of the
çeng was considered so delightful and voluptuous but multivalent that it was
analogous to all of the pleasures in their various moral contexts.
While both Persians and Ottomans shared these evaluations of the çeng,
it seems that the Persians did not take the step of developing professional
troupes of dancing women using the instrument. Also, as During notes, despite
its paradisical associations, the çeng was not considered appropriate for a Sufi
repertoire in Iran. Nevertheless, the Germiyan/Ottoman poet Ahmed-i Dai
(d. 1427) dedicated a mesnevi to the çeng, the “Çengname” which is an elaborate
Sufi allegory in which every physical element used in the construction of the
instrument expresses the spiritual realities hidden behind the physical appear-
ances. The fact that an intellectual like Dai would choose the çeng as a medium
through which to address philosophical issues of existence reflects both the
high status of music in fifteenth-century Turkish culture, as well as an aware-
ness of the ambiguity of the religious views of music and worldly pleasure (cf.
Ahmed-i Dai 1992).
120 Chapter 3

Figure 1.6 “Surname” of Murad III (1882): Çeng, şahrud, two neys, two mıskals. H1344 19a
Instruments and Instrumentalists 121

Figure 1.7 Çeng (Hızır Ağa)

122 Chapter 3

In the course of the poem, Ahmed-i Dai supplies various details on the con-
struction of the instrument. The medieval çeng is also described in great detail
by the fourteenth-century Indo-Persian treatise “Kanz al-tuhaf fi’l musiqi”
(During 1991:102). The Persian and Turkish çengs of the fourteenth to six-
teenth centuries consisted of an arched, almost cone-shaped soundbox (“Kanz
al-tuhaf ” uses the image of a horse’s neck), attached to a spike or leg which
supported the entire body while being played. A horizontal bar was fixed per-
pendicularly to the sound box. The strings were stretched from the box to the
bar, where the tuning frets were located. According to the “Çengname” the
sound-box was made partly of wood and covered with deerskin. The strings
were made of silk, and the tuning frets of horse-hair. Various sources, including
Marāghī’s “Maqāṣid al-Alḥān,” give the number of strings as twenty-five. Some
illustrations indicate large wooden tuning pegs rather than horse-hair tuning
frets. Two basic shapes are indicated in both Safavid and Ottoman miniatures,
one sharply arched, and the other rather taller (Fig. 1.3 and 6).
However, a few visual representations show a totally different type of harp.
The sixteenth-century “Codex Vindobonensis” shows a Palace woman playing a
wooden harp whose sound-box is placed on one side of the instrument, while
the strings fall vertically (Tuğlacı 1985:109). The instrument has no leg, and
rests on the lap of the performer. This is somewhat like the Celtic harp, which
was played in various parts of medieval Europe. This type of harp reappears in
the mid-eighteenth-century illuminations for the “Sazname” attached to the
treatise of Hızır Ağa, where it is described simply as a “çeng” (Fig. 1.7). Although
the çeng was apparently extinct by the time this manuscript was written, the
illustration seems to be taken from an actual instrument, which shows such
details as a carved bird’s head from which a tuning key is suspended. The tun-
ing pegs are visible on the upper bar of the instrument. In addition, Hızır Ağa
supplies the tuning with cipher notation. The similarity of this harp with the
European, or specifically “Celtic” type is too great to be coincidental. Evidently
this was a very early borrowing from Europe, which co-existed with the Persian
model. The contexts in which this type of çeng had been played in Turkey
are undocumented.

3.6 The kanun

No foreign masters are among the kanun players in the 1525 document, who
seem to have been devşirme graduates of the palace school. This may indicate
that the secondary status of the kanun did not necessitate attracting or cap-
turing the best Iranian masters. The kanun is seldom represented in Turkish
Instruments and Instrumentalists 123

(or Persian) miniatures of the sixteenth century so its popularity is difficult

to gauge. The instrument played in Turkey seems identical to that played in
Iran and Transoxiana, which appears to be a direct descendant of the kanun
in Marāghī’s text and rather distant from the modern instrument of the same
name. Marāghī had described the kanun as trapezoidal, with strings of brass,
arranged in groups of three. He did not mention a parchment covering for the
area under the bridge, so we can assume that the instrument had an entirely
wooden face. The few representations of the kanun support this conclusion
(Fig. 1.8). The only modern descendant of this medieval instrument is the
Uighur qalūn, except that it no longer uses brass strings (Vyzgo 1980:pl. 84).
The miniatures show instruments of a purely trapezoidal shape as well
as one with a curve on the side of the instrument with the tuning pegs. The
sixteenth century “Codex Vindobonensis” shows a female kanun player with a
trapezoidal instrument (Tuğlacı 1985:108).
Evidently the structure and appearance of the sixteenth-century kanun must
have resembled a zither more than it did the modern kanun. The instrument
could not have supported the thirty-four courses of three strings needed for
two octaves, and therefore probably required some retuning for new makams.
However, the rarity of modulation in the music of the sixteenth century prob-
ably allowed the kanun to be used with a minimum of retuning.

4 The Ottoman Ensemble from the Seventeenth to the

Mid-Eighteenth Century

Whereas the instrumentation of Ottoman court music in the sixteenth century

was almost identical to that of Iranian music, by the middle of the seventeenth
century the Ottomans were in the process of eliminating several instruments
of the shared Perso/Islamic musical tradition and replacing them with a vari-
ety of instruments either by creating local variants of shared instruments (e.g.
ney, kanun), or by developing and reinstating older organological types (e.g.
tanbur). From the middle of the eighteenth century there were significant bor-
rowings of non-Islamic forms—the European viola d’amore and the Greek lyra.
In some cases, as in the elimination of the ud and the çeng, the Ottomans may
have been part of a broader movement within the eastern Islamic world, but in
general between 1650 and 1750 the instrumentation of Ottoman music under-
went a fundamental transformation which differentiated it from other Islamic
musical forms.
124 Chapter 3

Figure 1.8 Kanun, Bukhara 1571 (Vyzgo 1980: pl. 43)

4.1 The kemançe/keman

Illustrations of the kemançe (keman) in the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries do not show apparent differences in construction from the instru-
ment which had been depicted in the “Surname-i Humayun” of 1582 (Fig. 1.9).
The keman was apparently the only bowed instrument in Ottoman music dur-
ing a very long period, probably well before the sixteenth century and extend-
ing to the middle of the eighteenth century. Evliya writes that there were eighty
performers in Istanbul. He names eight of them, all of them apparently Turks,
except for Kemani Ahmed Çelebi, student of Kemani Mustafa Ağa, whom
Cantemir described as a Greek “renegade.” Evliya hints that Kemani Ahmed
was even greater than his teacher: “Kabil şagird üstad olur ustaddan” (“A capa-
ble student becomes a greater master than his master”) (Evliya 1896:636). No
Iranian performers are mentioned. The kemançe school of Istanbul had evi-
dently established itself by this period and did not look to non-Ottoman cen-
ters. Yet, despite all of this cultural grounding, by the middle of the next century
Instruments and Instrumentalists 125

the kemançe would be sharing and then losing territory to the European viola
d’amore. Fonton described the situation in 1751:

Violin: The Orientals know the use of our violin; some of them play it very
well in their manner. The hero of their music, the premier musician of the
Ottoman court, is the famous Greek Yorgi, who plays all the instruments
and, in the words of his compatriots, even the most inert substance, the
most unharmonious body would become sonorous in his hands. Yorgi
has established his reputation above all others by the touching accords
of his viola d’amore, which no one plays better than he and which he first
introduced among the Orientals (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:123).

In 1767 Charles de Blainville wrote of the same Yorgi as a master not of the viola
d’amore, but of the traditional keman or rebab, which suggests that he was a
virtuoso on both instruments:

The quality of the sound is less loud and less gay than that of our violon,
but otherwise this Rebap suffers no point of mediocrity. Georges, Greek
by nationality and a much-celebrated musician among the Orientals,
has pushed the perfection of this instrument so far that one despairs of
being able to hear it played after him, or that anyone will ever try to do so
(de Blainville 1767:60).

Fonton wrote that the viola d’amore had indeed been known earlier in Turkey
but was not considered to be a proper instrument for art music, and that
the acceptance of the violin was not universal in the middle of the eigh-
teenth century.

But he [Yorgi] is the only one who has succeeded at it, and no one has
appeared after who is fond of it because in general the European violin is
not highly esteemed in the Orient and it is rarely heard except in taverns.
The local violin, called kemân, is much more popular; it does not resem-
ble our violin at all, and the shape is quite different (Fonton 1988–89
[1751]:124).

During the 1780s Toderini observed both the kemançe and the viola d’amore in
the Ottoman ensemble. The first was known as ayaklı keman (“footed keman”)
and the second as sine keman (“breast keman”) (Toderini 1789:231). The latter
was a more ancient term which had been mentioned as early as the fifteenth
century in the poetry of Ayni. Its use at that period is obscure, as we do not
126 Chapter 3

Figure 1.9 Kemançe (Hızır Ağa)

Instruments and Instrumentalists 127

know what fiddle held in the European manner was known in Turkey then. In
the eighteenth century ayaklı keman seems to have been a new term used to
distinguish the traditional keman from the European interloper. In the illus-
trations appended to the treatise of Hızır Ağa (Topkapı H. 1793) the verses
above the pictures of the respective instruments mention ayaklı keman for the
kemançe, and simply keman for the sine-keman. This suggests that the linguis-
tically unmarked “keman,” the European violin, was becoming the more com-
mon instrument.7
When Rauf Yekta Bey surmised that the viola d’amore had come to Turkey
via Romania and Serbia (Yekta 1921:3014), he was unaware of Fonton’s work,
and was probably expressing a more recent memory of the Moldavian violinist
Miron, who excelled at the viola d’amore in the Ottoman court at the end of the
eighteenth century. Documents from 1795 until 1806 show that in the last years
of the eighteenth century Miron was for several years the most highly paid
musician of the court, commanding eighty kuruş per month. As late as 1834
Miron was praised as “the venerable violinist Miron” (“Koca kemani Mirum”)
in a poem commemorating an Imperial celebration (And 1982:166). Anecdotes
claim that Tanburi İsak learned to play the viola d’amore from Miron, and
these may be confirmed by the fact that after 1804 we see records mention-
ing “Kemani İsak,” instead of “Tanburi İsak,” for the same monthly salary, forty
kuruş (Uzunçarşılı 1977:105). The older kemançe was excluded from the fasıl
ensemble by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and in the following
decades the viola d’amore was in turn replaced by the modern violin.
Moving beyond our historical period for the moment, we may note that in
the early twentieth century the violin was largely superseded for classical music
by the kemançe-i rumi, (called simply kemençe, with Turkish vowel-harmony)
which Rauf Yekta still viewed as a low-class instrument with a “rude” sound,
fit only for the nightclubs (Yekta 1921:3015). This kemançe-i rumi (“Greek” or
“Anatolian” fiddle) is none other than the Greek lyra politikas, the “fiddle of
Constantinople,” a close relative of the bowed lyra of the Greek Islands. The
instrument is represented first in the second half of the eighteenth century,
and always in scenes of entertainment (as in And 1982:pl. 20). An album paint-
ing from 1793 (reproduced in Aksoy 1994:277) depicts two Greek musicians and

7 The Swiss painter J.E. Liotard, who traveled in Turkey between 1738 and 1742, drew two
Ottoman musicians playing the viola â’amore in the European position. One of the musicians
is dressed as a Turk (with a kavuk and fur-lined robe; he is also bearded); the other, with only
a moustache, and wearing a loose cap, a short-sleeve, fur-trimmed vest, and shalvar- tiousers,
is apparently a Greek (cf. Aksoy 1994:57, 270).
128 Chapter 3

a dancing-boy entertaining a Turkish gentleman in a tavern. The musicians are

playing the kemançe-i rumi (kemençe) and the lauta. In 1767 de Blainville noted
the lyra along with the kemançe (rebab) and the violin:

The Lyre has only three strings and is nearly the size of our style of Violon,
but having only three strings it has a much louder sound, at least so I have
been assured, the more so since it is not played under the arm like our
Violon, but is held in the open, which offers them an ease of playing it,
even in childhood (de Blainville 1767:60).

Once again, this bowed instrument entered the fasıl music via a Greek tavern
milieu, and the agent was the Greek kemençeci Vasilaki, who taught its tech-
nique to Tanburi Cemil Bey (d. 1916), who in turn popularized it through his
numerous 78 rpm recordings. Today, after the decline of the Greek popular
culture of Istanbul, Turkish musicians consider the modern kemençe an emi-
nently “classical” instrument, without any stigma of the vulgar “gazino,” the
alcoholic nightclubs of the late nineteenth-century Pera district, where it had
formerly been played. During the twentieth century the violin has returned to
the nightclub mainly in the hands of Gypsy fiddlers.
To summarize: the Persian kemançe (kemanche) had been established in
Turkish art music for unknown centuries and by the seventeenth century had
become thoroughly “native,” producing great indigenous masters like Mustafa
Ağa and Ahmed Çelebi. During the following century the viola d’amore entered
Turkish court music primarily through two great virtuosi, the Greek Yorgi
(Corci) and the Moldavian Miron. The adoption of the kemençe into art music
in the early twentieth century was largely the result of the virtuosity of two
great musicians, Vasilaki and Tanburi Cemil Bey. In the cases of both the viola
d’amore and the kemençe great virtuosi were able to overcome the stigma
which had been attached to the instruments of the tavern, despite the fact that
after the middle of the seventeenth century the Ottoman instrumentarium
was moving in the direction of greater generic specialization. For a rather long
era instruments originating among the urban lower classes or the rural folk did
not penetrate the makam ensemble. Perhaps the great enigma in all this is why
the fiddle of the Ottoman ensemble was exchanged much later than the other
instruments, and why it proved so susceptible to further replacement.
Instruments and Instrumentalists 129

Figure 1.10
Lyra (kemençe):
a) de Blainville
(1767:64); b) Yekta
(1921:3015)
130 Chapter 3

4.2 The ud
One of the last visual representations of the ud in pre-modern Turkey occurs
in an album from the time of Ahmed I (1590–1617). In this well-known painting
the ud is evidently part of a female çengi troupe, entertaining a nobleman in
his harem. The dancers are seated, keeping time with their çarpare.
The decline of the ud in Turkey is evident from the number of players in
Evliya Çelebi’s list—“six individuals” (cf. Farmer 1937; Özergin 1972). The
leading performer at that time was not a Turk, but an Iranian, Acem Avvad
Mehemmed Ağa, who is mentioned prominently by Cevri in his description
of the “Singers of the Court of the Padishah” (Ayan 1981:111). The other masters
are Turks—Kasımpaşalı Balı Çelebi, Avvad Koçibegzade (the latter probably
the son of the statesman Koçibeg). As Cevri had written, the instrument was
still favored at the court of Murad IV, and Evliya also stated that the Sultan had
appreciated the playing of his footman (peyk) Avvad Kara Şatır.
After the middle of the seventeenth century the ud and ud players are
no longer mentioned in Turkish sources. Fonton does not speak of it, the
mid-eighteenth-century “Sazname” includes the European guitar (kitare)
and lute but not the ud. It was not in the courtly ensemble in Toderini’s time.
Yekta noted the decline of the ud in the later seventeenth century and its total
absence in the eighteenth century:

The small number of players mentioned by Evliyâ shows that the ud

was declining in popularity, and by the time of Toderini’s stay in Turkey
(1781–6) it had quite disappeared (op. cit. I, 236–38), the tanbûr having
completely ousted it from public favor. In the nineteenth century, prob-
ably through Italian influence, a small type of lute, known as the lauta,
was introduced … (Farmer 1937:42).

Yekta was perhaps unaware of the fact that the lauta appeared for the first
time in scenes of entertainment during the eighteenth century played with
the Greek kemençe. This lauta is a fretted lute with a longer neck than the ud
(Yekta 1921:3018). It is a smaller version of the lauto played on the Greek islands.
It is not clear whether the lauta of eighteenth-century Istanbul was a relative
of a much older lauto of insular Greece, in the same way that the kemençe was
a relative of the island lyra, or whether the lauta had developed independently
in Istanbul after the ud was dropped from courtly music. However, the former
may be more likely because the function of the lauta (in the modern tradi-
tion) is rhythm accompaniment, which agrees with the use of the lauto on
the islands. Yekta’s hypothesis of Italian influence is less likely, although not
Instruments and Instrumentalists 131

impossible. The ud did not reappear in Turkish art music until the end of the
nineteenth century.
The ud evidently remained in Iranian music until some point in the eigh-
teenth century. During’s hypothesis on the decline of the ud in Iran seems to be
a close analogue of the situation in Turkey, which had begun a century earlier:

In the eighteenth century the ud was removed from the Iranian tradition.
While still very much appreciated at the court of Shah Safi in the fifteenth
century, the ud did not survive the decline of ancient Persian music that
started during this period and witnessed the disappearance of the harp.
This process seems to be related to the advent of a new musical aesthetic
and the appearance of new instruments such as the tar and the santur
whose crystalline and resonant sonorities differ considerably from the
grave sounds of the ud. In accordance with the aesthetics of high-pitched
and clear sound, particularly prized in the eighteenth century, the ud is
no longer used to play traditional music (During 1991:108).

4.3 The kopuz

During the first half of the seventeenth century there seems to have been some
change in the terminology relating to the kopuz. Evliya Çelebi described two
closely related instruments, one termed the kopuz and the other şeşhane. The
senior, more widely used instrument was termed şeşhane, while the kopuz was
called “a baby şeşhane” (şeşhanenin yavrusudur), i.e. a smaller version of the
şeşhane. He states that the şeşhane and not the kopuz was used for art music
(Özergin 1972:6033). The earlier Turkish documents, and literature, mention
only the kopuz. During the seventeenth century the name kopuz seems to have
been demoted from its earlier use and relegated to an East European levend’s
version of the older kopuz-ı rumi:

Performers of the şeşhane: 70 individuals. Its inventor is Rizaeddin

Şirvani. This also is a stringed instrument and like the ud, its peg-board
is crooked, and its neck is longer than the ud, and fish hide is stretched
over its breast. But it has no frets. Because it has six strings (kıl) it is called
şeşhane. It is a difficult instrument. But all the makams can be performed
on it.
The most skilled in this art was Ahmed Ağa, the vekil-i harc of
Serdefterdarzade Mehmed Paşa, about whose playing Murad Han (IV)
was enthusiastic. Other great masters (pir) known to the sultan were
Hasan Ağa and Celeb Seydi Ağa the Georgian and Hızır Ağa.
132 Chapter 3

Performers on the kopuz: 40 individuals. Its inventor was Hersekoğlu

Ahmed Paşa [d. 1516] who was one of the viziers of Mehmed the Con-
queror. This instrument is peculiar to the marches of Bosnia, Buda,
Kanija, Eger and Timişiora. We have never seen it in Anatolia. It is a male
levend’s instrument [“bir erkek levendane sazdur”]. It is almost the child
of the şeşhane. But it is an instrument which neighs like a stallion. It has
three strings (Özergin 1972:6033).

Comparing Evliya with the description of the latter in Marāghī’s writings we

see that in the late fourteenth century it had had five double strings, but it
was smaller than the ud. The East European version had become still smaller.
Evliya connects this instrument with a historical figure who had lived two gen-
erations after Marāghī. The number of players is not reliable, as the instrument
was played far from the capital.8
It is probable that Evliya’s şeşhane was a descendant of the rud-i hani of
Marāghī. The crucial points in this identification are the six strings, and its ori-
gin in Şirvan (modern northern Azerbaijan). Marāghī’s instrument had been
preferred in Şirvan, and the inventor of Evliya’s was Rizeddin Şirvani. The ear-
lier version had four silk and two brass strings, while Evliya does not specify the
material of the strings used in the seventeenth century.
The form of the kopuz depicted in sixteenth-century Ottoman miniature
paintings seems identical to one of the types of Safavid rababs. The number
of strings in the paintings is not clear, but usually seems to be more than six.
In Iran, however, another type of rabab with two separate sound-boxes also
had appeared somewhat earlier (in the twelfth century or before). During the
Mongol era a new version of the rabab was invented in northern Azerbaijan
(Şirvan) and was played in Iran proper by the fourteenth century. However,
in Marāghī’s time it was still primarily a Şirvanian instrument. By the later fif-
teenth or early sixteenth centuries it had penetrated Anatolia and had replaced
the older Anatolian kopuz-ı rumi. In this period the latter was taken up and
modified by a well-known musician/vizier of West Balkan (Hercegovinian) ori-
gin and disseminated throughout adjacent areas of Eastern Europe.
Evliya specified that the şeşhane was appropriate for makam music, and
that it had been in favor in the reign of Murad IV (d. 1640). Nevertheless, the

8 The name kopuz still lives on in Eastern Europe, as the kobza of Romania and the Ukraine.
However, this instrument which is a fretted wooden-faced lute has probably adopted features
from the Istanbul lauta. It had evidently been the instrument of Gypsy troubadours and epi-
cal bards during the Greek Phanariot era of the eighteenth century, whence the Romanian
name lautar for all professional musicians.
Instruments and Instrumentalists 133

fact that he describes it as a “difficult” instrument is a sure sign that its days
were numbered in Istanbul. Evliya’s contemporary Bobowski failed to list it
among either the instruments of the court or of the people. By the next gen-
eration neither the şeşhane nor the kopuz are mentioned again in Ottoman or
foreign sources in Turkey. No instrument can be said to have taken the place
of the kopuz/rabab insofar as skin-covered lutes disappeared entirely from the
makam ensemble. The reasons for its rapid disappearance are probably to be
sought in the domain of timbre and sonority, similar to the decline of the ud
and çeng.9

4.4 The ney

By the seventeenth century the newly developed Ottoman/Mevlevi ney with
its bone mouthpiece had totally eclipsed the older Iranian ney. Furthermore,
the Mevlevi neyzens themselves had become an important, perhaps even the
dominant force in the performance of the ney. Whereas in the early sixteenth
century court Iranians and their students had been the principal ney players,
they are not mentioned at all in the following century. Out of the ten eminent
neyzens mentioned by Evliya, six are Mevlevi dervishes:

The most eminent of these neyzens is the sheikh of the Beşiktaş

Mevlevihane. He is Mevlevi Derviş Yusuf. The heart of anyone who hears
him performs a ritual prostration and he is brought to tears. And Ömer
Çelebi the barber, and Ahmed Çelebi the saddler, and Derviş Mehmed
from Kafa, and Derviş Süleyman who is the chief neyzen at the Kasımpaşa
Mevlevihane. And Torlak Dede, and Sipah Ahmed Beg and Yantir Hasan
Paşa and Derviş Kasım, and Küçük [Köçek?] Derviş Ahmed who is in the
Kulle-Kapı Mevlevihane. Apart from these there are also one hundred
and sixty other neyzens (Özergin 1972:6032).

In the following generation the Mevlevi Osman Dede (Cantemir’s “Derviş

Osman”) was known as Kutb-u Nayi, “the axis of the ney,” thus indicating his
preeminence among neyzens. The use of the term “quṭb,” a borrowing from
classical Sufism, draws the analogy of the quṭb as the axis or pole who supports
the moral universe, and the cylindrical ney, shaped like a “pole” which supports
the universe of music, or more precisely, the music of the spheres (eflak). This

9 If we compare the sounds of the modern Afghan rabab and the modern Turkish cümbüş, it
is possible that there may have been a stridency and uncontrollable overtones produced by
the şeşhane/rud-i hani which could not agree with the delicate and resonant tones of the
dominant instruments of the new makam ensemble, the tanbur, and the ney.
134 Chapter 3

term is a sign indicating the existence of a developed oral tradition of the sig-
nificance of the ney and its music, which has continued among Mevlevis into
the present. Evliya’s literary metaphor of the sound of the ney stimulating the
heart to prayer and tears of contrition reveals the unique relationship between
this musical instrument and Islam. Elsewhere in the chapter he makes this
connection even more explicit:

The ulema of Turkey (Rum) showed great favor toward this instrument
because it was played in the meclis of the Sultan of the Ulema [Behauddin
Veled] and Hazret-i Mevlana, and it is played now in the mevlevihanes
(Özergin 1972:6007).

“Sultan of the Ulema” was an honorary title of the father of Jalāl al-Dīn Balkhī
(Rumi), Bahāʾ al-Dīn (Behauddin). By noting that the ney was played in the
meclis (private gathering) of both Bahāʾ al-Dīn, who was a noted ʿālim, and of
his son, who became known primarily not as an ʿālim, but as a Sufi, Evliya was
probably referring obliquely to the controversies about Sufi practices which
had become violent during his lifetime. In the seventeenth century this con-
troversy had been instigated by Kadızade Mehmed b. Mustafa (d. 1635), but the
effects of the Kadızadeli movement were felt for generations after. Although
Evliya’s patron, Sultan Murad IV, cooperated with Kadızade on certain issues,
he patronized the Mevlevi sheikh Doğani Ahmed Dede (d. 1630), and was
generally supportive of traditional Sufi ritual practices (Zilfi 1986:257). Thus,
Evliya’s association of the ney not only with the Sufi sheikhs (meşaih) but with
the ʿulamāʾ was a political statement, which must have been recognized as
such by his readers.
Toward the end of Evliya’s life a non-Mevlevi secular neyzen rose to promi-
nence, Neyzen Ali Hoca, who is mentioned by Cantemir in his treatise and
Collection. In the “Surname” of Vehbi (1720–1730) the neyzens are dressed either
as Mevlevi dervishes or as secular musicians (Fig. 1.11, 1.12). The groups of two
or three neyzens are attired in either the one or the other fashion. Occasionally
a tanbur player may also be depicted wearing the Mevlevi felt hat (sikke).
In Fonton’s illustration of the Ottoman ensemble, the neyzen sitting in the
middle is dressed in Mevlevi costume. By the nineteenth century, the biog-
raphies of almost all neyzens reveal them to have been Mevlevis. Whereas
all other instruments might be played either by Muslims or non-Muslims,
the increasingly Sufi/religious associations of the ney effectively excluded
Christians and Jews from performing publicly on the instrument. The early
and increasingly total association of the ney with the Mevleviye and the early
documentation of the new style of ney in the hands of Mevlevis suggests that
they may have been the originators of the new form of the instrument. This
Instruments and Instrumentalists 135

technical addition must have been part of the development of a specific tim-
bre and technique needed to express a distinct musical aesthetic.
Bobowski mentioned the ney as one of the instruments “which they use
to accompany the delicate songs,” but he cites it only toward the end of the
list of instruments (Bobowski 1665). By the later seventeenth century the ney
had achieved an eminence over all the makam instruments except for the tan-
bur. In Cantemir’s time, during the concert meclis the tanburi and neyzen sat
directly behind the hanende (vocalist). They must therefore have been prin-
cipally responsible for the accompaniment (peyrevlik), which Cantemir avers
to have been the greatest test of a performer (ca. 1700:X:103). The other instru-
mentalists sat behind them, in no fixed order. Fifty years later Fonton wrote
that “the ney is the principal instrument of the Orientals,” and in his illustra-
tion the neyzen is seated in the center of the divan, between the tanburi and
the miskali (Fig. 1.13).
Cantemir had considered the tanbur to be the “most perfect instrument”
(Cantemir ca. 1700:I:1), but at the end of the eighteenth century Abdülbaki
Nasır Dede (“Tetkik ü Tahkik”) described the makams in terms of their perfor-
mance on the ney for his patron Sultan Selim III who was a performer both on
the ney and on the tanbur. Such a status for the ney was without precedent in
other maqām musics and even within the older practice of Turkish music. It is
a testimony to the prestige which had been brought to the Science of Music by
the Mevlevi order of dervishes and to the prestige which these musicians had
acquired within secular Ottoman music.
The distinctive mouthpiece of the Ottoman ney was apparently first
described by the Englishman John Covel in 1670:

There is neither a fipple above, nore noze in the mouth, but the head is a
horn sloped up and brought to a very fine edge, which leaning sideways
to the mouth, gives the sound, as boyes (with us) used to whistle in acorn
cups, this plaghiaulos, whence our flageolet (Covel 1670:168).

Eighty years later Fonton described the mouthpiece of the Turkish ney in
greater detail:

The upper end of the ney, where the embouchure is, is a piece made of
horn or ivory, whose shape resembles on the outside that of a truncated
cone. Its interior is hollowed out and forms the same shape but smaller,
and turned upside-down in relation to the exterior cone, such that the
section ABC of the exterior cone serves as the base of the interior cone,
which is cut out from the inside along points DEF, the base of the exte-
rior cone. … One can see the difficulty of this embouchure. It is often
136 Chapter 3

Figure 1.11 Neyzens from “Surname” of Ahmed III (1720–30) in Mevlevi costume (fol. 58a)
Instruments and Instrumentalists 137

Figure 1.12 Neyzens from “Surname” of Ahmed III (1720–30) in secular

costume (fol. 106b)
138 Chapter 3

Figure 1.13 Ensemble (Fonton 1751: fig. 5)

necessary to blow for years to get it just right, and even then it is only pos-
sible for extremely strong and vigorous lungs (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:100).

Fonton also described the construction of the ney and mentioned the neys of
different sizes:

The material of which it is made is a “noded” cane, of which the best

species grows in Syria, especially around Damascus, in a march called
Ainazare. The length of the ney is normally 24–25 inches. However there
are larger ones called şah mansûr to distinguish from the küçük mansûr.
Their difference is one tonem or even a semi-tone, lower in the former
and higher in the latter. Another which differs from the preceding two
is called dâvûd; the sound of it is less high than either, and it is slightly
longer (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:100).

Evliya had averred that there were twelve types of ney, and he names eight:
battal düheng, ney, girift, mansur-şah, bolaheng, battal, davud, serbeng, and
süpurga. The modern system knows the following twelve ney sizes (TMA
1974:79):

Table 1.3 The twelve ney sizes of the modern system

Mansur (A) mansur mabeyni (B♭) şah (B♭)

davud (c) davud mabeyni (c♯) bolahenk (d)
bolahenk mabeyni (e) sipürde/ahteri (süprge) (e) müstahsen (f)
müstahsen mabeyni ( f ♯) kizneyi (g) kizneyi mabeyni (g♯)
Instruments and Instrumentalists 139

Figure 1.14
Ney (Fonton 1751: fig. 1)

Of these the seven pitched to six degrees of the fundamental scale plus
acem (f) are in most common use (dügah, segah, çargah, neva, hüseyni, ger-
daniye, acem). There is no ney pitched to rast (G). In the nineteenth century
the girift (mentioned by Evliya as a kind of ney) was considered to be a differ-
ent instrument because it employed a different playing technique. Girifts could
be made for çargah (c) or rast (G). They came to be viewed as non-Mevlevi,
secular instruments (TMA I 1969). Although Toderini called the girift a “smaller
version of the ney” (Toderini 1789:231), the fact that he mentions none of the
other seven to twelve versions of the ney indicates that he viewed the girift as
a different instrument.
Beginning in the late sixteenth century the development of the ney in Turkey
took a highly distinctive direction which has no parallel in earlier or contem-
porary makam art musics. The Sufi aesthetics of the ney became increasingly
140 Chapter 3

integrated into that of Ottoman courtly music; that is, the prominence of the
ney in secular music should be seen as symptomatic of a reconceptualization
of the entire issue of music, which must have affected many other musical
spheres, such as intonation, timbre, tempo and rhythm. The performing style
of the Mevlevi neyzens constituted one of several disparate elements which
were welded into a coherent musical whole during the eighteenth century.

4.5 The tanbur

By the end of the seventeenth century the tanbur had not only won a place in
the fasıl ensemble but it had displaced every other member of the lute family.
This supremacy of one lute is without precedent in Turkish art music, where
the ud and the kopuz (or şeşhane) had shared the short-necked lute positions
in the ensemble during the sixteenth century and had probably coexisted with
one or more members of the long-necked lute type during the fifteenth cen-
tury. According to Evliya, during the first half of the seventeenth century there
had been a large variety of both short and long-necked lutes (including the
ud, the şeşhane, the tanbur, the şeştar and the çarta) which could perform the
makam repertoire in the court. Bobowski dropped the şeşhane and the çarta
but mentioned the other three. By Cantemir’s time, however, a drastic reduc-
tion had occurred, leaving only the tanbur. Cantemir (who was a tanbur player)
asserted the supremacy of the tanbur on the first page of his treatise:

The instrument called tanbur is the most perfect and complete of all
instruments which we know or have seen because it performs completely
and without fault all the sounds and melodies which appear by means of
the breath of man (Cantemir ca. 1700-I:1).

In the fasıl meclisi the tanbur and the ney sat directly behind and accompanied
the vocalist. In Levni’s paintings we see no lute other than the tanbur in the
fasıl ensemble (Fig. 1.11).
During the eighteenth century the known lute players were, without excep-
tion, tanbur players: Cantemir, Harutin, Haham Musi, İsak, Zeki Mehmed Ağa,
Musahib Seyyid Ahmed, et al. The tanbur continued its dominant role through-
out the nineteenth century. The school of tanbur playing begun by İsak Fresko
(d. 1814) continued through the nineteenth century and finds its principal
modern representative in Necdet Yaşar. Only toward the fall of the Ottoman
State did the tanbur begin to share its position in art music with another lute,
the ud, which had been reintroduced to Turkey from Syria and Egypt.
Instruments and Instrumentalists 141

4.5.1 The Origin of the Ottoman tanbur

The history and morphology of the Ottoman tanbur are relatively clear after
the end of the seventeenth century. However, the origin and morphological
development of the tanbur during the long transitional period before it came
to dominate the fasıl ensemble are obscure. Iconographic evidence becomes
abundant only with the beginning of the eighteenth century, by which time
the tanbur is rather close to its modern form.
“Tanbur” is the most common name for a long-necked lute in the medieval
Muslim musical cultures. In the Persianate cultural area tanbur seems to have
been frequently used interchangeably with Persian terms specifying the num-
ber of strings (tar) on the instrument, such as dutar, setar, çartar, şeştar. For
example, a variant of the Transoxanian tanbur is known as the setar in the
Pamirs. More distantly related instruments are the setar of Chitral (Pakistan)
and the setar of Kashmir. As noted by During (1991), the modern Persian setar
shares a close morphological relationship with the dutar of Khorasan, and
both are probably descended from the tanbur Khorasani described in the tenth
century by al-Farābī. The general form of the modern Persian setar is visible on
Safavid miniatures of the sixteenth century, but with rather larger dimensions
than the modern version.
None of the modern tanburs of Central Asia, whether Uzbek/Tajik, Uighur
or Pamiri show a very specific relationship to the Ottoman tanbur. The rela-
tion of corpus to neck, the construction of the corpus, the number of strings,
dimensions and method of plucking all show no resemblance to the Ottoman
tanbur. The most that can be said is that they are all fretted long-necked lutes.
There is however a unique iconographic representation, originating in
a fifteenth-century Herat “Shahnamah,” which portrays İsfandiyar holding
an instrument whose dimensions seem rather close to the Ottoman tanbur
(Fig. 1.15).
The shape of the corpus and its relationship to the neck, as well as the posi-
tion of the bridge all bear a striking resemblance to the seventeenth-century
Ottoman tanbur. The method of plucking is not specified, apparently because
İsfandiyar is not playing, but rather offering a piyala of wine with his right
hand to a female figure. There are frets on the long neck, and three pegs are
clearly indicated. This illustration proves that an instrument with a tan-
gible relationship to the later Ottoman tanbur was already in existence in
fifteenth-century Khorasan. Thus, there was evidently some earlier basis, not
just for the long-necked lute in general, but for a more specific type of tanbur
which became the Ottoman tanbur in seventeenth-century Turkey.
142 Chapter 3

Figure 1.15 Tanbur from fifteenth-century Herat “Shahnamah” (Vyzgo 1980: no. 45)

In the early fifteenth century in his “Maqāṣid al-Alḥān,” Marāghī had men-
tioned a number of long-necked lutes, three of them with the names “tanbur”
and “şeştar,” e.g. tanbur-i şirvaniyan, tanbure turki, ruhefza, şeştay (= şeştar),
tarab-rud. The tanbur-i şirvaniyan appears to be an ancestor of the dutar. “Its
shape is like a pear, frets are tied to its neck. It has two strings …” (Marāghī
1977:127). The tanbure-i türki was a smaller version of the latter. It is the ruh-efza
which is the most relevant to the Ottoman tanbur.

Ruh-efza: Its corpus resembles a turunj, six strings are attached to it; four
of them are of silk. They are in pairs and are tuned like the tanbure-i türki.
The other two, which are of brass can be tuned as desired (Marāghī
1977:128).

The composition of the strings are identical to the rud-i hani. What is most
significant here is the shape of the corpus. The turunj was an archaic Mediter-
ranean citrus fruit, which was considerably larger than the modern orange and
closer to a modern grapefruit. What is unusual is the rounded nature of the
corpus of the instrument. All other lutes mentioned by Marāghī are either pear
shaped or ud-shaped. Here we have a long-necked lute whose corpus looked
like a half-grapefruit, which is an apt description of the shape of the Ottoman
tanbur. We cannot see the back of the tanbur in the “Herati Shahname,” but its
rounded face gives the strong impression that its back may well have been like
a half-grapefruit.
The name of the tanbur “ruh-efza” turns up again in fifteenth-century Ana-
tolia. According to a sixteenth-century biographical dictionary of poets, the
Ottoman Prince Korkut (1467–1513), who was governor of Amasya, had invented
Instruments and Instrumentalists 143

an instrument called (in various manuscripts) “gida-yi ruh” or “ruh-efza”

(Uzunçarşılı 1977:83). This anecdote suggests that an instrument by this name
was played in Anatolia. Evidently Korkut had modified the existing “ruh-efza”
and thereby created a new instrument. However, the name ruf-efza does not
occur as an organo- logical term in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and between Korkut and the iconographic representation of the new Ottoman
tanbur almost two centuries intervened.
To sum up, what these iconographic and literary references suggest, is that
1. a round-faced, round-backed tanbur had existed in fifteenth-century
Khorasan,
2. in some areas this instrument may have been called ruh-efza,
3. a variant of this instrument was known in late fifteenth-century Anatolia.
By the seventeenth century, however the term ruh-efza had disappeared and
only the older generic term “tanbur” remained in use.
The name tanbur had appeared in Anatolian Turkish literature of the fif-
teenth century, for example in the gazel devoted to the tanbur by the Karaman
poet Ayni quoted above, and in the “Çengname” of Ahmed-i Dai (1992). It is
clear that the ruh-efza, and probably one or more of its relatives within the tan-
bur family, were instruments of art music; in his gazel Ayni specifically associ-
ates the tanbur with the makam. Prince Korkut was a composer of peşrevs,
and in the anecdote he criticizes the great Persian ud player Zeyn al-Abidin
for not displaying a sufficiently elevated style in his performance. Although
the tanbur/ruf-efza was certainly part of the art music in the fifteenth century,
it was not included in the courtly ensemble during the following century. It
was not represented iconographically nor were any performers mentioned.
The most likely explanation for this absence is the fact that the large tanbur
was not a feature of Safavid musical culture. In sixteenth-century Iran, the
dominant tanbur-type was akin to the modern setar, and large tanburs like the
fifteenth-century Herati or the later Ottoman instrument are not represented
iconographically in sixteenth-century Persian art.
Despite the appearance of a somewhat related instrument in the fifteenth
century, the stages by which the Ottoman tanbur reached its attested shape
in 1700 are obscure. In the interval lie two centuries with few visual sources
(Pekin 2009). At present the earliest unambiguous representation of a clear
antecedent of the Ottoman tanbur is Cantemir’s diagram from ca. 1700. Shortly
thereafter we see a plethora of both Turkish and European depictions and
descriptions. The Ottoman tanbur from the later seventeenth century on
is a highly differentiated instrument having no close relatives even among
Turkish lutes.
In the absence of clear iconographic evidence for the seventeenth century
Bobowski’s description of the tanbur (1665) is somewhat perplexing:
144 Chapter 3

The tambor or scheschtar, which is a small guitar of three strings of brass

wire whose neck is very long and contains a great number of frets to
mark the tones and semitones. This instrument is not plucked with the
fingers, but rather a small strip of tortoise shell or a feather is used to play
it (Bobowski 1990 [1665]).

Bobowski is treating the terms tanbur and şeştar as though they were synony-
mous. It would seem his mention of three strings can only mean three doubled
strings, as the meaning of şeştar is “six strings.” Then as now the strings were
of brass. The long densely fretted neck is consistent with later usage, but the
description of a “small guitar” may suggest an instrument somewhat smaller
than the present type. The possible use of a feather instead of a tortoise shell
pick also suggests a smaller instrument than the later type. The exclusive use
of the feather and six strings was mentioned earlier by Jean Antoine du Loir:
“… certain instruments with six strings, which they can only play with a feather
and which they call Tambours” (Loir 1654:173).
Evliya’s mention (without a description) of the tanbur is nearly contempo-
rary with Bobowski, but to him the tanbur and şeştar were different instru-
ments. The tanbur was clearly the dominant lute by his time, with three
hundred players in the capital alone. All of his master players were Ottomans
(of several ethnic backgrounds), including a Syrian, Şamlı Hasan Çelebi. Evliya
mentions no Iranian tanburis, whereas two of the five virtuosi of the şeştar
were Persians (Seyfi Ağa and Mir Mehemmed). Evliya gives no inventor for the
tanbur, nor any relationship with the şeştar, the ruf-efza or any other organ.
Evliya’s notice of the şeştar occurs five instruments away from the tanbur:

Players of the şeştar: an unknown number of individuals. Ali Han of

Tabriz invented it in Persia (Acem). It is a fretted instrument like the çarta.
But because it has six strings, they call it şeştar. It has a very moving voice.
Among its excellent masters are Seyfi Ağa the Persian, Mir alem Musahib
Mir Mehemmed, Rıza Çelebi, Hurrem Çavuş and Zeyni zade Hüsni.
Players of the çarta: 15 individuals. Its inventor is Kemal Ahi in the
land of Persia. It appeared according to the instructions of Sheikh Safi.
However, in Turkey the one who made this instrument famous was Murad
Ağa the Persian from Nakhchivan. He was removed from Erivan together
with Emirgun Han by Murad Han and settled in Istanbul in Beşiktaş and
was a master without peer. And the masters whom we know are Lapa
zade Mustafa Çelebi, the student of Murad Ağa, and Murad Ağa zade Şah
Ramazan Çelebi, and Kulle-kapulı Kara Sadık, Küçük Solak zade from
Instruments and Instrumentalists 145

Beşiktaş, and Celeb Ridvan Halife. All of them have composed külliyat
peşrevs (?) (külliyat sahibleridür) (Özergin 1972:6032–3).

According to these descriptions the çarta was a rather older instrument than
the şeştar, as Sheikh Safi died in 1334. The identity of Kemal Ahi is unknown.
Both instruments appear as borrowings from Iran in the early seventeenth cen-
tury. The şeştari Mir Mehemmed, apparently a musahib (“boon-companion”)
of Murad IV, was brought by him from Baghdad in 1638. Evliya and Esʿad Efendi
give conflicting stories about Murad Ağa, the latter claiming that he came to
Istanbul with Mir Mehemmed, while Evliya had stated that he came from
Tabriz in 1626. In any case, by these accounts neither instrument had much
vogue in Turkey prior to the seventeenth century. Murad Ağa died in 1688; and
although his son and his student Mustafa Çelebi must have continued to per-
form in Istanbul until Cantemir’s lifetime, he does not mention them, or their
instruments. After 1700 nothing more is heard about either şeştar or çartar in
Ottoman music.
Marāghī had not mentioned the çarta at all, but under şeştay he gave descrip-
tions of three different lutes. All types had a body like the ud, but the third type
used fifteen strings, and was played in Anatolia. None of these instruments
seem to have any relationship either to the Ottoman tanbur or to the setar type
of Iran.
Bobowski’s statement connecting the tanbur and the şeştar appears enig-
matic except for the fact that the seventeenth-century Ottoman tanbur seems
to have had six strings, as six pegs are usually (although not always) depicted
on the paintings of the early eighteenth century. Unfortunately, Cantemir’s
diagram does not indicate the pegs explicitly. The use of a feather points to a
difference in performance practice in the first half of the seventeenth century,
and possibly a difference in construction from later times. Another possibility
is that in the seventeenth century some musicians called the Ottoman tanbur
şeştar because it had six strings. There was no danger of confusion with the
Iranian şeştar because the latter was such a rare instrument and was clearly
exotic. The Safavid iconographic evidence does not indicate anything resem-
bling the Ottoman tanbur so if it and the Persian şeştar were related, the early
seventeenth-century form could not have resembled the later Ottoman tanbur.
Leaving aside Bobowski’s statement for the moment, the remoteness of
the attested Ottoman tanbur from any known Safavid prototype vitiates the
hypothesis of significant Persian input in the evolution of the seventeenth-
century Ottoman tanbur. Rather, a line of descent from the fifteenth-century
ruf-efza in its Anatolianized form seems more likely.
146 Chapter 3

4.5.2 The Ottoman tanbur in the Eighteenth Century

The numerous depictions of the Ottoman tanbur in the eighteenth century
all portray a single plucking technique, using a plectrum (mızrap) made from
tortoise shell. Fonton describes this technique: “The strings are plucked with a
thin strip of tortoise-shell called a mızrap, which is held between the thumb,
index and middle fingers with only a short bit extended” (Fonton 1751:109). This
plucking technique is related to that of the kopuz/şeşhane of the sixteenth cen-
tury (Fig. 1.2).
During the seventeenth century this technique had apparently coexisted
with another which employed a feather, but by the early eighteenth century
only the hard plectrum survived. It is unlikely that anything resembling the
modern stroke could have come into being prior to the adoption of the long
rigid plectrum. The basic principle of this technique involves emitting two or
three pitches with the left hand while the plectrum strikes only once. Notes
are usually fingered while the mızrap strikes downward, but occasionally an
upward stroke is used. The rigidity and size of the mızrap and the sparseness
with which it is employed rule out any quick rhythmic patterns created with
the right hand. Rhythmic patterns must be built up more fully by the left hand,
which is primarily involved in emitting the pitches of the melody. The rhyth-
mic striking of the face with the right hand, which is characteristic of the tech-
nique on the Anatolian lutes is impossible on the tanbur for several reasons:
the position of the long pick, the thinness of the face, and the height of the
bridge (which is liable to collapse and damage the face). The tanbur technique
is unique among Anatolian lutes and does not have any close analogues among
the tanbur/setar families of Iran or Central Asia. It apparently came into exis-
tence with the universal adoption of the tortoise-shell mızrap, which did not
occur prior to the later seventeenth century.
Several representations of the Ottoman tanbur survive from the eighteenth
century of which the earliest appears in Cantemir’s treatise (Fig. 1.16). The
soundbox there is slightly oval and is broader horizontally than vertically.
Cantemir’s instrument also shows a peculiar carving on the bottom of the
soundbox which does not appear later.
The Ottoman tanbur of the earlier eighteenth century resembled the mod-
ern instrument in its external form and general proportions, but probably dif-
fered somewhat in its construction. Fonton’s description:

The material of this instrument is ordinary wood. The soundbox, in the

form of a hollow hemisphere, must be only of fir, well-seasoned and
sonorous. It is covered on top with two planks glued together and with-
out any opening, The length of the neck is commonly about three feet
(one meter), and the diameter of the soundbox 10–11 inches (27 cm). If
Instruments and Instrumentalists 147

one desires to ornament this instrument, one covers it with nacre, ivory,
or gilt.
The tanbur has eight strings arranged in pairs … (Fonton 1988–89
[1751]:109).

The ratio of the neck to the soundbox of this instrument is slightly different
from the modern tanbur, in that the neck is proportionally longer. 10–11 inches
is somewhat small by modern standards, but instruments of that size were still
known early in the twentieth century (Necdet Yaşar, oral communication). The
neck of three feet is not uncommon for the modern instrument. More cru-
cial differences are the construction of the face out of two planks of wood,
whereas today it is made of a single plank. Fonton’s description does not spec-
ify whether the soundbox was made from strips or carved out of a single block.
However, one of Levni’s paintings from the “Surname” shows a tanbur slightly
tilted, revealing a soundbox constructed from strips (Fig. 1.11).
The soundbox of both this example from Levni and Fonton’s of thirty
years later have a slight pear shape which is rather different from Cantemir’s
instrument and from the modern tanbur. The large album illumination from
the treatise of Hızır Ağa (1760s) shows a tanbur with several differences from
Fonton and Levni (Fig. 1.18). Here the face is totally round, much like the mod-
ern instrument. The joint of the neck and soundbox is rather unlike other illus-
trations and may indicate heavy ornamentation. The tuning of the four pairs
of strings is given. The decoration of the face is also quite different from all
other examples. The wonderful mid-eighteenth-century painting showing the
tanbur being played by the daughter of the French consul Glavani depicts an
instrument with a nearly round face, but with the striated wood decoration on
the face which is seen in Fonton and Levni (reproduced in Aksoy 1994:269).
What these pictures cannot represent is the thickness of the face. The use
of two planks, however, suggests that the face could not have been as thin
as the modern instrument. This extremely thin face changes its shape with
the weather and imparts a resonance to the instrument totally unlike other
Anatolian long-necked lutes, as well as the various tanburs and dutars of
Central Asia.
Thanks to these descriptions and illuminations we can draw the follow-
ing conclusions:
1. The proportions of the tanbur changed only slightly from 1700 until 1900.
The instrument of 1700 had a proportionally larger soundbox. The sound-
box became smaller in the mid-eighteenth century. It became somewhat
larger again after the mid-eighteenth century.
2. The number of strings increased from six to eight, but brass strings were
used throughout.
 148 Chapter 3

Figure 1.16 Tanbur (Cantemir ca. 1700)

Instruments and Instrumentalists 149

Figure 1.17 Tanbur (Fonton 1751: fig. 2)

150 Chapter 3

Figure 1.18 Tanburi (Hızır Ağa)

Instruments and Instrumentalists 151

3. During the earlier seventeenth century either a feather or a tortoise-shell

plectrum was in use. The tortoise-shell plectrum became standard after
the middle of the seventeenth century and underwent virtually no
change since that time.
4. The principles of plucking probably have been constant since the later
seventeenth century. There were changes of style, the most important of
which originated with İsak at the end of the eighteenth century.
We may conclude that there must have been differences in volume in dif-
ferent periods, and somewhat different timbres as the face became thinner.
Nevertheless, the dominant characteristic of the Ottoman tanbur from 1700
until the present is continuity. The formative period of the more recent form
of the Ottoman tanbur certainly occurred earlier, probably during the late
sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, but is almost undocumented. There
is reason to believe that the general shape and proportions of the Ottoman
tanbur, although not its playing technique, originated in a fifteenth-century
Khorasanian tanbur and its nearly contemporaneous Anatolian modification.
This type of tanbur died out completely in Iran and is not attested in the six-
teenth century or thereafter. In Turkey, however, it underwent technical devel-
opment between 1500 and 1600 and shortly thereafter became the dominant,
and soon the singular lute in the Ottoman ensemble. The origin of the mod-
ern playing technique probably lies in the mid-seventeenth century when the
feather was replaced by a strip of tortoise shell used as the plectrum.

4.6 The çeng

Evliya Çelebi’s comments on the çeng, which indicate the decline of the instru-
ment in the seventeenth century, have been noted by Yekta (1921), Farmer
(1937) and others. Evliya noted that the players of the çeng consisted of: “twelve
individuals. Due to the fact that it is a difficult instrument, it has few perform-
ers” (Özergin 1972:6032). During believes that the çeng disappeared from
Persian music “around the seventeenth century” (1991:102), and notes its disap-
pearance in Turkey, the Arab countries, and Central Asia in the same period.
The reasons for its disappearance in all of these musical cultures are obscure.
Evliya mentions four masters, all of whom were Ottomans. He mentions
his contemporary Çengi Yusuf Dede, the ser-neyzen and Sheikh of the Beşiktaş
Mevlevihane (d. 1669), but only as a neyzen. Likewise Cevri described him
performing at the court of Murad IV but only as a neyzen (Ayan 1981:112).
According to Esʿad Efendi Yusuf had played çeng at the court for Murad IV
(Uzunçarşılı 1977:90). Behar cites disagreements about the veracity of Esʿad
Efendi’s description of Yusuf Dede as a çeng-player (2010:85). Nevertheless,
Recep Uslu published his Risale-i Edvar from 1650 as the work of Çengi Yusuf
152 Chapter 3

Figure 1.19 Masked dance with çeng (Album of Ahmed I, fol. 408b), 1603–1617

Dede (Uslu 2015). Cantemir’s Collection contains items by several Turkish çen-
gis: Çengi Ibrahim Ağa (probably the same as “Ağa Çengi”), Çengi Mustafa,
and Çengi Ahmed. Two of the three peşrevs by Mustafa are in the terkib
Buselik-Aşirani, which was in vogue in the seventeenth century, thus suggest-
ing that Mustafa was a seventeenth-century composer. Both Cantemir and
Bobowski notated peşrevs by Cengi Cafer, who was a Persian musician cap-
tured by Murad IV. Evidently during the first three quarters of the seventeenth
century there were a number of prominent çengis in Istanbul, most of whom
were of local origin. The existence at the time of several master-players and
composers, one of whom was a Mevlevi sheikh renders the total disappear-
ance of the çeng even more enigmatic.
During the early part of the century visual representations testify to the
association of the çeng with the dancing women and with boisterous male fes-
tivities (Fig. 1.19). European travelers in the seventeenth century continued to
describe the çengi dancing-women and the çeng. The following is extracted
from a letter written by Jean Antoine du Loir in 1640:
Instruments and Instrumentalists 153

After this diversion, the assembly finishes by another more pleasant,

which is given by the girls called Tchingue, from the word Tchenk, which
means Harp, they are ordinarily adroit and gracious, one playing a type
of Viole which they call Kementche, whose body is round and its neck
very long, and the other plays the Harp, while some with Tambour de
Biscaye beat delicately the cadence of the songs that the others sing as
they dance, with a type of Cliquettes (Loir 1654:173).

However, the scenes from the early eighteenth-century “Surname” of Vehbi do

not show the çeng at all, although these are precisely the kind of festive occa-
sions where the çeng would have been considered essential. Thus, it would
seem that by the Tulip Period the çeng was obsolete both in art music and in
popular genres.
Apparently, the last visual representation of the çeng in Turkey occurs in the
appendix to the treatise of Hızır Ağa. As was noted earlier, this çeng is not the
traditional Persian type, but a European form which had evidently been played
in Turkey. In the accompanying text the author states that “this is what they
call the çeng, an ancient and esteemed instrument” (Hızır Ağa n.d.)(cf. Fig. 1.7).
He also states that the instrument had 36 strings. Evliya had noted a century
earlier that the çeng had 40 strings (Özergin 1972:6007).
The final literary mention of the Turkish çeng occurs in the memoirs of the
Irish harper Arthur O’Neill (1734–1806). O’Neill had chanced upon a Turkish
harp which had been purchased by a merchant in Belgrade and brought back
by him to Cork. O’Neill praised the construction of the Turkish harp, averring
that it was lighter than any harp he had played and was of an unknown wood.
He was able to tune it and play Irish airs upon it (cf. Fox 1917:145). From this
description it would seem that what O’Neill had found in Cork was this entirely
wooden çeng, rather than the Persian instrument whose soundbox was cov-
ered with deer-skin. This information confirms that this Europeanoid çeng had
coexisted with the widespread Persian form. The fact that it was described by
these two independent eighteenth-century sources, one Turkish and the other
foreign, suggests that this wooden çeng had survived a little longer into the
eighteenth century.

4.7 The kanun

An instrument called kanun had been played continuously in Ottoman makam
music from a period prior to the sixteenth century until the present. However,
the nature of the instrument itself underwent fundamental changes, and its
importance in the fasıl has varied considerably. The early sixteenth-century
court records and several miniatures and foreign paintings attested to the pop-
ularity of the kanun in the sixteenth century.
154 Chapter 3

Both the Ottoman and the Safavid kanun of that period was essentially a dif-
ferent instrument from the one known in modern times. The sixteenth-century
kanun, whose form fits Marāghī’s description, continued to use brass strings.
Visual representations of the kanun in Turkey in the seventeenth century have
not been identified, but by the middle of the eighteenth century the Turkish
kanun had assumed a new shape, closely resembling the modern one. At this
period the kanun had apparently disappeared from Persian music, and there-
fore it must be assumed that whatever changes had occurred in the kanun had
not happened in Iran, but rather in Turkey and/or the Levant.
Bobowski failed to mention the kanun in his “Saray-i Enderun,” nor are any
compositions by kanunis present in his “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz.” Kanunis are not
mentioned in Cantemir’s Collection either. These two omissions would seem
to suggest that the kanun was not in a strong position in the seventeenth cen-
tury, However, Evliya gives a rather different impression:

Players of the Kanun: 55 individuals. Its inventor is ________

Its famous masters are Kanunci Ali-Şah, Revanli Mirza, Revanli Haydar
Beg, Sürmai Ali-yar, Çigala-zade Mustafa Beg, who were really masters of
the drum and standard of the kanun. And Kara Suhrab, and Celeb Çaker
Beg, and Yeşilli Can Memi and Adalyalı Derviş ________. All of these are
excellent masters who can perform a fasıl on the kanun in the presence
of the Padişah (Özergin 1972:6032).

Evliya divides his entry into two sections. The first sentence ends with the past
tense (idi), and all the musicians mentioned in it are Iranians (except possibly
Mustafa Beg), The fact that two of them came from Revan (Erivan) probably
indicates that they had come to Istanbul with Sultan Murad IV in 1627. The
next group, however, are certainly Ottomans. We should assume that the kanun
played by the Iranian masters was still the old Persian type with a wooden face
and brass strings, and there is no indication in Evliya that the next genera-
tion of Turkish musicians played anything different. The first mention of gut
strings seems to be from 1670–1679, written by the Englishman Dr. John Covel:
“a sort of dulcimer with gut strings, touch’t wit both hands, as the Harp, only
this lyes flat and Horizontall” (Covel 1670–79:214). However, Meninski, writ-
ing in 1680–1687, claimed that the kanun had fifty to sixty brass strings (“aenis
chordes”; Farmer 1937:33). Thus, during the second half of the seventeenth
century gut strings were introduced on the kanun, but they replaced the brass
strings only gradually, over a period of more than a generation.
Yekta thought that the kanun might have “fallen into neglect in the eigh-
teenth century” (Farmer 1937:33). The kanun was not mentioned by Cantemir,
and his contemporary Levni never depicted it in his numerous paintings. Pars
Instruments and Instrumentalists 155

Tuğlacı (1985:101, 114) has published two undated album paintings from his pri-
vate collection, probably of early eighteenth-century provenance, showing two
cariyes playing the kanun. However, these pictures are so vague that the instru-
ment is difficult to interpret. Among the series of harem women painted by
Van Mour in 1714 there is a kanun player and judging by the accurate detail on
his painting of a çöğür player (1719), this painting should probably be viewed
as a document. This kanun has the dimensions of the modern instrument;
it is oblong and relatively shallow, but its construction looks much like the
sixteenth-century instrument, i.e. it resembles a zither. The tuning pegs are
on the right of the instrument, and it appears to be completely of wood (cf.
Tuğlacı 1985:115).
Filippo Buonanni (1964 [1716]) seems to have utilized Van Mour’s painting as
the basis for his own engraving of a woman kanun-player. He supplies the infor-
mation that it had “metal strings.” However, the illustration of a kanun of fifty
years later, coming from the appendix to the treatise of Hızır Ağa (1765–1770)
shows an essentially modern instrument (Fig. 1.20). The instrument here has
the characteristic shape with the right side perpendicular and the left on an
oblique angle. The bridges are on the right, and the tuning pegs on the left.
The latter are upright and extend on a piece of the face which overhangs the
body. The entire instrument is very shallow. There seems to be a marked area
parallel to the bridges, which is probably meant to be the fish-skin on which
the bridges rest. There are two sound-holes on the face. Even the key is shaped
exactly like modern Turkish kanun keys. Thus, by the 1760s, the Turkish kanun
had lost its resemblance to the medieval instrument.
The painting of Van Mour probably depicts an intermediary stage in this
evolution. The Egyptian qānūn shown by Lane (1963 [1860]:359) agrees with
Hızır Ağa’s instrument in every visible way. The change from brass to gut strings
enabled a new technique to develop on the kanun, and the modern technique
known in both the Levant and Turkey could not have been performed on the
older instrument with brass strings.10
No kanun player is recorded as having performed throughout the reign of
Sultan Selim III. The kanun only reappears in the reign of Mahmud II (1808–
1839), who dispensed payment to four different kanun players (Uzunçarşılı
1977:108). The fact that the kanun is very rarely represented from 1650 to
1750, and that no famous masters are recorded between 1700 and the early
nineteenth century, probably indicates a hiatus in the favor shown to the

10 Aksoy (1944:270) reproduces Liotard’s drawing of a group of male musicians playing

a santur, two kanuns and a tanbura (bozuk). The only detail of the impressionistically
drawn kanuns is the upright group of tuning-pegs on one of them. The musicians are
evidently Muslims but are not attired in courtly style.
156 Chapter 3

Figure 1.20 Kanun (Hızır Ağa)

Instruments and Instrumentalists 157

instrument. This may in turn be connected with the fundamental changes in

the construction and performance technique of the kanun, so that no local
school emerged. The impetus coming from Iran, which was still powerful in
the first half of the seventeenth century, disappeared in the second half or in
the early part of the following century, as the kanun dropped out of the Iranian
instrumentarium. Another possible reason for the obscurity of the kanun in
this period is its association with the harem and female performers. Van Mour
showed it as one of the instruments played in the harem, and Buonanni had
noted that “the women frequently play it seated on a cushion” (Buonani 1716,
trans. Martin 1992:11). Later in the century Toderini associated the kanun with
the palace women: “Canun: a kind of Salterio, with gut strings, which in the
Seraglio of the Ladies is played with metallic thimbles of tortoise, armed with
tips of coco” (1789:I:232).
The kanun may have taken the place of the çeng, as a harp-like feminine
instrument for intimate performance situations. In the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries the kanun was one of the instruments which were com-
monly played by women. In the middle of this century, a woman, Vecihe Daryal
(b. 1908–1970), was one of the leading virtuosi on the kanun; no professional
female virtuoso of comparable stature appeared for any other instrument
in this century. Her initial instruction came from a female kanun player, and
Daryal had her own method of holding the plectrums and striking the strings
which was different from male performers (TMA 1969:153). This may well point
to a female style of kanun playing which had developed in the Imperial Seraglio.
Thus, the association of the kanun with female performers may explain its
absence from the fasıl ensemble until the early nineteenth century.
It is unclear whether the new kanun with gut strings developed in Turkey
between 1680 and 1750, or whether it was imported from Egypt or Syria.
However, the absence of a known master in Turkey during this period, and
the strong cultural grounding of the kanun in early nineteenth-century Egypt,
where it was a fundamental part of the ensemble, suggests the latter. Hızır
Ağa’s use of Arabic verse to accompany his illustration (Fig. 1.20) may also sug-
gest a Levantine origin for the instrument.

4.8 The santur

The santur was the dulcimer (cymbalom) of the Middle East. However, it is so
rarely depicted, mentioned, or described that its early history is more obscure
than any other instrument of comparable antiquity. It would appear that the
external form of the medieval santur was almost identical to the trapezoidal
type of kanun. Both used metal strings, the difference consisting in the ham-
mering of the santur as opposed to the plucking technique of the kanun.
158 Chapter 3

Perhaps due to its similarity to the kanun, and to its technique which was
difficult to represent visually, the santur was not favored in miniature illumi-
nations of literary works. It does not appear in Persian miniatures (During
1991:139), and for the same reason is omitted by Vyzgo’s study of medieval
Central Asian instruments (1980). It was not mentioned by Marāghī, but
Ayni (fifteenth century) did include it in one of his musical gazels (Levend
1943:242–3). It was not mentioned in the “Cemaat-i mutriban” (1525), nor was
it illustrated in sixteenth-century Ottoman miniatures. Nevertheless, its exis-
tence in sixteenth-century Turkey can be shown because of its appearance in
the “Codex Vindobonensis” (Tuğlacı 1985:110).
Although it was not mentioned by Evliya Çelebi there is sufficient evidence
to show that the santur was played at the seventeenth century court. Bobowski
mentioned it en passant (1665:2), but the cover page of his “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz”
calls him “Ali Beg el-Santuri—Cymbalista.” There is no cogent reason to ques-
tion this title, especially since Bobowski included a semai by “Ali Beg el-Santuri”
(Bobowski ca. 1650:327), apparently his own composition.11 Bobowski had also
mentioned the santur prominently in two of his own poems (see previous
chapter, p. 84), so there was at least one santur player at the court of Murad IV
He also includes a semai by İbrahim Çelebi Santuri (ibid.:116), and Cantemir
has one semai by Santuri İbrahim Ağa, who may have been the same individ-
ual. There are several album paintings of cariyes performing on the santur, dat-
ing from the late seventeenth-early eighteenth century (Tuğlacı 1985:104–19),
but they are all too vague to establish details of the instrument’s construction.
The santur was depicted regularly by Levni in the 1720s. It appears to have
had two distinct functions, one in the courtly fasıl and the other in the mehter-i
birun. The former was depicted most clearly in the concert in the Okmeydanı
in the “Surname-i Vehbi” (Fig. 1.12). This appears to be a realistic portrayal of a
fasıl meclisi for a fasl-i sāzende, an entirely instrumental fasıl. The musicians are
arranged in two facing rows of four persons each. The three neyzens are facing
the tanburi, on whose right is the kemançeci. It seems intentional that the two
types of instruments which express the rhythmic aspect of the performance,
the daires (frame-drums) and the santur are at opposite ends of the ensemble.
A contemporary miniature shows male dancers in Persian costume danc-
ing on a raft. They are accompanied by a mehter-i birun ensemble consisting

11 This was apparently Bobowski’s signature. The normal Turkish expression would have
been Santuri Ali Beg, or Ali Beg Santuri. No other musician in the “Mecmua” is described
with an analogous formula. Elsewhere, Bobowski signed his own pieces with the Arabic
formula “li-ṣāḥib al-kitāb” (“by the author of this book”).
Instruments and Instrumentalists 159

of four zurnas, four daires, two nakkaras and one santur.12 The use of the
santur for dance music with percussion is confirmed by the Swedish traveler
Frederick Hasselquist:

The music were two small kettle drums of copper, and a kind of rough
and ill-sounding dulcimer. The musicians beat both so hard, that in a very
large room, open on all sides, none could hear what another said, tho’ he
spoke loud (Hasselquist 1766:38).

A closer look at the santur from the fasıl ensemble at the Okmeydanı (1720s)
reveals a few aspects of its construction. The santur is trapezoidal, resembling
the older kanuns, but it is oblong, not squarish as in the sixteenth-century illus-
tration of both santur and kanun. The tuning pegs are upright and are attached
to an overhanging leaf of the face. This detail is identical to the kanun in the
Hızır Ağa illustration of the 1760s. The number or position of the bridges are
unintelligible. The hammers can be seen under the index finger. This is the
“Eastern” method; west European dulcimer players had held the hammers
under the thumb.
The clearest illustration of the Ottoman santur occurs in the “Sazname”
appended to the treatise of Hızır Ağa (Fig. 1.21). This instrument seems some-
what more oblong than the one in the “Surname.” It is a shallow instrument;
the dimensions are closer to the modern Persian santur than to the Iraqi or
Kashmiri santurs which are considerably deeper. The tuning pegs are different
from the type in the “Surname,” but are identical to those on the Persian santur,
extending horizontally from the right side of the corpus. The sticks are straight
and long, with turned up heads unlike the nineteenth-century Turkish sticks
which were small and crooked. The bridges are separate and movable. From
their placement it would appear that each course of strings could produce only
one note—they are not divided into fifths, fourths, or octaves. This agrees with
the Iraqi and Kashmiri instruments. However, it is unlikely that the number of
bridges is accurate, if this instrument is designed for the fasıl ensemble. Each
side of the instrument has only five bridges, in addition to a large flat bridge on
the top and bottom of the instrument whose function is unclear.
Toderini described the santur as simply “the Salterio, which is as ours with
metallic strings, and is struck with small rods” (Toderini 1789:I:232). Shortly
after Toderini’s sojourn in Turkey a major virtuoso appeared at the court; from

12 Reinhard (1981) is skeptical about the possibility of a santur being audible in such an
ensemble. The santur could certainly do little more than play rhythm, but with heavy
unwrapped sticks a santur of these dimensions is not a soft instrument.
160 Chapter 3

Figure 1.21 Santur (Hızır Ağa)

Instruments and Instrumentalists 161

1798 until 1810 Musahib Santuri Hüseyin Ağa appears on the payment regis-
ters of the Topkapı Palace (Uzunçarşılı 1977:104–6). From 1801 until 1810 he was
paid 100 akças daily, which was more than the salary of the violinist Kemani
Miron and more than twice the salary of Tanburi İsak. Unfortunately, noth-
ing about the life or the music of Santuri Hüseyin Ağa seems to have been
preserved. After Hüseyin Ağa the leading santur player was Santuri Hilmi Bey
(1820?–1895), who had the rank of mir alay for Sultan Abdülmecid (1839–1860).
Hilmi Bey however, exchanged the traditional Turkish santur for the Romanian
ţambal mic portable cymbalom (Yekta 1921:3021), which had recently been
adopted by the Roma lautari from the Jewish klezmorim (Bogach 1963:229:
Feldman 2016:106–7). During Hilmi’s lifetime the traditional Turkish santur
fell into decline, being played mainly by Jewish nightclub musicians. As Yekta
complained, the Romanian or “ala Franca” santur could not execute many
Turkish makams. Nevertheless, the last santur virtuoso, Santuri Edhem Efendi
(1855–1926) played this hybrid instrument.
Whereas the other traditional courtly instruments such as the ud, kopuz,
çeng, or kemançe were probably eclipsed for reasons of sonority, the fate of
the santur may have had different causes. Except for the kemançe, these other
instruments disappeared as the distinctive Ottoman ensemble was being
formed in the seventeenth century. The santur, however, maintained itself all
through this formative period, and even produced a virtuoso on the courtly
level at the end of this period. It is more likely that the decline of the santur can
be correlated almost exactly with the emergence of the modern Turkish sys-
tem of intonation. In the following chapters it will be contended that the first
evidence for the existence of something approaching the 25–27 note octave
of modern Turkish makam music occurs at the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth century. This system demanded too many notes
for the traditional or the Western santur—no santur in existence has a scale
comparable to that of the modern Turkish general scale. A santur which could
produce fifty-four discrete pitches would either be exceedingly long, and hence
difficult to play, or would demand new technical methods of string placement
and rapid note alteration. The Turks did not invest in this new technology, and
it is probably for this reason that the santur became obsolete.

4.9 The musikar/miskal

Marāghī mentioned an instrument created by attaching several reeds of dif-
fering lengths (Marāghī 1977:136). He termed it musikar or musikar-i acem, and
classified it among the wind group of mutlakat, instruments whose pitches were
fixed. He states that the scale produced could be varied prior to performance
162 Chapter 3

by inserting balls of wax into the reeds. He also mentions a musikar-i çin, which
was evidently of Chinese or Uighur origin.
The origin of this instrument is probably to be sought in the Uighur musical
culture, where it is frequently represented on frescoes of the ninth and tenth
centuries. Marāghī’s distinction between the musikar-i acem and the musikar-i
çin strengthens the impression that his musikar was an Iranian adaptation
of this Uighur/Chinese instrument. However, the instrument appears rarely
in Persian and Transoxanian miniatures, and is not mentioned in Persian
poetry.13 This would seem to indicate that the musikar entered Iranian music
during the Mongol period but was not accepted everywhere in the Persianate
musical culture. Nevertheless, it was known in Mughal India, although prob-
ably only in a Persian musical context. The painter Aqa Riza was evidently fond
of the instrument as it appears in two of his paintings dated 1595 and 1604–1610
(Okada 1992:105–8). This painter was born in Meshed in Iranian Khorasan,
so this may indicate a regional preference for the musikar within Iran. In
fifteenth-century Turkey, Ayni had referred to the musikar in his gazel quoted
earlier (“rubab ü ud ü musikar ü tanbur”) (see p. 82). While sixteenth-century
Ottoman miniatures frequently depict the musikar, there is no player of the
musikar among the court musicians in 1525. The reason for its exclusion may
have been its absence from the contemporary Safavid instrumental ensemble.
Moreover, throughout its long history in Turkey, the musikar displayed a
wide variety of cultural contexts for its performance. By the later sixteenth
century it appears with other courtly instruments, such as the ud and the çeng
(Fig. 1.3 and 1.6). During the earlier seventeenth century its fame must have
increased due to the career of Miskali Solakzade.14 Evliya makes him the center
of his entry on the musikar.

Performers of the musikar: 51 individuals. In the beginning Musa, the

successor (halife) of Fisagoris invented the musikar.
Their champion is the historian of the world, the scholar and sage, the
painter and miskali Solakzade, who is from the Janissary Corps (yeñiçeri
cemaatindendür). And Patakoğlu and Köle Yusuf, who is the slave (mem-
luk) of Solakzade. And Abdullah Efendi who is one of the chief scribes.
And Yako the Jew and Çirtik Ahmed Çelebi (Özergin 1972:6032).

Among the eight musicians named by Evliya Çelebi as performers of the

miskal (pan-pipes) two were of a rather high social status. Abdullah Efendi

13 There is no reference in Vyzgo 1980, During 1991, or Mellah 1932; 1943.

14 From the seventeenth century the Turkish vulgar pronunciation miskal is written
for musìkar.
Instruments and Instrumentalists 163

is described as “one of the reis katibs” (Özergin 1972:6032). The reis katib (or
reisülkutub, “chief scribe”) was an important court functionary, who ranked
just below the members of the Imperial Divan (Pakalın 1971). The best-known
instrumental composer of the first half of the seventeenth century, Miskali
Mehmed Çelebi Solakzade (d. 1658), is mentioned as “Nakkaş Musikari
Solakzade,” (“Solakzade, the Painter and Pan-Piper”). Solakzade’s peşrevs and
semais (totaling twenty-nine items in Bobowski, Cantemir, and Kevseri), rep-
resent the earliest substantial authentic instrumental repertoire which sur-
vives from a single Ottoman composer. Solakzade had a variety of talents and
professional functions. Born in Istanbul, he was the son of a member of the
elite Solak group within the Janissary corps in Usküb (Skopje). His education
is not completely known but was officially registered with the servants of the
Imperial Chamber (Has Oda). He was also known as a painter (nakkaş). At
the suggestion of the chief of the Imperial Chamber Service, he compiled a
history of the Ottoman Empire. He wrote poetry under the mahlas (nom de
plume) Hemdemi and Miskali, and he became a musahib (boon-companion)
of Sultan Murad IV (TMA III 1976:245). His slave (mamluk) Yusuf Köle (“Yusuf
the Slave”), described by Evliya as a Janissary, was also considered to be one of
the major performers on the miskal. In the Hamparsum notebooks Solakzade’s
peşrevs are found more commonly than are those of any other musician of the
seventeenth century. After Solakzade the use of the musikar was continuous
in the fasıl until the end of the eighteenth century. The musikar was described
during Solakzade’s lifetime by the Italian traveler Pietro Della Valle in 1614
(Valle 1845[1614]:48).
The paintings of Levni show the musikar both in the courtly ensembles and
in the mehter-i birun (cf. Fig. 1.11 and Fig. 1.22 below). Throughout the eigh-
teenth century the musikar/miskal was part of the female ensembles of the
harems (Tuğlacı 1985:114).
European visitors to Turkey were almost invariably struck by the musi-
kar/miskal, connecting it with the pipes of Pan of Greco-Roman antiquity.
Several of them gave detailed descriptions of it (including measurements), and
they also described the variety of social contexts in which it was played. An
eloquent description of the musikar in a context very remote from the court is
given by Alexander Drummond, the British consul in the city of Aleppo in 1754:

While we were at sea, one of the Turks played upon a musical instru-
ment made of reeds, and another accompanied him with his voice; the
uncommon sounds attracted mine ear while I was reading; I closed my
book, went forward, and, at first sight of the musician, was struck with
the idea of the god Pan; he had a very long beard, his visage very much
resembled that of a goat, and his breast, which was bare, exhibited a very
164 Chapter 3

Figure 1.22 Musikar in mehter-i birun, folio 97b from “Surname” of Ahmed III
Instruments and Instrumentalists 165

shaggy appearance. I did not, indeed, perceive his horns, nor could I see
his feet, which were folded across, and lay under him as he sat. Were I dis-
posed to trifle, I would say this instrument, which they call musical, was
an improvement upon that which Pan invented from the sighing of the
reeds, which he grasped when he expected to embrace the beauteous
nymph Syrinx; for as his was composed of seven, this comprehended
19 tubes … (Drummond 1754:179).

Drummond further indicates that the method of altering the notes by the use
of wax balls, described in the early fifteenth century, was still in use. However,
the expansion of the general scale and the use of single- note alteration must
have necessitated a mixed technique using both the wax-balls and overblowing
to elicit the proper semi-tones. Drummond’s contemporary Fonton describes
this practice in more detail:

Each tube of the miskal makes a different pitch. The first one is yegâh (D),
the second aşirân (E), the third irak (F♯), and so on. There are no tubes for
the semi-tones. If the player wishes to play them, he must fill the tubes
more or less, which requires much art and practice to avoid ever blowing
a wrong note. Sometimes, in order to avoid this difficulty at the outset, lit-
tle wax balls are used which are dropped into a tube where, for example a
flat is needed, and which is removed afterward. This ball, which must be
of a smaller dimension than the tube in which it is used, leaves a space
around the walls of this tube by which the air may pass around the wax
ball, which, not being an elastic body, lessens and reflects the air which
strikes it, diminishing its vibrations and rendering the sound les shrill
and sharp. However, the effect depends in large part on the breath of the
player whose skill makes up for the rest. Much of this skill is necessary
to render the great quantity of notes and modulations that the Orientals
have in their music (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:117–8).

In the first sentence Fonton mentions the first three pitches of the fundamen-
tal scale (the “basic scale degrees” or tamam perdeler). He enumerates the
number of separate reeds: “But today, the number of them has increased up
to twenty-two, which makes altogether three octaves” (ibid.:loc. cit.). All other
notes had to be produced by a combination of the stopping of the pipes and
the blowing of the player. He also notes that there were two sizes of miskal, şah
mansur and küçük mansur.
166 Chapter 3

The first has more tubes than the second and the tubes are larger, which
render a deeper sound. This distinction is made for both kinds of wind
instrument—the ney and the miskal, so as to accommodate the song
which they must accompany because often some singers cannot reach
the pitch of the küçük mansûr, but easily manage the lower pitch of the
şah mansûr (ibid.).

Fonton depicted the player of the musikar in the courtly ensemble seated next
to the neyzen (Fig. 1.13).
Toderini noted the use of the miskal in the 1780s, when it had twenty-three
canes. However, upon the accession of Selim III in 1789, the miskal was absent
from the musicians of the court and remained absent throughout his reign.
It is not mentioned at all during the nineteenth century, either in the hands
of male or female players, in the court, in the entertainment ensembles or in
the countryside. The Turkish miskal survived only in the far-away Danubian
Principalities where it was still played by Gypsy lăutări under the name nai.
During the early nineteenth century it was featured in the famous lăutăr
orchestra of Iaşi, which performed a Moldavian, Greek and Turkish repertoire.
By the late nineteenth century it was on the verge of extinction there as well,
being preserved only by the Luca family of lăutări, who led to its revival during
the 1950s.
Two factors probably played a role in the demise of the miskal. One is the
same which led to the gradual elimination of the santur in the nineteenth
century, The expansion of the general scale rendered modulation beyond the
capacity of a miskal with twenty-two or twenty-three canes, and apparently fur-
ther enlargement of the instrument was not feasible. The extinction of the mis-
kal occurred during the reign of Selim III when the change in the fundamental
scale seems to have become the most radical. However, the suddenness of the
demise of the miskal may also be the result of the aesthetic preferences of that
sultan and/or of the musical connoisseurs in general. Selim was a neyzen, and
he may not have appreciated the much more strident tone of the miskal. As
early as 1614 the Italian Della Valle had contrasted the miskal unfavorably with
the ney: “but the sweetness of the sound does not equal the long flute of the
dervishes” (Valle 1845:48) The impact of Sultan Selim, and the musicians whom
he favored, such as Tanburi İsak, Kemani Miron, Zeki Mehmed Ağa, Musahib
Seyyid Ahmed and later Ismail Dede Efendi upon the music of the nineteenth
century was enormous. The absence of the miskal from his courtly ensemble
may have discouraged musicians from introducing it into the music which was
created at that court, and the hiatus in royal patronage may have weakened
the standing of the instrument as well. Moreover, Selim’s negative view of the
Instruments and Instrumentalists 167

Figure 1.23 Musikar (Fonton 1751: fig. 3)

miskal may not have been only personal, but rather a reflection of the increas-
ing influence of the Mevlevi dervishes over all aspects of the makam music.
By the early nineteenth century the connoisseurs of Ottoman music may have
viewed the tones of the miskal and of the ney as fundamentally incompatible.

5 Social Contexts of the Turkish Lutes

Evliya Çelebi mentions a large number of lutes, which can be divided function-
ally as (1) the lutes of the fasıl, (2) the lutes of the “levend,” and (3) the lutes of
the folk. The first ( fasıl) group consisted of: tanbur, ud, şeşhane, şeştar, and
çarta. The second (levend) group were: çöğür, ravza, kopuz. The third (folk)
group were: karadüzen, yonkar, yeltme, tanbura, teltanburast, barbut, sünder,
şarki, and şeşde.
Bobowski makes a twofold distinction between the instruments “used to
accompany the delicate songs,” which have been enumerated above, and the
168 Chapter 3

“other instruments to accompany the common songs called turky (türkü).” The
latter were: tchaganah (çagana), thchigour (çöğür), tanbourah (tanbura), teltan­
bourasi (teltanburasi) and tscheschteh (çeşte = şeşde) (Bobowski 1990 [1665]:2).
On what basis did Evliya create his group of instruments called levendane,
which was not used by his contemporary Bobowski? This group seems to rep-
resent lutes which were associated with the young unmarried men who served
in the various irregular military organizations which were especially important
on the “serhad,” the marches between the Ottoman and the Habsburg imperial
realms, i.e. Hungary, Croatia, and Bosnia. The modern descendants of this fam-
ily of lutes and their social function are apparently the tanbura of Hungary,
the tanburitza (tanburica) of Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia, as well as the šargija
of Bosnia. The modern Bosnian šargija has retained the closest formal link
with the Turkish long-necked lutes, but the tanburitza seems to have inherited
something of the ethos of the unmarried men, still called by the Turkish name
bečar (<T. bekar). The tanbura became a Hungarian peasant lute and was later
developed as a Gypsy professional instrument in the early nineteenth century.
Later in the century it developed a new form in Serbia and Croatia (Forry 1978).
Evliya claimed that the two most important levendane lutes of his time were
variants of makam lutes. The kopuz was derived from the şeşhane, and the
revza was derived from the çarta. For the first two instruments the relationship
was not quite derivational, in that these were both derived from separate vari-
ants of the same prototype (see above, pp. 134–6).
With the exception of the Balkan kopuz and the Anatolian barbut, which
were short-necked lutes of the rabab family, the levend and folk lutes were all
of the long-necked, fretted variety. The sündir was associated with the Kurds,
and the şarki with the Türkmens. However, several other lutes are connected
by Evliya with royal or learned individuals from Turkish history. Evliya claims
that the karadüzen was invented by Şehzade Bayezid, son of Süleyman I,
that the yonkar and the yeltme were invented by Şems Çelebi, the son of the
fifteenth-century Ottoman poet Hamdi Çelebi, and that the çöğür was invented
by Yakub, the fifteenth-century sultan of Germiyan (d. 1429). Later on, he says
the latter was taken up by the Janissaries (Özergin 1972:6033). The supposed
involvement of such learned figures of Turkish Anatolian origin in the creation
or modification of these lutes suggests that there had been considerable inter-
action between popular traditions and the makam music in Anatolia of the
fifteenth century. However, in the sixteenth century the local Anatolian organ-
ological developments were excluded from the Ottoman courtly ensemble.
The most important lute of this category was the tanbur, which had evidently
existed as an instrument of art music in the fifteenth century. The iconographic
Instruments and Instrumentalists 169

Figure 1.24 Abdullah Buhari; court woman with bozuk

170 Chapter 3

evidence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggest that some of

these lutes were played by the educated classes as informal and more portable
instruments, mainly to accompany the singer’s own voice. Thus, they came to
hold an intermediate position between the lutes of the levends and Janissaries
and the musicians of the court.
Despite the relationships between the makam lutes and levend and folk lutes,
these latter two groups were excluded from the fasıl, and had their own reper-
toires. By the seventeenth century even the noble Anatolian pedigrees of the
lutes çöğür and karadüzen did not prevent them from being considered vulgar
by Cantemir and Bobowski. The former opens his chapter on musical genres
by claiming that the deyiş and irlayiş genres, performed by the lutes çöğür and
karadüzen, were not within “the rules of music,” (Cantemir ca. 1700:chapt. X:97).
Bobowski excludes the türkü (apparently accompanied by these lutes) from
the fasıl: “The other more common songs are called turky, whose notes are
imprinted on the ears of nearly everyone” (Bobowski 1990 [1665]:1). Yet this
family of lutes were popular not only among the common people, but also
among the upper classes. We have seen that the palace müezzin-başı Çarşeb
Mustafa Ağa in the early eighteenth century was noted for his “Turkmen style”
instrumental playing (sazendelik), which can only mean the use of lutes such
as the çöğür or tambura. Many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings
of the women musicians of the palace illustrate these non-classical lutes. Such
an instrument is shown in the hands of a court woman in a well-known minia-
ture by Abdullah Buhari (1739) (Fig. 1.24).
A contemporaneous painting attached to a copy of the musical treatise of
Kemani Hızır Ağa (mid-eighteenth century) depicts a lute described as a bozuk
(Fig. 1.25). A late European example of this genre is the “Odalisque with Slave”
by Ingres (1840), which shows a female slave serenading a drowsing odalisque,
accompanied by a mother-of pearl encrusted çöğür or bozuk.
The general name for this family of lutes seems to have been tambura; and
this name is still in use in parts of Anatolia. A French traveler, a certain Sieur
Poullet, described the prevalence of this type of instrument:

They have a kind of instrument which they call a tabourat; the body
of which has the shape and size of one of the sabot of our peasants. …
I don’t think it is necessary to try to evoke the sort of melody that this
can produce; the Turks are so charmed by them that there is no son of a
good family [my italics] among them who does not know how to play it,
and who doesn’t have one which he carries everywhere—on campaign,
Instruments and Instrumentalists 171

Figure 1.25 A bozuk from the treatise of Hızır Ağa

172 Chapter 3

at war, on foot, on horse, attached to the two ends of the scabbard of his
scimitar, or hanging on his back with his pipe. (Poullet 1668:62).15

Along with the Turkish paintings of the instruments of this family in the context
of the court, the numerous European descriptions of these small long-necked
lutes, (often described as “citterns”) in the hands of people who can be termed
“the sons of a good family,” tell us that this was not only a folk instrument,
but the preferred instrument of leisure and casual performance of the upper
classes. While these instruments were not vehicles for the classical repertoire,
at least not after the fifteenth century, their open proliferation is indicative of
the cultural groundedness of instrumental playing on the amateur level. The
fact that the most celebrated musician/composers were vocalists and that the
major group of professionals among them were mosque singers, should not
lead us to the interpretation that the use of musical instruments was looked
down upon, and that amateurs from respectable social backgrounds would be
secretive about playing them.
Many foreign travelers describe, almost invariably in negative terms, the pro-
clivity of Turks of the upper classes for whiling away long hours while singing
and playing the tanbur or a smaller lute. Both the classical tanbur and smaller
lutes of the tanbura/çöğür/bozuk family are described as being the constant
accompaniment of the idle hours of the cultivated Turk. In 1709, Aaron Hill
described the classical tanbur in this function:

yet they are never easy when alone, unless they have a kind of course
Ghitarr, or such a sort of instrument, consisting of several Wires, upon
a long & slender wooden Body, with a round hollow head. … With this
dull Instrument, the solitary Turks divert themselves, in every Place, and
every Company; They place it in the left hand, and turning its unwieldy
Body to their Sides, with the unheeding Fingers of their other Hand,
strike up and down at random all the Wires, and whine out horrid and
unpleasant Noises, to the hum-drum Echo’s of their barbarous Instru-
ment (Hill 1709:72).

In 1700 Corneille Le Brun described the same type of scene with one of the
smaller lutes, not used for makam music:

15 I am indebted to Robert Martín for these extracts from published European travelers’ dia-
ries. Martín has published several of them in the “Turkish Music Quarterly,” some of which
he translated from the French and Italian; all the translations used here are his.
Instruments and Instrumentalists 173

Since the Turks are by nature very grave and serious, one does not often
see them in movement when they do not need to be. For the same rea-
son one could accuse them of being a nit lazy; Because when they are at
home, and have no business to attend to, they typically remain seated on
their Divans smoking a pipe of Tobacco, or playing a kind of luth which
has only three strings, and which, although its harmony may not be very
pleasant, they do not tire of it (Le Brun 1700:135).

The remarkable mid-eighteenth-century portrait of Mme. Glavani (daughter

of the French consul in the Crimea) playing the tanbur also shows a beauti-
fully encrusted bozuk resting beside the divan, awaiting her touch (cf. Aksoy
1994:269). Hızır Ağa’s contemporaneous painting of a bozuk along with the
courtly instruments, and Buhari’s portrait of a woman of the court with a simi-
lar instrument all testify to the private performance of the non-fasıl genres such
as the türkü and şarkı by members of the upper classes using the non-classical
lutes in addition to the fasıl genres played with the classical tanbur.

6 Conclusion

Between the sixteenth and the later eighteenth centuries Turkish urban instru-
ments displayed correlations with a number of musical generic categories.
In the broadest terms there appears to be a fourfold division, but individual
instruments often had a function in more than a single category:
1. art music, which is subdivided into secular courtly performance and
Mevlevi ayin,
2. indoor (çengi, köçekçe) and outdoor dance-music (mehter-i birun),
3. urban popular songs (türkü, şarkı, etc.), and
4. outdoor military and official music (mehter-i tabl ü alem).16
The main diachronic development consisted of the abandonment of several
instruments which had been equally at home in categories (1) and (2), and the
introduction of instruments which were essentially characteristic only of cat-
egory (1). Two instruments came to dominate the secular branch of art music
from the mid-seventeenth century until the twentieth century: the tanbur and
the ney. Their collaboration symbolized a fusion of the distinct makam tradi-
tions of the court and of the Sufi lodge. The use of the tanbur represented an
affirmation of an older, fifteenth-century art music tradition, which had been

16 Evliya’s distinction between the popular and levend lutes, while valid within the lute con-
text, seems less essential in an overall generic classification.
174 Chapter 3

marginalized during the sixteenth century. At the same time its current form
was a new organological development which was considered appropriate to
the evolving aesthetics of the later seventeenth century and the modern period.
Three of the major instruments which had held central positions in the
courtly and popular musical ensembles of Iran and Transoxiana, the ud, the
çeng, and the kopuz/rabab were dropped from Ottoman music. The kanun,
which was in the process of being dropped in these eastern countries under-
went a technical transformation and was retained somewhat in the position
of the çeng, as mainly a woman’s instrument. The bowed kemançe had been
essentially identical to the instrument used in the East. Here the difference
between category (1) and (2) involved only the material of the instrument, not
the external form: courtly instruments were made of coconut while popular
instruments were of gourd. By the middle of the eighteenth century, class and
generic distinctions began to be expressed by the choice of bowed instrument.
At first the court music was the domain of the coconut kemançe, while cat-
egory (2) was supplied by the gourd kemançe and the Western viola d’amore.
Then the latter co-existed with the coconut kemançe in the court, while dance
music became the domain of the urban Greek lyra (kemençe). By 1800 the viola
d’amore had replaced the coconut kemançe in the court.
After the fifteenth century the miskal was largely a distinctive Anatolian
instrument. Throughout its history it was equally at home in the music of cat-
egories (1) and (2). By the beginning of the nineteenth century it was defini-
tively ousted by the ney in the courtly music, which left category (2) with only
the girift in the flute family.
The results of these changes had both internal and external implications.
Internally, the Ottomans had developed two instruments (tanbur, ney) which
were functionally highly specialized; they did not have the multivalence of the
older refined instruments. While musical genres outside of category (1) might
be played by these two instruments, this was unusual and not really consistent
with their construction and playing techniques. Externally the Ottomans no
longer shared their instrumentation with the entire Perso-Turkic zone. This
development was characteristic of the later seventeenth century, but at the
same time it harked back to the older Anatolian makam tradition of the fif-
teenth century, in which an earlier tanbur and an earlier form of the Mevlevi
Sufi music had been highly influential. During the early seventeenth century
Iranian instruments such as the şeştar and the çarta were introduced in Turkey,
but within a single generation their popularity declined. After that point the
instruments of Persian music were without attraction for the Turks.
The Ottoman tanbur was exported to Syria and Egypt in the seventeenth
century. However, the instrumental ensembles of these countries did not
Instruments and Instrumentalists 175

accept all of the changes which had originated in Istanbul; they retained the
ud, the kemançe and the older form of the ney, and they did not accept the
miskal, the santur, the European violin or the Greek lyra (kemençe).
After 1700 the instrumentation of courtly makam music was becoming
increasingly differentiated into distinct zones, comprising Transoxiana, Iran,
Syria/Egypt and Turkey proper as separate areas with primarily internal and
not external dynamics.
 Chapter 4

The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasıl

and Ayin

Within the modern musical cultures of Western Asia, a cyclical format may
exist for several musical genres. In non-classical genres, cyclicity seems to be
expressed essentially in performance practice, rather than in the theoretical
relationships among items in the total repertoire. Within the repertoires which
may be considered “classical,” cyclicity usually has both a performance-oriented
and theoretical aspect. The connection of both types of cyclicity with the “clas-
sical” genres and repertoires appears to be characteristic of almost all Muslim
art musics in the form which they had reached by the early nineteenth century,
and hence in the form in which they were documented from the end of that
century until the present.1
The issue of cyclicity is crucial for the Ottoman vocal repertoire which
reached its maturity as part of a strictly cyclical format, but it is also important
for the instrumental repertoire. The composed peşrevs, and semais as well as
the taksim were usually performed within one of several cyclical formats—the
vocal fasıl, the instrumental fasıl, the Mevlevi ayin or the nevbet of the mehter-
hane. The Early Modern Era of Ottoman music (i.e. the beginning of Ottoman
music properly speaking) began with the development of cyclical formats
which were distinctive to the Ottoman musical culture. The various types of
modal combination and modulation, melodic improvisation, and composed
forms all must be understood within this overarching cyclicity.

1 The concept of cyclicity has been most developed among Soviet musicologists, particu-
larly in Uzbekistan. The term used here, is in fact a translation of the Russian “tsikľnosť ”
which commonly figures in Soviet musicological discussions of several Muslim repertoires,
especially the various maqom/muqam repertoires of Soviet and Chinese Central Asia, The
conceptualization of the Uzbek şäşmäqam (shashmaqom) repertoire as a cycle (tsikľ )
appeared in I. Rajabíy’s Uzbek-language book (1963) on the maąom, and F. Karomatov’s joint
article with Jürgen Eisner “Makam i makom” (1984). “Cycle” (tsikľ ) is more neutral, i.e. less
Eurocentric, than the term “suite” or “concert-suite” which had been used by earlier authors
such as Farmer (1937). The Eurocentrism and inaccuracy of such terms, especially as applied
to vocal genres, was pointed out by Racy (1983), who proposed the term “compound form.”
At the 1992 meeting of the Study Group on Maqam of the International Council for Tra-
ditional Music (Berlin 1992) Józef Pacholczyk developed a research plan to compare the
use of cycles in the contemporary Muslim art musics. See also Pacholczyk 1992; Feldman
1990–91:73–112.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_008

The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 177

The individual compositional forms which came to constitute the Ottoman

cycle known as fasıl came into existence between the fifteenth and the seven-
teenth centuries. These forms were: kar, nakş, beste (or murabba beste), and
semai. The last two were Ottoman forms, while the first two (nakş and kar)
are attested by the fifteenth century in the Iranian cultural area. The Ottoman
mecmua song collections of the seventeenth century divide the vocal reper-
toire into two broad groups,
1. the beste with a much smaller number of kar, nakş and an occasional
amal and kawl (qawl), and
2. the semai with an occasional şarkı.
The beste was the predominant genre, and was frequently not indicated sepa-
rately, i.e. any unmarked piece was a beste. There is no evidence that the nakş
and kar forms had ever been part of a cyclical format in Iran or Transoxiana,
but they assumed that function in Turkey when all of the courtly genres came
to be performed in a strictly ordered cycle.
During the fourteenth century, in Iran and elsewhere, a four to five-part cycle
known as nauba (nawba) had been performed (qawl, ghazal, tarana, firudasht,
[mustazad]), alongside other non-cyclical genres. However in the course of the
fifteenth century the nawba seems to have gone into decline, and, as Wright
notes, “the nawba had effectively ceased to exist by the middle of the sixteenth
century at the latest” (1992b:11). Evliya Çelebi frequently uses the term fasıl in a
performance context. However, neither Evliya’s numerous references to musi-
cal performance and genres, nor Bobowski’s description of the music of the
palace specify the order in which items were performed. Cantemir (ca. 1700)
was the first author to specify the order in which the composed items of the
fasıl were introduced in performance.
Fasıl had two distinct musical meanings. From its core Arabic meaning of
“section,” or “season,” it had come to denote either a section of an anthology
of song-texts (or notations) arranged according to makam, or a cyclical perfor-
mance of composed items (and taksims) predominantly in a single makam.
Thus, Bobowski divides his “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” into sections labeled “fasıl,”
e.g. “fasl-i Hüseyni,” “fasl-i Rast,” but within these sections the individual items
do not have a fixed order; any of the compositional forms may appear any-
where within the “fasıl.” This was the standard usage of Ottoman mecmua col-
lections through the nineteenth century. Musicians could create a performed
fasıl by selecting items in the “fasıl” of a particular makam.
The relationship of the seventeenth-century Ottoman fasıl to any ear-
lier types of concert-cycle, or even to its immediate Ottoman antecedents
is not entirely clear. Wright (1992b) has examined two Ottoman repertoire
manuscripts dating from the middle of the sixteenth century, and they show
178 Chapter 4

fundamental differences from the structure of the seventeenth century fasıl.

The term fasıl is not mentioned in either manuscript. Only a minority of the
texts are in Turkish, and these only in the nakş (nahş) form. The term beste is
not mentioned, and many settings are given without a genre name. However,
these cannot be bestes, because their texts are in Persian or Arabic and, judging
from the facsimile of part of one (Wright 1992b:32), the structure of text and
non-textual syllables does not agree with the beste form. The other dominant
Turkish-language form of the fasıl, the semai, likewise is not mentioned. In
addition, two forms are given with only syllabic texts; the peşraw and the dāʾira.
The former is certainly the earlier, vocal form of the peşrev, while the latter is
unknown. It is significant that the fourteenth-century nauba cycle forms have
also largely disappeared. We must assume that the many structural differences
between the musical genres presented in these two mid-sixteenth-century
manuscripts and the attested fasıl forms imply one and possibly two genera-
tions of musical change.
In Iran the medieval compositional genres disappeared entirely in the course
of the eighteenth century. Cantemir, writing around 1700, still mentions them
as being part of contemporaneous Iranian music, and describes certain differ-
ences between the Turkish and Iranian peşrev (Cantemir ca. 1700:chap. 10). The
Turkish-Armenian Tanburi Harutin, who lived in Iran for several years after
1736, fails to note any formal difference between Turkish and Iranian music,
although he does indicate relatively minor differences in makam terminology
(Harutin 1968). There is no mention of the dastgah system in Iranian sources
until the nineteenth century, so that it must be assumed that during the
later eighteenth century the composed genres, e.g. kar, naqsh, pishraw, were
replaced by the gusheha of the dastgah. By the later nineteenth century, even
the memory of such compositional genres had disappeared. Their names sur-
vived only in classical poetry, and in modern times the musical significance
of these names were understood only vaguely (Mellah 1932, 1943). In modern
Persian and Azerbaijanian music, cyclicity is an essential principle but it is
expressed by means of the gushes or shuʿbas within the dastgah, rather than
by composed forms.
The appearance of developed cyclical concert-formats both for Ottoman
courtly and Sufi (Mevlevi) music in the sixteenth and early seventeenth cen-
tury was an innovation which differentiated both Ottoman genres from any-
thing in the adjacent Persian or Arabian musical zones, However, throughout
the Ottoman period cyclical concert formats coexisted with less or non-cyclical
formats within differing social contexts. Already in the seventeenth century
the urban şarki became accepted in the court, but not as part of the fasıl. It was
apparently sung at less formal occasions, accompanied by vocal and instru-
mental taksims. In the seventeenth century the şarkı had employed only the
The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 179

usuls sofyan (2/4) and devr-i revan (14/8). By the mid-eighteenth century aksak
(9/8) was coming into fashion. Later, other usuls were added, but until the end
of the eighteenth century these were always of the short variety. The perfor-
mance model of the şarkı existed as a bridge between the formal performance
structure of the fasıl genres, and the solo and intimate performances of the
türkü, varsaği, and other non-makam vocal genres. Although documents are
lacking, the performance tradition of the Ottoman fasıl indicates that since
the time of Selim III (1789–1808) a mini-cycle (takım) of şarkıs was inserted
between the ağir semai and yürük semai genres within the fasıl. Thus, during
the nineteenth century the strict cyclicity of the courtly fasıl, as it had existed
at least since the later seventeenth century, was diluted with the less formal
performance principles governing the şarkı with its accompanying vocal and
instrumental taksims.

1 The Structure of the Ottoman Fasıl

In Cantemir’s treatise the usage of fasıl is presented in highly specific terms.

Cantemir’s description specifies not only the order of the items to be per-
formed, but also the instruments used, the seating arrangement and also men-
tions the term by which the entire institution was named. This description
occurs at the end of the tenth and final chapter of his treatise (pp. 97–102),
“The Fasıl and the Performance of Music According to Genre” (Fasıl ve Icra-i
Musiki ala Vech-i Nevi).

The Concert ( fasıl) of the Vocalist and the Instrumentalist Together

When there is a concert gathering ( fasl-i meclis) the vocalist sits in the
middle. The neyzen is below the vocalist; the tanburi is below the neyzen.
Below the tanburi the places of the other instrumentalists are not speci-
fied. First the instrumentalists begin with a taksim. After the taksim they
play one or two peşrevs; then they are silent. Then the vocalist begins with
a taksim. After the taksim he sings a beste, a nakş, a kar, and a semai; then
he is silent. The instrumentalists begin a semai. After finishing the semai
they are silent, but they hold the drone notes (aheng perdeler) and after
the vocalist sings another taksim they bring the fasıl to an end (Cantemir
ca. 1700:X:103).

Thus, the fasıl in the later seventeenth century had the following structure:
1. instrumental taksim
2. 1 or 2 peşrevs
3. vocal taksim
180 Chapter 4

4. beste
5. nakş
6. kar
7. semai
8. instrumental semai
9. vocal taksim
In the same chapter Cantemir had mentioned that there was a separate “fasıl
of the instrumentalist” (“fasl-i sazende”), which had consisted of a taksim, a
peşrev, and a semai. There was also a “fasıl of the vocalist” (“fasl-i hanende”) con-
sisting of only the vocal genres, beginning with a taksim and going through the
same order as the instrumentally accompanied fasıl (Cantemir ca. 1700:X:97). It
would probably be safe to conclude that the custom of grouping the composed
forms and taksims in a particular order developed in the course of the seven-
teenth century and reached a fixed format in the second half of the century.
The following distinctive features of the seventeenth century Ottoman fasıl
appear most significant:
1. Compositional genres become fewer than in the fifteenth and sixteenth
century.
2. Virtually all the classical genres are grouped in a single unit and per-
formed in cyclical fashion.
3. The concert-cycle is divided into parallel vocal and instrumental varieties.
4. Both vocal and instrumental improvisation occupy prominent places in
the concert-cycles. It is probable that the existence of a separate instru-
mental concert-cycle was made possible by the development of the
instrumental improvisation (taksim).
5. The predominant vocal forms in the fasıl (murabba beste and semai) were
created in Turkey, the beste in the seventeenth century, the semai perhaps
somewhat earlier. The other forms, kar and nakş, had developed in Iran
or Transoxiana in the fifteenth century.
6. For the first time in any Muslim art music, Turkish-language texts take
the leading position, along with Persian texts, while Arabic texts disap-
pear entirely.
The first five of these six points describe a musical structure which was sig-
nificantly different from anything previously used in the Irano-Turkic tradi-
tion. The fixing of the order of the cycle coincided with the limitation in the
number of genres to be included. While the large number of vocal genres
found in the treatises of Marāghī (eleven items) may not accurately reflect
general practice, the same number appear in Kaukabi (sixteenth century),
and seventeenth-century Persian sources still give at least eight or nine
genres: kar, qawl, amal, sawt, naqsh, rikhta, sājʿ, darbayn in Darvish Ali; kar,
The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 181

qawl, ghazal, tarana, rikhta, sawt, naqsh, naqshband, and dar-saqi in Nayini
(Jung 1989:158–60). The vocal amal was preceded by one or two instrumen-
tal tariqa/pişraws, and so might be considered a mini-cycle. Out of all these
genres, only the pişraw (peşrev) appears in the Ottoman fasıl. Cantemir’s list
contains only four composed forms, none of which had appeared in the nau-
bat al-murattaba or the amal, plus the semi-classical şarkı and the improvised
vocal taksim. Therefore, it cannot be cogent to claim that the fasıl arose out of
the naubat al-murattaba, or the amal, because the fasıl dropped every vocal
genre in these earlier forms, retaining only the instrumental prelude. The
seventeenth-century fasıl did employ two Iranian vocal genres, the kar and the
nakş, but these developed later than the naubat al-murattaba and they had not
been arranged cyclically in the earlier Iranian musical culture.
It is possible that the Ottomans may have been influenced by the cyclicity
of the naubat al-murattaba and the amal, but in order to posit a more direct
relationship, there would need to be a greater degree of continuity between
the actual compositional forms. This is especially true because the Ottomans
had previously performed the naubat al-murattaba and the amal. Thus, rather
than being a development of these earlier genres, the Ottoman fasıl repre-
sented a breaking away from them. The forms of the naubat al-murattaba
seem to have led to a new cyclical concert genre not in Ottoman Turkey but
in the cities of Transoxiana (Bukhara, Khiva) during the eighteenth century
(Jung 1989:237–42).
By the seventeenth century the fasıl genres are already standard and the
names of the earliest Turkish composers of these genres are recorded (e.g.
Sütcüzade İsa, Koca Osman). Thus, between the late sixteenth century and
the second half of the seventeenth century two important transitions had
occurred. First, most of the Iranian composed forms had been replaced by
Turkish forms, and then these Turkish forms had been arranged in a specific
order of performance. A third significant development, although this is less
amenable to precise dating and documentation, is the introduction of both
vocal and instrumental taksims into the performed cycle. There is no evidence
that a similar genre had been part of earlier Iranian performance practice. In
Ottoman Turkey the concept of cyclical performance developed simultane-
ously with that of the performance-generated taksim (cf. part 2, chapter 8).
The dominant composed forms of the fasıl, the beste, and the semai, both
employed gazel and murabba poetry in the Ottoman Turkish language as their
texts. While this has little overt musical significance, it marks a very signifi-
cant step in the conscious creation of a musical standard and style which were
independent of those in use in Iranian and Transoxanian courts. During the
first half of the seventeenth century, the Persian genres with their Persian texts
182 Chapter 4

remained influential. In 1627 and 1638 Murad IV brought back Persian musi-
cians from the South Caucasus and Baghdad, the latter group including several
famous singers. Although these were all apparently Turcophone individu-
als, they would not have been experts in the new Ottoman composed genres
which had developed in Istanbul. The mecmuas of the seventeenth century
record compositions in both the Persian and the Turkish language by these
musicians of Murad IV. In the anecdote from Cantemir’s “History” (1734), the
“noble Greek” sings a “Persian air” which pleases Emirgunoğlu and Murad IV.
However, the mecmuas of the second half of the seventeenth century (e.g.
Hafız Post) all contain a vast majority of Turkish texts for the Turkish composi-
tional forms. While Persian texts were the rule for the kar and not uncommon
for the nakş-semai of the eighteenth century, these forms and their Persian
texts constituted a small minority of the repertoire after 1700. The setting up
of the murabba beste as the leading form along with its Turkish language texts
paralleled the introduction of the cyclical fasıl format and the restructuring
of the instrumental ensemble, all of which broke the links which had bound
Turkey to Iran during the sixteenth century, and into the first half of the seven-
teenth century (Cevri in Ayan 1981:110–13; Feldman 2022:149–152).
By the second half of the eighteenth century the order and constitution of
the fasıl had changed, showing an expansion of the Turkish compositional
forms, and a retreat of the Iranian forms:
1. instrumental taksim
2. 1 peşrev
3. [vocal taksim]?
4. birinci beste or kar
5. ikinci beste
6. ağır semai
7. small suite (takım) of şarkı
8. Yürük semai
9. instrumental semai (saz semai)
10. [vocal taksim]?
The kar had become rare, the nakş had begun to merge with other genres,
while only the semai had developed into two separate genres, the ağir semai
and the yürük semai. The beste had remained one genre, but it became custom-
ary to perform one beste in a longer usul and slower tempo first (e.g. darbeyn,
zincir) and then a somewhat quicker beste second (in hafif or muhammes). If a
kar was performed it replaced the birinci beste. The şarkı was developing classi-
cal variants which could be introduced into the fasıl following the yürük semai.
The place of the taksims in the fasıl is not documented.
The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 183

The reduction in the number of peşrevs performed is also significant, During

the seventeenth century peşrevs had used both long and short usuls. It is prob-
able (although not documented) that the first Peşrev in the fasıl had used a lon-
ger and slower usul (darb-i feth, darbeyn, zincir, muhammes) while the second
peşrev employed a shorter or quicker usul (e.g. hafif, düyek, devr-i kebir, evsat,
devr-i revan).

2 The Fasl-i Sazende

Cantemir speaks of three types of fasıl—fasl-i hanende (“the vocalist’s fasıl”),

fasl-i sazende (“the instrumentalist’s fasıl”), and the fasl-i hanende vü sazende
maʿan (“fasıl of the vocalist and instrumentalist together”). Two sentences con-
tain all the information which Cantemir gives us about this musical format:
“The instrumentalist first performs a taksim, then he plays a peşrev. After the
peşrev he finishes with a semai” (Cantemir ca. 1700:X:103). “The instrumental-
ists’ taksim is not different from the vocalists’ taksim, so there is no need to
describe it” (ibid.:102).
He does, however, supply ample data about the three separate genres which
comprised the instrumental fasıl. Fifty years later, Charles Fonton described
the same type of fasıl at somewhat greater length. Fonton mentions the parts
of the peşrev, and then added that:

At the end of these four parts, there often comes a fifth, which is not the
air proper, but merely serves as a sort of hors d’oeuvre. It is called semâʾî
[semāʿī]. One might compare it to the “presto” which ends Italian sonatas.
It is normally more lively than the rest of the piece, and the measure is
usually different and quite brisk. It is, apparently, to awaken the listener
from the state which the spell of the music has created. The same thing
is done before the commencement of an air. It is preceded by a sort of
“caprice” called a taksim. This caprice must be in the same mode as the
air which will be played and in fact serves simply as a transition to it. It is
played by only one of the musicians assembled for the concert, while the
others play a kind of drone by playing continuously the tone on which
the taksim is based. There are some who succeed perfectly in these tak-
sims, which they prolong for whole hours entirely in the same mode,
which they embroider in a hundred different ways. It is in these caprices
that the taste and talent of the musician develops. It is not constrained by
measure, as are the peşrevs, because he may change it at will and because
184 Chapter 4

the taksim must not follow any of the usûls of which we have spoken
(Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:83/2).

While there may be some exaggeration in Fonton’s statement that the taksim
might last for “whole hours,” it is clear that the taksim was far more than a
“transition” to the “air,” because in sheer volume, the taksim might be many
times longer than the Peşrev and semai combined. In this format, the “airs” look
rather like postludes to the taksim. We also learn that the taksim was played
by one musician, while the others held a drone. Cantemir uses the singular
when describing the fasıl of the instrumentalist (sazende), but it is not clear
whether this kind of fasıl was associated with solo performance. Fonton spe-
cifically refers to the other musicians, who hold a drone behind the performer
of the taksim. In the drawing which he appends to his essay, Fonton depicts an
ensemble of five musicians—tanbur, ney, miskal, kemençe, and küdum. Earlier,
he spoke about the great masters disguising the meter in their performance,
but it is not clear whether he was referring to a solo performance, or a small
ensemble, led by a “great master” (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:78/1).
Although there were only two composed elements in the instrumental
cycle, the fasl-i sazende represented a major innovation in the art musics of
Western Asia. For the first time, instrumental music acquired its own format.
Popescu-Judetz correctly notes that: “The further development of Turkish
music demonstrates that Turkish music will surpass, in sophistication, other
styles because of the attention given to instrumental music” (1981:108).
As noted earlier, the reasons for the Ottoman development of instrumen-
tal music were various. One factor was the continuous musical tradition of
the Mevlevi dervishes, which laid particular emphasis on the reed-flute (ney),
and küdum (kettledrum), and on other instruments as well. Another was the
popular Anatolian affection for long-necked lutes, which were used both to
accompany songs (such the varsaği and türkü), and to accompany the ritual
(ayin) of the Alevi sect. Both the long-necked lute in the rural Alevi order and
the ney (and to some extent also the küdum) among the urban Mevlevis, had
acquired the status of “sacred instruments.” That is, in the rituals of these two
Turkish Sufi groups the ney, küdum, and saz are as indispensable parts of the
ritual equipment as were the sheep-skin mat (post), or the high felt hat (sikke)
of the Mevlevis.
Behind the preference for these instruments, and a tolerance, even respect
for several genres of instrumental music, there appears to have been a conflu-
ence of distinct ethnic and religious influences. One was the Turkic tradition
of polyphonic playing of non-dance melodies on long-necked lutes, which
is wide-spread in Central Asia as the küi (Uzbek, Kazakh), or the magham
The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 185

(Turkmen). Another was an esoteric Kurdish religious tradition of employ-

ing the Kurdish tanbur as a sacred instrument (During 1989:322–7), which
probably formed the substratum for the use of the saz in the Turkish Alevi
ceremonies.2 Yet another was the pan-Islamic tradition of playing the reed
flute in Sufi ceremonies. This combination of urban dervish and rural/popular
respect for instrumental music appears to have overcome much of the Muslim
suspicion of instruments. There may have been other factors at work, but these
alone would have raised the status of musical instruments in Ottoman soci-
ety. A Muslim society like the Ottoman which accepted the use of melodic
instruments for sacred purposes was unlikely to object to their use for pro-
fane purposes.3
We do not know whether the instrumental fasıl and the vocal fasıl arose
at the same time. The two major musical sources of the generation preced-
ing Cantemir, the writings and Collection of Bobowski and the “Seyahatname”
of Evliya Çelebi, supply no information about the instrumental fasıl, although
both mention the vocal fasıl. The instrumental fasıl established no new com-
posed items; both the peşrev and the semai also existed in the vocal fasıl.
Therefore, the fasl-i sazende was much less cyclical than the fasl-i hanende,
which consisted of seven separate composed items, plus three taksims in dis-
tinct positions in the cycle (i.e. instrumental taksim before the first peşrev,
vocal taksim before the beste, and vocal taksim after the saz semai).

2 On the little explored relations between the Kurdish and Guran Ahl-e Haqq of Iran and the
Zaza and Turkish Alevis of Turkey see Menteshashvili (1984:198).
3 We should also note that it was the three instruments ney, küdüm, and long-necked lute
saz/tanbur which had sacred status among dervishes that remained stable throughout the
history of Ottoman music. While the various bowed instruments beginning with the kobuz
(qobyz) had been the instruments of Central Asian Turkish shamans, no dervish order in
Turkey adopted the kobuz, ıklığ, or kemençe as a sacred instrument. It may be for this reason
that no bowed instrument retained its place in the Ottoman orchestra. Over a period of three
centuries, the bowed instruments were changed several times. Likewise, the secular prestige
of the ud and çeng did not prevent these instruments from disappearing entirely from the
orchestra. In this ensemble, the pride of place was held by the tanbur and the ney. During
the concert, these two instruments sat directly behind the singer, while the others sat behind
them. While the ud and çeng may have been excluded for purely musical reasons (see chapter
on instruments, pp. 154–6), there seems to be no such explanation for the secondary status of
the bowed instruments. In fact it may be the absence of an association of sacredness which
kept the fiddles in second place, and which allowed them to be changed according to the
taste of the era, even to the point of adopting the fiddles of the Franks and the Greeks (the
viola ďamore/ime kemâm, and the kemençe-i rumi).
186 Chapter 4

3 Structure of the Fasl-i Sazende

In the fasl-i sazende, the semai followed immediately after the peşrev. This
was the case in the seventeenth century, and evidently also in the middle of
the eighteenth century, when it was described by Fonton. To the Frenchman,
the semai was like a “fifth part” which succeeded the four parts (hanes) of the
peşrev, although it was not “the air proper.” In the 1780s, Toderini gave a notated
specimen of what he calls “concerto Turco—izia semaisi,” but does not say
where it was played in the fasıl (Toderini 1789:I:appendix). His mispronounced
name for the genre, may, however, reveal the change in nomenclature to the
modern term (izia semaisi < saz semaisi). Fonton gives the impression that the
semai was composed by the same musician who created the peşrev, although
he does not say so explicitly. In the seventeenth century, the relationship of
the composer in the fasl-i sazende appears to have been similar to that of the
fasl-i hanende. That is, the composer created individual items, usually not
entire cycles.
Neither Cantemir nor Bobowski connect the composers of the semais with
those of the peşrev. In Cantemir’s Collection, all of the semais in the old semai
usul are placed in one group between pages 125 and 135. Page 125 bears a large
title: “Maʿlūmāt Semāʿīyāt” (“The Known Semais”). Under this title the semai
tunes are grouped by makam:
1. finalis G: Rast, Rehavi, Pençgah, Mahur,
2. finalis B♭: Segah,
3. finalis F♯: Irak,
4. finalis A: Hicaz, Şuri, Neva, Sünbüle, Acem, Buselik, Beyati, Kürdi, Nühüft.
Some of the composers are mentioned; e.g. Ahmed Çelebi (Segah), Ali Hoca
(Acem), but not as a rule. This differs from his practice with the peşrevs, where
the composer is always listed after the makam and usul.
Following the treatise, Cantemir wrote a list of the items in his Collection,
grouped by makam. While the peşrevs are written in the middle of the pages,
the semais are confined to the margin, written diagonally near the appropriate
makam section. Page numbers of the Collection are listed rarely (to enable the
reader to locate the semai notation), and the number of composers do not match
the notations in many cases. Evidently, the author wrote the names of the com-
posers of semais which he knew or had heard. But, when he actually wrote the
notated Collection, he either failed to locate or lost interest in a number of the
semais which he had mentioned earlier, in the index. Therefore, it is frequently
impossible to know which semai he has written—there are more composers’
names than actual musical examples. It is also striking that Cantemir has only
notated a single semai of his own, in the terkib Geveşt (Centemir ca. 1700:148).
The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 187

Furthermore, he has no peşrev in Geveşt in his Collection. The later Turkish tra-
dition has “found” semais for most of the peşrevs ascribed to Cantemir. These
are generally extant in Hamparsum notation, along with these peşrevs. A num-
ber of these, such as the semais in Pençgah and Neva, are well-known classics
of the Turkish repertoire.
During the later eighteenth century, composers began to compose fasıls as
a single unit. The same process seems to have affected the instrumental fasıl,
and a number of pairs of peşrev and saz semai survive from that and later peri-
ods. Therefore, it would seem that the later tradition felt uncomfortable with
the peşrevs ascribed to Kantemiroğlu (and to other early masters, such as Beñli
Hasan, and Gazi Giray Han), if they had no semai to “complete” them.

4 The Mevlevi Ayin

Although the early history of the Mevlevi ayin is not as well-documented as

that of the courtly fasıl, it must be considered in describing the development
of cyclicity in Ottoman Turkish music. During the later eighteenth century the
ayin had the following structure:
1. Naat-i şerif: a pre-composed rubato form;
2. a taksim on the ney;
3. a peşrev in usul muzaaf devr-i kebir (56/4);
4. Selam-i Evvel in usul devr-i revan (14/8) or düyek (8/4);
5. Selam-i Sani in usul evfer (9/4);
6. Selam-i Salis beginning in usul devr-i kebir (28/4) and continuing in usul
semai (6/8);
7. Selam-i Rabi in usul evfer;
8. a taksim on the ney;
9. a son peşrev in usul düyek;
10. a son yürük semai (6/8).
Although the earliest notated Mevlevi ayin dates only from 1795, several ayins
are ascribed to well-known musical figures of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, including Itri, and Osman Dede. The earliest known composer was
Köçek Mustafa Dede (d. 1683). The ayin as a musical genre is mentioned in
seventeenth-century sources. Ayins had evidently been composed earlier than
the Bayati ayin of Mustafa Dede. Only three of these have survived in some-
what fragmentary form, but even these items should be taken as proof that the
ayin already existed in the early seventeenth century. It may never be possible
to discover the period in which the ayin as a musical genre was first employed,
but what is relevant for us is that the ayin certainly existed at the same period
188 Chapter 4

that the courtly fasıl was created, and there is reason to believe that it may be
somewhat older.
Prior to the beyati ayin of Köçek Mustafa three ayins survive today and are
known collectively as the “beste-i kadimler” or “ancient compositions.” An
expert on the music of the Mevlevis, Sadettin Heper had written of them:

These three Ayin-i Şerifs are the first composed Ayin-i Şerifs. It is sup-
posed that they were composed after the second half of the fifteenth
century. Despite all the researches undertaken by a great many experts
occupied with the history of Turkish music, they were unable to discover
any trace of the identity of the composers of these highly valuable works.
In both the old and new mecmuas instead of the names of their compos-
ers only the term “ancient compositions” is given. … What can be said
today is that from the stylistic point of view, these three ayins have played
a guiding role in the creation of the ayins which were composed after
them by many great masters until our time (Heper 1979:534).

The three beste-i kadimler are in the makams Pençgah, Hüseyni and Dügah (the
ancient Dügah = modern Uşşak). Of these only the first is complete, having all
four sections (selam). The Dügah ayini has three sections and the Hüseyni only
one. It is highly significant that the Mevlevi tradition did not invent compos-
ers to go along with the “ancient” ayin composition. While pseudographia was
a common phenomenon in the Ottoman secular musical tradition, evidently
the Mevlevi dervishes were able to tolerate the existence of compositions by
unknown composers, and even to allow them to remain fragmentary, without
composing appropriate second, third or fourth sections. These facts, and some
internal evidence, suggest that the Mevlevi attribution of these ancient com-
positions to a period prior to the seventeenth century must be taken seriously.
Another distinctive feature of the Mevlevi ayin is the attribution of each
ayin to a single composer. Beginning with Mustafa Dede, every ayin in the rep-
ertoire is the work of only one musician. This applied only to the vocal ayin
proper, the introductory Peşrev and closing peşrev and semai were taken from
other, often non-Mevlevi sources. The composition of the four selams of an
ayin by one individual meant that the ayin became the largest arena in which a
Turkish composer could expend his skill; it was the longest and most demand-
ing of all Ottoman compositional forms. During the seventeenth century it was
common for a secular composer to create individual fasıl items, rather than
entire fasıls, and it was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that
there is much evidence for musicians composing their fasıls from beginning
to end. In some rare cases (e.g. Tanburi İsak) this even included the peşrev and
The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 189

semai as well as the vocal items. Thus, from the point of view of the develop-
ment of composition, the Mevlevi ayin in the seventeenth century had already
reached a level of sophistication which the secular music was only to approach
over a century later.
The first, second and fourth sections of the ayin employ short rhythmic
cycles which were common in the kar and naqsh genres of the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries. These particular rhythmic cycles (devr-i
revan, evfer) do not seem to have been in common use prior to the sixteenth
century. Neither of them are mentioned by Marāghī, and only an usul named
rawan (but not evfer/ufar) makes its appearance in the fifteenth-century trea-
tise of Ladiki. This fact would suggest that the ayin, in the form in which it is
known today, could not have been created prior to the early sixteenth century.
The second selams of the Pençgah and Dügah ayins are in the usul evfer, using
nine beats. The second selam is considerably shorter than the first. Evfer was
considered a lighter usul, and it was commonly used in the nakş, but after the
end of the seventeenth century evfer was no longer used in the courtly fasıl at
all. Its permanent position in the second selam indicates that the model had to
have been created before, and in all likelihood considerably before that time.
Although the notated documents of the ayin are relatively late, the internal
structural evidence and larger circumstantial evidence point to the sixteenth
century as the period during which something resembling the known ayin
structure came into existence. While the ayin cannot be the focus of our atten-
tion in this study of instrumental court music, the development of the ayin is
significant for our topic because of the centrality of cyclical organization to the
genre, because of the use of the instrumental peşrev and semai in both fasıl and
semai, and because of the importance of the taksim in the ceremony. Thus, by
the later seventeenth century there were apparently two distinct cyclical con-
cert forms in Turkey; a courtly fasıl and a Mevlevi dervish form termed the ayin.
Both fasıl and ayin begin with the instrumental peşrev and close with the
instrumental semai. The Sufi origin of the term semai also reinforces the likeli-
hood that the semai may have been borrowed by the court musicians from the
Mevlevi ayin (see Part 3, chap. 7 on semai). The sections (selams) of the ayin
exhibit a fixed succession of rhythmic cycles. In modern practice, improvised
taksims are performed prior to the peşrev, and following the last semai, some-
times also after the semai which is played to close a series of ilahi hymns. In
the vocal fasıl as well, the taksim preceded the peşrev, which was followed by a
vocal taksim. Like the ayin, the fasıl had closed with a (vocal) taksim.
In the modern Mevlevi tradition, the taksim occupies a distinct posi-
tion. Many descriptions and anecdotes survive from the nineteenth century
and well into the present time testifying to the ability of Mevlevi neyzens to
190 Chapter 4

create elaborate taksims. These taksims might be performed during the ayin
ceremony or else in a wide variety of settings. The ney taksim was not only a
part of the ayin—it was (and is) a developed and independent art form and it
was appreciated as such by Mevlevis and Turks of many cultural backgrounds.
The importance of instrumental music to the Mevlevis can be seen continu-
ously from the lifetime of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī through his son Sultan Veled,
in the works of the fifteenth-century poet Ayni, and on into modern times.
Unfortunately, specific references to the taksim genre, which are found in secu-
lar Ottoman and foreign sources starting with the seventeenth century (Evliya,
Cantemir, Hızır Ağa, Fonton) have not yet been identified in the early Mevlevi
literature. Nevertheless, we should assume that the special position of the ney
taksim among the Mevlevis, whose best performers often were employed by
the court, could only lead to the increased development of the genre in courtly
music. While there is no evidence to suggest that the taksim originated among
Mevlevis, they may have institutionalized and developed it earlier than the
courtly music did. Apart from the independent performance of the taksim,
the Mevlevis also institutionalized the ney taksim at specific points during the
ayin. Among Mevlevis today the ney taksim precedes the peşrev, whereas in the
fasıl it had succeeded it, and the fasıl employed both vocal and instrumental
taksims while the ayin has only the instrumental kind. Thus, it does not appear
that the taksim was borrowed by one genre into the other, but that the concep-
tualization of the uses of the taksim were similar in the ayin and the fasıl, and
that special non-cyclical performance of the taksim received stimulation from
the Mevlevi ney taksim.
The Mevlevi ayin was conceived of both as a ritual which would benefit the
participants and as a spiritual concert like the medieval Sufi samāʿ, a “spiritual
audition,” which would spread spiritual benefit ( feyz) among the audience as
well. Unlike the medieval Sufi samāʿ, the audience of the Mevlevi samāʿ was
not restricted; women and non-Muslims were allowed to observe the rituals
in Istanbul. Some larger Mevlevi tekkes were constructed with both a musi-
cians’ gallery and a clearly demarcated space for a non-participating audience.
Thus, while the samāʿ/ayin was a religious ritual, it functioned as a concert. In
this respect it differed from the religious rituals of Orthodox Sunni Muslims,
Orthodox Christians or Jews, which, while not prohibiting the presence of
non-believers, did not encourage their presence. Likewise, the fasl-i meclis
at the court, or at a private mansion, was essentially a closed event. In this
situation, the only public art-musical event in pre-nineteenth-century Turkey
was the Mevlevi ayin performance.
Despite the fact that during the later seventeenth century the composers of
ayins such as Mustafa Dede, Osman Dede, and Itri were also composers of the
The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin 191

courtly fasıl, the courtly fasıl and the Mevlevi ayin were two distinct musical
structures. After this period the only major borrowing from one genre to the
other is the adoption of the new form of Peşrev in the new usul devr-i kebir
and some secular semai melodies into the Mevlevi repertoire, which occurred
during the second half of the eighteenth century, apparently. The features held
in common by fasıl and ayin must therefore predate the seventeenth century.
The conclusions which can be reached are:
1. The Mevlevi ayin was attaining its known form during the sixteenth
century.
2. The courtly fasıl was attaining its known form during the last decades of
seventeenth century.
3. The structure of the vocal items within the ayin differs in essential
respects from the items of the fasıl.
4. Both the instrumental and the vocal semai appear to have entered the
fasıl from the ayin.
5. The instrumental taksim has a rather similar function in both fasıl
and ayin.
The two principal venues for makam music in Turkey, the courtly fasıl and the
Mevlevi Sufi ayin were characterized by strictly cyclical formats. The nature
of these two cycles had no close precedent in the earlier Muslim art and Sufi
musics. Part of the generic distinctiveness of Ottoman music throughout its
history from the late seventeenth century until the early twentieth century has
been its insistence upon cyclical arrangement for musical performances.
Part 2
Makam

∵
 Chapter 5

The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century

Ottoman Music

Several related concepts of scale existed in seventeenth-century Ottoman

music. While indigenous terminology existed only for some of them, we may
extract five sets of concepts:
1. The “general scale” (the “echelle generale” of d’Erlanger, cf. Powers
1980a:424) of all nominally designated pitches in the gamut;
2. The “basic scale” formed from the pitches known as “whole notes” (tamam
perde) or basic scale degrees;
3. The “half notes” or secondary scale degrees (nim perde), which could not
form scales on their own;
4. The construction of “particular scales” (“gammes particulières”) out of
basic notes alone or with one or more secondary scale degree, and
5. The placement of various particular scales on specific degrees of the
“general scale.”
Cantemir divided his general scale into what he called “tamam perdeler” (liter-
ally “whole frets” or “whole tones”) and “na-tamam” or “nim perdeler” (literally
“incomplete” or “half” frets or tones). The tamam perdeler can function as the
finalis (karar) of a makam, while the na-tamam or nim perdeler can only very
rarely assume this function.1 Scales can be (and were) formed entirely out of
the basic scale degrees, but never out of secondary scale degrees.
The terms tamam perde and nim perde can be misleading if they are thought
of as whole steps and half steps of the scale, for as will be seen below, despite
the many cases when they may be seen this way (e.g. rast (G) to dügah (A) is
a whole step, or dügah (A) to nihavend (B♭) is a half step), this is not always
the case. Therefore, it is preferable to translate his tamam perde as “basic scale
degree” and na-tamam or nim perde as “secondary scale degree.”
For Cantemir the note dügah (A) was the “gateway” and “measure” of music,
and so it is advisable to view his basic scale as one octave from dügah to
muhayyer, plus a fifth below (from yegah to dügah) and a fourth above, from
muhayyer to tiz hüseyni. The fundamental octave is divided into seventeen
notes of which eight are tamam perdeler and seven are na-tamam perdeler. The

1 These exceptions are the na-tamam perde buselìk (B) which can be the finalis of the makam
Nişabur, and uzzal (c·) which is the finalis of the terkib Hicaz.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_009

196 Chapter 5

lower fifth is composed of four tamam perdeler and three na-tamam perdeler,
while the upper fourth is composed of four tamam perdeler and five na-tamam
perdeler (Tab. 2.1).
There are the following whole steps from dügah to muhayyer: 1. dügah (A)
to buselik (B), 2. çargah (c) to neva (d), 3. neva to hüseyni (e), 4. acem (f) to
gerdaniye (g) and 5. gerdaniye to muhayyer (a). Four of these five whole steps
are separated from each other by two na-tamam perdeler, the exception is ger-
daniye and muhayyer, separated by only one na-tamam perde. Cantemir him-
self tells us nothing precise about the relative size of any of these intervals.2
Cantemir grouped his modal entities into four essential categories:
1. Müfred (“independent”) makam (or simply, makam) using “basic”
scale degrees,
2. Makams using “secondary” scale degrees,
3. Mürekkeb (“compound”) makams, and
4. Terkibs (“compound,” “combination”).
The first two categories involve scale, in that he uses scalar criteria to distin-
guish them. All of the “basic” (tamam) scale degrees from aşiran (E) to neva (d)
were the final tones (karar) of makams of the “basic” scale degrees. These
makams are named after the notes on which they conclude: Aşiran (on E), Irak
(on F♯), Rast (on G), Dügah (on A), Segah (on B♭), Çargah (on c), and Neva
(on d; which might also conclude on A, however). Above neva (d), the makams
are named after the notes on which they begin (ağaze), rather than after their
finalis: Hüseyni, beginning on e (hüseyni) and ending on A; Evc, beginning on f♯,
and ending on F♯; Gerdaniye, beginning on g and ending on A; and Muhayyer,
beginning on a and ending on A (see Signell 1977:26–6). Although he never
uses a word equivalent to “scale,” Cantemir’s melodic progressions (hareket,
lit. “movement”) for these makams explain them as a sequence of “basic” scale
degrees. When he explained that Irak was a makam of tamam perdeler, con-
cluding on the note ırak. (F♯), or that Rast was a makam of tamam perdeler
concluding on the note rast (G), he gave all the necessary information about
the pitches which these makams employed. For example, about the makam
Çargah, he wrote: “The makam Çargah is a great makam employing basic scale
degrees. It takes its own note as the axis of the circle, and whether ascending
or descending, it announces itself by means of the note çargah (c)” (Cantemir
ca. 1700:III:29).

2 The Western pitches given here are those employed in modern Turkish convention, but the
actual note played today is a fourth or a fifth higher; written A (dügah) equals played d (Re)
or e (Mi).
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 197

After mentioning its finalis, and whether it used only basic, or also one or
more secondary, scale degrees, Cantemir then describes the melodic progres-
sion of each modal entity. The second category of makams employed one, or
sometimes two nim perde in its scale. To Cantemir, and to the eighteenth-century
writers after him (e.g. Harutin, Hızır Ağa), the tamam perdeler formed a special,
primary set of notes, from which the other notes diverged. The use of the word
tamam, “whole,” “complete,” “sound” as opposed to nim, “half,” “incomplete”
indicates that the tamam perdeler were given a privileged position within the
music. This concept is borne out by the repertoire of the seventeenth century,
which favored the makams of the basic scale degrees. The most widely used
makams were Hüseyni, Rast, Irak, Neva, Segah. Certain makams of secondary
scale degrees had substantial repertoires, although smaller than those of the
former group: Beyati, Saba, Acem, Uzzal. From these usages we can extract a
concept of what we might term a “basic” scale, consisting of all of the tamam
perdeler from yegah (D) to tiz neva (d’). Cantemir is able to describe the scales
of each makam in his first category by stating where the makam begins, and
then in which direction it moves, using the basic scale degrees. For example,
the makam Gerdaniye: “Therefore the makam Gerdaniye begins its melodic
line from the note gerdaniye (g) and descends by means of basic scale degrees
to evc, hüseyni, neva, çargah, and segah and concludes upon the note dügah”
(Cantemir ca. 1700:IV:34).

1 Nomenclature of Scale Degree and Mode

The identity of makam and note names3 proves that the particular scales
(makams, avazes, şubes and terkibs) were positioned upon particular degrees
of the general scale. During the twentieth century, the system of note/makam
names is established, and has been well documented in Turkey and in those
Arab countries which have a long history as an integral part of the Ottoman
State, i.e. Syria (Lebanon/Palestine) and Egypt. The Turkish and Arab nomen-
clature differs only slightly. Both Persian and Arabic names are used, but
the core of the old basic scale uses only Persian names: rāst (“right”), dügah
(< P. du-gāh = A. dūkāh, “second place”), segah (< P. sih-gāh = A. sīkāh, “third
place”), çargah (< P. chahār-gāh = A. jahārkāh, “fourth place”), etc. Since Persian
was rarely used as a literary or scientific language in Arabic-speaking countries

3 In the following, note names are written lower case whereas makam names are written
upper case.
198 Chapter 5

apart from Iraq, the use of Persian names would seem to rule out Syria or Egypt
as the point of origin for the system.
The texts of the Systematist tradition, whether written in Arabic or Persian,
do not mention this system, and do not indicate where the pardas (primary
modes) and shoʿbas (secondary modes) were placed. ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī
(d. 1435) still employed the older Perso-Arabic system of letter combinations to
indicate the notes of the general scale and of the various particular scales with-
out linking these notes to the names of the modal entities. Among Marāghī’s
twelve pardas only four have names which later became final notes of the
Turkish basic scale (Nava, Rast, Hoseyni, Iraq = Neva, Rast, Hüseyni, Irak). The
names for the later basic scale degrees occur here as shoʿbas: Dügah, Segah,
Çargah, Pençgah, Aşiran, Evc, along with other names which never were used
to indicate notes, e.g. Nühüft, Nevruz-i Hara, Müberka, as well as names which
later became scale degrees which could not be used as finalis, e.g. Saba, Beyati,
Uzzal, etc. The existence of such Persian names as Dügah (“second place”),
Segah (“third place”), Çargah (“fourth place”) and Pençgah (“fifth place”) sug-
gests that these names were in use for degrees of the scale, at least in Iran
and Baghdad. However, Marāghī’s classification of modal names indicates that
the strict association of certain names with degrees of the general scale could
not have yet existed. According to the post-fifteenth-century system, these
numbered modal names could not be considered as secondary modal entities
(shuʿba) because they were associated with basic scale degrees.
The fifteenth-century Transoxanian theorist al-Ḥusaynī criticizes Marāghī
for failing to indicate the tabaqāt (“levels”) at which the pardas (modes) were
played, but he does not indicate a system of nominally equivalent pardas and
notes (Husayni 1987:56). The earliest identified reference to such a system was
written by ʿAbdallāh al-Mārdīnī (d. 1406). According to Shiloah, al-Mardini
states that “a mode is determined by its finalis (mahatt)” (Shiloah 1979:277).
This is an early appearance of the term “mahatt,” which became standard in
the Turkish-language treatises of the fifteenth century, and which would be
replaced in the seventeenth century by the term “karar.” Mārdīnī states that
“all modes refer to a basic scale degree, called by the Arabs yeka and the Persian
ra‌ʾs al-hanak” (Shiloah 1979:277). It appears that the manuscript has reversed
the Arabic and Persian terms. While ra‌ʾs al-hanak (“head of the palate”?) is an
obscure technical term, yeka (< P. yek-gāh, “first place”) is a note name. This
reference by Mārdīnī proves that a note-name system was employed by the
Persians. The existence of the term “raʾs al-hanak” seems to refer to the begin-
ning of the principal octave (later on G = rast), but it does not show whether
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 199

or not the other scale degrees were named, or whether these names were con-
nected with the makams.
A fully-developed system linking note names and modal names first
appears in a treatise written in the Turkish language by Hızır bin Abdullah
around the year 1440 for the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (1421–1451). During the
fifteenth century it was employed in several Ottoman treatises written in the
Turkish language, e.g. “al-Maṭlaʿ ” of Seydi, and the late fifteenth-century trea-
tises by Rühperver and Şeyhi. It seems that the emergence of the term makam
(< A. maqam) to replace the older parda and shedd is connected with the new
system of note-makam names. The most complete discussion of this issue is
found in Oransay (1966:71–81), who notes that: “‘Makam’ means literally ‘place,
spot, state.’ As a technical term of music the word was derived from the ‘seat’
of the melody, i.e. from the single tone upon which the melody rests, or some-
times the final tone or the melodic dominant” (Oransay 1966:71).
The Ottoman musical treatises of the fifteenth century show both a new
system of correlation of the notes names and mode names, and a new term for
mode, makam. As Oransay suggests, the adoption of this new terminology was
not accidental; the word “makam” defined the mode by its position (makam)
upon the general scale. Other explanations for the word “makam” (e.g. as “mys-
tical state”) probably existed among Sufis, but only as a mystical interpretation
of the established musical meaning. (The explanation of makam as the “place”
where the musician performed, occasionally heard today, is absurd, in that it
implies that musicians performed each makam seated at a different “place.”)
The Ottoman treatises written in Arabic, i.e. those of al-Ladiki and Şirvani,
adhere to earlier Systematist usage and do not mention the note/makam
names. It is therefore clear that the note/makam-note system was not part of
classical Muslim musicological theory, whether written in the Arabic or the
Persian languages. In twentieth-century Iran, the note-names are not known,
French solfège terms are in use instead. However, the Ottoman Armenian
musician Harutin, who lived in Iran from 1736 to 1738, relates that at that time
the Persians used note-names. He begins with the basic scale degrees:

What we call rast (G) in Iran they name yegāh

What we call yegāh (D) in Iran they name pas-panjgāh
The first note of the octave we call rast
The second note we call dügāh (A). In Iran they call it the same.
The third note we call segāh (B♭). In Iran they call it the same.
The fourth note we call çārgāh (c). In Iran they call it the same.
200 Chapter 5

The fifth note we call nevā (d). In Iran they call it panjgāh.
The sixth note we call hüseynī (e). In Iran they call it shashgāh.
The seventh note we call evc (f♯), In Iran they call it haftgāh.
The eighth note we call gerdanīye (g). In Iran they call it hashtgāh
Harutin 1968:74

Unfortunately, Harutin does not give the Iranian names for the secondary
scale degrees. In the modern dastgah system, only Segah seems to preserve its
connection with the older note-name, but not Chahargāh (Çargah) or Dugah.
The modern dastgah system does not possess modes named after the notes
shashgāh, haftgāh or hashtgāh. It seems that the Persians had possessed a sys-
tem of numerical note-names for the basic scale but did not usually connect
these nominally with modal entities.
Outside of the Ottoman Empire, the connection of note-names and modal
entities is found east of Iran. Several frets of the modern Uighur tanbur (in
Chinese Turkestan) are named after the muqams which end on these notes.
I have documented six note/makam (muqam) names on the Uighur tanbur,
in ascending order: bäyat, muşävräk, uzzal, çäpbäyat, näva, eçem (Khashimov,
oral communication 1990). According to Otanazar Matyakubov, something
like this system had been in use in Uzbekistan but had become virtually
extinct now because the musical policies of the Stalin era obliged Uzbek and
Tajik musicians to transpose for the greater convenience of the directors of
official choruses and orchestras which use both traditional and reconstructed
instruments (Matyakubov, oral communication 1990). This subject requires
greater research, but it is clear that a system of note/makam names (and not
only numerical names) has existed in modern times among the art musics of
Central Asian Turks. These systems are not dependent on the Ottoman sys-
tem, nor can they be derived from either the medieval theory or practice of
Persian music.
The possibility that these systems, including the Uighur, Uzbek/Tajik, and
the Ottoman, may ultimately derive not from a Middle Eastern but from a
Central Asian source is suggested by the use of named notes among the pro-
fessional lute musics of the Turkmens and Kazakhs. Among these recently
nomadic Turkic groups, there is no codified modal system. However, both
Kazakhs and Turkmens divide the neck of their respective lutes into three
sections. The neck of the Kazakh dombra is divided into sagha, orta, and bas
sections. The küi melodies of the professional dombra repertoire all were
meant to have three parts, which were played on the three sections of the
dombra (Mukhambetova 1989:236). Certain names for individual frets (perne)
are still in use. Recent research in Kazakhstan has uncovered the entire
system of note-names formerly in use in Central and Eastern Kazakhstan
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 201

(Asimqulov 1989; Seyidimbekov 1991), including microtonal steps (qaşağan)

between B and c and between e and f. However, the Kazakhs do not possess
a makam system, and these names are not connected with specific melodies
which rest upon them.4
Uspenski, writing in 1928, had claimed that the names for the frets of the
Turkmenian dutar were already going out of use, but Zerańska-Kominek
(1990) has been able to supply a complete set of note-names. These are divided
into the lower group called shirvan perde, a higher group called bäsh perde,
and two notes in the middle (bäsh, gökleng) without a specific group name.
The Turkmen bäkhshi musicians employ three principal tunings, which cor-
respond to the three areas of the dutar neck (Zerańska-Kominek 1990:106).
Different melodies (mağam) are pitched on specific frets along the dutar neck.
The entire Turkmenian dutar repertoire is classified according to the three tun-
ings and the three sections of the neck of the instrument.
Even in this incomplete state of documentation, it can be seen that both
the urban and the nomadic lute traditions of Central Asian Turkic peoples
have established a terminology for the relationship either of parts of a single
melody (Kazakh), different melodies (Turkmen), or different modal cycles
(Uighur) with the sections of the lute-neck. In the case of the Uighurs, this even
includes specific names for frets and modal cycles (muqam). While all this is
not definite proof, it suggests that the distinction of modal entities according
to the place of their finalis on the general scale, which has been an essential
feature of Ottoman and Arabian music since the fifteenth century, may ulti-
mately derive from musical conceptions which the early Ottomans had shared
with other Turkic peoples.

2 Cantemir’s General Scale

Cantemir did not follow the Systematist practice of indicating the intervals of
his scale by means of string ratios, or any other system of exact measurement.
He was content to give the names of the notes when describing the tuning of
the tanbur or the many modal progressions which constitute the substance of
Chapters three, four, five, and six. All later treatises in Turkish or Arabic follow
the same custom, until Rauf Yekta, writing at the beginning of the twentieth
century, attempted to establish the intervals of the general scale on a math-
ematical basis.

4 Among western Kazakhs, the word maqam is used for melodies of the epical repertoire, e.g.
Goroĝli Maqamy.
202 Chapter 5

Cantemir introduced the general scale of Turkish music on the first page of
his treatise:

It is possible to place a limitless number of notes into the science of

music, so that from one point of view music is unbounded, and at which-
ever instrument we look, notes may be placed in imitation of the melody
which issues from the throat of a human being. The instrument called
tanbur is the most perfect and complete of all the instruments which we
know or have seen, because it performs completely and without fault all
the sounds and melodies which appear by means of the breath of Man.
The following are the notes which are placed on this instrument:
[1] yegah, [2] aşiran, [3] acem aşirani, [4] ırak, [5] rehavi, [6] rast,
[7] zirgüle, [8] dügah, [9] nihavend, [10] segah, [11] buselik, [12] çar-
gah, [13] saba, [14] neva, [15] beyati, [16] hüseyni, [17] acem, [18] evc,
[19] mahur, [20] gerdaniye, [21] şehnaz, [22] muhayyer, [23] sünbüle,
[24] tiz segah, [25] tiz buselik, [26] tiz çargah, [27] tiz saba, [28] tiz
neva, [29] tiz beyati, [30] tiz hüseyni.
Know that although this instrument has this many notes, however when
the melody goes down or up, due to the secondary scale degrees (nim
perdeler) the number of notes needs to be symbolized by a greater num-
ber or letters, which are the following:
yegah [D], aşiran [E], acem aşirani [F], ırak [F♯], rehavi [F ], rast [G],
zirgüle [G ], dügah [A], nihavend [B♭], segah [B ], buselik [B], çar-
gah [c], saba [d♭],5 uzzal [c♯], [15] neva [d], beyati [e♭], hisar [e ],
hüseyni [e], acem [f], evc [f♯], mahur [f ], gerdaniye [g], şehnaz [g ],
muhayyer [a], sünbüle [b♭], tiz segah [b ], tiz buselik [b], tiz çargah [c’],
tiz saba [c♯’], tiz uzzal [d♭’], tiz neva [d’], tiz beyati [e♭’], tiz hüseyni [e’]
A number of the above-mentioned thirty-three letters are basic scale
degrees and a number are secondary scale degrees.
There are sixteen letters for the basic scale degrees:
yegah, aşiran, ırak, rast, dügah, segah, çargah, neva, hüseyni, evc, ger-
daniye, muhayyer, tiz segah, tiz çargah, tiz neva, tiz hüseyni
There are seventeen secondary scale degrees:
acem aşirani, rehavi, zirgüle, nihavend, buselik, saba, beyati, acem,
mahur, şehnaz, sünbüle, tiz buselik, tiz saba, tiz beyati

5 As will be explained in the following section, the intervals represented by Cantemir’s saba
and uzzal are not entirely clear. According to their position on the tanbür neck, saba should
be written as cŕ and uzzal as dk However, such usage would be so exotic from the modem
Turkish point of view that I have retained the modern conventions, except that saba is writ-
ten as a simple flat (l·).
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 203

Cantemir presents us with a visual image of the placement of the notes on

the neck of the fretted tanbur (Tab. 2.1). All of the sixteen tamam perdeler and
the seventeen na-tamam perdeler mentioned above are shown on the dia-
gram of the tanbur. However, Cantemir’s second list of notes contains three
new names—uzzal, hisar, and tiz uzzal. These are not among his seventeen
na-tamam perdeler. Although he tells us that the basic fretting of the tanbur
did not contain these three notes, the diagram of the tanbur shows frets in
place for all three. Symbols existed for these notes, and his transcriptions make
frequent use of one of them—the note uzzal, and occasionally also hisar.
Somehow, he considered these three notes to be less essential to the group of
secondary scale degrees. This may be meant to indicate that not all musicians
fretted their tanburs for these notes, perhaps because they had become estab-
lished rather recently as discreet pitches with their own names.
No tanbur from the early eighteenth century has survived. According to
Necdet Yaşar, the oldest tanbur he had seen and played was from the late
eighteenth century, and had belonged to Sultan Selim III (Yaşar, oral com-
munication 1988). The numerous painted examples portray an instrument
of essentially similar neck-length as modern instruments. There were four
courses of doubled strings, Cantemir tells us that the first pair was tuned to
yegah (D) and the second (the aheng telleri, “sympathetic strings”) could be
tuned either to dügah (low A) or to çargah (C) (Cantemir ca. 1700:I:3). Today
the yegah/dügah tuning is still standard. Yegah/rast is common for playing
makams with finalis rast (G) or segah (B ). Yegah/çargah is rare, but Necdet
Yaşar occasionally uses it (Yaşar, oral communication 1988). The melody was
played only on the first course of strings, but on occasion a player might go
below the pitch of the open strings (D) to reach the note nerm çargah (C):

Table 2.1 The fretting of the Ottoman tanbur. Cantemir: “Kitabu İlmu’l Musiki Ala
Vechi’l-Hurufat” (Cantemir ca. 1700)

(D)a yegah ___________

___________ aşiran (E)
___________ acem aşirani (F)
(F♯) ırak ___________
(F ) rehavi ___________
___________ rast (G)
(G♯) zengüle ___________

a The notes of the basic scale, the tamam perdeler (basic scale degrees) are printed in boldface.
204 Chapter 5

Table 2.1 The fretting of the Ottoman tanbur (cont.)

(A) dügah ___________

___________ nihavend (B♭)
___________ segah (B )
(B) buselik ___________
(c) çargah ___________
___________ saba (d♭)
(c♯)* Uzzal ___________
___________ neva (d)
(d ) ___________ beyati (e♭)
(e ) hisar ___________
(e) hüseyni ___________
___________ acem (f)
___________ evc (f♯)
(f ) mahur ___________
(g) gerdaniye ___________
(g ) şehnaz ___________
___________ muhayyer (a)
___________ sünbüle (b♭)
(b ) tiz segah ___________
(b) tiz buselik ___________
___________ tiz çargah (e’)
___________ tiz saba (d♭)*
(c♯)* tiz uzzal ___________
(d’) tiz neva ___________
___________ tiz beyati (e♭’)
___________ tiz hüseyni (e’)

b The asterisked notes were considered to be supplementary by Cantemir.

In addition to these there is another note [below] yegah which is the note
nerm çargah (“low çargah”). Due to the fact that this symbol does not
correspond to a note on the tanbur, it is necessary that one press on the
dügah sympathetic string (aheng teli) so that the tone of nerm çargah
[below] the note rast is played (Cantemir ca. 1700:I:2).

Virtually the entire repertoire notated in Cantemir’s Collection can be per-

formed with the notes from yegah (D) to tiz neva (d’).
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 205

Table 2.2 General scale according to Seydi (late fifteenth century)

evc b’
muhayyer a
gerdaniye g
hisar f♯
isfahan
hüseyni e
pençgah d
çargah c
segah B
dügah A
rast G
ırak F♯
acem E
maye D

By comparing the scales given by Seydi (late fifteenth century)6 and

Cantemir as well as their modal progressions (modern Turkish seyir), we can
determine that the notes of the basic scale had not changed significantly since
the fifteenth century. The secondary scale degrees, however, have undergone
considerable change. It is possible to compile a comparative list of the gen-
eral scale degrees derived from Seydi’s chart of the tabakat and Cantemir’s
first chapter (see previous page). The probable affinity of Seydi’s system with
Iranian usage is evidenced by the appearance of hisar for evc (f♯), and pençgah
for neva, both of which were documented in early eighteenth-century Iran by
Harutin. In Seydi’s system, some of the nim perdeler appear where they do in
Cantemir (e.g. buselik above segah, hicaz above çargah, but under saba), but
usually they appear in quite different places: neva below ırak, rehavi below
dügah, zengule below segah, etc. With the information we have at present it
seems unlikely that we will be able to interpret most of these usages of the
secondary scale degrees in Seydi or other fifteenth-century Turkish theorists.
These differences in nomenclature were remarked upon in the mid- eigh-
teenth century by Hizir Ağa, who viewed them as one of the factors which
necessitated the writing of a new book of music:

6 Described in Popescu-Judetz 1973:59. I am using Topkapı Sarayı, Ahmed III no. 3459.
206 Chapter 5

In the treatises of Şeyh-i Musikar7 the names of several notes are

described with names and expressions which in our time are incompre-
hensible. … In the old treatises tiz segah is connected with the note evc,
but in our time they call the tiz segah the upper octave of the note segah
(Hızır Ağa n.d.:2).

However, we can conclude that Seydi is showing more than a system for count-
ing the notes: makam names have already replaced the number-names in cer-
tain degrees of the scale, e.g. hüseyni for şeşgah (sixth place), hisar for heftgah
(seventh place). In the case of the makam Hüseyni, Seydi’s very brief poetic
description does not inform us whether his makam shared all the notes of the
later makam of that name. We can only affirm that it commenced on the note
called hüseyni (e) and concluded on dügah (A). Nevertheless, this information
shows that in the fifteenth century there was a makam called Hüseyni which
was centered on the fifth note above dügah, and which took over the name
(şeşgah) which had formerly been assigned to this note. There can be little
doubt that this reflects the beginning of the system of the nominal identity of
note and makam. Although Marāghī had died only in 1435, the fact that this sys-
tem is not present in his writings indicates either that it developed in the gener-
ation after his death, or that it developed first in Anatolia. Although Bobowski’s
collection (ca. 1650) has no treatise attached, the fact that his makam names
are identical to Cantemir’s indicates that this system was already established
by the beginning of the seventeenth century.
From the point of view of the modern Turco-Arabian system, two major
divergences are immediately apparent. The first is the low number of notes
per octave, seventeen in the basic octave as opposed to twenty-four in the “offi-
cial” theory of the modern system, and considerably more in modern practice.
The second divergence is the classification of the notes segah (B one comma
flat in the modern Turkish theory) and evc (a fifth up from segah), (f raised

7 “Şeyh-i Musikar” appears to be a generalized name for the writers of early Turkish treatises.
Cantemir uses the term in this way in the eighth chapter of his treatise:
“They relate that in the early times there had been a great personage by the name of
Şeyh-i Musikar. This Şeyh was so knowledgeable and perfect in the science of music that his
thoughts and intellect were immersed day and night in the ocean of the science of music and
he was busy bringing into the view of science those makams and terkibs which were buried
within it” (Cantemir ca. 1700:VIJI:64).
Elsewhere, in his “History” he speaks of a “Hodgia Musicar” who is certainly none other than
ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī. This is also the “Hodgia” of Charles Fonton. However, the material in
Cantemir’s eighth chapter resembles the fifteenth-century Turkish treatises, not the treatises
of Marāghī. Likewise, the remarks of Hızır Ağa about the notes evç tiz segah refer to these
Turkish sources (e.g. Seydi) and not to Marāghī.
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 207

by four commas) as tamam perdeler while their immediate neighbors buselik

(modern B) and mahur (f raised by five commas) are classified as na-tamam
perdeler. Cantemir never explains his reasoning in this choice. Forty years later,
Harutin divided the general scale in the same manner (Harutin 1968). It is clear
from the Cantemir Collection that the notes segah and evç were far more com-
mon in the repertoire than were buselik and mahur. The Ottoman theorists
of the eighteenth century (Kemani Hızır Ağa and Abdülbaki Nasır Dede) are
silent on this issue, as is Haşim Bey in the middle of the nineteenth century.
However, when the question of finding a scientific staff notation for Turkish
music arose in the early twentieth century, the major theorist Rauf Yekta Bey
implicitly followed Cantemir by including the note segah in the basic scale
so that it would require no accidental. Yekta’s transcriptions published in the
1920s and 1930s have no accidental for segah but require one for buselik (B). In
the 1940s Sadettin Arel, in an attempt to bring Turkish music closer into accord
with Western music, invented a makam which he termed “Çargah” which was
equivalent to a C major scale, and claimed that this was the basis of the basic
scale of Turkish music. Arel’s position has prevailed since that time so that
today the note segah requires an accidental.8 It will be shown below that there
is good reason to believe that the notes called ırak, segah, and evc by Yekta
and Arel (and all twentieth-century musicians) were not the same as the notes
known by those names in Cantemir’s time. Ekrem Karadeniz created an alter-
native series of symbols for these notes, and Yalçın Tura employed yet another
series in his transcriptions from the Cantemir Collection. The disagreement
about these notes is a good indication that these particular basic scale degrees
have not been stable over the centuries. In this they resemble not the other
basic scale degrees, but rather the secondary scale degrees, which were clearly
different in 1450 and 1600, and again in 1800.

3 The Problem of the Note Segah

The fretting of the tanbur in Cantemir appears to be deficient when compared

with modern Turkish theory, which divides whole steps into four intervals, or
modern practice, which has at least five, while Cantemir gives only three. The
closest parallel to the fretting of the seventeenth-century Ottoman tanbur is
not found in modern Turkish tanbur fretting but rather in the Iranian setar.
The setar divides each whole step into three intervals. Today the two lower

8 See Signell (1977:2Ö–3 9), and the Turkish sources mentioned there. This issue has been
treated in detail by Wright 1990.
208 Chapter 5

intervals are termed the koron and the “bemol”; the bemol corresponding to a
Western bemol (flat) while the koron is a neutral interval. The setar begins this
series of intervals with Re, which corresponds in actual pitch to dügah. From
Do to Re there is only a bemol. The same is true of higher do-re interval. Other
than the gap between Do and Re this series of intervals is completely regular
on the setar (During 1984:39–46). However certain dastgahs require the move-
ment of one of the frets, usually of the koron. This is largely idiosyncratic and
not essential. During reports that one of the oldest and most traditional of the
setar players living in the mid-twentieth century did not adjust his frets at all
(During 1985:108).
Between A and B the modern setar has the same number and arrangement
of frets as the tanbur of Cantemir’s day. During has convincingly shown that
this fretting of the setar is much older than the dastgah system (which does
not antedate the later eighteenth century); it appears to be close to the fretting
of the tanbur khorasani given by al-Fārābī (During 1985:89). As During notes,
this scale is not found on the various tanburs played in modern Khorasan by
the Iranians, Turkmens, or Kurds (ibid.:87). It would appear that both in form
and tuning the setar is the descendant of this early medieval Khorasanian tan-
bur, which was an instrument of art rather than folk music. The writings of
the Systematists Ṣafī al-Dīn Urmawī, Qutb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, and ʿAbd al-Qādir
Marāghī describe an essentially identical scale. However, as noted by both
Wright and During, the Greek-derived theory has influenced the manner
in which the intervals are presented in these writings (Wright 1978:37–43;
During 1985:91). The issue appears to be the various intonations of the note
called by Fārābī the vosta, which was located between the sababe (d) and the
bansar (e). In the tenth century there were four possible pitches for the vosta
(Farhat 1965:14–5). Regardless of the explanations of the theorists, Iranian and
other Middle Eastern musicians remained fascinated by the intonational pos-
sibilities of this scale degree, and continually developed various possibilities
for expressing it.
According to During, the intervallic structure of modern Iranian art music
which is reflected on the setar would appear to be a fairly direct descendant of
the old Perso-Arabic system. There is, of course, a good deal of speculation in
taking the argument back as far as Fārābī, but for our purposes what is signifi-
cant is the fact that there is a rather close correspondence today in the into-
nation of a neutral scale degree between d and e (in Turkey written today as
A and B) in Iran and Turkey. Accepting as a hypothesis the essential identity
of the seventeenth-century Ottoman tanbur scale and the modern setar scale,
certain (although not all) crucial problems in the notation of Cantemir can
be explained. Foremost is the use of the notes segah and evc. The difference
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 209

Table 2.3 Intervals between B (buselik) and A (dügah) on the modern Turkish tanbur, the
seventeenth-century tanbur, and the modern Iranian setar, expressed in commas

Modern tanbur Seventeenth-century Modern setar

tanbur

B bûselîk B bûselîk B bûselîk

-1 segâh

-2.5 ʿuşşak segâh -2.5 ʿuşşak

-4 dîk kürdî

-5 kürdî nihâvend -5 kürdî

A dügâh A dügâh A dügâh

Modern tanbûr 17th-century tanbûr Modern setar

between twentieth-century and seventeenth-century Turkish usage is evident

when we compare the notes used in the makams Segah, Dügah (Uşşak), and
Uzzal (Hicaz) (Tab. 2.4).
In Cantemir’s treatise, segah is the first tamam perde above dügah, hence it
is the second tamam perde above the note rast. It is the finalis of the makam
Segah. This seems consistent with modern Turkish theory. A problem arises
when we turn to the makam Uzzal, however (for Uzzal see pp. 213–215 below).
According to modern Turkish theory (Yekta, Ezgi, and Arel) the second step
of the makam Hicaz (roughly equivalent to Cantemir’s Uzzal) is the note dik
kürdi, or Si flattened by four commas (bakiye). In the treatise and in all of the
notations where the makam Uzzal is used, the second step of the scale is given
as segah, rather than the modern kürdi (or dik kürdi). Uzzal transposed up an
octave uses tiz segah as its second step, rather than dik sünbüle (b♭).
Likewise, the makam Şehnaz (scale of Uzzal transposed up a fifth to e)
uses the note evç (fifth of segah) as its second step rather than modern dik
acem (f ). Uzzal transposed down a fourth to aşiran (E) (Cantemir’s makam
Zengüle) uses ırak (F♯) the lower octave of evc as its second step rather than
the modern acem aşiran. All modern transcribers of Cantemir’s notation (with
the exception of Yalçın Tura) have automatically substituted the correspond-
ing modern note (dik kürdi, dik acem, etc.) for Cantemir’s segah, evç or ırak.
However, the notes kürdi, acem and aşiran (all are five commas flat = küçük
mücennep) existed in the author’s time. Although these notes are one comma
lower than the notes used in these positions today (e.g. dik kürdi) they are
210 Chapter 5

Table 2.4 The ʿUzzal/Hicaz tetrachord

Modern Seventeenth-century

d nevâ d nevâ

c hicaz c ʿuzzal

B -2.5 segah

B -4 dîk kürdî

A dügâh A dügâh

closer to the notes required by modern practice than are the one comma flats
such as segah or evc. Later in the eighteenth century Hızır Ağa, and Abdülbaki
Nasır Dede persist in the same usage.
Cantemir’s notation shows one symbol (segah) for what are today consid-
ered to be three different notes in Turkey: B one comma flat in Segah, B four
commas flat in Hicaz, and an alternating pair consisting of B 2.5 commas and B
one comma flat in Uşşak (as well as Beyati, Karciğar, Hüseyni, Neva, etc.). Most
twentieth-century Turkish musicologists (Arel, Sanal, Karadeniz, Sürelsan),
as well as the Romanian Ciortea, automatically modernized the notation of
Cantemir where the original used notes which were not used in the current
versions of the makams in question. Without this modernization, crucial inter-
vals in Hicaz, Şehnaz and other makams would appear to be too high for the
current intonation of these makams. If the modern symbol for the note segah
were to be written in the makam Uzzal/Hicaz, the second scale degree would
be eight commas above the first degree (dügah/A). The “augmented second”
structure of Hicaz in current usage demands that the second degree be only
five commas above dügah. This three-comma difference is clearly perceptible,
especially in Turkey, where one-comma and even half-comma distinctions are
made in practice. The fact that Cantemir, and all other pre-nineteenth-century
Turkish theorists, used a single note to describe the second degrees of both the
Uzzal and Uşşak makams suggests that they were describing not the modern
Turkish intonational system, but rather a system much closer to that in use
in Iran. In Iranian music today, a single note is employed to express a neutral
second scale degree in both the dastgahs Homayun and Shur, whose scales cor-
respond to Uzzal and Uşşak, respectively.
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 211

While various twentieth-century Iranian theorists were active in computing

mathematically the intervals which should be used in Iranian music, the mea-
surement of the actual intervals used did not advance very far. In 1959 Farhat
measured the intervals produced by the frets of three setars and two tars. For
the interval in question, the koron between Re and Mi, he got a low reading of
3.4 commas flat and a high reading of 2.3 commas flat (he gives his results in
cents counting from Re to Mi). The mean was 3 commas flat (Farhat 1965:25).
Between 1966 and 1979 During measured the intervals used in performances
by the master setar players Daryush Safvat and Ebadi, and on the setar played
by the late Hajji Aqa, as well as in a ney performance by Musavi and in the
singing of Karimi. Comparing the intervals of the dastgahs Shur (correspond-
ing roughly to Turkish Uşşak or ancient Dügah) and Humayun (correspond-
ing to Turkish Hicaz, or ancient Uzzal), During obtained the following results
(During 1985:110–115):9 The lowest intonation for the second step of dastgah-e
Shur was by Daryush Safvat and Ebadi, with 2.7 commas flat (although in 1966
Safvat registered 2.6) with the highest by Hajji Aqa pitched at 2.1 commas flat.
The lowest intonation for Humayun was by Daryush Safvat with 3.5 commas
flat (in 1966), highest once again by Hajji Aqa who used the same fretting as
for Shur (2.1 commas). Safvat and Musavi consistently played the second in
Humayun lower than the second of Shur, but Ebadi actually played it higher
(2.3 commas for Humayun, 2.7 commas for Shur). Thus, while consider-
able variation is tolerated in modern Iran, the mean of the various perform-
ers and performances are 2.5 commas flat for Shur and 2.6 commas flat for
Humayun—just one tenth of a comma difference.
These results demonstrate that despite some variation between differ-
ent performers and different performances (even by the same performer) in
current Iranian practice the second step of the dastgahs Shur and Homayun
employ a series of intervals which are culturally perceived as variants of the
same note and are empirically very close to one another. Any differences which
may occur in an individual performance are phonetic rather than phonemic.
Santur players (whose instrument does not permit easy changes in intonation)
do not differentiate at all between the second steps of these two dastgahs; a
single course of strings is used for the second degrees of Shur and Homayun,
and for the tonal center of Segah. Thus, the modern Persian dastgah does con-
stitute a system in which, in the seventeenth-century alphabetic notation, the

9 Both Shur and Humayun were played with finalis Sol for these recordings; the original savarts
have been converted into cents and then into commas going downward, in accordance with
Turkish conventions of describing intervals.
212 Chapter 5

same grapheme could be used for the second step in both Shur (Uşşak) and
Homayun (Uzzal), as well as the first step of Segah.
What is the actual intonation of this note in contemporary Turkey? The
Turkish 2.5 commas is one of the four standard intervals found on the modern
Turkish tanbur between each whole tone from Re to do, e.g. between dügah
and buselik, çargah and neva, neva and hüseyni, hüseyni and mahur, etc. As
During notes (During 1987), the Turkish theory of Rauf Yekta (and his follow-
ers Subhi Ezgi and Sadettin Arel), like the Iranian theory of Barkeshli, denies
the existence of this interval. According to current Turkish theory no makam
requires the use of a 2.5 comma flattened tone, and no name for this inter-
val exists. However, among musicians in Turkey the inaccuracy of this crucial
aspect of the theory is well known (e.g. Karadeniz 1984).
During the early 1970s, Signell had measured the intervals produced by the
tanbur of Necdet Yaşar and verified the use of this 2.5 comma interval in the
makam Uşşak. Essentially the same interval occurs between E and F♯, A and
B, C and d, d and e, e and f♯, g and a, with the corresponding decrease in the
interval as the pitch is raised (Signell 1977:153–159). In my own interviews with
Necdet Yaşar conducted in 1987, Mr. Yaşar described the area between one and
four commas flat as being one of “heavy traffic” and demonstrated his finger-
ing around the fret for the note which he calls “ʿuşşak” so as to produce a tone
approximately a half comma flatter still (3 commas) for special emphasis in
cadential phrases. In the makam Uşşak (as well as in Beyati, Hüseyni, Muhayyer,
Neva, etc.) the one comma flat note termed “segah” is employed in ascending
phrases and in descending phrases heading toward the sub-tonic (G). Mr. Yaşar
uses the 2.5 comma interval for most descending phrases, saving the 3 comma
note for the final cadence.
The one comma flat “segah” is indeed used in modern Turkish music (as it
is not in Iranian art music) and specifically in the makam Uşşak, but it coex-
ists with another second scale degree, pitched between 2.5 and 3 commas flat,
unofficially termed “uşşak.” Despite the absence of this note in theoretically
“correct” charts and diagrams of the tanbur made in Turkey (inexplicably
including Signell 1977), every competent Turkish tanbur player plays an instru-
ment fretted for the uşşak note, and for the corresponding interval between
each other whole tone.10

10 The diagram of the tanbur in Signell (op. cit. :30) is fretted for the “theoretical,” not the
actual, scale.
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 213

Example 2.1 Teslim of Beyati peşrev by Emin Dede, showing alternation of segah and uşşak
notes (after Karadeniz 1984:337)

In the Turkish makam Segah the tonal center is the note segah, pitched one
comma below buselik (B). On the tanbur it is played on the fret called segah,
below buselik. In Segah this note is usually invariable, except for some perfor-
mances by virtuosi on legato instruments. (In Segah, the fifth above segah, the
note hisar, is unstable.)
About the intonation of Uzzal/Hicaz there is less disagreement between
theory and practice in Turkish art music. Here the essential difference is
between classical and urban gypsy playing (Signell 1977:45). It also exists in
some regional styles (Fatih Salgar, oral communication 1986). In classical music
today, the second scale degree is always the note dik kürdi, B four commas flat.
In the treatise of Haşim Bey published in 1864 the second step of Hicaz is given
as “kürdi.” Turkish theorists of the eighteenth century always give the note
“segah” in this position, however. Kürdi, in fact, is a 5 commas flat, but even
if Haşim Bey was methodologically sloppy (as musicians in modern Turkey
assert), it is clear that the second step of the makam Hicaz had journeyed con-
siderably downward by the mid-nineteenth century, to roughly where it was
when the first sound recordings were made (and where it is today). Thus in
modern Turkish practice the makams Uşşak and Uzzal/Hicaz do not share a
common second degree, whereas the Iranian dastgahs Shur and Homayun do
share a common second degree.
We may conclude that
1. In the seventeenth century the Turkish makams Uşşak and Uzzal shared
a common second degree.
2. This common second degree was the note termed segah.
214 Chapter 5

3. The segah of seventeenth-century Turkish music was approximately 2.5

commas flat corresponding to the modern Iranian intonation in Shur
and Homayun.
4. During the eighteenth century, the note segah was divided into upper
and lower versions in the makams of the Uşşak family.
5. At some time in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, prob-
ably through a series of intermediary stages, the Turkish makam Hicaz
adopted the four comma flat kürdi as its second scale degree, in place of
the older note segah.
The argument summarized above gives a coherent explanation for the origin
and evolution of the Uşşak tetrachord in Turkish music, and its relationship
to the corresponding Shur tetrachord in modern Iranian music. Like theorists
elsewhere in the Middle East, Yekta, Ezgi and Arel accepted the “Pythagorean”
comma interval and the four comma interval (termed bakiye), but rejected the
“irrational” neutral interval of 2.5 commas flat. This Pythagorean interval has
in fact been accepted in practice for the makam Segah, and in some phrases in
the makam Uşşak. The bakiye has become standard for classical (but not for
several kinds of folk) playing in the makam Hicaz. However, Turkish musicians
have refused to give up the 2.5 comma interval in the makam Uşşak and many
other related makams. At present, there does not seem to be any firm evidence
to explain why the 2.5 comma interval could be eliminated in Segah and Hicaz,
but not in Uşşak. These choices define the intonational aesthetics of Turkish
music in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
All classical musicians in Turkey insist on retaining this interval for caden-
tial phrases in a large family of makams. It reappears transposed as “neva’da
Uşşak” (the makam Uşşak on neva/d), and in many other positions. It is also
the basis for the current intonation of the very popular makam Saba, where it
defines the interval between d and c. Thus, the interval in question is certainly
not alien to modern Turkish music; however, its use is sharply circumscribed.
Turkish documentary evidence exists which suggests the development of
the two distinct degrees for the note segah.
The earliest evidence for the use of a note between the older segah and buse-
lik is supplied by Kemani Hızır Ağa, whose short treatise “Tefhim el-Makamat
fi Tevlid el-Nagamat” (“The Comprehension of the Makams in the Generation
of Melodies”), was written perhaps within the decade preceding 1749 (which is
the date of one early manuscript).11 Under the terkib Sazkar he writes:

Sazkar is that which commences from dügah and demonstrates segah, and
then the secondary scale degree (nim) between segah and the secondary

11 I am using Topkapi Sarayi, Hazine 1793.

The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 215

scale degree buselik, and from that secondary scale degree it demon-
strates neva and hüseyni, and returning from hüseyni it demonstrates the
aforementioned secondary scale degree and then demonstrates segah
and dügah and rast and aşiran, and from aşiran it demonstrates ırak and
rast and dügah and from segah it concludes upon rast without [touching]
dügah (Hızır Ağa n.d.:22).

The existence of a separate note between buselik and segah (which, however,
was not yet universally accepted) was described at the end of the eighteenth
century (1795) by Abdülbaki Nasır Dede in “Tetkik ü Tahkik,”

There is no doubt of the absurdity of [placing] an obstructed (or “closed,”

mesdud) note below the note buselik (buselik tahtina), called nişabur
with the distance of an irha (comma) on the tanbur. Due to the fact that
between buselik and segah there is the smallest distance in the gamut
from yegah to tiz hüseyni, even if one were to create a note, the difference
would be extremely hidden (Abdülbaki Nasır Dede 1795:15).

By Abdülbaki Dede’s time the segah note had probably already begun its jour-
ney upward, so that the distance between it and the note buselik would have
been perhaps approximately a comma, as it is today. It is apparently this note,
one comma below buselik, which was called “nişabur” in the later eighteenth
century.12 By the middle of the nineteenth century (at the latest) it became
accepted as the higher version of the note segah and was no longer named
nişabur. We can only conclude that the change in intonation which must have
taken place during the century separating Abdülbaki Dede from Cantemir
probably caused some confusion about the proper terminology for those notes
which had not been part of the accepted system.

4 Saba, Uzzal, Beyati, Hisar

Based on the analogy with Iranian music, one would expect to be able to
transpose this 2.5 comma interval to all the whole steps in the basic scale, as
is done in modern Turkish music. However, Cantemir’s own descriptions and
usage suggest a number of probable deviations from this system. The intervals

12 This note nişabur, which is rejected by Abdülbaki Dede, does not seem to be the same
note mentioned by Cantemir, which appears to have stood between buselik and çargah or
buselik and uzzal. Cantemir also mentions a note called rehavi-i atik, apparently between
segah and buselik, but it does not seem to have been in use in his time.
216 Chapter 5

Table 2.5 Çargah (c) to hüseyni (e) in Cantemir and modern practice

Cantemir Modern practice

hüseyni e _________________ hüseyni e

dik hisar
hisar _________________ hüzzam −2.5
hisar
beyati _________________ nim hisar −5
neva d _________________ neva d
dik hicaz
uzzal _________________ saba −2.5
saba _________________ hicaz
nim hicaz
çargah c _________________ çargah c

between çargah and neva, affecting in particular the makams Saba and Uzzal,
present irregularities.
Cantemir divides the third beginning with cargah (c) and ending with
hüseyni (e) into two units containing two secondary scale degrees each, which
are apparently symmetrically divided by the basic scale degree neva (d). The
notes between çargah and neva are, in ascending order, saba and uzzal.
In the modern system, saba is above, not below the note hicaz (Cantemir’s
uzzal). As Signell has demonstrated, the modern note saba is a more or less
precise transposition of the note uşşak, thus rendering the Uşşak tetrachord
on the note çargah, instead of dügah (Signell 1977:158). The note hicaz is a
half-step above çargah and is the third note in the modern Hicaz tetrachord.
Had Cantemir indicated these two notes in their modern positions, there
would be no problem. On the contrary the placement of the note saba as the
koron between çargah and neva would help to explain the modern Turkish per-
formance practice. However, by placing saba below uzzal, our author would
seem to be indicating that it was not a koron at all, but rather a “bemol.” And he
is completely consistent in this positioning, which also appears in his diagram
of the tanbur. Thus, the makam Saba would have been performed exactly as it
is written today (with d flat), not how it is performed (as a koron). More dis-
turbing is the position of the note uzzal above saba. If uzzal were the koron in
this series of koron and bemol, then Cantemir’s makam Uzzal would have had
as the third degree the modern note saba. This would create an interval signifi-
cantly larger than a major third. While Cantemir’s makam Uşşak is confirmed
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 217

by Iranian practice, such an augmented second interval for makam Uzzal cor-
responds neither to the modern Iranian dastgah Homayun nor to the modern
Turkish makam Hicaz.

Table 2.6 Comparative chart of the general scale according to Cantemir and Abdülbaki
Nasır Dede

Cantemir Abdülbaki Nasır Dede

(1700) (1795)

Tiz Hüseyni Tiz Hüseyni e’

Tiz Hisar
Tiz Beyati Tiz Beyati
Tiz Neva Tiz Neva d’
Tiz Uzzal Tiz Hicaz
Tiz Saba Tiz Saba
Tiz Çargah Tiz Çargah c’
Tiz Buselik Tiz Buselik
Tiz Segah Tiz Segah b
Sünbüle Sünbüle
Muhayyer Muhayyer a
Şehnaz Şehnaz
Gerdaniye Gerdaniye g
Mahur Mahur
EVC Evc f♯
Acem Acem
Hüseyni Hüseyni e
Hisar Hisar
Beyati Beyati
Neva Neva d
Uzzal Hicaz
Saba Saba
Cargah Cargah c
Nişabur (?)
Buselik Buselik
Rehavi-i Atik [Nişabur]
Segah Segah
Nihavend Kürdi
Dügah Dügah A
Zengüle Zirgüle
218 Chapter 5

Table 2.6 Comparative chart of the general scale (cont.)

Cantemir Abdülbaki Nasır Dede

(1700) (1795)

(Şedd-i Saba) Şuri

Rast Rast G
Rehavi-Cedid Geveşt
Irak Irak F♯
Acem Aşirani Acem Aşirani
Aşiran Aşiran E
Pes Hisar
Pes Beyati
Yegah Yegah D

The notes beyati and hisar are less problematic. Unlike modern Turkish
usage, where the makams Uşşak and Beyati share one scale, Cantemir’s makams
of these names have different scales. The difference is represented by the fifth
and secondarily, the sixth degrees. While modern Uşşak and Beyati both have
a perfect fifth (hüseyni), Cantemir’s Beyati uses a secondary scale degree called
beyati. This note no longer exists in Turkish terminology. Also, Cantemir gives
the sixth note as evc, rather than acem. This is essentially the modern form of
the makam Karciğar.
His notated examples, however, use both sixths more or less equally, but
the emphasis on the sixth, which characterizes the modern makam Beyati, is
much less pronounced. Accepting the general relatedness of makams Uşşak
and dastgah Shur, one would expect the sixth step to be a koron akin to the
interval found in the gushe Shahnaz, which features the Shur tetrachord trans-
posed up a fourth, and is considered essential to even the most minimal per-
formance of the dastgah. The logic of the system would demand a koron as the
second degree; instead Cantemir gives a bemol. In case we had any doubt that
the note beyati was in fact a flat, he confirms it by stating that beyati is equiva-
lent to the note sünbüle, which (he tells us) is the octave of the note nihavend
(= kürdi, B flat).
Thus, neither the Cantemir materials, nor any comparisons with modern
Turkish or Iranian practice furnish a completely satisfactory explanation for
the intonation of the notes saba and uzzal. The notes beyati and hisar differ
from their modern usage both in Turkey and Iran. However, this should not
The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music 219

surprise us, as the tetrachord above neva (d) is one of the most complex and
variable in modern Turkish music.

5 Conclusion

Without entering in depth into the issue of the general scale of modern
Turkish classical music (which is outside of the scope of the present study),
it is useful to point out those areas where comparative analysis can fruitfully
be conducted.
Our interpretation of Cantemir’s materials has shown that something very
much like the neutral koron degree of modern Iranian music seems to have
existed in seventeenth-century Turkey. While the intonational unity with Iran
was probably not total, seventeenth-century Turkish music seems to have
functioned intonationally in a manner which was closer to the music of mod-
ern Iran than to that of modern Turkey. However, even in Cantemir’s time a
rather more differentiated series of intervals was entering Turkish music.
This process was an early phase of an evolution which produced the modern
Turkish general scale. In this modern general scale we can see the coexistence
of the old Irano-Arabian seventeen note scale with its neutral third plus the
single-comma intervals of the theorists. In the Uşşak-Beyati-Hüseyni genre
both systems have in fact been integrated into the same musical phrase, i.e. by
using the one-comma interval when ascending and when descending toward
the subtonic, and the neutral interval when approaching the finalis.
The system of basic and secondary scale degrees, with the particular names
in use since the early seventeenth century, continued with little change at
least until the middle of the eighteenth century and possibly until the end of
the century. The great systemic changes which were occurring on the level of
makam and terkib, modulation, transposition, rhythmic expansion, melodic
density, and compositional structure were not yet reflected in the general
scale. This fact suggests that the intonational changes which were then taking
place did not disrupt the entire system of the general scale until the beginning
of the nineteenth century. After this time the notes lowered by a single comma
(irha) and notes lowered by four commas (bakiye), i.e. bemol notes raised by a
single comma, became standard features of all whole tone intervals, and were
institutionalized by a nomenclature (the latter distinguished by the word dik =
high) and by frets on. the tanbur. The originally undifferentiated segah neutral
tone (koron) acquired distinct intonations for (1) the Segah and Rast family
of makams, (2) the Uşşak and Hüseyni family, and (3) the Uzzal/Hicaz family.
220 Chapter 5

Transpositions necessitated the filling of empty areas of the general scale. The
new forms of the Uşşak and the Uzzal tetrachords (or sections of them) could
now be played on almost every basic scale degree.

6 A Note on Symbols

Turkish musicologists such as Yekta, Ezgi, Arel, Sürelsan, Sanal, and Karadeniz
have transcribed Cantemir’s notations using the symbols which the various
scholars have employed for their other transcriptions from more modern
sources (Hamparsum, etc.). The transcriptions published by E. Popescu-Judetz
in Romania (Popescu-Judetz 1973) use the Arel-Ezgi system. Only Yalçın Tura
has devised a new system of symbols to correspond to each grapheme in
Cantemir’s Collection (Tura 1976).
There is an existing system of musical symbols which corresponds quite
closely to the intervallic structure which underlies Cantemir’s graphemes—
the koron and sori symbols invented by the Persian musicologist Ali Naqi
Vaziri (Farhat 1965:44). For international scholarship, there is no reason why
Cantemir’s segah should not be written as B koron (B ), or his ırak as F sori
(F ). Unfortunately, while musicologists involved with the broader makam
tradition may readily comprehend such usage, this would be unduly exotic to
both musicologists and musicians in Turkey.
In my own case I have had to tread a middle ground because I did most of
my transcriptions in Turkey and was in frequent contact with Turkish musi-
cians (Necdet Yaşar, Ihsan Özgen) who were examining and playing the tran-
scriptions. The system which I am using is close to the Arel-Ezgi system, which
is standard today. It requires accidentals for such notes as segah (B♭) and
evç (f♯), but not for buselik (B). However, I have created a combination of Arel’s
symbol for segah and Karadeniz’s for uşşak, which represents a 2.5 comma flat,
standing for Cantemir’s note segah. I use the same symbol for hisar (e ) and
tiz segah (b ). It is the equivalent of Vaziri’s koron. I have retained the Western
sharp sign (which symbolizes the four comma bakiye diyezi of Arel’s system)
to correspond to Vaziri’s sori. It is the sharp version of the koron and repre-
sents the same neutral interval. It is used for such notes as Cantemir’s ırak (F♯).
I retain Arel’s symbols for the küçük mecenneb diyezi ( ), and bemolü (♭) for
approximately the same intervals. Thus, his note geveşt and Cantemir’s rehavi
will both be written as F , and his and Cantemir’s mahur will both be written
as f . However, I have not modernized Cantemir’s usage, i.e. the note segah is
not changed to dik kürdi (B ) in the makam Uzzal. Therefore, my transcrip-
tions do not appear very different from standard modern Turkish notation, but
each of Cantemir’s graphemes corresponds to a single note symbol used here.
 Chapter 6

Makam and Terkib

Within the art musics of the Islamic world the tension between an open-ended
and a closed modal system appears to have been very old and continuous. In
an open-ended system all modal entities are of equal importance and can be
added to indefinitely. In a closed modal system a fixed number of modal enti-
ties are arranged hierarchically (Powers 1980a:427). The medieval theories
of music maintained a hierarchical division of modal entities based both on
musical and extra-musical criteria. The practical system (as opposed to the-
ory) as early as the thirteenth century appears to have had a strong tendency
toward “open-endedness,” which finally triumphed in the Turco-Arabic musics
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Powers 1980a:184).
Twentieth-century Turkish musical theory distinguishes between “simple”
(basit) makams and “compound” (mürekkeb) makams. In practice, however,
neither modal category holds a privileged position within the system. Items
may be composed in either type of makam, and modulations may go in either
direction from “simple” to “compound” or from “compound” to “simple” with-
out regard to a pre-arranged progression.
On the other hand, prior to the nineteenth century, theorists writing in
Arabic, Persian, or Turkish maintained distinctions between the primary modal
entities (shedd, parda, and later maqām or naghma) and various secondary
entities known as shuʿba (“branch,” “ramification,” > T. şube), avaz (“voice”) or
tarkīb (“compound,” “mixture,” > T. terkib). After the fourteenth century, the
divisions of maqam (> T. makam), shuʾba, avaz, and tarkīb were not usually
based on musical grounds. Rather these modal entities were associated with
the heavenly bodies, minerals, human organs, and the times of the day, so that
various extra-musical factors were used to support the concept of a musical
hierarchy, in which a fixed number of members in each category had astrologi-
cal significance (12 maqamat, 7 avazat, 4 shuʿba, 24 terkibat, or other systems)
(see Shiloah 1979).
The theoretical concepts used for the purpose of analyzing mode in the
modern phase of the Turco-Arabian tradition are derived from Turkish and
Arab writers of the first half of the twentieth century, as well as from the
French scholar of Arabian music, Baron d’Erlanger (1872–1932). As noted by
Marcus (1989:46): “Rodolphe D’Erlanger’s scholarship in Arabic helped shape
the thoughts of a generation of Arab theorists during the middle of the twenti-
eth century.” All students of these musics, whether writing in Arabic or Turkish,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_010

222 Chapter 6

or in English, French or German have utilized a number of concepts held in

common. These are:
1. The fundamental intervals of music,
2. The general scale,
3. The positioning of the particular scales upon the general scale, and hence
the relation of “mode” and finalis,
4. Tetrachords and pentachords ( jins, “genre”),
5. Melodic movement (seyir),
6. Modal “combination” (terkib), and
7. Modulation.
The seven principal concepts used to define modality in twentieth-century
Turkish and Arab music are a mixture which entered musical theory in dif-
ferent historical periods. While post-World War II ethnomusicology has dis-
covered them as a coherent whole, they have only functioned together for a
relatively brief period. Shiloah’s historical research (1979) and Marcus’ recent
study (1989) of the three periods of modern Arab music theory provide a useful
framework for viewing the corresponding periods of Turkish musical theory. In
the Arab countries (mainly Syria and Egypt) the “early period” of modern the-
ory began in the middle of the eighteenth century. This “early period” theory
agrees in most respects with music as it was presented in Turkey by Hızır Ağa
and Abdülbaki Dede in the middle and late eighteenth century respectively.
The “early period” continued until the 1930s, when the theory of the “middle
period” emerged, largely through the influence of the work of Baron d’Erlanger
and the Egyptian al-Ḥifnī. Much of d’Erlanger’s information was ultimately
derived from Rauf Yekta Bey (1871–1935), the teacher of ʿAlī al-Darwīsh (1874–
1952), one of d’Erlanger’s principal informants (Marcus 1989:44). Yekta’s music
school in Istanbul, the Darülelhan, was a point of dissemination for his new
theories of Turkish music. “Turkish music culture was one of the strongest
influences [on Arab musical theory] in the early and middle periods” (ibid.:44).
Yekta’s work was continued by Subhi Ezgi and Sadettin Arel, who codified
the theoretical aspects of Turkish music theory during the 1930s and 1940s.
Marcus describes this period in Arabic music theory as the “middle period,”
and it lasted only from the 1930s until roughly the 1970s. He notes that “as
Westerners came to study the maqam system, wanting to focus on melodic
movement, Arab theorists were looking to the West, fascinated by the static
elements of Western music theory, especially scale” (ibid.:45). In Turkey, this
“middle period” is coterminous with the twentieth century as there has been
no major change either in theory or musical pedagogy in Turkey since 1950.
This twentieth-century phase of Turkish musical theory has reached Western
Makam and Terkib 223

musicologists both through the French writing of Yekta (1921), through the
fifth and sixth volumes of d’Erlanger’s “La Musique Arabe,” and more recently
through Signell (1977). The key concepts in this theory are drawn from current
practice and from the theory of the preceding periods of Turkish music, as well
as from the thirteenth-century/early fourteenth-century Systematist theory of
medieval Persian and Arab music.
The current theory of intervals, involving such discrete intervals as the koma
(comma), bakiye (4 commas), büyük mücenneb (8 commas), küçük mücenneb
(5 commas) and the tanini (9 commas), originates in Systematist theory. The
placing of all makams (“particular scales”) upon specific degrees of the general
scale probably originated in fifteenth-century Turkey, and has continued ever
since in practice and theory. The priority of the tetrachordal “genre” (genus,
> Ar. jins T. cins) over the octave in identifying modal species is of Systematist
vintage. The conceptualization of melodic movement (seyir) as a fundamental
feature of modality seems to have originated in the seventeenth century (see
chap. 3, below), and has grown in importance in musical practice and theory
since that time. Modal “combination” (terkib) existed in Systematist theory,
but the actual methods of combination described are those which have been
dominant since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The first task in describing the modal system of the seventeenth- and early
eighteenth-century Turkish music is to ascertain what was considered to be
a “mode” (makam or nağme) and what was a secondary modal entity (terkib,
avaz, şube), and whether these distinctions were only theoretical, or practi-
cal as well. This is not a simple task because the sources are not completely
consistent, although certain principles appear to be common to all of them.
The only theory of mode created in Turkey (or anywhere else in the Middle
East) during the period from 1600 to 1800 is that of Cantemir. Although his
theories were certainly not universally accepted, they must be at the center of
this discussion.
The concept of modal “combination” (tarkīb/terkib) has been continu-
ous in the musical theories written in the Middle East from medieval times
to the present (except for modern Iran and Transoxania). The seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century materials from Turkey furnish a considerable corpus
in which to analyze the more detailed workings of the concept during this
period, and to assess its similarities to and differences from modern theory
and practice. Connected with modal “combination” is the concept of modula-
tion, which is essential to the modern phase (and several earlier phases) of
Turco-Arabian music.
224 Chapter 6

Two basic components of the twentieth-century theory of Turkish music

are absent from the theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
1. Current theory features a codified, named series of intervals, i.e the
bakiye etc. These do not exist in the books of Cantemir, Harutin, Hızır
Ağa or Abdülbaki Nasır. It would appear that the tetrachordal intervals
which constituted the ajnas of Ṣafī al-Dīn and Quṭb al-Dīn could be per-
formed in more than a single position on the general scale. However,
when the modes were connected with the degrees of the general scale
(in the fifteenth century) it became simpler to describe a particular scale
(gamme particulière) by referring to the notes of the general scale which
it employed, rather than by adducing the comma intervals between each
degree. This may account for the disappearance of the terminology for
these comma intervals from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
2. The second basic component of current theory is the genus (cins) a
tetrachord or pentachord. This is absent from all seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Turkish writings. The novelty of this medieval con-
cept is seen in the current terminology—Turkish musicians do not speak
of cins (genus), or its plural forms cinsler or ajnas. Genres are referred to
as dörtlük (from dört “four”) and beşlik (from beş “five”), which are literal
translations of “tetrachord” and “pentachord.” There is today in Turkey
some confusion in practice as to whether a makam is represented by an
octave scale or by an irreducible modal nucleus of four or five notes. As
noted by Powers (1980a:424), d’Erlanger had complained that “the Arab
musicians of our time seem to confound the idea of genus with that of
mode: the same term naghmah serves them, in effect, to denote either
the one or the other … Every melodic succession, whatever its scope, is
for these musicians a naghmah” (d’Erlanger 1949-V:69).
The reasons for the total disappearance of the terminology for the “genres”
(ajnas), from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries are not entirely clear.
However, the return of the genus/cins concept in twentieth-century theory is
not arbitrary, for two reasons. One is that by the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, melodic units (although not entire tunes) became increasingly confined
to a tetrachord or pentachord. The other is that in the course of the eighteenth
century, one of the methods for the creation of modal compounds (terkibat),
which involved the conjunction of intervallically distinct tetrachords, became
more common. In addition, transposition, rarely practiced in the seventeenth
century, became increasingly frequent in the eighteenth. It became possible to
transpose a tetrachordal or pentachordal modal nucleus, and thereby create a
new “makam.” Two centuries of such developments allowed the conceptions
Makam and Terkib 225

of modal nucleus and genus to coalesce once again, so that when Yekta and
Arel reintroduced the tetrachordal theory after a five-century hiatus, musi-
cians readily accepted it.
The only definition of makam in seventeenth-century Turkish music occurs
in the second chapter of Cantemir’s treatise. He distinguished between the
“independent” (müfred) and the “compound” (mürekkeb) makam:

Description of the Makam of Music

The makams are of two types, one is called the independent (müfred) and
the other the compound (mürekkeb) makam.

Description of the Independent Makam:

The independent makam is that which becomes the axis (kutb) of the cir-
cle of notes among eight basic notes, and whether descending or ascend-
ing shows that it is the makam of that note upon this axis and is without
a doubt distinguished and separated from the other makams. It subordi-
nates to itself the terkibs which are connected with those notes, and after
reaching its particular finalis, it announces that the entire makam has
been performed (Cantemir ca. 1700:II:20).

In the “independent” makam, scale is the dominant criterion. The concept

of the fundamental scale, and hence of the makams which used the notes
of the fundamental scale, and consequently the priority of octave scale over
tetrachord, appears to have been held in common by Turkish musicians.
Therefore, it also appears in the mid-eighteenth-century treatises of Harutin
and Hızır Ağa.
Within the category of independent makams, Cantemir distinguished
between makams using basic scale degrees (tamam perdeler) and those using
secondary scale degrees (na-tamam perdeler). Within the first category, he
separated the makams of the “lower notes” (nerm perdeler) from those of the
“upper notes” (tiz perdeler). There are seven makams of the lower notes and
three of the upper notes. The first six of these makams, namely Irak, Rast,
Dügah, Segah, Çargah, and Neva, are conceived of as octave scales ascending
from each successive degree of the fundamental scale: F♯, G, A, B, c, d.1 This can
be seen in Ex. 2.2.

1 Dügah is something of an exception, because of its use of the minor sixth, see below.
226 Chapter 6

Example 2.2 Positions of the first six independent makams along the degrees of the
fundamental scale

Example 2.3 Older and newer forms of the makam Neva

There were older and newer forms of the makam Neva. The older one com-
menced and concluded upon the note neva, while the newer had its cadence
on dügah (A).
The makams Hüseyni and Dügah are somewhat problematical. According
to the logic of Cantemir’s system, Hüseyni should have been called “Dügah,”
because it is the makam which is created by ascending from the basic scale
degree dügah, using only basic scale degrees. The makam Dügah (also known
as Uşşak), uses one secondary scale degree as its sixth degree (acem, f), and
hence it should be classified with the makams using secondary scale degrees.
Nowhere in the author’s prolix discussion of the makam Dügah does he
take note of this detail which is confirmed by his transcriptions (Cantemir
ca. 1700:III:26). Perhaps the fact that the secondary scale degree occurs as
far away from the tonic as the sixth degree made it appear non-essential to
Cantemir. The fact that Dügah was alternatively named “Uşşak” indicates that
some musicians did not consider it to be a true makam of basic scale degrees,
as there was no scale degree named “uşşak.”
Cantemir stresses the “greatness” of the makam Hüseyni:

The makam called Hüseyni is a fortunate and auspicious makam which

uses basic scale degrees. In my opinion it is more glorious, dignified, emi-
nent and great than all other makams, so that all the makams and terkibs
are not ashamed to be obedient to it (ca. 1700:III:31).

This “greatness” apparently derived from the fact that its tonal center (e) was
the fifth degree above A, which was the most commonly employed finalis for
most makams. The lists of repertoire in the seventeenth-century sources reveal
Makam and Terkib 227

Example 2.4 Comparison of the makams Dügah and Hüseyni

that Hüseyni was the most widely used makam at that time (see pp. 234–35).
The modulating külliyat peşrev began in Hüseyni. Cantemir’s model taksim
(taksim-i külli) also began and ended in Hüseyni. Hüseyni was probably linked to
the folk usage of Anatolia; today much of the folk music of eastern and central
Anatolia employs modality resembling or identical to the makam Hüseyni. We
have not enough evidence for the status of folk modality throughout Anatolia
in the seventeenth century, but it is likely that the usage of Hüseyni-like modal
structures in remote eastern provinces is indigenous, and not a reflection of
urban art music (but see Haug 2019). The older nomenclature of the makam
supports this view. Although the ethnic and topographical names found in the
makam system cannot usually be interpreted in a meaningful manner, the fact
that the older name for the makam Hüseyni was Kürdi (from Kürt = a Kurd) was
probably not coincidental. This was noted by Rauf Yekta: “This mode is noth-
ing other than the mode named Hüseyni; because as the Kurds always use it, it
imitates their particular manner, and it is called Kürdi, that is to say, after the
manner of the Kurds” (1921:2979).
The name kürdi was not a note-name in the seventeenth century (as it was
to become in the early nineteenth century). In the fifteenth century the note
e was named not hüseyni or kürdi but şeşgah (sixth place). Therefore, the use
of Kürdi as a makam name is not connected with a scale degree, but rather
with an existing folk modal usage. It is not clear whether the popularity of
the makam Hüseyni/Kürdi in the seventeenth century was connected with an
influence of regional folklore on the art tradition, connected perhaps with the
resurgence of native elements after the decline in Persian musical influence
(which had been very strong in the sixteenth century), or simply reflected the
scalar significance of the fifth scale degree above A. Cantemir’s explanation
of the “greatness” of the makam Huseyni emphasizes only the latter element.
But Cantemir demonstrated in his tenth chapter (on musical genres) that he
had no interest in folk music, and purposely excluded folkloric genres from
his analysis. “However, because they have not entered the system of music
and because they are outside of its rules, to describe them would be a use-
less exertion” (Cantemir ca. 1700:X:97). So, at present the issue of Hüseyni is a
moot point.
The last three makams of basic scale degrees are named after the note
from which they descend; evc (f♯), gerdaniye (g), muhayyer (a). In these cases,
228 Chapter 6

Example 2.5 The three descending makams of the basic scale degrees

Example 2.6 The makams using secondary scale degrees

melodic movement is part of their definition; they are “descending” makams

(tizden nerme varinca—or in modern terminology: inici makamlar).
Gerdaniye has the further peculiarity of concluding on the second degree
rather than the lower octave (A instead of G). Cantemir notes that if it did not
conclude on dügah (A) Gerdaniye would not differ at all from the upper part of
makam Rast (Cantemir ca. 1700:IV:34).
According to Cantemir’s theory the nine makams using secondary scale
degrees were characterized by a single such scale degree, while the remainder
of the scale consisted of basic scale degrees. In all of these instances the one
and only criterion for distinguishing the makams is scale. Each one of these
makams was named after the one secondary scale degree which was part of
its particular scale: B♭ for Kürdi, c♯ for Uzzal, d♭ for Saba, e♭ for Beyati, f for
Acem, g for Şehnaz, d for Hisar, B for Buselik, and G for Zengüle. Cantemir
observes that the removal of this single secondary scale degree from each one
of these particular scales would result in the scale of the makam Hüseyni. He is
able to make this claim because the finalis for all of these makams is the note
dügah (A). Although Cantemir does not discuss the point, it is likely that hav-
ing a finalis on A was a qualification for a modal entity being considered as an
independent makam using “half notes,” rather than as a compound makam or
terkib. It would seem to have been essential that these third- and fourth-type
makams each possess a distinctive secondary scale degree. Or, in other words
every secondary scale degree starting with G (zengüle) became the one char-
acteristic note of an octave species which was thereby distinguished from the
fundamental scale. The system of the seventeenth century seems to have used
the octave from A to a (dügah to muhayyer, with the leading tone beneath A
Makam and Terkib 229

corresponding to the leading tone beneath a) and no other notes to create

its makams using “half notes.” Once these nine notes had been claimed, any
other species using secondary scale degrees would be relegated to a differ-
ent category.
The question of transposed makams, which was to become so important
for nineteenth-/twentieth-century Turkish music, was of little importance
to Cantemir. He was unwilling to create a separate category of transposed
makams, but he did describe them:

Description of the Transposed Makam (Şedd Makam)

The transposed makam is moved to the fourth note of the original
makam, and it concludes upon a note which is not its finalis, that is, when
a piece composed in a makam [concluding on] dügah is played on aşiran
(E) something in segah upon ırak, or something in çargah (c) upon rast,
which is four notes away. However, be aware of the fact that these sorts
of transposed makams are not recognized by singers at all and are only
employed by instrumentalists (ca. 1700:II:21).

In his fifth chapter, Cantemir gives a more detailed description of transposition:

The Transposed Makam

After this it is necessary that we analyze transposed makams. However,
you must know that according to the theory of the ancient treatises, only
four methods of transposition exist. What they were and what they were
called is presented and analyzed in the ancient treatises. At present,
according to our judgement, what is transposition and what shape does
it have? Let us try to present it.
Know that a transposed makam is not a special and distinct makam.
However, according to what was mentioned in the description of the
makams, a piece composed in one makam can be played four notes either
higher or lower. These types of transposition are peculiar to instrumen-
talists; they cannot at all be distinguished by means of a singer’s voice.
Now according to our judgement, transpositions in the lower notes may
be four in number: asiran for dügah, ırak for segah, rast for çargah, dügah
for hüseyni.
Observe that although the note neva is the fourth from dügah it never-
theless cannot be the transposition of dügah; that is its fifth, hüseyni. The
reason that it cannot be [the transposition of dügah] is this: due to the
fact that the note yegah is simply the harmony (aheng) of the instrument,
the axis of the notes is the note dügah. Just as from yegah to dügah five
notes are counted, in the same manner from dügah to hüseyni five notes
230 Chapter 6

are counted. While the methods of transposition are always on the fourth
note, the note neva, like the note yegah is removed and the transposition
is relinquished to the note hüseyni.
In addition, there can be three types of transposition in the upper
notes: evc for segah, gerdaniye for çargah; muhayyer for neva [i.e. the
fifth transposition]. The secondary scale degrees are analogous. Notes
which possess makams again are transposed four [sic] steps: nihavend
with acem, saba with sehnaz, going upward; [tiz] uzzal with sehnaz going
downward. Acem and buselik, uzzal and zengüle are also analogous.
In the above manner a master instrumentalist is able to play a peşrev
in the makam Irak in Segah, one is Rast in Çargah, one in Acem in Buselik,
one in Şehnaz in Uzzal, and one in Uzzal in Zengüle. The Persian instru-
mentalists practice such transpositions very much. Among the Turkish
instrumentalists however, these methods are very little heard.
In addition there is another method of transposition. When I ques-
tioned contemporary instrumentalists they gave some sort of answer, but
they had no name for it: acem-aşirani [F] becomes yegah [D], rast [G]
becomes aşiran [E], etc. According to this, the secondary scale degrees are
altered, and in the above-mentioned manner every makam can be played
on an instrument with different notes and a strange tone. However, much
practice is needed and it is necessary to listen a number of times to one
who knows this method of transposition (ca. 1700:V:39–40).

Cantemir did have a small category containing two items of what he called
“simulated makams” (sureta makam), in which transposition played a role. In
addition, he informs us elsewhere that the makam Zengüle using secondary
scale degree could be seen as a transposition of the makam Uzzal from A to
E. The few transcriptions of passages in the makam Zengüle sometimes show
this pattern, and sometimes a rather different one, in which the note zengüle
(G ) appears not as the third degree of Uzzal on E (aşiran) but rather as a lead-
ing tone below the first degree of Uzzal. This latter appears to be the ancestor
of the modern “Zirgüleli Hicaz.”

Example 2.7
Makam Zengüle
Makam and Terkib 231

Example 2.8
Scales of Mahur and Nişabur, showing secondary scale
degrees

Example 2.9
Scales of Uzzal and Nikriz

Cantemir’s model taksim (ca. 1700:VII; see pp. 294–95) contains one trans-
position. Melodic material might be transposed during a composition; in fact
this was a common compositional technique seen in the earliest material in
his Collection. However, the creation of new makams by means of the transpo-
sition of an octave scale or characteristic tetrachord onto another degree of the
general scale was almost unknown in the seventeenth century.
Cantemir also includes five makams which he describes as “compound”
(mürekkeb). These are: Sünbüle, Mahur, Pençgah, Nikriz and Nişabur. His defi-
nition of the compound makam is virtually identical to that of the terkib: “The
compound makam is that which is produced by two, three or four makams,
that is by mixing the notes of a number of makams and in the end coming to
rest upon the finalis of one of them” (ca. 1700:II:20).
According to the principle which he had created, makams of the secondary
scale degrees might possess only a single such degree. However certain par-
ticular scales in common use were constructed out of basic scale degrees plus
more than a single secondary scale degree. For the sake of the consistency of
his own theory, Cantemir had to find another category for the makam Mahur
which employed the secondary scale degrees buselik (B) and mahur (f), and
for Nişabur which used acem (f), uzzal (c♯) and buselik (B). As will be shown
later, Nişabur is in no sense compounded; Cantemir said: “Due to the fact that
its finalis [B] does not resemble that of any other makam, it does not show any
affinity for the makams which utilize these notes” (ca. 1700:IV:45).
Cantemir’s theoretical basis is contradictory because he confuses octave
scales with compound modal entities. Nikriz has only a single secondary scale
degree (c♯), but Cantemir had apparently invented the (unstated) rule that
232 Chapter 6

Example 2.10 Structure of the makam Sünbüle

makams of the secondary scale degrees must reach the finalis on A, whereas
Nikriz concluded on G. This disqualified Nikriz, and forced it to become a com-
pound of Uzzal, because of c♯ (the note uzzal) and Rast (because of its finalis).
However, the items in Nikriz in the Collection clearly demonstrate that Rast
played no role in the makam Nikriz. It behaves exactly like Uzzal, but with a
finalis on G.
On the other hand, Pençgah and Sünbüle are true compounds. Pençgah is
compounded of Rast and Nişabur, while Sünbüle is a complex modal entity
involving the makams Muhayyer, Acem, and Saba in a prescribed order of
entry. The structure of Sünbüle illustrates one of the methods of modal com-
position which became increasingly characteristic as the eighteenth cen-
tury progressed.

1 Other Modal Entities

The fourfold modal classification in use from the thirteenth to the fifteenth
centuries consisting of parda (perde), shuʿba (şube), avaz and tarkīb (terkib)
is not in evidence in any of the Turkish sources from the seventeenth or eigh-
teenth centuries. These sources use a variety of terminologies, indicating that
no new theory commanded universal acceptance. Thus, it should not surprise
us that neither Cantemir’s nor any other theoretical usage became the norm.
Cantemir presents a distinction between makams of the basic scale degrees
and those of the secondary scale degrees, as well as a further distinction
between makams of the lower and of the upper notes. All of these distinctions
occur within his broad category of “independent makam” (müfred makam). He
has only two other modal categories: “compound makam” (mürekkeb makam)
and “combination” (terkib). The compound makam is a very small category,
containing only five members. In contrast to these, the terkibs are without
number (“nihayeti yoktur”). Old members fall out of use, becoming “obsolete”
(“gayr-i müstemele”), leaving the “functional” (müstemele) category, while new
terkibs may be created. The terms avaz (or avaze) and şube do not appear in
Cantemir’s treatise.
Forty years later, Harutin sometimes uses avaze as a synonym for makam.
His makams are only seven of Cantemir’s ten makams of the basic scale
Makam and Terkib 233

degrees. He uses seven for its magical significance, but at the same time merges
it with the concept of the basic scale degrees. Harutin takes the basic scale
degrees from rast (G) to evc (f♯), i.e. G, A, B, c, d, e, f♯, and subordinates all other
makams to these seven notes and their makams. For example, Irak, which
shares a scale with Evc, becomes a şube of Evc, whereas to Cantemir these were
both independent makams. Since we know that in the fifteenth century the
note rast had been considered the beginning of the fundamental scale, it is
not unlikely that musicians before Harutin had also used the seven basic scale
degrees from rast to create the seven basic makams. Harutin has only one word
for any secondary modal entity: şube, which also includes Cantemir’s makams
of the secondary scale degrees. He never uses terkib or mürekkeb makam.
Harutin’s contemporary, Hızır Ağa has a completely different modal termi-
nology. He appears to employ the word nağme synonymously with makam.
Cantemir had used nağme only as a synonym for taksim, never for makam.
His secondary modal entities may be termed şube, ağaze (apparently an error
for avaze) or terkib, but he is inconsistent in his usage. For example, Rekb and
Neva-Aşiran are described once as nağme and elsewhere as terkib; Şehnaz is
once a terkib and elsewhere an ağaze. In general, the items which Cantemir
had classified as makam of basic scale degrees appear here as makam, but all
other items can be called nağme, ağaze, şube or terkib.
We may conclude that by the end of the seventeenth century there was no
longer a standard classification of modal entities, comparable to the charts
which had appeared in the Systematist writings and the books of Marāghī
(Shiloah 1979). The Mevlevi sheykh and neyzen Çengi Yusuf Dede had written
his Risale-i Edvar around 1650 (Uslu 2015). While constituting an important
document, this little text broke no new theoretical ground, and it was evidently
not widely circulated either during his lifetime, or after his death in 1669. Esʿad
Efendi, while praising Yusuf Dede as a musician and secular composer, fails
to mention his musicological writing. Nevertheless, it was hardly coincidental
that this rare and thoughtful musical treatise was the work of a Mevlevi musi-
cian who had been born and trained in Konya.
The concepts of makam and modal combination were rapidly expanding,
and no terminology commanded universal respect. Cantemir attempted to
rationalize the situation by creating criteria by which to classify the modal
entities. Harutin, while not making such intellectual effort, also wished to
rationalize the system, and he did this by jettisoning all obsolete terminology.
He retained ağaze, but only as a synonym for makam, and confined this term to
seven basic modes. At the end of the eighteenth century, Abdülbaki Nasır Dede
had only two terms, makam and terkib. He reserved the word makam for the
modes using basic scale degrees, so that Cantemir’s makams of the secondary
234 Chapter 6

scale degrees appear in his work as terkibs. Throughout the eighteenth century
we can see the gradual elimination of the various categories of modal entities,
resulting in an “open-ended” modal system by the mid-nineteenth century
through Turkey and much of the Ottoman Empire.
During the later seventeenth century, this process was already underway
among the musicians themselves, and Cantemir castigates them for ignor-
ing the distinction between makam and terkib. His preoccupation with this
issue can be seen by the fact that he repeats his warning on many occasions in
his treatise. He devotes his sixth chapter to “The Analysis of the Functioning
Terkibs,” and introduces the subject in the following way:

In the third chapter it was mentioned that the terkibs were twenty in
number but there is no doubt that there is no end to the terkibs of music.
Nevertheless, due to the fact that a number of terkibs are more prominent
than others, among the musicians it is a widespread error that they are
named “makam.” Due to the exaggerations of the vocalists, they claim
that since bestes and nakş were composed in them, they have given them
the name “makam.” Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that every terkib is
subordinate to a major makam (ca. 1700:VI:50).

In Chapter III Cantemir had named twenty terkibs: “Twenty function-

ing terkibs, which according to a widespread error are termed makams …”
(ca. 1700:III:20). The number twenty was not fixed for any structural reason,
and elsewhere he mentions twenty-five terkibs which he describes as “obso-
lete” or “non-functional” (“gayr-i müstemele”), but he also presents peşrevs in
some of them. Several of these were in use later in the eighteenth century,
so it is doubtful that these “functional” or “non-functional” categories should
be taken as absolute, although it is probably true that his “functional” group
were the most popular at the end of the seventeenth century. He repeats sev-
eral times that the number of terkibs was not fixed, and this “open-endedness”
of the terkibs was for him one of the most positive features of Turkish music.
The importance of the terkib concept was such that in his “History of the
Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire,” written in Latin for a European
readership, one of his only technical comments about “Oriental music” con-
cerns the terkib:

The scarcity of complete Musicians is owing to the difficulty of compre-

hending all the parts of the Sounds called by the Arabians Terkib, which
Hoje Musicar after Ptolemaeus affirms to be infinite by this Axiom: Emma
ki Terkibate nihayet yok, i.e. But because there is no end to composing
parts (1734:151–52, note 14).
Makam and Terkib 235

In the second chapter of his treatise Cantemir defined the terkib:

When the voice moves along a number of notes and has contact with the
places of a number of makams and passes on, and afterwards reaches
the finalis of one of the makams with which it has been in contact and
concludes there, then it is clear that it is one of the terkibs of that makam
and is subordinate (tabi) to that makam (ca. 1700:II:20).

The issue of subordination is what distinguishes the terkib from Cantemir’s

compound makam. These compounds are mixtures of two or more makams,
each of which “possessed its own note” (finalis). But a terkib, although likewise
a mixture which might employ two or more resting points, must conclude on
the finalis of one of its constituent makams, and hence be considered to be
subordinate to that one. The concept of subordination can only be understood
with reference to the alignment of the makams along the degrees of the fun-
damental scale. The three treatises created between 1700 and 1750 insist upon
the “subordination” of the majority of the modal entities to a privileged minor-
ity of makams which concluded upon a basic scale degree. Judging by the
mecmua repertoire collections, this would seem to have been standard think-
ing throughout the seventeenth century. Harutin’s seven principal makams
“subordinate” all the remaining şubes. No provision is made for “compound
makams”; this term does not appear in Harutin’s treatise. All of Cantemir’s five
compounds are included among the subordinate şubes: Nikriz, Pençgah and
Mahur subordinate to Rast, Sünbüle to Dügah, and Nişabur to Neva.
Hızır Ağa expressed himself through a concept of genesis rather than of sub-
ordination. To him, all the modal entities, makams, ağazes, şubes and terkibs,
were all the “progeny” (mevlidat) of the basic scale degrees. Thus, the terkibs
(sic) Mahur, Pençgah and Nikriz, as well as the makam Rast are all the “prog-
eny” of the note rast. The subordination of all modal entities to a basic scale
degree, rather than the subordination of secondary modal entities to a makam
based on a particular basic scale degree may simply be alternative formula-
tions. Perhaps the latter may be a step toward the equalization of all modal
entities while maintaining their distinctions according to final tones.
This subordination of the terkibs to the makams is occasionally confirmed
by literary references, such as the lyrics written by Tabi Mustafa, to his beste in
the terkib Sazkar:

Hemişe dilde suhân elde sazkârimdir

Terâne-senc-i nev âğâz-i gam küsârimdir
Makam-i Rast’dan ifrâz ehl-i sevdâyâ
Benim bu beste-i zencîr bergüzârimdir (Üngör 1981:1011).
 236 Chapter 6

On my tongue always speech, with my instrument (“sazkar”) in hand,

My fresh and well-proportioned song disperses sorrow.
From the makam Rast derived, for the people of love,
This beste in zincir is my offering.

The terkib Sazkar combined the makams Segah and Rast, concluding upon
the note rast. Hence, it was considered a subordinate of Rast. The word sazkar
appears in the first stich of the Turkish original in the ostensible meaning of
“musical instrument” (lit. “harmony”), but also as a punning reference to the
terkib Sazkar.
We may hypothesize that the development of the identification of nomi-
nal makams with the specific positions for makams along the degrees of the
fundamental scale, tended to destroy the astrologically based system of perde
(makam), avaz, şube, and terkib which had existed prior to the sixteenth cen-
tury. When this newer conception came into practice, a powerful system of
hierarchy was established which focused on the degrees of the fundamental
scale. Various types of modal combination had existed in the past and con-
tinued to develop, thus ensuring the vitality of the terkib concept but, the
more purely conventional distinctions of parda, avaz, and şube gradually
gave way to the new hierarchy of final tones. In the near absence of theoreti-
cal writing for two centuries, musicians apparently were unsure of how to use
the older modal terminology; during the seventeenth century several terms
became synonymous.

Table 2.7 Frequency in the use of modal entities, 1650–1700

Ali Ufki (1650) Hafız Post (ca. 1680) Revan no. 1723 (ca. 1680) Cantemir (ca. 1700)

1 Hüseyni Hüseyni Hüseyni Hüseyni

2 Muhayyer Saba, Rehavi, Irak Eviç, Segah Neva
3 Rast Neva, Acem Saba Rast
4 Neva, Acem Beyati Uşşak, Uzzal/Hicaz Irak
5 Segah Segah, Evc Rast/Rehavi Acem
6 Irak, Uşşak Muhayyer, Uşşak Nikriz, Pençgah, Mahûr Segah
7 Uzzal, Hisar Arazbar, Mahur, Neva, Irak Muhayyer, Saba
Kürdi, Aşiran
8 Mahur, Hicaz, Uzzal, Buselik, Isfahan, Çargah Uzzal, Bayati
Aşiran-Buselik Nihavend
9 Beyati, Evç Pençgah, Rast Şehnaz, Buselik Uşşak, Evc, Pençgah
10 Nikriz, Nişabur Buselik-Aşirani
Makam and Terkib 237

Table 2.8 Frequency of makams in modern Turkish music (after TMA)

1. Hicaz 11. Karciğar

2. Uşşak 12. Segah
3. Nihavend 13. Saba
4. Hüzzam 14. Muhayyer
5. Kürdili Hicazkar 15. Acem-Aşirani
6. Rast 16. Beyati
7. Hüseyni 17. Evc
8. Suzinak 18. Bestenigar
9. Mahur 19. Isfahan, Neva
10. Hicazkar 20. Buselik

In the seventeenth century the terkibs were rarely used as the nominal
modes of compositions, which were almost entirely in the nominal makams.
The musicians who justify their use of the term “makam” for the more popular
terkibs pointed to the existence of “a few bestes and nakş” composed in them.
Therefore, it must be understood that the majority of compositions used the
makams. Terkibs occur occasionally as modulations, although the Cantemir
Collection contains many peşrevs where the nominal makam is used through-
out. In other cases, there is a modulation or two, but only into other makams
(e.g. Uzzal or Kürdi), not into terkibs. It would appear that in the seventeenth
century the major function of the terkibs was as modulation in the improvised
taksim.
Further confirmation of the rarity of compositions in the terkibs can be
found in Cantemir’s Collection and in the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” of Ali Ufki Bey
(ca. 1650) and the lyric collections, such as that of Hafız Post and others. The
“Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” contains a limited selection of terkibs: Nihavend, Sünbüle,
Aşiran-Buselik. The “Hafız Post Mecmuası,” written before 1694, contains a num-
ber of vocal compositions in the terkibs Hicaz, Acem-Aşirani, Kuçek-Sünbüle
and a mere two in Baba Tahir. Topkapi Saray R. no. 1723, probably contempo-
raneous with Hafız Post, indicates repertoire for the following terkibs: Isfahan,
(new) Dügah, Acem-Aşirani, Buselik-Aşirani, Nihavend, and Arazbar.
In Cantemir’s Collection the following terkibs are the nominal modes for a
few peşrevs: Acem-Aşirani (4), Buselik-Aşirani, (7) (but one of these is described
as “Huzi-Buselik”), Nihavend (2), Nuhüft (2), Hicaz (1), Maye (1), Sipihr (1),
Selmek (1), Arazbar (3), Baba Tahir (3), Isfahan (2), Geveşt (2), Sultani Irak (1),
Acem-Yegahi (1).
238 Chapter 6

Revan no. 1725 written under Mahmud I (d. 1754) shows a use of terkibs not
much different from Cantemir: Isfahan, Nuhüft, Sünbüle, Nevruz, Nevruz-i
Acem, Arazbar, Baba Tahir, Aşiran, Büzürk, Hicaz, Muhayyer-Buselik, Muhalef,
Maye, and Hüzzam.
Thus the seventeenth- (and early eighteenth-) century sources demonstrate
a gradual development of the use of the terkibs for compositions, although the
bulk of the repertoire employed only the makams. The group of makams which
appear most frequently is much the same in all of these sources, but there is
some rather significant variation in the frequency of items in these makam
among the documents. It does not seem possible to correlate these variations
with the date of each document; personal preferences seem also to play a role.
Comparing the two seventeenth-century mecmuas mentioned above with the
“Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” and the Cantemir Collection, the items composed in the
makams and terkibs occur in a frequency as shown in Tab. 2.7.
There is unanimity only about makam Hüseyni, which was clearly the most
widely used makam of the seventeenth century. The list does not indicate the
overwhelming preponderance held by Hüseyni in the “Hafız Post Mecmuası,”
where it has virtually three times the amount of repertoire of any other makam
(151 items). In the Cantemir Collection it has just over twice the repertoire of
other makams (52 items) compared to Rast with 23 or Neva with 32 items. Hafız
Post’s extreme preference for Hüseyni would appear to be idiosyncratic; it is
not substantiated by the contemporaneous Revan no. 1723.
There was certainly some difference in classifying the various items by
makam, and this may account for some of the differences in the four sources.
Hafız Post classified many items as Rehavi, rather than Rast, thus inflating his
Rehavi section. Cantemir refers to the confusion as to the definition of the
makam Rehavi (Cantemir ca. 1700:V:47). The author of Revan no. 1723 prefers
to group together closely related makams: his fasil sections include titles like
“Uzzal ma’hu Hicaz” (“Uzzal with Hicaz”), “Saba ma’hu Dügah,” “Rast ma’hu
Rehavi.” There was also some difference as to whether a given item should be
classified as Hüseyni, Muhayyer, or even Neva. Cantemir and Bobowski occa-
sionally classify the same peşrev as one or another of these makams. Among
the more striking differences among these sources are the relatively high fre-
quency for the augmented second species Uzzal/Hicaz in Revan no. 1723 and
the absence of Acem in this source. It is possible that the low frequency of both
Irak and Beyati in Bobowski, the earliest of these documents, may be signifi-
cant. There is also an apparent inconsistency in the high frequency of Saba in
both Hafız Post and Revan no. 1723, whereas in both the earlier collection of
Bobowski and the later one of Cantemir this makam is much less common.
Makam and Terkib 239

Nevertheless, even with these differences, there is a consensus on what

constituted the ten most frequently used makams in the seventeenth cen-
tury: Hüseyni, Rast (Rehavi), Irak, Segah, Evc, Neva, Acem, Uşşak, Beyati, and
Muhayyer, more or less in that order. These ten, excepting only Acem and
Beyati, were makams of the basic scale degrees (tamam perdeler). Beyond these
ten there were a number of makams of secondary scale degrees (na-tamam
perdeler), compound makams, or terkibs (according to Cantemir’s system),
in rather common use: Saba, Nikriz, Pençgah, Uzzal (Hicaz), Mahur, Arazbar,
Buselik, Nihavend, Şehnaz, and less frequently, Nişabur, Kürdi, Hisar, Çargah,
Isfahan, and Buselik-Aşirani. Other terkibs were still more rare. This repertoire
usage proves beyond any doubt that the makams of the basic scale degrees
constituted a “privileged” class in the modal hierarchy, expressed in composi-
tion, not only in theory.
Despite differences in pitch arrangement among the makams, during the
seventeenth century the repertoire of Turkish music was dominated by the
same ten pitches, i.e. the basic scale degrees from ırak (F♯) to muhayyer (a).
The secondary scale degrees and more complex modal compounds appeared
as a relief to the preponderance of the makams using this fundamental scale.
Despite the relative stability in the seyirs of most makams from the seven-
teenth to the nineteenth century, this difference in modal usage created an
enormous gap between the musical aesthetics of these two eras.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the creation of new terkibs and the
loss of repertoire in older makams altered the surface of the music considerably.
A glance at the twenty most commonly used makams of modern Turkish music
(in practice nineteenth-century music, as the bulk of the repertoire dates from
the last century) reveals the extent of the transformation (Tab. 2.8).2 Of these
twenty-one names, eleven makams and three terkibs (Nihavend, Isfahan, and
Hicaz) are familiar from the seventeenth-century sources. Three other names,
Bestenigar, Acem-Aşiran, and Hüzzam are also familiar but now they represent
different modal entities. The makam Beyati likewise underwent some change
in its intervallic structure. Suzinak, Hicazkar, Kürdili Hicazkar, Karciğar are new
transpositions and modal combinations in which an augmented second tetra-
chord forms part of the basic structure. This predominance of the augmented
second (with certain microtonal variations) is perhaps the most characteris-
tic feature of the nineteenth-century modal system. The other makams have
changed their melodic movement (seyir) rather little since the seventeenth

2 This information can be obtained by comparing the entries for each makam in Turk Musikisi
Ansiklopedesi, Istanbul, 1969–1976.
240 Chapter 6

century. The greatest alteration has appeared in the makam Segah, which has
acquired some characteristics of the makam Irak, now no longer in frequent
use. The seyirs of Hüseyni, Muhayyer, Neva, Rast, Mahur, Evc, Uşşak, and Saba
have changed very little in three and a half centuries.3
Hicaz, basically equivalent to the seventeenth-century makam Uzzal, is the
most common modal entity in twentieth-century Turkish music. Nihavend,
formerly a rather obscure terkib, which Cantemir viewed as no more than an
alternative finalis for the makam Kürdi, has become the third most common
makam in Turkish music.
Since the end of the eighteenth century there has occurred a fundamen-
tal transformation in both the classification and use of modal entities. The
makams, which had previously dominated both the theory and practice of
Turkish music (at least in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), took
second place to the terkibs, which far outnumbered them. By the middle of
the nineteenth century this change was institutionalized by the application
of the term “makam” to all terkibs, and the concomitant elimination of the
term “terkib.” Concurrent with this terminological victory, the former second-
ary modal entities now came to dominate the sound of Turkish music as well.

2 Terkib and Şube Structures

The subsidiary modal entities were created in accordance with several differ-
ent principles. Cantemir’s generalization of the term terkib to cover all of these
modal entities creates the false impression that they were all compound forms.
Many of the modal entities were compounds, but even the compounds often
display peculiarities of melodic movement which cannot be explained by any
of their constituent modal elements. Others are not compounded at all; on the
contrary they are characterized by small melodic movements within the com-
pass of a tetrachord or even a trichord. The use of the terms şube and ağaze by
Harutin and Hızır Ağa implies a recognition by these authors that compound-
ing (terkib) was not the only method of creating the subsidiary modal enti-
ties. In theory, a compound has the scalar space to expand beyond the octave
ambitus of one makam, but in fact seventeenth-century modal conventions
dictated very specific melodic movements, which made the subsidiary modal
entities less free in their melodic movements than the makams. Cantemir cites
this as the reason for the dearth of composition in the terkibs:

3 For modern seyirs, see Yekta 1921:2997–3010 and Signell 1977, passim.
Makam and Terkib 241

In some of the terkibs analyzed here there exist composed pieces, either
peşrev or beste. However, in addition to these there are other function-
ing terkibs, but there is nothing composed in them. The reason for this is
that they are of very narrow compass, so if they move a little too much,
immediately they enter the melody of another makam. Such terkibs
are Kuçek, Muberkʾa, Karciğar, Humayun, Neva-Aşiran, or Beste-Isfahan
(ca. 1700:VI:55).

Most of the true “compounds” of modern Turkish (and Arab) music fall into
two types (Powers 1980a:425–6): In the first, most of the exposition takes
place within one makam, but the final cadence resolves itself in another, usu-
ally employing a different final tone; in the second, two makams succeed one
another as equal partners in the creation of the melody. The finalis may be
shared, as in the makam Dügah, compounded out of Saba and Hicaz both end-
ing on A (dügah), or different, as in the makam Sazkar, compounded of Segah
and Rast ending on B♭ and G, or Hüzzam, compounded of Segah and an altered
version of Araban on d.4
Within the first type, usage may be interpreted rather variously. A makam
such as modern Bestenigar may be seen as an octave species composed of con-
junct tetrachords (Powers 1980a:426), the upper part as the Saba tetrachord
concluding on A, and the lower as the Irak tetrachord, concluding on F♯.
However, the structure of melodies in Bestenigar reveals that they are primar-
ily in Saba, with Irak functioning as a cadence (Signell 1977:107). An additional
subtlety is provided by the raising of the characteristic fourth degree of Saba
(to “kapalı neva”), thus distinguishing the two makams further.
While both of these types of “compound makam” existed in the seven-
teenth century, the subsidiary modal entities described as “terkib” by Cantemir
included several rather distinct types in addition to these. We may take as a
corpus the twenty-three “terkibs” which he specifically describes in his sixth
chapter, plus seven more which he describes incidentally, or for which notation

4 During the nineteenth century, all terminological distinctions between modal entities were
abandoned, but in this century the Arel-Ezgi theory has resurrected Cantemir’s term “mürek-
keb makam.” They generalized it by confounding true compounds with octave species so that
only twenty-one “simple” makams remain, and almost the entire Turkish modal system is
considered “compound” makams, a case of the tail wagging the dog. More recently Karadeniz
attempted to redefine the compound makam (1982), and in his theory the modern makam
system contains fifty-seven “simple” (basit) and 144 “compound” (birleşik) modes. In this
case, the rather large number of compounds was achieved by calling out the modal reserves
(from Hamparsum notation collections), conscripting a large number of retired (“gayr-i mus-
temele”) modal entities which were never widely used in any period.
242 Chapter 6

Example 2.11 Structure of Baba Tahir

exists in the Collection, making a total of thirty “terkibs” which were “function-
ing” (müstemele) at the end of the seventeenth century, and for which suffi-
cient information exists.
We may exclude at the outset three modal entities which were alternative
forms of makams and differ in no way from the octave-species makams of the
secondary scale degrees. These are Hicaz and Humayun, both alternative forms
of Uzzal, and Nihavend, which was the makam Kürdi with a finalis moved
down to G.
Twelve of the remaining twenty-six “terkibs” fall into the first category of
compounds. Four of these cadence on the note ırak (F♯), and six on aşiran (E).
The only other cadences are acem aşiran (F) for the terkib Acem-Aşirani, and
yegah (D) for Acem-Yegahi. The melodic movements (hükm) of all of these ter-
kibs lie essentially in their principal makam, after which they cadence in the
second, lower makam. Thus, the terkib Rahatülervah consists of Uzzal plus Irak,
Ruy-i Irak is Segah plus Irak, Muhalif-i Irak is Saba plus Irak (much like modern
Bestenigar), and Beste-Isfahan is Isfahan plus Irak (Isfahan was itself a com-
pound of Uzzal and Saba). The aşiran (E) group of terkibs are: Buselik-Aşirani,
which was Buselik plus Aşiran, Büzürk, which was much like the last terkib
with a small detour into Rast, and Huzi-Buselik, a close relative of the last two,
Nühüft with its relative Neva-Aşirani, and Uşşak-Aşirani.
Six of the remaining terkibs fit into the second category of compounds,
where the elements are more equal. However, they do not appear to have been
created according to a single formula, like many of the compounds in the first
category. A good example of complete equality between two makams in a com-
pound is the terkib Baba Tahir, composed of Muhayyer and Beyati:

Analysis of Baba Tahir: Baba Tahir commences its melodic line from
the note muhayyer (a), and after demonstrating the complete melody
of Muhayyer, it comes, like Beyati to the note neva (d). It pauses a bit
on neva and demonstrates the complete makam Beyati. From there it
descends to çargah (c) and segah (B ) and concludes on dügah (A)
(Cantemir ca. 1700:VI:54).

The terkib Isfahan uses the notes of two makams of secondary scale degrees,
Uzzal and Saba, who share the finalis dügah (A):
Makam and Terkib 243

Analysis of Isfahan: The terkib Isfahan gives its ağaze like Uzzal, and when
it comes to the note hüseyni (e) it strikes acem (f). From there it returns,
and after coming to hüseyni, neva (d), and uzzal (c♯), like Uzzal or Hicaz it
passes over the note çargah (c) and falls upon the note segah (B ). Then
it ascends again and strikes the notes çargah and saba. It demonstrates
thoroughly the melody of Saba, and like Saba it concludes on dügah (A)
(ca. 1700:VI:51).

The example of Isfahan given in the küll-i külliyat peşrev is wedged between
Uzzal and Saba. In the quick modulations of this composition we see one mea-
sure of Uzzal (labeled “Uzzal”), followed by a measure of the opening section
of Saba, and then a measure which introduces the note uzzal (c) and quickly
cancels it out in favor of çargah (c) in order to introduce a cadence in Saba.
These two measures are labeled “Isfahan.” The following two measures feature
ascending and descending melodies in Saba. In Ex. 2.12 Isfahan is used as a
transition between Uzzal and Saba. Cantemir’s own peşrev in Isfahan (remel
usul) demonstrates a more complete use of this terkib.
In Cantemir’s peşrev, the two makams do not simply succeed one another;
rather the frequent alteration in the c (the 3rd degree) and changes in melodic

Example 2.12 Isfahan from küll-i külliyat, first hane

Example 2.13 Nazire-i Isfahan, usul remel, Kantemiroğlu, serhane, mülazime

244 Chapter 6

direction create modal ambiguity in several points, notably in the cadential

sections of the serhane where the use of c natural (çargah) in the descending
phrase cancels out the impression of Uzzal, without fully introducing Saba.
The makam Uzzal is employed only as an ağaze (opening phrase), centering
around d; it is never allowed to develop its full ambitus. Finally, the mülazime
holds the note c for the space of a whole note and then introduces a phrase
in Saba.
Due to the fact that compositions in the compounds only began to appear
commonly in the second half of the eighteenth century, our sources for ana-
lyzing their earlier usage are few. In some cases we can only read the laconic
descriptions in Cantemir, Harutin, or Hızır Ağa, or else scrutinize a single
peşrev or semai. The makams of the basic scale degrees (and some of the sec-
ondary degrees) have exhibited great consistency over a period of over three
centuries, while the terkibs are sometimes described rather differently in our
three early sources. From the late eighteenth century to the present the ter-
kibs have undergone far more change than have most makams. The extensive
composed repertoire in the makams must have helped to stabilize them over
the centuries, but no such repertoire existed for the subsidiary modal entities
until the early nineteenth century. While the disagreements among musicians
were a source of frustration for Cantemir and later musicologists, it permit-
ted the growth of a rich oral tradition with regard to the “correct” or “best”
usage. During the twentieth century all compound makams have been taught
with very specific instructions with regard to intonation, melodic direction
and additional or optional modulations. The text-book analysis of compound
makams constructed out of two or three makams appearing in a certain order
does not exhaust all the nuances of how these compounds are performed by the
best musicians or how they are used in classical compositions. Although these
are rarely discussed in the pre-twentieth-century treatises, we must assume
that the inconsistencies among the treatises created by practicing musicians
reflected a living musical process. Cantemir, Hızır Ağa, and Abdülbaki Dede
all introduce their books by noting the disagreements among the older trea-
tises and the frequent discrepancies between all of them and current musi-
cal practice. Cantemir devotes an entire chapter (Chapter VIII) to presenting
the makams and all subsidiary modal entities in accordance with the older
theories (kavl-i kadim), using various unnamed written sources, probably
from the fifteenth and/or sixteenth centuries, and specifically pointing out
the differences from and similarities to current practice. After Cantemir, the
later treatise-writers do not quote earlier texts, with the exception of Haşim
Bey (1864) who plagiarized the third, fourth, fifth and seventh chapters of the
Makam and Terkib 245

Example 2.14 Nühüft: a) Buhurcioğlu; b) Ali Hoca; c) Angeli

“Kitab-i Ilm el-Musiki.” Thus, the laconic expressions of the treatises of the later
seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries allow us to glimpse something of the
rapid musical development of that period.
Cantemir felt that he had to apologize for the discrepancies which show
through at times in his book by explaining how he collected his material:

However, you should know that among vocalists and instrumentalists

there is much dispute and confusion concerning the terkibs mentioned
here, and others as well. Nowadays the judgement of one does not con-
form to that of another; the treatises of old do not resemble one another.
Therefore, despite our inadequate ability, we researched every treatise
repeatedly, we spoke continually with individuals who are expert in
the treatises, we conferred conscientiously and collected and studied the
most well-founded and reasonable analyses, and analyzed them in the
manner in which we have presented them (ca. 1700:VII:55).

In certain rare instances notated repertoire may be compared with variants

of a single terkib recorded in the treatises, thus bringing more information to
bear upon our interpretation of the notated documents. These cases reveal the
subtle varieties which had existed in the musical practice and repertoire of the
period, and which led to some of the nuances of modern practice. The material
concerning the terkib Nühüft provides some valuable insights. All the sources of
the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century agree that Nühüft begins on neva (d)
and concludes on the note aşiran (E), but beyond this, opinions varied. The
pre-seventeenth-century terkib Nühüft was apparently very loosely related (or
possibly unrelated) to its later forms. Cantemir presents three rather divergent
versions of this terkib and also reveals his oral sources:

Analysis of Nühüft: There is much contention among the musicians

concerning the terkib Nühüft because in the ancient treatises it moves
melodically from tiz dügah, that is, from muhayyer (a) and descends like
Isfahan, and like Hicaz it concludes on dügah (A).
246 Chapter 6

According to the theory of the vocalists [Çömlekçizade] Receb and

Buhurcizade [Itri], it moves melodically from the note neva (d) and going
by means of basic scale degrees it concludes on aşiran [E].
According to the theory of Ali Hoca and Tanburi Mehmed Çelebi, it
moves melodically from the note neva (d), like Rehavi, it shows thor-
oughly the note rast (G), and from there it concludes on aşiran [E], going
by means of basic scale degrees.
According to the theory of Tanburi Koca Angeli and Tanburi Çelebi,
it moves melodically from the note neva, goes to dügah (A) by way of
buselik (B) and then concludes on aşiran by means of basic scale degrees.
Of them all the most correct appears to us to be the theory of Ali Hoca
because, according to Buhurcioğlu’s theory, the terkib called Neva-Aşirani
would be performed. According to Angeli’s theory there could not be any
difference from the melodic movement of Buselik-Aşirani. I have said that
Ali Hoca’s theory is most correct because by concluding on aşiran with
the melodic movement of Rehavi, one removes any suspicion of other
terkibs (ca. 1700:VI:53).

Harutin’s description of Nühüft can be summarized as in Example 2.15 (see

Harutin 1968:89). It is the most specific of the seyirs.
Hızır Ağa defines Nühüft in the following manner:

Nühüft: It is that most hidden terkib which mixes the notes nim hicazi
(с♯) and hüseyni (e) and nim acemi (f) in the manner of Isfahan, and
descends to dügah (A), and from dügah it descends by means of rast (G)
and ırak (F♯) and concludes upon aşiran (E) (Hızır Ağa n.d.:30).

Hızır Ağa’s description agrees very closely with Harutin’s. Both of them differ-
entiate Nühüft from Neva-Aşirani (Neva with a cadence on aşiran) by beginning
with the notes d, c♯ and f, thus suggesting the ağaze of Isfahan. It does not seem
that Isfahan actually develops itself with the makam Saba; only the ağaze is
used. However, this suggestion is enough to lose the atmosphere of the makam
Neva, which uses neither c♯ nor f. Harutin’s ağaze is further differentiated

Example 2.15 Nühüft, Harutin

Makam and Terkib 247

Example 2.16 Nühüft, düyek, serhane (Collection: 122)

Example 2.17 Nühüft, darbeyn; Mehmed Çelebi (Eyyüblü), serhane (Collection: 113)

from Neva by the appearance of buselik (B) in place of the expected segah. The
close agreement of these coeval sources on a version of Nühüft which was not
mentioned by Cantemir might appear to indicate a temporal development in
Turkish musical practice during the forty-to-fifty-year interval separating these
sources. However, Cantemir’s Collection contains one anonymous peşrev nom-
inally in Nühüft which employs an ağaze resembling Isfahan, thus agreeing
with Hızır Ağa and Harutin, and not with any of the three theories presented
in the treatise. The consistent use of the note acem (f) in place of evc (f♯) and
the frequent appearance of c♯ both separate this piece from the makam Neva;
the composer of this item could not have conceived of Nühüft as a compound
of Neva and Aşiran. This item is in the Persian peşrev form of the mid-late sev-
enteenth century, thus proving that Hızır Ağa’s theory of this terkib had existed
in the later seventeenth century. Cantemir could not have been ignorant of
it, as he himself transcribed a peşrev created in accordance with this theory.
Nevertheless, through oversight, or some other cause he failed to include it in
his treatise (see ex. 2.16).
The theory of Nühüft which Cantemir favored was that of Neyzen Ali Hoca
and Tanburi Mehmed Çelebi. A peşrev in the usul darbeyn by Mehmed Çelebi
occurs in Cantemir’s Collection (Ex. 2.17). It is clear from the serhane in Ex. 2.17
that the makam Neva is totally absent. The melody commences near the note
248 Chapter 6

neva (d) but never dwells on this degree. The note rast (G) is rather prominent,
and it was this feature in the theory that pleased Cantemir because it erased
any impression of either Neva or Buselik, both makams which emphasized
dügah (A) rather than rast. However, from the second measure the makam
Saba makes its appearance and remains throughout the serhane and most
of the mülazime. In addition, the note kürdi (B♭) appears consistently in the
cadential phrases, which is neither a feature of the makams Saba nor Aşiran.
On the basis of this piece alone we might conclude that Nühüft was a com-
pound of Saba, Rast (or Rehavi), and Aşiran. The movement of the melody is
quite peculiar in that it is alternately drawn downward toward G and upward
toward c, although neither the theory nor the practice of Turkish music in
the seventeenth century or later created such intimacy between the makams
Rehavi and Saba. Any theory of seventeenth-century Turkish music probably
could not have accounted for the melodic movement which Mehmed Çelebi
has created here. Cantemir is silent about this question, and the existence of
this peşrev in his Collection illustrates the fluidity which was possible in treat-
ing the subsidiary modal entities.
The later Turkish tradition seems to have favored neither the practice of
Mehmed Çelebi nor the theories found in Harutin and Hızır Ağa. All of the
repertoire preserved by the later tradition uses the version of the makam
employed by Buhurcioğlu (Itri). This version is very nearly a compound of
Neva and Aşiran, and hence most likely indistinguishable from the extinct
Neva-Aşirani. An example is the semai by Esʿad Efendi, a contemporary of Hızır
Ağa and Harutin, preserved in the oral tradition until the nineteenth century
(cf. Yekta 1924–1930: No. 67).
While some of the compounds mentioned above are no longer current in
modern Turkish music, the principles by which they were constructed are
not fundamentally different from the compounds currently in use, or which
had been in use during the nineteenth century. However, Cantemir’s treatise
and Collection mention four terkibs (and one “makam”) which do not func-
tion along any of these principles. They appear to have been losing popular-
ity by the middle of the eighteenth century and were considered archaic by
Abdülbaki Dede at the end of the century. Their significance lies therefore not
for the future development of Turkish music (after the seventeenth century)
but for its past. These five entities, named Hüzzam, Kuçek, Şiraz, Karciğar, and

Example 2.18 Hüzzam, from küll-i külliyat peşrev, third hane

Makam and Terkib 249

(the makam) Nişabur, are not compounds at all; Cantemir called the first four
“terkib” because he chose not to employ the terms şube or avaz. They are in
a sense the opposite of compounds. Rather than mixing elements of two or
more octave species, they restrict themselves to a small ambitus within a single
one. Their compass is less than a tetrachord, and in two cases they do not con-
clude on degrees of the fundamental scale, and hence are not convenient for
the creation of modal compounds:

Analysis of Hüzzam: The terkib Hüzzam commences the opening of its

melodic line just like Hicaz, that is it moves from the note neva (d) and
ascends to hüseyni, from there it descends to neva and from neva it con-
cludes on the note uzzal (c♯). Know that of all the terkibs, there is no other
which concludes upon a secondary scale degree (ca. 1700:VI:52).

The entire melody described verbally and seen in the peşrev (Ex. 2.18) is
restricted to a minor third. At first glance this looks like a small movement
within the şube Hicaz, and indeed in this peşrev it occurs in the third hane
which begins in Hicaz. However, in Turkish music it was not customary to
name every melodic movement within a makam or şube, after the manner of
a Persian gushe, so the distinctive identity of Hüzzam appears anomalous. To
Harutin it was simply “Hüzzam.” Hızır Ağa termed it “Hüzzam-i Rumi,” to dis-
tinguish it from his “Hüzzam,” a completely different makam (a compound of
Araban and Segah) which is known today by that name. To Abdülbaki Dede it
was “Hüzzam-i Kadim” (“ancient Hüzzam”), opposed to Hüzzam-i Cedid (“new
Hüzzam”). The appellation “Rumi” does not seem fortuitous, as this is today
a mode used in Anatolian Turkish folk music. In art music, Hüzzam seems to
have been replaced by its new namesake in the early nineteenth century. The
folksong from Central Anatolia in Ex. 2.19 exemplifies the modern use of the
“native” Hüzzam şube.
Another archaic modal entity is Şiraz. Cantemir does not mention it among
the functioning “terkibs,” but its description appears in his chapter on the
“ancient theory” (kavl-i kadim), and a short example appears in the first hane

Example 2.19 Türkü from Konya, “Yeşilim, yeşilim aman,” nakarat

250 Chapter 6

of the küll-i külliyat: “Şiraz: It begins from the note hüseyni (e), goes up to
muhayyer. From there it returns, goes down by basic scale degrees to çargah
(c), from çargah it ascends by means of uzzal (c♯), and concludes on hüseyni”
(ca. 1700:VIII:76).
Ex. 2.20 begins from neva (d) rather than hüseyni, and touches on buse-
lik (B), but otherwise agrees with the “ancient” theory. Şiraz is absent from both
Harutin and Hızır Ağa. Abdülbaki Dede describes it as follows:

Şiraz: It descends from the note muhayyer (a), and begins like Uşşak, and
after pausing somewhat on the note gerdaniye (g), it once again begins like
Uşşak from muhayyer and concludes on the note hüseyni (e). It appears
that this terkib was an invention of more recent antiquity (kudema-i müt-
eahirin), but although in our time it may occur in the midst of a mode
(Ağaze miyaninda güzer), it has no fame. However, in our time I heard a
perfect master say that there was a terkib called Şiraz (Abdülbaki 1795:55).

A small but significant change had occurred during the century separating
Cantemir from Abdülbaki Dede. Abdülbaki Dede is reporting the definition of
a musician, probably of the generation prior to him, who no longer performed
this terkib, but had heard that it had existed. The precise melodic movement
of the earlier versions of Şiraz have been replaced by a simple transposition
of the Uşşak tetrachord on hüseyni (e). This seemingly small change in inter-
pretation is significant in that it demonstrates the foreignness of the type of
modal thinking represented by Şiraz in the later eighteenth century, and hence
in modern Turkish music. This later version of Şiraz is a simple transposition,
not the more melodically specific formula of the previous period.
Cantemir’s terkib Karciğar (ca. 1700:VIII:55) is a descending movement from
gerdaniye (g) to neva (d), using acem (f) and beyati (e♭). It reaches down to the
subtonic, çargah (c), but quickly concludes on neva; its basic movement being
confined to a minor third. Karciğar is absent from Hızır Ağa, and Harutin’s
Karciğar is a totally different entity with a finalis on segah (B ).
Cantemir’s Küçek is a narrow descending movement from gerdaniye:

Analysis of Kuçek: Kuçek commences its melodic line from the note ger-
daniye and descends to evc (f♯) and hüseyni (e). From there it passes over

Example 2.20 Şiraz, from küll-i külliyat, serhane

Makam and Terkib 251

the note neva and falls on the note çargah (c). from çargah it concludes
like Saba on dügah. In conclusion, Kuçek is that which suddenly falls
from hüseyni to çargah (ca. 1700:VI:55).

Whereas seventeenth-century Kuçek was a very narrow şube which barely

touched on the notes of the makams Gerdaniye, Hüseyni, and Saba, modern
Kuçek is a compound utilizing the Uşşak tetrachord on hüseyni (e), the com-
plete makam Saba and Zirgüleli Hicaz transposed to çargah (c). There is no
doubt, in this case, that the modern makam is a descendant of the older one,
but their ambitus and composition are quite different.
Finally, the “makam” Nişabur appears to be an expanded version of Hüzzam,
emphasizing the core major third from B to f (B, c♯, d, e, f). Although according
to Cantemir and Harutin, it might ascend above muhayyer (a) to sünbüle (b♭),
it normally went no further than gerdaniye (g) and concluded on buselik (B). Its
melodic movement was similar to Hüzzam, but it concluded a half step down.
Nişabur was considered to be a “makam” by Cantemir, and apparently it
had an independent repertoire. In his Collection he included three peşrevs in
Nişabur; a sakil by “Beyazit,” another sakil by the “Indians” (Hindiler), and most
recently, a devr-i kebir by Solakzade. The latter appears also in the Mecmua-i
Saz ü Söz. The latter also attributes the sakil of the Indians to Solakzade.
Three seventeenth-century vocal items exist today in this makam. After
them, there is only the fasıl by the late nineteenth-century composer Tanburi
Ali, but these latter are quite possibly an attempt at archaicism, which was in
vogue at that time. In modern Turkish music Nişabur is generally used only as
a brief modulation in pieces or taksims in the makam Hicaz, raising the second
degree from B_ to B natural.
Hızır Ağa describes it as follows: “Nişabur: That Persian nağme which
begins from tiz dügah (a), and then shows the notes gerdaniye (g), acem (f),
hüseyni (e), and neva (d), then it reveals nim hicazi (c♯) and it makes clear that
its conclusion is on the note buselik (B)” (n.d.:19). Nişabur is the only modal
entity described by Hızır Ağa as “Persian.” While this may be arbitrary, it may
be worth considering such a remark in the context of the wider affinities of
this class of subsidiary modal entity. This is not to suggest that any of these
şubes are a direct kin to any of the gushes of the modern Persian dastgah, but
the alienness of these structures in Turco-Arabian music needs some expla-
nation. The five modal entities in question (Hüzzam, Nişabur, Kuçek, Şiraz,
and Karciğar) can be compared to Persian gushes on the basis of their narrow
ambitus and the specificity of their melodic progression within that ambitus.
It is at least possible that these represented some aspect of the music of the
252 Chapter 6

Example 2.21 Kuçek, from küll-i külliyat, first hane

preceding period, when Persian musicians were influential in the court in

Istanbul, or perhaps a still earlier period (the fifteenth and early sixteenth cen-
turies) when the first musical treatises were being written in Ottoman Turkish.

3 The Terkib in the Eighteenth Century

Even in the absence of available notated documents from the first half of the
eighteenth century, some basic information may be obtained from the treatise
of Hızır Ağa and from the mecmua collections of the period. Unfortunately,
the existing manuscript of Harutin’s treatise has undergone interpolations
when it was written in the late eighteenth century, and these affect particu-
larly the section on the şubes. Some of the şube descriptions are undoubtedly
Harutin’s, but a number of late eighteenth-century compounds have been
added (e.g. Suzidilara, Suzidil) by the copyist who sought to make the book
more up-to-date. However, even the limited material available reveals consid-
erable development of the compounds between 1700 and 1750.
Hızır Ağa lists sixty items, of which twenty are makams, and forty are sub-
sidiary modal entities which he terms ağaze, şube, or terkib (Tab. 2.9). Four
of these appear to be variant forms of terkibs which had been mentioned by
Cantemir. As noted above, Hızır Ağa’s Nühüft is documented by a notated
item in the Cantemir Collection. His versions of the terkibs Geveşt, Rekb, and
Selmek as well as of the makam Dügah differ to a greater or lesser degree from
Cantemir’s descriptions and/or notations. The differences do not connect
these items with later practice, and probably reflect variants which had already
existed in the later seventeenth century. However, fully twenty-three of his ter-
kibs and two of his makams agree with modern usage, not with that of the
seventeenth century. Hızır Ağa’s treatise supplies the earliest document of
such well-known modern modal structures as Müstear, Isfahan, Hüzzam, Zavli

Example 2.22 Movement of Nişabur from küll-i külliyat, third hane

 Makam and Terkib 253

Table 2.9 Makam classification of Kemani Hızır Ağa

Mevlidat-i perde-i dügah Mevlidat-i Mevlidat-i Mevlidat-i Mevlidat-i

dir (dügah makari) perde-i rast dir perde-i ırak dir perde-i neva perde-i aşiran
“Those generated by the “Those gener- “Those gener- “Those gener- “Those gener-
note dügah (finalis on ated by the ated by the ated by the ated by the note
dügah)” [A]: note rast” [G]: note ırak” [F♯]: note neva” [d]: aşiran” [E]:

Uşşak makam, Rast makam, Irak makam, Neva makam, Nühüft terkibdir,
Hüseyni makam, Rehavi makam, Beste-nigar, Nihavend-i Buselik-Aşihran
Şehnaz Ağaze, Selmek Ağaze, Rahat el-Ervah, Kebir, terkibdir,
Gerdaniye Ağaze, Rekb terkib, Evc, Nişabur perde-i Acem-Aşiran
Sultani Irak, Sazkar Muhalif-Irak, buselik terkibdir,
Saba, terkib, Beste-Isfahan, makar, Uşşak-Aşiran
Acem, Nihavend-i Rahat-feza, Araban neva terkibdir,
Kürdi, Rumi terkib, Ruy-i Irak, makar, Mahur-Aşiran
Beyati, Nikriz terkib, Zirkeş-Haveran. Yegah şube, terkibdir,
Buselik makam, Mahur terkib, Hüzzam-i Neva-Aşiran
Isfahan makam, Zavli terkib, Rumi, terkibdir.
Hisar Ağaze, Pençgah terkib, perde-i hicaz
Huzi, Büzürk makam. makar.
Zirefkend-Kuçek,
Hicaz makam,
Dügah şube,
Zirgüle makam,
Nevruz Ağaze,
Muhayyer,
Sünbüle,
Baba Tahir,
Arazbar,
Muhayyer-Biuselik,
Muhayyer-Kürdi,
Nişaburek,
Evc-Buselik,
Evc-Muhalif,
Nihavend-i Sagir,
Şehnaz-Buselik,
Humayun.
254 Chapter 6

(Zavil), Bestenigar, Dilkeş-Haveran, Nişaburek, Araban, and Vech-i Arazbar.

Hızır Ağa claims to be the inventor of the latter terkib himself, during the reign
of “Gazi Mahmud Han” (Sultan Mahmud I, 1730–1754). While some of these
names had been used before, e.g. Isfahan, Hüzzam, Bestenigar, these terkibs
have little or no resemblance to the modal entities which had been current
under the same names in the seventeenth century. In addition, the entity
Yegah makes its first appearance. The author describes it as a şube transposi-
tion of the makam Neva. The makam Beyati is seen in its modern form, retain-
ing its earlier melodic movement, but without the note beyati (e♭) which had
been its distinguishing characteristic. Now the e flat was raised to e natural, so
that its scale was indistinguishable from the makam Uşşak. In modern Turkish
music Beyati is viewed as the ascending-descending form of the makam Uşşak,
which is an ascending makam (Signell 1977:51). Thus, this change seems to have
begun in the middle of the eighteenth century, or somewhat earlier.
The number of cadences used in the type 1 compounds (see pp. 238–39)
have doubled. Whereas previously only the makams Irak and Aşiran served as
the cadential makam (with the exception of Acem Aşirani), now Buselik and
Kürdi likewise can assume this function. The older group of compounds on F♯
(Ruy-i Irak, Rahatül Ervah, Muhalif-i Irak) are retained, but new ones are added:
Rahat-Feza, Bestenigar and Beste-Isfahan. The same is true for the compounds
on E (Buselik-Aşirani, Neva-Aşirani, Nühüft) to which are added Mahur-Aşiran
and Hüseyni-Aşiran. Both Buselik and Kürdi compounds conclude on A
(dügah), but one uses the note buselik (B) and the other nihavend (= kürdi, B♭).
In the case of Şehnaz-Buselik and Muhayyer-Buselik the cadence involves rais-
ing the second degree from the neutral B to a natural B; in Muhayyer-Kürdi
it involves flattening of the second to B♭. Aside from the scalar difference, the
cadence in the compound makams demonstrated the characteristic cadential
formulas of these new makams.5 Evc-Buselik, however is a more radical type of
compound, in that the finalis of the makam Evc is not dügah (A), but ırak (F♯).
Kürdi had also not been employed previously as a compound element. Thus,
by 1750 we see both expansion of the previously known compound structures,
as well as experimentation with new possibilities for cadential modulation.
The appearance of an entity entitled Araban is an important link with mod-
ern practice. It is described as a tetrachord ascending from d to g, using the
notes e♭ and f♯, and finally concluding on d (neva, hisar, evc, gerdaniye), using
the same notes. While these notes had existed on the seventeenth-century tan-
bur, Cantemir does not mention such an entity, nor do his notations show any
examples of this species except in passing note-alterations in such modes as

5 The modern forms of the buselik and Kürdi compounds are described in Signell 1977 98–106.
Makam and Terkib 255

Beyati and Karciğar. Araban never acquired much repertoire, but it became an
important component in compounds and in modulations. In modern Turkish
music it is an essential modulation in the makams Beyati and Beyati-Araban,
and it is a component in the octave-compound Karciğar. While in essence it
is an augmented second tetrachord transposed to d, in modern times it has
developed microtonal variants for use in different makams. Thus, today the
tetrachord used in Beyati-Araban is not identical with the one used in Hüzzam.
The crucial difference lies in the second degree above neva, which is 2.5 com-
mas flat in Hüzzam and 4 commas flat in Beyati-Araban. In the mid-eighteenth
century no such distinction existed. Hızır Ağa describes Hüzzam with the same
notes above neva as in Araban (see above), however, here the finalis is not on
neva but on segah (B ). To Cantemir the terkibs Bestenigar and Geveşt had con-
cluded on segah; here these two have been discarded and in their places are
two new terkibs with a segah finalis, Hüzzam and Müstear. The introduction of
various forms of the augmented second tetrachord on d, and then on its octave
yegah (Sultani-Yegah, Şed-i Araban = “transposition of Araban”) was to change
the face of modern Turkish music.
Transposition is slightly more in evidence in Hızır Ağa’s system than in
Cantemir’s, as seen in three terkibs (Arazbar, Selmek, Araban) and one makam
(Yegah) which he specifically calls transpositions (şedd). Harutin had devoted
many leaves of his now scattered manuscript to the issue of transposition
(eleven pages in the Soviet edition). A more substantial section was published
in Popescu-Judet’s Turkish edition (2002:67–82).
Another new development is the loss of all of the narrow, gushe-like şubes
found in Cantemir except for Hüzzam. In Harutin, Karciğar, and Şiraz are
absent, while Hüzzam and Kuçek appear in their familiar new forms. In Hızır
Ağa, Kuçek appears, but without its characteristic melodic movement (i.e. the
drop from e to c). Hüzzam is now called “Hüzzam-i Rumi,” and shares position
with the new “Hüzzam.” At the end of the century, Abdülbaki Dede mentions
Hüzzam as Hüzzam-i Kadim (“the ancient Hüzzam”) and considers Şiraz an
obsolete terkib. The Şiraz which he knows is rather different from its earlier
form. Neither the old nor the new Karciğar occurs.
I will briefly mention the main lines of development of the compound
structures as seen in the two major pre-twentieth-century treatises, the “Tetkik
ü Tahkik” of Abdülbaki Nasır Dede (1795) and the “Mecmua” of Haşim Bey
(1864). The period from the reign of Sultan Abdülhamit I (1774–1789) and of
Selim III (1789–1808) saw a very great development of repertoire and compo-
sitional forms, far more than in the previous twenty years under Osman III
and Mustafa III. It appears that the lavish patronage of Abdülhamit and Selim
also aided in the development of the makam-terkib system, which was able to
256 Chapter 6

build upon the achievements of the first half of the century. This system now
expanded both in size and sophistication.
Abdülbaki Dede uses the term makam only for the seven modes based on the
lower notes of the fundamental scale (makams Irak, Rast, Uşşak-Dügah, Segah,
Çargah, Neva, Hüseyni) plus Muhayyer, the descending version of Hüseyni.
Everything else is classed by him as terkib. He distinguished two types of terkib,
Izafi and Mezci, i.e. “connected” and “blended,” (1795:28). The Izafi variety was
compounded from makams which concluded on different final tones (muhtelif
el-tabaka) while the Mezci was compounded from makams or terkibs which
concluded on a common finalis (mütefik el-tabaka). He presents a catalogue
of one hundred twenty-five terkibs. We may subtract nine makams of second-
ary scale degrees (e.g. Kürdi, Uzzal, Saba, etc.). A number of the remainder
were certainly gleaned from older treatises, and do not reflect current prac-
tice. For example, under Nühüft-i Kadim we find the same terkib mentioned
by Cantemir in his eighth chapter, as a nonfunctioning terkib. Nevertheless,
such obsolete modal entities account for only a small number of items (prob-
ably less than ten). Abdülbaki Dede tries to give an approximate date for each
modal entity in his catalogue. In a few cases he is able to give the name of the
inventor, e.g. Hızır Ağa for Vech-i Arazbar and his contemporary Seyyid Ahmed
Ağa for Ferahfeza. Otherwise, he uses terms like müteahirin (“the later ones”),
müteahirin-i selef (“somewhat earlier ones”) and kudema-i müteahirin (“earlier
ones”) to refer to the era when a given terkib was probably created.
By the end of the eighteenth century there were over one hundred terkibs
in use, many of which had been created within the past century. This contrasts
with the forty mentioned by Hızır Ağa or the thirty in Cantemir. Most of these
terkibs never possessed a large repertoire, but modern collections like those
of Ezgi and Karadeniz contain a number of items which had been composed
between the period when these terkibs were invented in the late eighteenth
century, and their decline in the late nineteenth century.
Structurally these compounds show a continuation of the principles of
the previous era, plus some new techniques. The type 1 compounds featuring
cadences in Buselik and Kürdi have increased in number and complexity, e.g.
Şehnaz-Buselik, Gerdaniye-Buselik, Acem-Buselik, Evc-Buselik, Hisar-Buselik,
Hicaz-Zemzeme (Zemzeme = Kürdi), Isfahan-Zemzeme, Arazbar-Zemzeme,
Kuçek-Zemzeme, Aşiran-Zemzeme. These latter are not simple two-element
compounds, because the first element of each is itself a compound. The older
compounds in Irak and Aşiran were still in use, and a few new ones were
created (e.g. Canfeza, out of Saba and Aşiran). Transposition was playing an
increasingly important role in the creation of compounds. New terkibs such as
Evcara, Suzidil, and Suzinak involved transpositions as well as combinations.
Makam and Terkib 257

Almost all of the compounds known in modern Turkish music are to be seen
in “Tetkik ü Tahkik.” The only major exceptions are Hicazkar, Kürdili-Hicazkar,
Şevkevza, Şevkütarab, and Ferahnak, all of which appeared during the reigns of
Selim III (d. 1808) or Mahmud II (d. 1839).
The publication of Haşim Bey’s “Mecmua” in 1864 shows little development,
and in fact considerable decline from the richness of terkib-invention of the
end of the eighteenth century. The total number of items in his catalogue of
modal entities is ninety-two. He no longer distinguishes between makams and
terkibs; everything is a makam. If we extract the twenty-two items which had
been previously known as makams, seventy terkibs remain. Very few of the ter-
kibs which had existed prior to the middle of the eighteenth century are found
here; Sazkar, Sultani-Irak, and Maye may be the only examples. A few others
appear under the old names but with expanded structures, e.g. Sipihr, Kuçek,
Arazbar, Büzürk, or totally different structures, e.g. Hüzzam, Isfahan, Karciğar.
Remarkably, some of the type 1 compounds known from the late seventeenth
century still persist: e.g. the entire Irak “family,” as well as Buselik-Aşirani and
Nühüft. Some of the early eighteenth-century inventions have been retained,
e.g. Müstear and the new Hüzzam. Type 1 compounds concluding in Buselik
have grown to the tremendous extent of fourteen separate terkibs, now the
largest single type of compound. Three of the Kürdi group remain from the
previous century. The major new structural developments are the five com-
pounds mentioned above; Hicazkar, Kürdili-Hicazkar, Şevkefza, Şevkütarab
and Ferahnak, which display considerable ingenuity in their construction, and
which were, and are today widely used in Turkey.
 Chapter 7

Melodic Progression

In the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Turkish sources quoted in the

previous chapter, all modal entities are presented by means of a melodic pro-
gression expressed verbally. The specific conception of melodic progression
within the makams unites modern Turkish and Arabian music, and in Turkey
it can be traced back to the later seventeenth century, in a form not unlike
the one known today. According to current theory, modes are distinguished
not only by intervallic structure and by their position on the general scale, but
also by specific melodic progressions. These involve a tonal hierarchy within
a theoretical scale, for which a fairly standard terminology exists. One tone is
the point of entry (ağaze or giriş), the same tone or another may be the finalis
(karar). Yet another tone will be predominant (güçlü), and others will have
important functions as resting points (müvakkitli kalış). Suspended cadences
(asma karar) have an active function, as do leading tones (yeden). In addi-
tion, modes are distinguished on the basis of their overall melodic direction.
Modes may be ascending (çıkıcı), descending (inici) or descending-ascending
(inici-çıkıcı). Modes may be extended above and below the octave with-
out repeating (Signell 1977:50–65; Powers 1980a:427). While modern theory
employs the medieval tetra/pentachord cins (genre) as a concept, melodic pro-
gression is conceived within the ambitus of an octave or more. The standard
modern term for the entire phenomenon is seyir.
Modes with an identical intervallic structure and position on the general
scale may be distinguished on the basis of melodic progression. For example,
in modern Turkish music the makams Uşşak and Beyati share all basic features
except for melodic direction. Uşşak ascends from A to d and Beyati ascends
from d to a and descends from d to A. Since the seventeenth century, the
makam Muhayyer has been considered a descending version of the makam
Hüseyni, sharing the same scale (Signell 1977:55).
Modern Iranian music shares some basic scales with Turco-Arabian music
(allowing for differences in intonation), but not the conception of melodic pro-
gression within an octave scale. In the dastgah system, the scales of the dara-
mads of the modes Rast-Panjgah, Shur, and Segah correspond rather closely to
the Turkish makams which are placed on the three fundamental scale degrees
rast (G), dügah (A) and segah (B ). The makams are called Rast, Uşşak (ancient
Dügah) and Segah. The daramad sections of these three Persian modes
share some features of melodic progression with their Turkish counterparts.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_011

Melodic Progression 259

However, after the gushes which follow the daramad, the melodic progressions
of the Persian modes are not comparable to the Turkish makams because the
conception of the octave scale as a basis for mode is foreign to the dastgah. As
noted by Farhat:

The concept of a musical scale, where division of an octave into various

intervals is implied, is unknown to the practical art of Persian music …
Persian music and the Persian musician is not aware of the concept
of scale.
The dastgâh system of Persian music is a relatively new development
dating back only to the eighteenth century. Before that time, the classi-
cal music was known under the genus of the Maqâmât (Arabic plural
for maqâm). In all of the Moslem nations west of Persia (Turkey and the
Arab countries) the system of maqâmât is still the basis of the classical
music. In those countries, as well as in Persia before the development of
the dastgâh, maqâm signifies a mode with the usual properties of a mode
having a tonic, a certain intervallic structure, and a particular melodic for-
mat on the basis of which improvisation and compositions are created.
… these characteristics are found only in the darâmad section of a
dastgâh and not in the dastgâh as a whole. In Persian music what is anal-
ogous to the maqâm of Turco-Arabian music is, not the dastgâh, but the
gûshe (Farhat 1965:37).

It is possible to extract a tonal hierarchy from the theoretical octave scales as

they are used in Persian music (as Farhat has done), but the dastgah is not con-
ceptualized in this manner. As noted above, the scales, and some of the melodic
movement within the daramad section of such modes as Rast-Panjgah, Shur,
Segah and also Bayat-e Kord can be compared with corresponding Turkish
makams. Nevertheless, to use these tonal centers within an octave scale as a
basis for improvisation is not permitted in the dastgah system. Melodic pro-
gression is, however, an important concept in the creation of the gushes, the
smaller modal units which constitute the substance of the Persian modal sys-
tem. But in the gushe, unlike the makam, melodic progression is often closely
tied to a specific melody-type, bringing it rather close to the “tune” end of the
“tune-scale” spectrum. Farhat correctly asserts that the dastgah system does
not predate the eighteenth century, and in fact seems to have developed in the
second half of that century (see During 1988:154–168).
We will try to examine how the historical documents of Turkish music pres-
ent the issue of melodic progression. The word seyir is derived from the Arabic
verb sara, “to move,” “set out,” “travel.” Sayyar is a “traveler” or “planet”; sair,
260 Chapter 7

> T. seyir (also spelled seyr) is “travel,” “journey,” “progress,” etc. As a musical
term it is not attested prior to 1795 when it was used by Abdülbaki Nasır Dede
in “Tetkik ü Tahkik.” Cantemir had employed the word hareket (< Ar. haraka),
“movement” or hareket-i ağazesi, “movement of its opening note” in a similar
meaning. These words do not appear to be part of an accepted terminology,
comparable to ağaze, karar, or perde, but rather ad hoc expressions, used for
the first and last time by Cantemir. He also used a few other words to describe
modal functions, e.g. hükm (“domain”), kutb (“axis”), istirahat (“repose”),
asma karar (“suspended cadence”). He had several other words for prolong-
ing a note, skipping over a note, ascending and descending the scale (see
below, Tab. 2.10). The terminology he used was fairly adequate to describe the
melodic progressions both of his period and of modern Turkish music. All of
these terms appear to be new, only one (asma karar) gained currency for some
time afterwards. After Cantemir, the Turkish treatises have only a few words to
describe modal functions, until Abdülbaki Dede employed a new terminology
which was functionally comparable to Cantemir’s, although differing in most
specific words.
Prior to Cantemir, apparently, no Turkish source had employed either
hareket or seyir nor any other word in a comparable function. The only modal
functions named were ağaze or mahraç (opening note or point) and the fina-
lis, known as either mahatt or karar in the fifteenth century. Not only was
Cantemir the first writer in Turkey (or elsewhere in the Middle East) to create
a term for melodic progression, but his treatise also contains the earliest writ-
ten seyirs. As noted by During (1988:160), the characteristic elements of seyir
were never mentioned by Ṣafī al-Dīn Urmawī, or by the other Systematists.
By the fifteenth century, in Turkey the common names for makams and scale
degrees were in use, facilitating the description of modal scales by simple
verbal means. However, the verbal descriptions from this period do not men-
tion more than the opening point, the finalis and sometimes one charac-
teristic scale degree to identify the mode in question. Knowing the melodic
progression of later Turkish music, modern Turkish scholars may read these
early descriptions and assume that similar progressions were intended by
the authors, but somehow were not written out. They routinely project back-
ward their own knowledge of modern seyir. This is the assumption used, for
example, by Oransay (1966:83–89). However, when we look objectively at these
descriptions, they cannot be called seyirs. They lack almost all of the informa-
tion which would define a melodic movement within a given series of notes.
The descriptions in the prose texts (e.g. Hızır bin Abdullah, or Ruhperver) are
no more explicit than the rhymed couplets of Seydi or Şeyhi. None of these
treatises mention the ambitus of the modal entity in question, so it is usually
Melodic Progression 261

impossible to decide whether the crucial unit was the tetra/pentachord or the
octave. Therefore, on the basis of these treatises alone we cannot objectively
state whether the modal entities functioned like modern Turkish makams, or
like modern Persian dastgahs (or gushes), as a mixture of the two (like the Iraqi
maqam) or in some different manner.1
We might hypothesize that a more elaborate melodic movement had
existed but was not stated by any of the early authors. While this is not impos-
sible, it is an unnecessary assumption, and several arguments may be brought
against it. This is not to say that no concept of melodic progression existed,
but rather that whatever existed was not equivalent to the modern seyir of
Turco-Arabian makam.
We may take as an example the description of the makam Irak in the late
fifteenth-century treatise of Seydi (n.d.:31):

1. İkinci makamatuñ Irakdır

Ki çeşm-i can bigi kalbe çirakdır
Irak is the second makam
Which is a lamp to the heart like the eye of the soul
2. Dilerseñ eylesin mülk ü Iraki
Şahr-i Bağdadla it ittifaki
If it is your wish to possess Irak
Then join with the city of Baghdad
3. Dügahıñ perdesinden it hurucü
Nüzul itdür Irak evine göçü
Set out from the note dügah
Go down and settle in the house of Irak
4. Heman bildiñ Irakıñ girçeğini
Mahatt ü mahracınuñ nedüğini
At once you’ve learned the truth of Irak
What are its final and its opening points.

The final couplet reveals the kind of information that was deemed to be criti-
cal by the fifteenth-century writers—the opening point (mahraç) and finalis
(mahatt). In this case the opening point is A (dügah) and the finalis F♯ (ırak).
From this description, Irak appears to be a narrow descending movement

1 For example, the descriptions of the makam Uzzal quoted by Oransay (1966:83) agree on
the starting point on hüseyni (e), the descent toward the note called hicaz (d) and the final
cadence on dügah (A). The description of the same makam from Cantemir’s treatise, which
he presents in the original and in German translation (83–4) contains much more informa-
tion about melodic direction and possible note alteration (g* or g natural).
262 Chapter 7

confined to the neutral third from A to F♯. If we use the Persian gushe as a
model, such a movement is not inconceivable. Seydi provides no information
about the rest of the ambitus of Irak, or any other tonal center.
We may contrast this with Cantemir’s description (teşrih; “dissection,”
“analysis”):

Analysis (teşrih) of the makam Irak:

The makam Irak is one of the makams using basic scale degrees in the
lower notes. It is on the third note up from the note yegah.
This makam takes its own note as axis (kutb idüb), and although it
begins its melodic line (ağaze) and movement (hareket) from yegah (D),
it ascends using basic scale degrees up to aşiran (E), and manifests itself
(izhar ider) upon its own note, and again in its own special manner it
begins its melodic line and movement from dügah (A): it descends to the
note rast and concludes (karar) and reposes (istirahat ider) upon the note
ırak (F♯).

The tonal domain (hükm) of Irak:

If one wishes to go higher than these notes, it has a tonal domain which
ascends to tiz hüseyni (e’) using basic scale degrees in accordance with
the delicacy of its melodies (terakib), and once again it returns by the
same way and concludes upon its own note (Cantemir ca. 1700:III:23).

Cantemir distinguishes melodic progression from scale. The first sentence of

his teşrih presents the scale of Irak, while the remainder describes melodic
progression. By taking “its own note as axis” the makam Irak takes the note ırak
(F♯) as what we would call its tonal center. The ağaze is not F♯, but yegah (D).
Dügah (A) is a secondary tonal center, and F♯ reappears as the karar (finalis).
The hükm section provides some more information about the ambitus. The use
of the word terkakib (pl. of terkib) is ambiguous. Cantemir may be referring to
the melodies which may be created in the concluding sections of the seyir, to
more-or-less stereotypical cadential patterns, or to subsidiary modal entities
which might be performed in the taksim.
The makam Evc uses almost the same scale as Irak but has a different
melodic direction. Cantemir tries to avoid any confusion which the scalar simi-
larity may create:

Analysis of the makam Evc:

The note evc (f♯) is the octave of the note ırak (F♯). However, this makam
is not performed by beginning its melodic line on the upper notes, and
ascending or descending by means of three basic scale degrees. Rather it
Melodic Progression 263

Example 2.23 Ambitus of Irak and Evc

is necessary that one descends by means of basic scale degrees to the note
ırak, which is its octave and conclude there. It is performed by means of
such a complete conclusion that if one concludes on the note evc, in that
case it is only an octave transposition of Irak that is performed, not the
makam Evc.

Tonal Domain of Evc:

This makam is permitted to remove the note hüseyni (e) and move by
means of the note acem (f), so that it is able to perform all of its terkibs
with the note acem. In my opinion it is by this means that the melodic
distinctiveness of the makam Evc is distinguished from the makam Irak
(ca. 1700:III:33).

Apart from the treatises, the notated documents of Bobowski and Cantemir
also raise significant questions concerning the nature of melodic progression.
This issue will be treated in more detail in the chapters on the peşrev, where
a number of items will be examined to show changes in compositional prac-
tice. I will present the general argument here as it relates to the question of
melodic progression.

1 Seyir in Compositions

The Bobowski and Cantemir Collections furnish a substantial corpus of peşrevs

and semais which embody the conceptions of makam and seyir (hareket) cur-
rent at the time when they were composed or recorded. The cut-off date for the
Bobowski Collection is 1650; the Cantemir Collection contains a substantial
group of peşrevs which are ascribed to musicians active before that date, some
even dating from the second half of the preceding century. In addition, many
of the peşrevs recorded by Bobowski were written down again by Cantemir.
In several instances, the later version shows significant structural changes. By
comparing the earlier and later items in this corpus, and the later and earlier
versions of the “same” item, differences in melodic progression become evident.
Had Cantemir not written a treatise, it still would have been possible to
establish the melodic progressions of the makams by synthesizing the pro-
gressions underlying the melodies of the transcribed peşrevs dating from the
264 Chapter 7

second half of the seventeenth century. These progressions do not usually

differ much from the seyirs known in modern Turkish music. However, the
peşrevs from the later sixteenth centuries and early seventeenth are frequently
not as enlightening in this regard. What we see in these early peşrevs are scales,
with some evidence of normative melodic progressions, but we cannot dis-
cover the complete seyirs of the makams in terms that are meaningful to the
Turkish tradition after 1650. Compared to the later items in the Collections,
the sixteenth- and earlier seventeenth-century peşrev repertoire reveals not so
much “different” seyirs from those known later, but rather a weakness in the
conception of seyir.2
The compositional techniques seen in the sixteenth-century peşrevs, involv-
ing rapid leaps and runs through the scale of the makam, and frequent repeti-
tion of terkibs (compositional units) without regard to a succession of tonal
centers, could not easily coexist with the concept of melodic progression
known from later Turkish music. During the next century we see a gradual
abandonment of all of these compositional techniques. A change, or rather
an elaboration in the conception of the melodic progression apparently led
to changes in compositional techniques. The more elaborate melodic progres-
sions could not be expressed without a more fixed position for terkibs which
emphasized different tonal centers and melodic movements. This increased
attention to the order and placement of the terkibs decreased the incidence
of repetition without a clear melodic progression. Likewise, rapid movement
up and down the scale could only be tolerated in an ornamental function, not
as an essential movement within the melody. Together, all of these factors
changed both the surface and the structure of the peşrev, and we assume of
other composed forms as well.

2 It is true that no notated documents survive prior to Bobowski’s Collection of the mid-
seventeenth century. While his transcriptions of peşrevs by such composers as Muzaffer and
Şerif, were contemporary, as were those of Cantemir for the peşrevs of Angeli or Mehmed
Çelebi, the pieces by the unnamed “Persians” (Acemler) or the sixteenth-century compos-
ers Hasan Can and Nefiri Behram had undergone two or more generations of oral transmis-
sion before they were transcribed. It is highly likely that the compositional form of the early
peşrevs were altered to suit the taste of the later seventeenth century. However, the melodic
progressions of these items were not made to conform entirely to contemporaneous taste.
Therefore, the differences in the conception of melodic progression must reflect aspects of
the original compositions, as they would not have been introduced in such a form during the
mid- or later seventeenth century. There is no reason to claim that the compositions were
simplified. On the contrary, Wright’s study (1988) has shown that with the passage of time,
compositions were transmitted in a more elaborate, not a simpler form. Where we see what
appears to be innocence of the known seyirs of the makams, we should accept this impres-
sion and conclude that the sixteenth-century peşrev compositions reflected accurately the
contemporaneous conception of makam (see chapter on peşrev).
Melodic Progression 265

In 1987, I tested this hypothesis with several Turkish musicians, including

Necdet Yaşar, the leading living authority on seyir. Mr. Yaşar could understand
the seyirs expressed in the peşrevs of Ali Hoca, Angeli, Cantemir and other
composers of the later seventeenth century. Some of the pieces showed seyirs
which he recognized as early versions of known makams (e.g. the early form of
Neva, with finalis on d). But most of the pieces dating from before 1650 did not
function in accordance with any seyirs of Turkish music as he knew it. Once
we see this discrepancy it becomes possible to view early treatise definitions
more critically, i.e. without reading back the later seyirs into them. We see
mainly scales, with some indication of tonal hierarchy, but not the seyirs of the
Turkish makams as they have been used since 1650.
Although the developments which led to the modal usage of the seven-
teenth century would seem to be largely beyond retrieval, we may create some
hypotheses on the basis of the seventeenth century material. We have seen
that throughout the seventeenth century most compositions used the makams
of the basic scale degrees. The ten pitches of the fundamental scale from F♯ to
a accounted for most of the melodies in use. Makams using secondary scale
degrees held a subsidiary position, and as Cantemir stressed repeatedly, very
few terkibs were employed in compositions. The general scale consisted of sev-
enteen pitches in the principal octave (A–a) as opposed to the twenty-seven in
common use today, limiting the function of microtonality in defining mode.
In addition, the octave coexisted with tetra- and penta-chordal units as the
fundamental melodic ambitus. It was possible to maintain a modal system by
distinguishing makams through a combination of intervallic structure and tes-
situra. However, codified melodic progressions presented many more possibil-
ities to develop subtle differences in modality. In the seventeenth century the
terkibs seem to have functioned mainly in the improvised taksim. Thus, during
the vocal or instrumental fasıl, makam changed relatively little, but the taksims
punctuated or introduced the makam compositions with a dazzling array of
new intervallic color. The taksim did not exist in the fifteenth and earlier six-
teenth century, so the terkib systems must have functioned more directly in
composition at that time.
We know that the terkibs were not an invention of the seventeenth cen-
tury because Cantemir records the names and some structures of many
defunct terkibs, and because they also appear in much earlier treatises in
Persian and Arabic. The one extended notated example written by Qutb al-Dīn
Shīrāzī in the thirteenth century (Wright 1978:233–244), a qawl in the parda
Huseyni-Mukhayyer, modulates several times into different scalar structures
(Ruy-i Iraq, Hisar, Isfahan, Zankula). While this example is too early to link
directly to fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century practice in Turkey, it does
266 Chapter 7

demonstrate that scalar variation was important prior to the sixteenth cen-
tury. The Systematists had a language to discuss scalar variation but lacked one
to discuss melodic progression. It would not be an exaggeration to say that
modulation seems to have been more important in the thirteenth century than
it was to be in the later sixteenth century and earlier seventeenth centuries, at
least in composition.3 Whatever the causes, between 1300 and 1600 something
seems to have changed to decrease the use of combined modal entities and
to establish the octave scale as the ambitus for melodic development. These
changes may have resulted in a period of over a century during which most
musical composition was confined to a group of eight makams (Irak, Rast,
Uşşak, Segah, Neva, Hüseyni, Evc, Muhayyer) conceived as octave scales based
on degrees of the fundamental scale. At the same time, the taksim genre was
developing, which made greater use of the combined modal entities. By the
middle of the seventeenth century we see compositional practice changing
once again, by the inclusion of the terkibs, but mote significantly, by the elabo-
ration and codification of melodic progression within the makams and the ter-
kibs as a means of distinguishing discrete modal entities, thus furthering the
melodic development of each one and their combination in compound modes.

2 Cantemir’s Terminology for Melodic Progression

Cantemir was apparently the first to develop a language to describe a specific

melodic progression within the scale of a makam. The earlier Turkish writers
did not use a comparable language or utilize other available means to describe
melodic progression. We know of at least seven Ottoman theorists writing in
the fifteenth century in Turkish or Arabic (Ladiki, Şirvani, Hızır bin Abdullah,
Seydi, Ruhperver, Şeyhi, and two unknown authors), as well as the Mevlevi
Kırşehirli Yusuf, writing in Persian. Yet none of them felt the need to create
a language capable of expressing a more elaborate conception of melodic
movement.4 Cantemir’s terminology did not attempt to define the separate

3 Recently O. Wright has reached a similar conclusion: “One might speculate that the tech-
nique was particularly associated with the nawba, the gradual disappearance of which
resulted in a decrease in the importance attached to modulation sequences during the six-
teenth century …” (Wright 1992b:138).
4 After Cantemir different terminologies were used by Hızır Ağa and Abdülbaki Nasır Dede at
the middle and the end of the 18th century, respectively. Tanburi Harutin expressed elaborate
seyirs without using words, only of the names of the pitches involved. Even if no notated doc-
ument had survived from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, these treatises would have
revealed that a highly developed and codified (although not unified) conception of melodic
progression was in existence. The technique of describing seyir verbally appeared in Arabic
for the first time in the treatise of Mikhail Mashaqa, written around 1840 (Marcus 1989:38).
Melodic Progression 267

functions of all parts of a melodic progression. Some of these functions, such as

tonal center and leading tone, remained undefined until the twentieth century.
Cantemir’s basic method was to divide the description of a makam into two
sections. The first was called teşrih (“dissection,” “analysis”), and the second
section hükm (“domain”). The teşrih presents the opening and closing points of
the mode, and the notes which it uses within its basic octave, within the spe-
cific sequence of its melodic progression (hareket). The hükm is the scale and
progression of the mode after it leaves its basic range. After these two sections
the author names the terkibs which are subordinate to the makam, as well as
the defunct terkibs, and he frequently comments about various problems, i.e.
disagreements about nomenclature and seyir connected with the makam or
the related terkibs.
Cantemir employed several terms in connection with melodic progression:
hareket (“movement”), ağaze (“opening tone”), karar (“finalis”), kutb (“axis”),
kutb-i daire (“axis of its circle”), çikib, (“ascending”), and inüb (“descending”).
He has a large number of verbs to describe melodic movement (Tab. 2.10).

Table 2.10 Verbs employed by Cantemir to describe melodic movement

şuru etmek (“to set out”) göstermek (“to show”)

ibtida etmek (“to commence”) beyan etmek (“to reveal itself”)
ağaze etmek (“to begin”) izbar etmek (“to manifest itself”)
hareket eylemek meks etmek (“to linger”)
etmek (“to move”) titremek (“to trill”)
aşmak (“to pass over”) okşamak (“to caress”)
şıçramak (“to skip over”) çıkmak (“to ascend”)
avdet etmek (“to return”) inmek (“to descend”)
gezmek (“to stroll”) düşmek (“to fall”)
varmak (“to reach”) karar etmek (“to conclude”)
gelmek (“to come”) istirahat etmek (“to repose”)
basmak (“to press”) karar-i istirahat etmek (“to reach repose”)

In Turkey, the technique was continued by Haşim Bey in his “Mecmua” published in Istanbul
in 1864. According to Marcus, this method of describing the makams never became entirely
acclimatized in the Arab countries, and already in the end of the last century, Mashaqa’s
seyirs were little understood (Marcus 1989:46). Today, they are totally incomprehensible
to Egyptian musicians and theorists. By way of contrast, in Turkey all twentiethth-century
theorists, such as Yekta, Arel, Ezgi, and Karadeníz continued to present melodic progression
in much the same way as the eighteenth-century writers, and the practice continues today
(Signell 1977:61).
268 Chapter 7

This rich vocabulary imparts a literary quality to Cantemir’s “Kitab-i Ilm-el

Musiki” which is equaled only by Abdülbaki Dede’s “Tetkik ü Tahkik.” However,
despite all these words, Cantemir uses them to distinguish only a few modal
functions. Near synonyms like “to pass over” and “to skip over,” “to manifest
itself” and “to reveal itself,” or “to linger,” and “to caress” reveal no new informa-
tion. The 23 verbs in the above list are equivalent to approximately nine essen-
tial melodic movements: “to begin,” “to move,” “to skip,” “to reach,” “to press,” “to
manifest itself,” “to ascend,” “to descend,” and “to conclude.”
The terms to which Cantemir most frequently refers while defining the
modal entities are: ağaze, hareket, hükm, karargah (karar). Less frequent are
kutb, istirahat, asma karar.

Agaze. Persian ağaz: “starting point, beginning”

Cantemir uses this term in several different senses. The Turkish use of the word
“perde” implies a particular note within the general scale, which in English
could also be termed a “note.” Therefore another word was needed for an unde-
fined pitch, a musical sound or note without reference to its position in the
general scale, e.g. “na-ism ağaze icra olunur” (“a nameless ağaze is performed”)
(ca. 1700:I:9).
In his first chapter he distinguishes the ağaze-i külliye (“the total ağaze”) and
the ağaze-i mahsusa (“particular ağaze”). In this context ağaze has to do with
the temporal extension of a note, not with its pitch, as though our concepts of
“pitch” and “beat” were combined. The “total” ağaze has no rhythmical subdivi-
sions, while the “particular” ağaze is so divided:

The Quality of the Total Ağaze (keyfiyyet-i ağaze-i külliye):

Like the movement of the Sun or the position of the heavenly bodies,
it never reposes in one location, or it is a thing like an endless line, so
that it has an unbroken, continuous state, like the sound of the zurna
(ca. 1700:I:7).

In Chapter II he defines “Ağaze” and here it is the pitch on which a melody

(nağme) commences. Throughout the treatise this meaning of ağaze will be
used in every description of a makam or terkib. “Aqaz” is still employed in
Iranian music in this sense (Farhat 1965:38). Due to the fixed position of the
various particular scales on the general scale the concept of ağaze is crucial to
the definition of all modal entities.
In the text the frequent use of the expression hareket-i ağazesi (“movement
of its ağaze”) is a bit surprising as the ağaze is defined (in Chapter one and
Melodic Progression 269

two) “movement” is not one of its characteristics: “the ağaze is that which is
produced if you hold your voice without movement (haraket) …” (p. 19). In fact
this expression is precisely equivalent to ağaze and is apparently used only for
stylistic variety: “hareket-i ağazesini şuru idüb” (“beginning the movement of
its ağaze,” p. 34), “andan hareket-i ağazesini mübaşeret eyledikten soñra” (“after
commencing the movement of its ağaze,” p. 30); also, with identical meaning
“yegah perdesinden ağaze ve hareket ider ise …” (“if it were to perform its ağaze
and its movement from the note yegah”).
In the last phrase the fixed expression hareket-i ağaze has been divided and
the two components have become equivalents, as in the following: “iptidai
ağazesi ile” and “iptidai hareketi ile” (“by means of its beginning agaze,” and “by
means of its beginning movement,” both p. 40). Ağaze is treated as the oppo-
site of karar (finalis) as in “bu makamıñ bizzat ne hareket-i ağazeleri ne karar-i
istirahatleri vardır” (“this makam has no special movements of its ağazes nor
finalises of repose,” p. 41).

Kutb (Ar. “pole,” “axis”), also kutb-i daire (“axis of the circle”)

This is functionally equivalent to the finalis (karargah) but here visualized in a

circular image whereby the notes of a makam revolve around their axis:

The independent (müfred) makam is that which becomes the axis of

the circle of notes among eight basic notes, and whether ascending or
descending shows that it is the makam of the note upon this axis, and
is without doubt distinguished and separated from the other makams
(Cantemir ca. 1700:II:20).

This quotation utilizes kutb in connection with the octave as well as with the
tonal center which is dependent upon a specific melodic movement, both of
which were essential to Cantemir’s conception of makam.

Karar, karargah, and istirahat (Ar. “conclusion,” “decision,” plus P. suffix

“gah” = place, and Ar. “repose”)

Cantemir repeatedly emphasizes the centrality of the finalis in his definition

of makam (Chapter two passim). A typical formula in his analysis of a makam
is: ____×____ “perdesinde karar virüb istirahat ider” (“concluding on so-and-so
note it reaches repose”), or “karar kilar” (“it concludes”). As we observed in the
analysis of the general scale, in most cases only basic scale degrees (tamam
perde) were permitted to function as the finalis of any makam or terkib. Where
270 Chapter 7

this was not the case, Cantemir always calls attention to this fact; e.g. “Nişabur
makam karargah sahibidir” (“the makam Nişabur possesses a finalis”). This
because Nişabur is the only modal entity to conclude on the note buselik (B),
which Cantemir considered a secondary scale degree, so that buselik was the
special karargah “possessed” by Nişabur.

Asma karar (T. “suspended” + karar, “suspended cadence”)

This term is never defined and occurs rarely in the text, e.g. in the description
of the “külli külliyat” taksim (p. 65): “Şedd yüzünden bir Beyati dahi gösterüb,
andan gelüb eviç perdesinde bir asma karar kilub,” (“having demonstrated a
transposition of [the makam] Beyati, one comes from there and performs a
suspended cadence on the note eviç”). From this quotation it would seem that
the term asma karar was used exactly as it is today (Signell 1977:48). Most of
Cantemir’s other terms, such as ağaze, hareket, istirahat, kutb, terkib etc. are
obsolete. Asma karar is also the only linguistically Turkish word in his ter-
minology. From the context, i.e. an empirical description of a model taksim
rather than a prescriptive melodic progression, it would appear to derive from
actual musicians’ language and not from scientific discourse. In the analysis of
the makam Neva we read that the makam possesses three final tones (karar),
“one is the note neva, which is known as the suspended cadence of the makam
Neva.” Although this is part of a formal analysis (teşrih), it is followed in the
next sentence by “contemporary musicians say …,” again confirming the practi-
cal origin of the term. Due to the fact that karar is used interchangeably with
karargah, asma karar is Cantemir’s only term for a function in the melodic
progression of a makam other than its beginning and ending point. The analy-
ses of the individual makams and terkibs sometimes indicate these secondary
tonal centers quite clearly, but evidently the author saw no need for separate
terms for them.

Hareket (Ar. “movement”)

Apart from its function in conjunction with the ağaze, hareket bore the mean-
ing of “movement”: “sirf tiz perdeleriñ hareketi ile Rast makamı icra olunur idi,”
(“the makam Rast would have been performed with its movement [hareket]
only in the upper notes,” p. 28). Hareket seems to have much the same meaning
as seyir in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Cantemir was aware of overall melodic direction, which is today defined by
such terms as “ascending,” “descending” and “ascending-descending.” He uses
both verbs çıkmak (“to ascend”) and inmek (“to descend”), and he classifies all
Melodic Progression 271

makams according to their position on the general scale, and hence in which
direction they move: “nermden tize varınca nim perdeleriñ makamları dörtdür”
(“there are four makams using secondary scale degrees going from the low
notes to the high”).

Hükm

This is one of Cantemir’s most important terms, and its definition is some-
what complex. The dictionary definition of the term includes: “rule,” “domin-
ion,” “authority,” “government,” “jurisdiction,” as well as “sentence,” “decree”
(Redhouse 1981:497). Popescu-Judetz’s definition is apt:

Hükm signifies the range and determines the limits of the tonal field of
the melodic movement of the makam, in terms of tonal-spatial expan-
sion of its zone of influence and characterization. It follows that the hükm
of a principal mode may influence the adjacent modes or the related
modes. … The hükm establishes the limits in space of a specific melodic
architecture constituency with tonal characteristics. This idea implies
the principle of modulations as the relationship between modes and the
possibility of interference with each other (Popescu-Judetz 1981:125).

Cantemir at times employs the word ruhsat as a synonym for hükm. Ruhsat
means “permission,” “permit,” “license,” and is thus not a real equivalent for
hükm. Ruhsat never appears in the title of a section, but in the description
itself, e.g.: “acem perdesi ile hareket eylemek ruhsatı vardır” (“it has permission
to move by means of the note acem,” p. 33). Here ruhsat is functionally equiva-
lent to hükm in phrases like “inmek hükmi var,” or “çıkmak hükmi var” (“it has
a tonal domain which permits it to descend,” or “… to ascend”), which are the
standard locutions in the text. Here I believe Cantemir is following the conven-
tions of literary Ottoman in seeking to vary his language with a near-synonym,
ignoring the scientific need for a consistent terminology, and therefore I do not
consider that this use of ruhsat invalidates the broader conceptions underly-
ing the use of the term hükm. The use of the term hükm with its broader asso-
ciations appears to be original with Cantemir.

3 Hızır Ağa and Harutin

Hızır Ağa employed a much more restricted terminology than Cantemir. He

used karar for finalis, and karar etmek for “to conclude,” but had no word for
272 Chapter 7

the opening point of the mode. He described the opening point by means of
the phrase “breaking out from the note x” (“x perdesinden kopub”), using the
verb kopmak, “to break out” or “break off.” He used çıkmak and inmek for “to
ascend” and “to descend.” The principal tonal centers of the progression were
referred to with the word gösterüb’ (“showing”). Occasionally he uses the word
çarpub (“striking”). These essentially constitute his entire modal terminology.
His usage is exemplified by his seyir of Beyati:

Beyati ol dur ki dügah gösterüb segah ve çargah ile neva dahi gösterüb
ba’dehu nim acemiden hüseyni ve neva ve çargah ve segah ve perde-i
dügah’da karar ide.

Beyati is that which shows dügah, and after also showing çargah and
neva, then it [goes] from the secondary scale degree acemi to neva, çar-
gah and segah and concludes on the note dügah (Hızır Ağa n.d.:29).

Unlike Cantemir, Hızır Ağa did not distinguish between melodic progres-
sion within the basic octave and movement outside of it, including pos-
sible relationships to other makams, which was considered the hükm (“tonal
domain”) by Cantemir. Hızır Ağa uses the terms tamam perde and nim perde
like Cantemir, except that he attaches the word nim to the pitch-name, e.g.
nim acemi, nim hicaz or buselik nimi.5 Harutin did not follow the practice of
describing seyir verbally. Instead, he gave the pitch-names in a typical progres-
sion. His seyirs are equivalent to a notated melodic progression, and in fact his
Soviet Armenian editor has occasionally transcribed these seyirs in staff nota-
tion. Despite this apparent minimalism, Harutin’s seyirs are valuable because
they often demonstrate very particular movements, including repetitions not
indicated by the other authors. In addition, several of his seyirs represent vari-
ant versions of the makams, not documented elsewhere.6

5 This should not be confused with twentieth-century usage which has distinct pitches named
nim hicaz or nim hisar, as well as dik hicaz and dik hisar. To Hızır Ağa, nim hicaz was not dif-
ferent from hicaz. This can also be seen by his linguistic usage, nim hicaz or hicaz nimi, which
are interchangeable. In Turkish, the first expression can mean “the diminished version of the
note hicaz,” or “the secondary scale degree hicaz,” while the second can only mean the latter.
6 There are a number of interpolations introduced by his editor in the late eighteenth cen-
tury, but it is usually easy to distinguish these from the original, because they employ terkibs
which did not yet exist in Harutin’s generation. In the cases where the makam or terkib is
older, it appears that the editor did not modernize Harutin’s text, because the seyirs given
do not resemble these in Tetkik ü Tahkik, or Haşim Bey’s “Mecmua” but appear to be close to
Harutin’s contemporaries or to be variants from the earlier eighteenth century.
Melodic Progression 273

Despite the linguistic and stylistic simplicity of the treatises of Hızır Ağa and
Harutin, the concept of melodic progression is more developed in them than it
is in Cantemir’s treatise. It is a great pity that neither of the eighteenth-century
treatises contains a notated component, despite the fact that Harutin had cre-
ated a notation system for the tanbur, so it is impossible to compare their seyir
descriptions with notated documents. Nevertheless, their seyirs consistently
reveal a very specific melodic progression which is highly distinguished from
scale, though their linguistic means were very limited. As I have attempted
to demonstrate earlier, and in the chapter on the peşrev (Part 3), the early
seventeenth-century notated documents show only an inchoate conception
of melodic progression, which develops gradually during the century. It should
not be very surprising that Cantemir has much of the quality of a pioneer, cre-
ating a vocabulary to enable him to make clearer distinctions between scale
and melodic progression, but without great specificity. Although Hızır Ağa
and Harutin appear to be presenting rather routine information, relatively
well-known to their audiences, and not requiring any great intellectual effort,
this very routineness reveals the higher development of melodic progression
as a concept in 1740–1750 than it had been in 1700.
As an example, we may compare the seyirs of Gerdaniye given by Cantemir,
Hızır Ağa and Harutin. Gerdaniye exemplifies the type of modal structure
which depends upon a codified melodic progression in order to be distin-
guished as a separate mode. Its scale was identical to that of Rast, but it is a
descending makam while Rast is an ascending makam. In addition, its finalis
was not rast (G) but dügah (A).

(1) Cantemir:
Analysis of the Makam Gerdaniye:
The note gerdaniye is the octave of the note rast, but if one concludes on
the note rast, in that way only the upper notes of the makam Rast would
be performed, and the makam Gerdaniye would in no way be distin-
guished from the makam Rast. Therefore, the makam Gerdaniye begins
its melodic line from the note gerdaniye and descends by means of basic
scale degrees to evc, hüseyni, neva, çargah, and segah, and concludes
upon the note dügah.
Be aware that it is very difficult to distinguish the terkibs Arazbar and
Baba Tahir from the makam Gerdaniye. However, among musicians it
is known that the terkib Arazbar is connected with the makam Beyati
and the terkib Baba Tahir is related to the makam Gerdaniye. When we
analyze these terkibs we will explain further. This makam has no tonal
domain (hükm) and it is difficult to create anything in it which does not
274 Chapter 7

impinge on other makams. For this reason, there is nothing composed in

it (ca. 1700: III:33–4).
(2) Harutin:
Gerdaniye: One stroke (mizrab) of gerdaniye; evc; hüseyni; neva; çargah;
dügah; segah; çargah; hüseyni; acem; gerdaniye; acem; hüseyni; neva; çar-
gah; segah; çargah; segah; dügah (1968:91).
(3) Hızır Ağa:
Gerdaniye also is that which breaks off from gerdaniye and shows evc and
hüseyni, and then again evc and gerdaniye. From gerdaniye it descends to
rast by means of basic scale degrees. From rast once again it shows ger-
daniye and muhayyer, and from muhayyer it descends note by note and
concludes on dügah (n.d.:25).

Although Cantemir’s description is the most prolix, his melodic progression is

less specific than that of the other two. His main point is that without the karar
on dügah, Gerdaniye would not be distinguishable from Rast in the “upper
notes,” i.e. a descending version of Rast. By the standards of modern Turkish
music, this definition would not necessarily be acceptable, as it is quite pos-
sible for one scale to give birth to two makams with differing melodic direction
(e.g. Beyati and Uşşak, Muhayyer and Hüseyni). The seyirs of Harutin and Hızır
Ağa, in addition to placing the finalis of Gerdaniye on dügah, supply several
important details of melodic progression.
All three seyirs fail to mention that the secondary tonal center of Gerdaniye
must be neva (d), which is the fifth degree of the Rast scale. All three take as
their starting point the note gerdaniye, which is the upper octave of rast (G).
Harutin’s seyir resembles that of Cantemir in its avoidance of the note rast.
However, it includes a distinct section in which the note f♯ is flattened to f natu-
ral. It does not jump up to g or a, but descends from d. The feeling of Muhayyer
is totally absent from Harutin’s seyir, as it is from Cantemir’s. However, Harutin
does not present the movement from g to A as a simple descent, but rather
breaks up his descending movement into several small motives involving the
area from d to A.
Hızır Ağa notes that the descent from g to f♯ to e is immediately followed by
a small ascent from f♯ back to g. From there he has the melody move straight
down to rast. Then it jumps up the octave to g and then a. The attack on a
(muhayyer) allows it to descend in the manner of Muhayyer and conclude on
A. This seyir is very close to that in current use, in that it briefly emphasizes
the note rast, thereby imparting some movement which will resemble that
makam, before returning to the range of Muhayyer. This mixture of Rast and
Melodic Progression 275

Muhayyer imparts much of the flavor to the Gerdaniye repertoire which has
survived from the nineteenth century (see, for example Özkan 1984:364–368).
Comparing these three seyirs we can see that Cantemir presents only the
barest essentials of melodic progression. Both Harutin and Hızır Ağa appear to
address an audience which expects more detailed information about how to
reach the various tonal centers of a makam.
Cantemir considered the makam Pençgah to be a compound of Nişabur
and Rast:

This makam is produced by three secondary scale degrees and one basic
scale degree. The secondary scale degrees are acem (f), uzzal (c♯), and
buselik (B). The basic scale degree is rast (G) (ca. 1700:IV:45).

In the hükm section Cantemir describes the movement of Nişabur with a con-
clusion on G instead of B. No other distinctive features of melodic progression
are mentioned.
Harutin’s seyir differentiates Pençgah from Nişabur not only by means of the
finalis, but through the appearance of f♯ in place of f. He also uses neva to pivot
up to e and f♯ and down to c♯:

Pençgah: One stroke of neva, one stroke of hicaz (= uzzal), one stroke of
buselik, one stroke of hicaz, one stroke of neva, one stroke of hüseyni, one
stroke of evc, one stroke of neva, one stroke of hicaz, one stroke of buselik,
one stroke of dügah, one stroke of rast (1968:82).

Hızır Ağa’s seyir appears simple, but it includes an important bit of information:

Pençgah also is that which breaks off from neva and showing hicaz, buse-
lik, and dügah, it concludes on the note rast. And, during the taksim it
is perfected by sometimes showing çargah instead of hicaz and segah
instead of buselik (n.d.:24).

Neither of the previous seyirs had indicated the possibility of substituting the
Rast scale (with B and c) for Nişabur with B and c♯. Cantemir had mentioned
that the older version of Pençgah used the same scale as Rast. Several of the
peşrevs in his Collection employ this form of the makam, e.g. sakil, Ağa Mumin
(p. 70), Nefir-i Dem (p. 151), and Nazire-i Nefir-i Dem (p. 162). The “Acemi” düyek
peşrev entitled “Gülistan” uses the form which he describes, and his own com-
position, (devr-i kebir), “Huri” is based on the Nişabur scale which he gives.
276 Chapter 7

While Hızır Ağa’s version, like that of Harutin and Cantemir, is also based on
the scale of Nişabur, he calls attention to a possible variation using the Rast
scale. He specifically points out where this variation might be used—in the
taksim. In modern Turkish music the rapid alternation of the Nişabur and Rast
scales is considered essential to the makam Pençgah, and is seen, for example,
in the modern saz semai ascribed to Cantemir. However, we can see from the
notations in the Cantemir Collection that during the seventeenth century such
a rapid alternation was not aesthetically possible in a composition. Even in
1750 the essential scale of the makam Pençgah was given as that of Nişabur
ending on G. However, Hızır Ağa tells us the musical environment in which
this rule might be bent somewhat—and this was the improvised taksim.
A century later, Haşim Bey recommended the use of unusual modulations
in the taksim. The following examples are from his descriptions of the makams
Nikriz and Rast:

From “der tarif-i makam-i Nikriz”:

According to the exigencies of the seyir of this makam both in the tak-
sim and in the miyan sections of bestes [or “compositions”], it is permis-
sible also to use the note evc (f♯); it is not contrary to the rules (Haşim
Bey 1864:23).

From “der tarif-i makam-i Rast”:

During the taksim, according to the needs of the melody which is cre-
ated, to conclude on rast (G) in the manner of [the makam] Pesendide
by pressing on hicaz (c♯) instead of çargah (c) and kürdi (B♭) instead of
segah (B ) is also part of the seyir of Rast (Haşim Bey 1864:22).

In the succeeding chapter we will analyze the evidence for the appearance of
the taksim genre and suggest the effects which the development of this genre
had on the Turkish conception of makam and composition.
The use of seyir accounts for much of what imparts the specific sound and
structure to both Turkish and Arabian urban music (and some rural music).
It is seyir which distinguishes the makam music of this cultural sphere from
the non-makam folk genres, e.g. Kurdish and Assyrian free-rhythm singing,
Upper Egyptian antiphonal laments, Laz Black Sea songs and dance-tunes, etc.
While all of these folk genres have little in common, from the perspective of
the urban makam musical culture they may be grouped together for one basic
reason—they lack seyirs.
Seyir is not tied to any particular scale and microtonal intonation. Certain
seyirs survived the changes in intervals within Turkish music, while very similar
Melodic Progression 277

makam scales were subjected to very divergent seyirs in the period prior to 1650
and thereafter. During the twentieth century seyir is largely the preserve of the
practicing musicians, rather than theorists or conservatories. The practical tra-
dition has had some effect on the way in which makams are presented by the
theorists, but no Turkish theorist has attempted to integrate the practical seyirs
and the theoretical makam scales. Since Cantemir’s first presentation of seyir,
the concept has become so acclimatized that by the twentieth century, Turkish
musicians and theorists consider seyir to be implied within the makams. To
Cantemir, two elements had made up the nature of a makam·, the notes of the
scale, and the melodic progression (hareket and hükm). In the late seventeenth
century, this was new information which had never been presented in any
book of theory. To twentieth-century theorists, such as Yekta and Arel, melodic
progression was an old part of the practical tradition, and the theoretical tra-
dition as it had been developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
They could not entirely dispense with this element, which they felt was some-
how important, but their primary influences were the older, Greek-derived and
hence more “authentic” theories of the medieval Systematísts, whose empha-
sis on intervals and tetrachords was shared with much Western musicology.
Thus, this new and yet antique body of Turkish theory could be solidly rooted
both in classical antiquity and in the heyday of the Islamic past. Seyir was rel-
egated to the oral tradition of the practical musicians, and those premodern
Turkish theorists whose knowledge was derived primarily from them, and not
from the Systematists. Yekta and Ezgi knew the repertoire eminently well and
understood that changes in the use of seyir would make Turkish music sound
very different, in fact, wrong. But they never attempted to put seyir into the cat-
egory of musical phenomena which could be analyzed or presented rationally.
Seyir is eminently horizontal musical thinking, in which the melody must
travel along a rather specific path, emphasizing certain points along the way.
Even when certain stops are omitted, knowledgeable listeners hear this as a
deviation from a well-known path. Much of the interest of modern Turkish
music is created by the interplay of seyir and modulation. The latter is able to
either cancel out a path of the seyir, or to transform it in some unexpected way.
The specifics of how this works in the classical compositions or the taksims of
master musicians is almost totally terra incognita outside of the initiates of the
practical tradition. Some of the specific workings of seyir will be discussed in
the chapters on the peşrev, but for present purposes what is most important is
to recognize that the development of self-conscious, verbalizable seyirs had a
crucial effect upon the evolution of the taksim genre.
 Chapter 8

The Taksim and Modulation

The taksim (Arabic taqsīm) is often referred to in the musicological literature

of the Middle East as an instrumental “improvisation” (Nettl 1973:11). The tak-
sim has been known as a major musical genre during the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries in most of the countries of the Middle East which had been
incorporated within the Ottoman Empire, especially Turkey, Syria/Palestine
and Egypt. It is also significant in Tunisia, but less so in the rest of North
Africa. In Iraq it became prominent only after the end of the Second World
War. Earlier the taksim had probably been known and practiced by only a
small Ottomanized Iraqi elite. In other Arab countries, such as Morocco and
Yemen, the taksim is largely a post-World War II adaptation of Egyptian musi-
cal practice.1 In the European part of the Ottoman Empire, the taksim has also
left important vestiges in the musics of Greece, Bulgaria, and Macedonia, and
to a lesser extent Romania (Garfias 1981). Thus, as a developed and productive
genre, the taksim functions today only within the Levant and Turkey. The fact
that current Arabian and Turkish performance practices are not identical and
were even more differentiated early in the twentieth century when the first
sound recordings of taksims were made in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, has not
prevented Turkish, Syrian, Lebanese, and Egyptian musicians from employing
the word taksim to refer to all the local sub-styles of the broader taksim genre.
In contemporary Turkey the taksim is essentially urban and shows no close
affinity with rural genres.2 In Syria and Egypt on the other hand, the taksim

1 The taksim has been adopted only in the twentieth century in those Arab countries most
distant from Turkey, e.g. Morocco, Yemen, and Iraq. Prior to World War I, Ottomanized Iraqi
musicians, such as Musullu Osman (1840–1918) were evidently performers of the [vocal] tak-
sim. After World War II, the taksim has been chosen over the indigenous Iraqi maąām in
which the instruments ate subordinate to the vocalist, and in which the taksim has no role.
The leading Iraqi exponent of the taksim on the ud (not an Iraqi instrument) is Munir Bashir,
who was a student of the Turkish ud virtuoso Şerif Muhyiddin Targan (d. 1967). Between 1955
and 1959 Mesud Cemil (d. 1963) the Turkish tanbur and cello virtuoso taught at the Baghdad
Fine Arts Academy. During the 1960s, several Turkish musicians were teaching at the Baghdad
Conservatory (Dieter Christensen, oral communication). Since the 1960s Turkish music has
also been taught in Baghdad by the violinist Cevdet Çağla and the ud player and composer
Cinuçen Tanrıkorur.
2 In the broadest sense the taksim shares a lack of metricity with the rural uzun hava genre.
Although there may have been a historical relationship between them, in the twentieth cen-
tury the taksim employs a much larger fund of rhythmic formulas than the uzun hava. While

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_012

The Taksim and Modulation 279

seems rather more connected with non-metrical vocal genres such as the layālī
and mawwāl which also have rural forms. Perhaps the broad diffusion of the
taksim and related genres in the Levant has been the cause of its rather exten-
sive treatment in studies of modern Arabian music.3 Turkish musicologists,
such as Yekta, Ezgi, Arel, or Oransay barely mention the taksim, while it was
treated somewhat more extensively by Signell (1977:16, 89, 116–7).
At times the entire Arabian art music or maqam system is discussed as though
it were inseparable from or even equivalent to the taksim, e.g. by Touma.4 More
recently Racy (1991) delineated a broad generic continuum in which the taksim
is one vehicle for the expression of ṭarab (musical rapture or ecstasy) in what
he refers to as “the modern ṭarab style of the east-Mediterranean world and
Egypt, a style that emphasizes live musical performances, gives prominence
to instantaneous modal creations, and treats music as an ecstatic experience”
(1991:9).
While there is no questioning the centrality of the taksim in the modern and
early modern music of the Turco-Arabian zone (i.e. the east-Mediterannean
and Egypt),5 there have been few studies of how the taksim differs from other
non-metrical genres in the Middle East (or the “core Muslim world” [Powers
1979]) as a whole, which have inherited or developed different approaches to
flowing rhythm and “improvisation.” The fact that the early twentieth-century
area of diffusion of the taksim did not encompass the whole of the region of
the maqam art music suggests that historical evidence, where it is available,
may bring us closer to an understanding of the place of the taksim within the
broader maqam musical culture.

the latter may have exerted an influence in the formative period of the former, the modem
classical performer cannot borrow any of the formulas of the uzun hava without overtly
referring to rural music. This may occur occasionally in the makam Hüseyni which is held in
common by both musical systems.
3 D’Erlanger 1930–1959; Touma 1971; Eisner 1973:70–76; Nettl 1973; al-Faruqi 1985:6–13.
4 “The maqām represents a unique improvisatory process in the art music of a large part of the
world” (Touma 1971:38).
5 The term “Turco-Arabian” used here refers to the partly shared musical culture of urban
Turkey and the urban centers of the Arab Levant (Syria-Palestine and Egypt), Despite broad
differences in performance practice, genre and repertoire, the Ottoman musical terminology
is still used to some extent in both areas. The importance of the taksim genre in Turkey, Syria,
Lebanon, and Egypt forms a major link between the music of this “Turco-Arabian” zone.
Urban Iraq had two distinct musical cultures, one (patronized by the aristocracy) which was
Turco-Arabian or purely Ottoman, the other, called the “Iraqi Maqām” (patronized by the
Shiite, Jewish, and other middle classes), which had non-Ottoman affinities.
280 Chapter 8

1 The Generic Nature and Origin of the Taksim

Starting in the earlier seventeenth century, Ottoman texts employ the term
taksim (< Ar. taqsīm, “division”) to refer to a performance-generated melody
in a non-metrical, “flowing” rhythm, which might be performed either vocally
or instrumentally. While taqsīm occurs as a non-musical term in Arabic and
many other Muslim languages, studies of Arabic and Persian sources have not
attested its musical use as an improvised, non-metrical genre prior to the nine-
teenth century.6 In fifteenth-century Turkish mecmua anthologies taksim had
been “a section setting the first verse block” (Wright 1992b:316). This section
was a part of the composed, metrical genres within the nauba, i.e. the qawl,
ghazal, tarana, or firudasht.
No Turkish source attempts to explain the meaning of the term, which
has the etymological meaning of “division,” or “distribution” in Arabic and in
Ottoman. One meaning of taksim or taksimat in several Turkic languages refers
to the syllabic division of a poetic text for musical purposes. The relation, if any,
between this literary usage and any musical meaning is obscure. It is possible
that taksim refers to the “division” of the vocal fasıl cycle by these improvised
interludes. However, in the instrumental fasl-i sazende cycle of the seventeenth
century, the taksim introduced the composed genres; it was only in the nine-
teenth century that it came to “divide” the peşrev from the semai in this genre.
It seems more likely that the “division” refers in some sense to the makam sys-
tem or to the individual makam. We should note that the grammatical form of
taksim is analogous to the word terkib: (1) a compound makam or (2) a discrete
section of a composition. Both are tefil (tafʿīl) verbal nouns from the intensive
form II of the roots r-k-b and q-s-m and their meanings are nearly antonymic.
Taksim (from Ar. qassim “to divide,” “to distribute”) is a “division” while terkib
(from Ar. rakkaba) is a “combination.” The meaning suggested is that while the
terkib combines modal entities, the taksim separates and recombines them in
new and original patterns. Another point in favor of this explanation is that
it emphasizes the use of the terkibs in the taksim. As we will see below, in the
seventeenth century the terkibs were very little used in compositions, and their
major function was in the taksim. This explanation further reinforces the con-
nection of the taksim with modulation, and Cantemir’s explanation of the tak-
sim is inextricably bound up with modulation.7

6 D’Erlanger, Shiloah 1979b, Wright 1978, Jung 1989.

7 Cantemir tells us that an alternative name for taksim among musicians was nağme, which
means “melody” or “mode” (ca. 1700:11:20). The usage of nağme does not provide any clue to
the etymology of taksim.
The Taksim and Modulation 281

Another explanation would attempt to link this seventeenth-century Otto-

man usage to the fifteenth-century use of the term. It is not unlikely that the
position of the vocal improvisation at the beginning of the vocal section of the
fasıl (as described by Cantemir) may have suggested the use of the term taksim
which had been the first poetic line of each discrete genre within the nauba
cycle. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary references to taksim
which will be quoted below do not suggest that their text was taken from the
opening line or lines of the succeeding beste in the fasıl. Nevertheless, we could
conceive of a situation in which this may have been the case in the transitional
period when the fasıl structure was beginning to emerge, and from which no
clear literary evidence has yet been found. According to this explanation the
hanende would have sung an improvisation using the first misra (hemistich) of
the gazel or rubai of the beste with which he would then begin the fasıl. Thus,
the link between the fifteenth-century and seventeenth-century usages would
have been the use of the first poetic line. The term taksim does not appear in
the modem terminologies of other cultures which had formerly performed the
genres of the nauba cycle, e.g. Iran, Azerbaijan, Transoxiana.
The taksim as it is known in modern Turco-Arabian music is defined by
four major characteristics, which are not present as an ensemble in any other
non-metrical genre within the core Muslim world (including the Maghreb and
Transoxiana):
1. Performance-generation (“improvisation”) which precludes learned tune-
like models.
2. Specific rhythmic idioms within an overall flowing-rhythm context.
3. Codified melodic progressions (seyir).
4. Modulation.
The emergence of the taksim genre must be viewed against the broader back-
ground of various approaches to temporal organization, composition, and
performance-generation characteristic of the Middle East since the early mod-
ern period, whose origins, very likely, extend farther back into medieval times.
In the musical treatises of the medieval Muslim art music tradition, from
al-Farabi onward the rhythmic cycle (Ar. īqaʿ) and its variations had been the
temporal basis of almost all genres of art music (Sawa 1989:35–71). Prior to the
late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, some form (or forms) of rhythmically
free, partly performance-generated singing and/or playing existed in Muslim
art musics. Al-Fārābī mentions the nashid and istihlal, and Marāghī (d. 1435)
speaks of the nas̲h̲īd al-ʿArab as non-metrical vocal genres (Jung 1989:144). In
fifteenth-century Turkey the term nathr an-naghamat evidently referred to all
the non-metrical genres of which the nas̲h̲īd al-ʿArab was the major courtly rep-
resentative (Touma 1991:101). While the nas̲h̲īd al-ʿArab was non-metrical the
282 Chapter 8

degree to which it may have been performance-generated is unclear. Since the

seventeenth century several non-metrical genres (durak, naat, mersiye, temcid)
have existed in Turkey which are entirely pre-composed (Feldman 1988a). The
taksim as a genre was not mentioned by the fifteenth-century Turkish theo-
rists (e.g. Ladiki, Şirvani, Seyyidi, Bedr-i Dilşad, Hızır bin Abdullah, Ahmed bin
Şukrullah, or Kırşehirli Yusuf). The appearance of the term ghazal may indicate
an item without a fixed rhythmic cycle, but this was not equivalent to a tak-
sim, with its four musical characteristics (as mentioned above). As we will see
below, in the seventeenth century one sang a gazel “in taksim” (Neşati 1933:24).
The use of “gazel” as the vocal equivalent to taksim developed only in the later
nineteenth century.
In the medieval Middle East some of the non-metrical genres were appar-
ently used as preludes, particularly where cyclical performance arrange-
ments were accepted. It is likely that the use of non-metrical vocal genres in
the beginning of the modern Moroccan nauba, the Kashmiri sufiyana kalam
and the Uighur muqom relate to a similar medieval Muslim musical practice
(Pacholczyk 1992). In modern Moroccan practice the leading vocalist may
insert non-metrical passages in between the composed genres of the nauba.
However in these modern Muslim art musics, as in their medieval predeces-
sors, the role of performance-generation and “flowing rhythm” is far less sig-
nificant than that of the metrical composed genres. In modem times it is only
in Iran (along with Azerbaijan and Iraq) that non-metricity of the melodic line
is the rule in the classical performance.
Outside the sphere of secular art music much of the modern Middle East
employs a wide variety of non-metrical genres, some of them performance-
generated, some of them composed and others displaying various treatments of
the elements of time and pre-composition. These genres are widely employed
in the mosque, in Sufi ceremonies, in non- classical urban performances or
in many rural contexts. The most dominant of these genres in the entire area
is the Qurʾānic chant, (in its tajwīd form) in which performance-generation
and flowing rhythm are essential. Despite the limited role of flowing rhythm
and performance- generation in the medieval treatises in Arabic, Persian and
Turkish (which dealt almost exclusively with the secular courtly tradition)
metrical composition was certainly not dominant in all musical contexts.8

8 This discussion owes some of its general concepts to Judit Frigyesi “Preliminary Thoughts
Toward the Study of Music Without Clear Beat: The Example of ‘Flowing Rhythm in East
Ashkenazic Jewish Nusah.’” (“Asian Music,” vol. xxiv–2 1993:59–88). Some of the ideas were
first brought up by her, Harold Powers, and myself in the panel which she chaired at the
33rd annual SEM meeting in October 1988, entitled “Flexible Rhythm, Elastic Meter, Tempo
Rubato: A Cross-Cultural Investigation.”
The Taksim and Modulation 283

It is unlikely that the four critical elements of the taksim had coexisted
for a long time prior to the earliest literary references to the genre. As it has
been known almost since its creation, the taksim relies heavily upon a codified
melodic progression (seyir; cf. previous chapter). This emphasis on seyir over-
shadows other possibilities for musical variation, such as those used by the
Persian avaz, e.g. repeated ornamentation of single tonal centers and neigh-
boring tones, vocal trills and other ornaments (especially in the tahrir section),
or rhythmic variations reminiscent of poetic meters. All of these elements are
either not essential or completely absent in the taksim, especially as practiced
in Turkey. Repeated ornamentation of a single tonal center, in Turkey would
call to mind the rural uzun hava, and in Syria the ʿatāba. These possibilities
for musical interest which were taken up and developed in the Persian avaz
were excluded from the taksim. Something akin to the Persian avaz seems
to have existed in Iran in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but,
as Cantemir notes (in his Chapter VII), this was fundamentally distinct from
the taksim.
No evidence has yet been found which indicates the period when the taksim
developed in Syria or Egypt. While current forms of the instrumental peşrev
(bashraf ) and semai seem to have entered these Arab countries in the last cen-
tury, and hence are regarded as “Turkish” genres today, no such memory of
“foreignness” adheres to the taksim. Arab musicians today consider the taksim
to be the most “Arab” of genres, despite the fact that it exists only in those Arab
countries with the closest ties to Turkey.9 In the absence of any firm evidence,
we cannot yet infer what possible interactions may have linked the develop-
ment of the taksim in Istanbul, Aleppo, and Cairo.
The emergence of a genre termed taksim, first attested in Ottoman texts
of the early seventeenth century, should be understood in the context of the
broader changes in genre, instrumentation and professionalism which over-
took Ottoman court music in the later sixteenth century (cf. Part 1, Chapter 1).
The appearance of the taksim along with so many other new developments in
musical life suggests that its absence in previous written sources was not an

9 Seventeenth-century Turkish sources leave little doubt that the peşrev genre was known in
Egypt prior to the nineteenth century. The Egyptian mehter musician known as Emir-i Hac
was brought along with three other musicians from Egypt to Istanbul for an Imperial sün-
net celebration in 1582. Several of the peşrevs which he composed became classics of the
seventeenth-century Ottoman repertoire (Sanal 1961:132–3). Bobowski includes peşrevs by a
certain Kase-baz-i Misri (makam Irak), as well as one in the same makam by a certain Seyf
el-Mısri. Possibly the peşrev had declined in Egypt during the eighteenth or early nineteenth
century so that it seemed like a new import from Turkey in the second half of the nineteenth
century (on Turkish borrowings in nineteenth-century Egypt, see Racy 1983a:167).
284 Chapter 8

omission, but rather that the new musical usage of the term taksim referred to
a significantly novel type of non- metrical performance generation.
Until the present day Turkish musical theory has created no way of defining
the metricity of the taksim genre, nor has it accepted the existence of several
Sufi vocal genres (e.g. durak, naat) whose rhythmical structure does not fol-
low the established rhythmic cycles (usuls; Feldman 1988a). Prince Cantemir’s
general definition of music, written around 1700, stressed meter and rhythm:

When the question is asked “what is music?” we would reply: “Music is

the movement of the voice within a measured time and which reaches a
conclusion and repose in a defined place and thereby brings pleasure to
the power of hearing, according to the meter of rhythm” (ca. 1700:II:18).

However, Cantemir evaluated the absence of defined metricity in the taksim in

a positive manner: “Nevertheless, the melody of the taksim is not bound to any
usul or to any regulation. … But the melody of the taksim manifests only the
power of the musician” (ca. 1700:VII:67).
Fifty years later Fonton independently echoed Cantemir’s formulation: “It
[the taksim] is not constrained by measure, as are the peşrevs, because he may
change it at will and because the taksim must not follow any of the usuls of
which we have spoken” (Fonton 1751:83/2).
The second characteristic by which Cantemir defined the taksim was its use
of modulation. The taksim was the principal means by which “consonance” or
“agreement” (hiss-i ünsiyet) was achieved in music. For this reason modulation
was as essential to the seventeenth-century conception of taksim as it is to its
modern descendent. Today’s taksim may contain sections which consist of a
single makam, but a taksim which remained in one makam for more than a
few minutes would be judged to have little aesthetic value (Signell 1977:66).
The major thrust of Cantemir’s text is the use of modulation within the taksim,
which he presents as the highest form of performance. Although the bulk
of his work presents the makams and terkibs according to the classificatory
scheme of the author, the art of taksim performance holds a special place in
the treatise because it allows the musician the greatest freedom in modulat-
ing between the modal entities. A taksim performance might employ a large
number of modal entities, as well as non-standard transpositions. Modulation
also appeared in composed melodies, but, as shown above, the evidence of
Cantemir’s notations shows that they were then of a rather limited nature.
The centrality of the taksim to Cantemir’s musical thought can be seen
from the position which his verbal taksim holds in his treatise. The treatise
The Taksim and Modulation 285

commences with some general definitions of musical terms, and then proceeds
to explain the principles of Cantemir’s system of notation. The use of notation
was certainly an important aim of Cantemir’s treatise and Collection. However
the treatise continues to present a classification of the entire makam system,
including a brief definition of every existing modal entity. This catalogue con-
stitutes the bulk of the treatise (Chapters 3 to 6), but it is followed by a broader
attempt to explain “consonance” (ünsiyyet) in music (Ch. 7). While this ambi-
tious plan is not very consistently executed, he concludes his chapter with a
verbal description of a taksim which modulates throughout the entire makam
system. Cantemir seeks here to explain the nature of musical consonance by
demonstrating how different makams can be joined together to form a musical
whole. One chapter is devoted to a recapitulation of the makam system accord-
ing to sixteenth-century sources (Ch. 8). The book concludes with a catalogue
of usul patterns (Ch. 9) and a brief survey of the compositional forms and their
performance in the concert (Ch. 10). Chapters 8, 9 and 10 appear to have been
written somewhat later than the others, because Cantemir originally ended his
book after describing the taksim in chapter 7: “In this way the science of music
according to the alphabetical and numerical notation and the treatise of music
according to my own theory has come to an end” (ca. 1700:VII:67). Cantemir
is the first theorist in the Muslim world to employ the taksim genre (or any
non-metrical genre) as a vehicle for the demonstration of abstract relation-
ships within the modal system, culminating in performance practice.
The first necessary element in the taksim was performance-generation.
Although neither Cantemir nor other Turkish theorists had any term for
this concept, in his seventh chapter he makes it clear that the prior learning
of any section disqualified a melody from being considered a taksim. This
will be discussed below in connection with his comparison of Turkish and
Persian musicians.
The word taksim with the earlier meaning of “a section setting of the first
verse block” (Wright 1992b:316) occurs as late as 1615, in the “Risale-i Mimariye”
(Crane 1987:25). In the scene in 1562 where Mehmed Ağa as a young devşirme
recruit listens to a Janissary musician perform in the Palace garden, the lat-
ter “shows types of makams and melodies and various terennüms and taksims”
(“envad makamat ile nağamat ve esnaf-i terennümat ile taksimat”:8v). The pair-
ing of terennümat (“passages of mainly syllabic material”; Wright 1992b:316)
and taksimat shows that the intention is to contrast composed sections using
poetic texts with syllabic texts. Considering that over fifty years had elapsed
between the occurrence of this incident and its written form we cannot be
certain that this earlier usage was still normative in 1615, as it had been in 1562.
286 Chapter 8

An early literary reference to taksim (as improvisation) occurs in the divan

of the Ottoman poet Neşati (d. 1674) who wrote in a kaside glorifying the con-
quest of Baghdad by Sultan Murad IV in 1638:

Geldi bir mertebe alem ki değil cay-i aceb

Etse bülbül gibi ger gonca gazeller taksim

The world has reached such a point where it is not to be wondered at

If the bud, like the nightingale, were to sing a gazel in taksim.
Neşati 1933:24

Another contemporaneous literary mention of the taksim (by the poet Cevri
1595–1654) is cited below under modulation (p. 293). In Neşati’s couplet the
taksim is a vocal genre, employing the gazel (ghazal) as its text. During the
nineteenth century, the word gazel completely replaced taksim as the term for
a vocal improvisation, i.e. the text became the name of the musical genre. By
the time of the earliest commercial recordings in Turkey in the first decade of
the twentieth century, the term taksim was always reserved for an instrumental
“improvisation,” while the vocal taksim was always named “gazel.” It appears
that this usage had already begun during Cantemir’s lifetime, as the court poet
Nedim, who was a contemporary of Cantemír’s, wrote a şarkı text containing
the lines:

Geh şarki okuyup gah gazel-han olalım

Gidelim serv-i revanim yürü Sa’d-abada

Sometimes let’s sing ş̱arki. sometimes chant gazel

Come, my flowing cypress, let’s go to Sadabad.
Nedim 1972:357

Şarkı was a light urban vocal genre which was not yet part of the concert fasıl.
In nineteenth-century Turkey the expression gazel-han referred to the singing
of a gazel to a taksîm melody, and its use here must be parallel with the term
şarkı, i.e both must denote musical genres. Therefore there seems to be little
doubt that in this poem “gazel” must refer both to the text and to the musical
genre to which the text was sung, i.e. the vocal taksim. It would seem that this
was a popular, less technical usage, and that both Evliya and Cantemir, who
were musicians, avoided it.10

10 In the twentieth century, Turkish dervish singers describe their taksims as kaside, although
the texts are usually not kaside but gazel. Musically, most of the dervish “kasideler” are not
The Taksim and Modulation 287

Evliya Çelebi, who was a contemporary of Neşati, mentions the taksim

many times in his “Seyahatname” (1896). To Evliya, taksim was both a vocal and
an instrumental genre. He praised the taksim playing of the kemançe player
Kemani Ahmed Çelebi: “A person who hears his taksim would be amazed”
(“Taksimini istima eden adam hayran kalur”) (Evliya 1896–1:636).11 However,
when he mentions the vocal taksim, his description is significantly different
from Cantemir’s. When describing the singing of the Kurdish Abdal Khan of
Bitlis he writes:

He has a very high and melancholy voice, and when anyone hears him
take the daire (frame-drum) into his hand and perform a taksîm to the
couplets of Hâfiz, or sing a kâr, a savt, or a zecel, paying attention to the
twenty-four rhythmic cycles while singing and beating the def, would
leave off his business and stand totally amazed (Dankoff 1990:98–9).

From the syntax of the text, it is clear that the “twenty-four rhythmic cycles”
(usul) refers to the composed genres kar, savt, and zecel, not to the taksim.
Nevertheless, the singer (the Abdal Khan of Bitlis) sings the couplets (ebyat)
of Hafız with his “hand on the daire.” While the Qurʾānic chant is never per-
formed with a rhythmic accompaniment, today the vocal taksim or “kaside” of
the dervish zikr is usually sung over the rhythmic chanting of the dervishes,
and frequently with the accompaniment of a daire, either played by the singer,
or by the other Zakirs. It may be that, when Evliya was in Bitlis, during the
1650s, the vocal taksim was also connected with dervish performance practice.
In any case, Abdal Khan also had zikir among the musical genres at which he
was adept (Dankoff 1990:98), and the couplets of Hafız would be as appropri-
ate to a Sufi performance as to a secular one.
These quotations from Ottoman sources in both poetry and prose demon-
strate that the taksim existed in the seventeenth century as the dominant type
of non-metrical improvisation in vocal and instrumental music within both
the courtly and dervish musical spheres. The quotation from Neşati reveals
that the taksim was sufficiently acculturated by the 1630s to be used as a part
of an image in a gazel. These Turkish documents show that the taksim prob-
ably emerged toward the end of the sixteenth century as a vocal genre. During
the seventeenth century it became an instrumental genre as well. The fact that

distinguishable from the vocal gazel. At present the difference in usage serves to distin-
guish the function of the dervish improvisation, which occurs only during the zikr, from
the secular gazel of the fasıl. In the seventeenth century, the term taksim was employed
to cover the instrumental taksim, the vocal taksim with gazel text, and probably also the
Sufì kaside.
11 The word taksım is absent in Özergin’s edition (1972:6032).
288 Chapter 8

Cantemir is the first theorist in the Muslim world who mentions the taksim,
and moreover that he structures much of his theoretical treatise around it sug-
gests that the taksim had distinguished itself from any earlier performance
practices of musicians which had not acquired a sufficient degree of formaliza-
tion to merit a specific name. Now in the seventeenth century, it was a defined
musical genre.
Cantemir used a single term to describe both the instrumental improvi-
sation and the vocal improvisation which employed a secular gazel poem as
text: “The instrumentalists’ taksim is not different from the vocalists’ taksim, so
there is no need to describe it” (ca. 1700:X:102). In Cantemir’s time it appears
that vocal taksim was accompanied by the two lead instruments of the fasil
ensemble, the tanbur, and the ney (ibid.:103), Apparently these instruments
accompanied the vocal taksim while the singer was performing, i.e. after the
manner of the Azerbaijanian dastgah. Cantemir writes:

Description of Accompaniment (Peyrevlik): It has been mentioned ear-

lier that the skill of all instrumentalists becomes evident when they
practice accompaniment, so that they move (hareket idüb) together with
the note of the nağme brought out by the voice (nefes) of the vocalist.
Whatever is sung the instrumentalist must perform it with no difference
(ca. 1700:X:103).

During the vocal taksim which closed the fasıl this type of accompaniment was
not practiced, because all the instruments held a drone while the singer sang
his taksim: “After they complete the [saz] semai, they are silent; they only hold
their drone notes (sazlanñ aheng perdelerini tutarlar), the vocalist once again
performs a taksim, and they bring the fasil to a close” (ibid.).Cantemir men-
tions that the ney and the tanbur sat directly behind the singer, so it is likely
that they both accompanied him, playing continuously while the vocalist sang.
By the early twentieth century the Turkish concept of accompaniment of the
vocal taksim had changed. On the 78 rpm recordings by such masters as Munir
Nurettin Selçuk, Isak al-Gazi, Hafız Kemal, Sadettin Kaynak, or Hafız Osman
the “accompaniment” was conceived not as following the improvised melody
of the singer, but as the performance of taksim during the sections when the
singer is silent.
While Bobowski (1665) says nothing about the taksim in his brief descrip-
tion of the music of the court, his contemporary Evliya Çelebi mentions
the taksim frequently. In 1700 Cantemir puts the taksim in the center of his
description of both the makam system and musical practice. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, Fonton was able to describe the instrumental taksim as
the most important musical genre for the instrumentalist.
The Taksim and Modulation 289

In looking for generic relatives of the taksim there are several reasons for
introducing the tajwīd (tecvit) form of the Qurʾānic chant. The Qurʾānic tajwīd
and the taksim, both in the Arab countries and in Turkey, have similar atti-
tudes toward performance-generation, avoid fixed rhythmic cycles and com-
positions (although their specific rhythmic idioms differ), and modulate. In
addition, it should be noted that the tajwīd form of Qurʾānic chant (as opposed
to the tartil) is based upon the same makam seyirs as are the taksim. There is
not enough musical information about the practice of Qurʾānic tajwīd in past
centuries to trace possible influences of the tajwīd upon the taksim, or vice
versa. However, given the relative novelty of both the taksim and the codified
seyirs on which it is based, it is not unreasonable to suppose that seyir had
already developed in the tajwīd before it became the basis of the taksim. If
one views the Qurʾānic tajwīd as one of the most stable elements in Muslim
musical cultures, then it is possible that the development of seyir within the
tajwīd could well have been worked out by the Qurʾānic cantors long before the
need was felt for such a usage by the secular courtly singers whose repertoire
consisted primarily of rhythmic composed genres. The position of the Qurʾānic
cantors in Ottoman courtly music, which became established only in the later
sixteenth century, furnishes the social context in which such a transference of
musical practice becomes likely.12
At present the musical relationship between the vocal and instrumental
taksim, and the Qurʾānic tajwīd and various non-metrical religious genres in
Turkey (e.g. mevlut and some kasides) and Syria and Egypt is not well known.13
Nevertheless al-Faruqi claimed that all of the non-metrical genres of art music
shared in some of the canonical legitimacy of the Qurʾānic chant:

The pitched recitation of the Holy Qurʾan stands at the peak of impor-
tance and acceptability in the Muslim hierarchy of handasah al sawt
[vocal art]. … At the top of the second composite section of the hierar-
chy [of musical forms] we find the free rhythmed Vocal and Instrumental
Improvisations, e.g., layâlî, âvâz, taqâsîm and istikhbâr. Because of their
formal and stylistic similarity to qirâ’ah [Quranic chant], these genres
have also been favored by a large percentage of the population, though
they were not universally approved (1985:9, 11).

While al-Faruqi’s general argument is overly schematic and polemical, this

point does bear consideration. The inclusion of the Iranian avaz is probably

12 These remarks are based on my research with Hafız Kemal Tezergil of Istanbul in
1978–1979.
13 An important step in this direction has been taken by Danielson (1991).
290 Chapter 8

not justified due to its close adherence to the metrical scansion of Persian
poetry (Tsuge 1970), thus creating a fundamental difference between it and the
Qurʾānic chant. However, the other genres she mentions, all interconnected
with the taksim, bear a general similarity to the chant. In Turkey the secular
gazel (= vocal taksim) and certain types of religious kaside singing avoid overt
reference to the poetic meter of the sung text, thus bringing them somewhat
closer to the qirāʾa.14
The fundamental musical difference between the Qurʾānic tajwīd and the
taksim whether performed vocally or instrumentally lies in the approach to
rhythmic idioms. In general, in the Turkish tajwīd (tecvit) style the rhythmic
idioms are quite genre specific and allow for relatively smaller amount of indi-
viduality on the part of the performer. The overall impression is of less rhyth-
mic “freedom” than in the taksim. In the twentieth century the great exponents
of taksim favor different rhythmic idioms even on the same instrument. For
example, the idioms used by the tanbur masters Necdet Yaşar and Mesut Cemil
differ greatly from those of Mesuťs father Cemil Bey and Cemiľs follower
İzzettin Ökte. Under these conditions, if there had been a period when the tak-
sim had closely resembled the tecvit, four centuries of separate instrumental
development have largely effaced this similarity.
Despite these differences between the attested forms of the taksim and
Qurʾānic tecvit in Turkey, it is necessary to take a broader view of the new
prominence of the performance-generated non-metrical genres in the art
musics of the Ottoman Empire. Theses genres comprised a major musical
innovation which was without clear precedent in earlier Muslim art musics,
and which was not accepted in the peripheries of the “core Muslim world,” i.e.
the Maghreb and Transoxiana. In Turkey the taksim was integrated into the
cyclical performance formats of the court ( fasıl) and of the Mevlevi dervishes
(ayin). In Syria and Egypt, it came to co-exist with the cyclical waṣlah, but by
the later nineteenth century it became increasingly dominant over the com-
posed forms.
This emergence of new musical forms and relationships involves larger
issues concerning the function of the form for competing social classes and
its symbolic associations in relation to the societal views of legitimacy in the
musical realm. This historical phenomenon should be understood both as
part of the history of a particular social class, and as a symbolic representa-
tion of the relations between secular and religious culture within Ottoman
Turkey. As explained earlier (in Part 1, Chapter 1), in the seventeenth century
the higher ʿulamāʾ were part of the Ottoman state bureaucracy, which caused

14 See above note 35.

The Taksim and Modulation 291

many of them to view their social role as somewhat comparable to that of

other Ottoman bureaucrats. Due both to the maintenance by the Ottomans
of a strong commitment to the secular traditions of the earlier Turco-Muslim
courts, and to the increased acceptance of the Sufi models for music, worship
and astrological determinations which characterized the ruling classes, the
ʿulamāʾ created a sonic expression for their newly enhanced role as guardians
of the religious legitimacy of the state. By the seventeenth century this novel
interface of three formerly highly disparate social groups (court musicians,
ʿulamāʾ müezzins, and dervish zakirs and neyzens) and their respective sym-
bolic visions of the musical art led to an equal legitimation of the principles
of metrical pre-composition and non-metrical performance generation. This
new development came to eclipse the performance practice of the Iranian
musicians which had dominated the Ottoman court in the sixteenth century.

2 Turkish and Persian “Taksim” in Cantemir’s Treatise

By the seventeenth century, both the Turks and the Persians had distinctive
forms of nonmetered “improvisation.” In his seventh chapter Cantemir com-
pares the two national types, using the term “taksim” to describe both:

Furthermore, know that the vocalists and instrumentalists of the land of

Persia (diyar-i Pars) compose the meiody of the taksim like a peşrev, so
that they give their students the taksim of every makam terkib by terkib.
However, among the musicians of Turkey (ehl-i musikar-i Rum) this type
of formalized (kalıplı) taksim is not accepted, and they remove it from the
sphere of music. And why do they remove it? They adduce this proof: for
example, due to the fact that the beste, the kar, and the nakş, the peşrev
and the semai are all bound to the usul, they demonstrate the power of
the knowledge of the composer. But the melody of the taksim manifests
only the power of the musician. Thus, through the exercise of the power
of his knowledge he may create charming terkibs, and through the beauty
of his arrangement he may connect one makam with another, and bring
about agreement among conflicting makams, so that he may create melo-
dies which are brand new and entirely his own (ca. 1700:VII:67).

Of course, from the outset we must recognize that Cantemir is using the word
“taksim” for the form of ametrical improvisation performed by the Iranian
musicians, even the Iranians themselves used no such word. Evidently this
is simply the closest linguistic equivalent that he can find. Whereas with the
292 Chapter 8

Persian composed vocal genres he has no doubt of the usage of terms like
“kar” or “naqsh,” simply because these terms had the same meaning for both
Iranian and Turkish musicians in the seventeenth century. Apparently, he did
not research either any Iranian musicians or their students closely enough to
learn their linguistic usage in this case, which had no exact equivalent within
the Turkish musical practice of his own generation. Certain conclusions can be
drawn on the basis of Cantemir’s remarks:
1. Some form of unmeasured, improvisatory playing existed in both Turkey
and Iran in the seventeenth century.
2. These improvisatory forms were not identical.
3. The Iranian form of improvisation was considered to be “formalized”
(kalıplı) by the Turks, because it was taught section by section (terkib),
resembling a peşrev, except that it had no usul pattern.
4. The Turks might have considered the Iranian form of improvisation to be
older than their own, but no longer acceptable, in that they “removed it
from the sphere of music.” This rests mainly upon one phrase in the text:
“musiki-siniñ dairesinden ihrac iderler” (“they remove it from the sphere/
circle of music”). It is doubtful that Cantemir had conducted the kind of
sustained interviews to reach such a conclusion more definitely.
5. The taksim of seventeenth-century Turkey was directly antecedent to the
taksim of nineteenth-twentieth-century Turkey.
6. What Cantemir calls “taksim” of seventeenth-century Iran was directly
antecedent to the avaz of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Iran.
In contrasting the Turkish and Persian approaches to improvisation Cantemir
focused on the pedagogical method in addition to performance. He was able to
do this because the students of Iranian musicians of the Ottoman court were
still active in Istanbul during the later seventeenth century. These observations
from the seventeenth century are reminiscent of modern practice as well. The
same data can also be viewed from the cultural perspective of Persian music,
as they have been by During (1984:123), who asserts the aesthetic value of the
gushe model of a master musician (ostad) for the improvisations of his stu-
dents. The modern Persian vocal avaz is based upon memorized modal units
called gushe, whose rhythmical structure is largely determined by the poetic
foot of the text (Tsuge 1970). The avaz form was codified into several personal
radifs by the second half of the nineteenth century. Authorities on Iranian
music consider that the radif must have developed no later than the end of the
eighteenth century (During 1984:20–1).
Recent research in Safavid musical texts suggests the existence of cycli-
cally arranged gushes, perhaps a proto-radif, as early as the seventeenth cen-
tury (During 1992). While it can be shown that compositional forms like the
The Taksim and Modulation 293

peşrev, kar, and nakş were held in common by Turkish and Iranian music,
the term taksim is not in use, and has never been in use in Iran. Already
in 1628–29 in his famous Tarikh-i Alem-Ara-yi Abbasi the Safavid historian
Eskendar Beg Monshi noted the decline in Central and Western Iran of the art
of khanandagi—which emphasized vocal compositions in various usuls—in
favor of the singing of mainly religious Persian poetry, which was known as
guyandagi. In his time khanandagi was better known among the singers in
Khorasan (Pourjavady 2005:74).15
The term terkib (as section of a composition) properly referred to the peşrev.
Each hane of a peşrev was composed of several melodic units, known as terkib.
While Cantemir does not claim that the Iranian taksim had a fixed usul (in
which case it could not have been described as “taksim”), he finds it convenient
to use the terms terkib and peşrev to convey to his Turkish readers the com-
positional technique underlying the “taksim” of the Iranians. In addition, he
had earlier compared the Turkish taksim to a specific type of peşrev, the küll-i
külliyat, emphasizing the similarity in their use of modulation, but without the
use of usul in the taksim. Whereas the Turkish musician composed his own
taksim, thus showing his own musical “power,” the Iranian musician learned
the taksim from his teacher. An essential barrier separating the Arabo-Turkish
taksim from the Iranian avaz is formed by the gushes, the modal formulae
which are the basis for improvisation only after they have been learned by rote
in a fixed form. The Arabo-Turkísh taqsīm/taksim does not contain such modal
formulae. While the absence of the gushes can free the individual Turkish or
Arab musician to do more individual improvisations, including unusual modu-
lation, it is not clear to what extent this actually occurs. In general, there is
little information about the value and scope accorded to improvisation in
these musical cultures. For example, certain types of modulation are prohib-
ited in “traditional” taqsim playing in Egypt, while these same modulations are
permitted in Turkey. The Arab taqsīm insists on stereotypical closing phrases
for certain maqāms (qaflah), while Turkish musicians are free to develop their
own, idiosyncratic closing phrases (Signell 1977:125–133). The musicians who
have transmitted the radif in twentieth-century Iran generally reject the freer
sort of improvisation current in Turkey and the Arab world.16

15 Largely following Pourjavady’s groundbreaking research, I summarize the causes for

this situation in Iran—and its probable effects on Ottoman Turkey—in “The Musical
Renaissance of Late Seventeenth Century Ottoman Turkey” (2015:119–127).
16 In an interview in 1987, the noted radif authority Dr. Dariush Safvat characterized the
freer improvisation of certain contemporary Iranian musicians as “vagabondage on the
strings.”
294 Chapter 8

There is another critical distinction between the Turco-Arabian and Iranian

types of “improvisation”—the relation of improvised, largely unmeasured
music to poetic meter. Tsuge has demonstrated the close connection between
the vocal avaz and the Persian poetic meter of the texts to which it is sung
(Tsuge 1970). Tsuge’s study was not primarily concerned with the instrumental
versions of the gushes. So far, no study of either Turkish or Arabic improvised
singing has dealt in comparable depth with the issue of the relation of poetic
and musical meter.
Cantemir’s brief characterization of the Persian “taksim” focuses on a
characteristic feature which distinguishes the modern Iranian and Turkish
conceptions of variation and “improvisation.” To Cantemir, the distinguish-
ing characteristic of the Iranian “taksim” was its segmentary and largely pre-
composed nature. The Iranian musicians, both vocalists and instrumentalists
(hanendeleri ve sazendeleri) compose (beste eylemişler) their taksims “in the
form of a peşrev” (peşrev şeklinde). They teach the taksim (talim virler) to their
students part by part (terkib terkib). Cantemir never uses the verb beste eylemek
(“to compose”) in reference to the Turkish taksim. This verb and tasnif olmak
(“to be composed”) are used for both instrumental and vocal compositions. The
usual verb for the taksim is icra olunmak (“to be performed”). Other verbs used
in connection with the taksim imply motion—hareket eylemek (“to move”),
dolaşmak (“to stroll,” “wander”) or istirahat kalmak (“to repose”). It is signifi-
cant that Cantemir employs different verbs for the creation of the Persian and
Turkish “taksims.” The Persians “compose” their taksims while the Turks “per-
form” them. One is justified in discerning something resembling the unchang-
ing melodic nucleus of the gushe behind Cantemir’s description of the Persian
“taksim.” The verbs used in connection with the Turkish taksim, i.e. “to be per-
formed,” “to move,” “to stroll,” are more suggestive of performance-generation.
As we learn more about the transformations of Persian music during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Cantemir’s evidence for Persian perfor-
mance practice takes on added significance. And as we also see the continued
strength of Persian performance practice even at the court of Murad IV,
Cantemir’s remarks about the Persian musical pedagogy (VII:67) must be under-
stood as reflecting a practice that was still known in Istanbul within living
memory. Nahçevenli Murad Ağa—whom Evliya Çelebi mentions as having
been brought by Sultan Murad from Yerevan in 1634—died in Istanbul in 1688.
Thus, in the course of his own musical studies, Cantemir might very well have
heard or met one or more of Murad Ağa’s students.
Cantemir stressed the role of the individual musician in creating “melo-
dies which are brand new and entirely his own,” and that the highest type of
taksim could be performed only by “one or two musicians” (ca. 1700:VII:67).
The Taksim and Modulation 295

Fonton’s description of the taksim indicates that it must have relied largely
upon performance-generation:

This caprice [i.e. the taksîm] must be in the same mode as the air which
will be played and in fact serves as a kind of transition to it. It is played
by only one of the musicians assembled for the concert, while the oth-
ers play a kind of drone by playing continuously the tone on which the
taksîm is based. There are some who succeed perfectly in these taksîms,
which they prolong for whole hours entirely in the same mode, which
they embroider in a hundred different ways. It is in these caprices that the
talent of the musician develops. It is not constrained by measure, as are
the peşrevs, because he may change it at will and because the taksîm must
not follow any of the usûls of which we have spoken (Fonton 1988–89
[1751]:S3/2).

In the instrumental fasl-i sazende the relations between composition and

improvisation were quite different from those prevailing in the vocal/instru-
mental fasıl, where both instrumental and vocal taksim punctuated an extensive
composed program. Here the taksim constitutes the core of the performance,
while the composed genres peşrev and semai take on the character of a “post-
lude.” This autonomy of the fasl-i sazende and the prominence of the taksim
within it, has maintained itself to the present day.

3 Modulation and the Taksim

Fonton’s description, quoted above, confirms some of Cantemir’s remarks

about the taksim. The taksim was not bound to any rhythmic cycle, the taksim
was the measure of the quality of a musician, and the finest sort of taksim
could be extended and developed at the will of the musician. However, his
phrase “entirely in the same mode” is certainly erroneous, because, accord-
ing to both Cantemir and later practice, a fine and extended taksim could not
remain in the same mode. Modulation is in fact one of the basic components
in the generic definition of the taksim, which helps to distinguish it from other
non-metrical genres such as the uzun hava or the various non-measured vocal
“preludes” of the modern maqām traditions.
The most succinct definition of “modulation” as it is used in Western discus-
sions of the makam musics of the Middle East is found in Powers 1980a: “The
term ‘modulation’ sometimes occurs in the literature on western Asian music;
it is used in three different, often insufficiently distinguished senses. All three
296 Chapter 8

senses can entail a change of maqam/naghmah/gushe” (Powers 1980a:427).

The first sense is a transposition; the second is a change of melody type; while
in the third “one modal nucleus is replaced by another with different aggregate
interval structure but spanning the same segment of the general scale and with
the same principal degree” (ibid.).
Various types of modulation appear to have originated rather early in the
practice of Near Eastern art music and are reflected in the thirteenth-century
writings of Ṣafī al-Dīn Urmawī and Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (Wright 1978:255–269).
However due to the fact that our knowledge of melodic movement within the
ancient scales is scanty, the significance of most of these “modulations” will
remain obscure. The development of modulation, especially of the third type
was certainly encouraged by the existence of mixed modal complexes, which
Cantemir describes as mürekkeb makam (“compound makam”), or as terkib
(“combination”).
Although to Cantemir modulation was an essential feature of the taksim, his
treatise does not possess a single term to describe any form of modulation other
than transposition (şedd). Modern Turkish music uses the term geçki (from
geç = “to pass”) for “modulation,” but this seems to be of twentieth-century ori-
gin. In his seventh chapter Cantemir attempts to discuss what he calls “musi-
cal agreement and aversion” (“hiss-i ünsiyyet zidd-i arbedet-i musiki,” Cantemir
ca. 1700:VII:57). However, the subject of this chapter is basically transposition,
which he tells us was rarely practiced by Turkish musicians (ibid.:50). His sec-
tion on “the particular agreement and aversion of the notes” in the same chapter
would seem to bring us closer to modulation. Popescu-Judetz has briefly sum-
marized this chapter and notes that “it is emphasized that the fixed tones do not
stand in a consonant relationship to all half tones” (Popescu-Judetz 1981:126).
However the material he presents is a very hasty attempt at creating a theoreti-
cal system to explain both modulation and transposition as it was practiced
in his time, and as his Romanian translator has observed, his analyses “do not
derive from theoretical foundations.” (ibid.). The material he presents is often
contradicted by the notated repertoire in his own Collection.17
Cantemir saw the concepts of “agreement” (or “consonance”) and “aversion”
as being connected with modulation. His seventh chapter concludes with
a taksim which modulates through the entire makam system. This taksim is
called by him “nağme-i külliyat-i makamat” (“taksim [-nağme] of the collected
makams,” or “compendium of the makams,” Cantemir ca. 1700:VII:63–67).

17 For example, he tells us that the note ırak (a neutral F’) is “unfriendly” with the note
zengüle (G1), when in fact the transposition of the Hicaz-Uzzal tetrachord onto the note
aşiran (E), called by him the makam Zengüle employs both irak and zengüle.
The Taksim and Modulation 297

He introduces this taksim, presented as a verbal melodic progression, as “the

alteration of the contradictory natures of music into the agreement of melody”
(“zidd el-tabiat- i musiki-i ber muvafakat-i nağme-i u tagyir kerden”) (Cantemir
ca. 1700:63). In it he presents thirty-six makams and terkibs plus two trans-
positions. Cantemir’s verbal scheme of the taksim is a primary source for the
seventeenth-century Turkish conception of modulation and improvisation.
The central position of the taksim in Cantemir’s “Kitabu İlmu’l Musiki” prob-
ably demonstrates the relative novelty of the genre and is significant to an
understanding of his musical thinking. Cantemir’s seventh chapter is entitled
“Musical Agreement and Aversion” (“hiss-t ünsiyyet zidd-i arbedet-i musiki”).
Although the word taksim is not mentioned in the title of the chapter, the
opening of the chapter specifies that its essential subject will be the taksim.

We have explained the makams and terkibs as much as possible. It is now

necessary that the agreement and aversion among the notes, makams
and terkibs should be explained; so that when you wish to play a taksim,
according to the description mentioned earlier, you may gain mastery of
the treasury of music, and whatever bejeweled and gold-disbursing melo-
dies you may wish to extract, you may do so and it may penetrate and
influence the power of audition through its sweet movement and elegant
organization in accordance with the rules of music (ca. 1700:VII:56).

He commences the chapter with the “rules of general agreement” in music: “The
agreement of makams is that which should mix together the notes, makams,
and terkibs of music without showing any conflict or contradiction” (ibid.).
Modulation had a different role in the seventeenth century from the role it
holds in the repertoire and practice of nineteenth-twentieth century, i.e. “mod-
ern” Turkish music. The repertoire of modern Turkish music features modula-
tion of a variety of types in all but the simplest compositions (Signell 1977:66).
The vocal repertoire is based upon the zemin-miyan structure in which the
miyan usually modulates either to a new makam or to a different range of
the original makam. The peşrev is constructed according to a system of what
Signell had termed the “multiple miyan” whereby each hane employs a new
makam. The Mevlevi ayin modulates almost continually to the extent that
Signell coined the expression “wandering makam” to describe these modula-
tions (Signell 1977:120) In addition all these genres use fleeting modulations
and single-note alterations very frequently. Sometimes variant versions of the
same item may introduce these smaller modulations, and today choral direc-
tors and radio musicians commonly introduce them where they feel they
might enhance the written score from which they are playing.
298 Chapter 8

In the notations in Cantemir’s Collection the full range of compound or

subsidiary modal entities (terkib) is not in evidence. Modulations are few and
of a very limited nature. The four-section (four-hane) peşrev with its modulat-
ing “multiple miyans” has not yet made its appearance. Instead, the prevalent
three-hane peşrev with its long ritomello (mülazime) allows for modulation
mainly in its third hane. The recorded repertoire in such makams as Uzzal
or Saba, which in the modern repertoire demand certain standard modula-
tions (e.g. Nişabur and Evc in Uzzal, Hüseyni in Saba), are generally without
any modulation at all. The compositions both in the collections of Cantemir
and Bobowski are usually in the nominal makams, rarely in the terkibs. For
example, Cantemir’s Collection contains only one peşrev each in such terkibs
as Bestenigar, Nühüft, Hicaz, Acem-Yegahi, Zergüle, Zirefken, Maye, Sipihr, and
Küçek, and most of these have no peşrev at all in Bobowski. These terkibs may
also appear occasionally as modulations, but there are several terkibs which
were described by Cantemir in his treatise, which are never used in the instru-
mental repertoire which he recorded. Had we been left with the Collection
alone, without the treatise, we could only have concluded that almost all early
Ottoman music employed the ten makams using basic scale degrees (Irak,
Rast, Dügah, Segah, Çargah, Neva, Hüseyni, Evc, Gerdaniye, and Mahür), and
to a lesser extent the nine makams of secondary scale degrees (Ķürdi, Saba,
Beyati, Acem, Şebnaz, Hisar, Uzzal, Buselik, and Zengüle). The compound
makams (mürekkeb makam) and terkibs were extremely rare, and modulation
extremely limited in instrumental compositions.
The types of modulation appearing in the Cantemir Collection are summa-
rized below.
1. Alteration of single notes was commonly employed. The most frequent
of these was the flattening of the second degree in modal complexes end-
ing on A, less frequently the raising of the sub-tonic. Alternation of f# and
f was common in A-final and also Bd final modal complexes.
2. Modulation between the hanes or within a single hane of a peşrev was
most common in A-final modal complexes. Aside from single-note altera-
tions, true modulations most frequently involved only the modal com-
plexes Uzzal and Saba.
3. Thematic development in the majority of pieces was accomplished more
often by alteration of the range of the original makam than by modulation
to a new makam. In certain cases, the change in range, sometimes includ-
ing a single-note alteration automatically introduced a new makam (e.g.
Şehnaz in Hicaz or Uzzal).
4. As a consequence of the above it can be seen that the concepts of scale
and melodic progression were not as rigidly differentiated as they were to
become in the later music.
The Taksim and Modulation 299

The peşrevs which can be dated to the later seventeenth century show a greater
use of small-scale modulation, even single-note alteration, than do most of the
earlier pieces, except for a few with early attributions which were probably
“modernized” (e.g. the “HünkarPeşrevľ” in makam Irak by the sixteenth-century
mehter Emir-i Hac). As will be shown below, in the chapters on the peşrev
(Part 3, Chapters 10 and 11), compositions by such musicians as Ali Hoca,
Mehmed Çelebi, or Cantemir himself show a wider range of modulation than
do earlier pieces. Nevertheless, even in the later seventeenth century, the gap
between the existing makam/terkib system and its use in compositions was still
considerable. Many terkibs existed which do not appear in the peşrev scores.
Cantemir’s Collection is exclusively instrumental; it consists of peşrevs
and semais with no vocal pieces. It is possible that the vocal compositions
employed modulation more prominently. This might be due to the fact that
the beste and nakş were constructed with a zemin, an unvarying melody used
for lines A, B and D of the poetic quatrain, and a miyan (or meyan) for line C
in which a different melody was used. Although in his tenth chapter Cantemir
explains the construction of the vocal forms in some detail, he never mentions
exactly what modal or scalar change occurred in the miyan. For each vocal
form he states that the third poetic line is the miyanhane and that “its terkib
is different” (“terkibi dahi mugayirdirmuğayir,” “contrary,” “opposing,” “differ-
ent”). It seems that terkib is being used here in its meaning of “precomposed
melodic line” not “secondary modal complex.” However, if the second meaning
is intended, then this is referring to modulation. On the basis of later vocal
pieces (or later versions of early vocal pieces) we would assume that modula-
tion usually occurred in the miyan, but this may not have been the case in the
seventeenth century. The seventeenth-century vocal repertoire, as it has been
transmitted to modern times (i.e. later nineteenth century) exhibits very few
of the terkibs which existed in the seventeenth century. The major monuments
of this era such as the kar, bestes and semais of Itri, Hafız Post, and Ama Kadri,
or the ayins of Osman Dede and Köçek Mustafa Dede have been transmitted
with modulations only into the well-known makams of the seventeenth cen-
tury, i.e. Hicaz, Saba, Uşşak (Dügah), Isfahan, or Şehnaz and virtually never into
terkibs such as Zirefken, Buzurk, Hüzzam, or Geveşt. Modern terkibs have not
been introduced into these compositions, so there has evidently been a degree
of conservatism in their transmission.
We know of only two composed genres in the seventeenth century which
did employ substantial modulations. These were the kar-i natık and the küll-i
külliyat which were designed to use most of the existing terkibs. However, these
two genres had a very limited, mainly pedagogical function. Cantemir specifi-
cally distinguishes between those terkibs which were “functioning” (müste-
male) and those which were “defunct” (gayr-i müstemale). If these numerous
300 Chapter 8

terkibs were “functioning,” where were they functioning? Since they were evi-
dently not much in evidence in compositions, they can have been “function-
ing” only or primarily in the taksim.
An early seventeenth-century literary reference, approximately contempo-
raneous with the gazel by Neşati of 1638, quoted above, documents the role
of modulation in the taksim. In a work entitled “In Praise of the Vocalists of
the Imperial Palace” (“Der Ta’rîf-i Hanendegân-i Sarây-Pâdişâhî Bâ-Teklîſ’ ”) the
Mevlevi and court poet İbrahim Cevri (1595–1654) devoted a beyt to the taksim
singing of a certain Ali Ağa:

Eylese şevk ile taksîm-i dü-beyte âğâz

Gösterür cümle makâmat be-kavl-i edvâr

When he commences to passionately sing a taksim of two couplets

He demonstrates all the makams according to the theory of music
Ayan 1981:111; Gültaş 1982:30

Thus, in the first half of the seventeenth century at least one singer of the court
was able to modulate more extensively in his taksim. Cevri also informs us that
Ali Ağa had learned his musical art from the famous Tokatlı Derviş Ömer, who
had also taught Evliya Çelebi (Feldman 2022:149–151).
The seventh chapter of Cantemir’s treatise describes a special, and we may
assume, newer type of taksim, the “compendium” taksim which could modu-
late throughout the modal system. Cantemir states that only “one or two” musi-
cians were capable of performing in this way, but evidently a generation earlier
Ali Ağa was approaching something like this kind of performance. Both Hızır
Ağa in the eighteenth century and Haşim Bey in the mid-nineteenth century
had specified the taksim as the locus for unusual modulations which were not
customary in compositions.
In the same chapter Cantemir states that transposition was very little prac-
ticed in Turkey, and he gives some information on how it was done. This part
of his seventh chapter was copied and expanded in the early nineteenth cen-
tury. In addition, fifty years later Harutin included a similar but much larger
section in his treatise (Harutin 1968:94–105). The taksim-i nağme-i külliyat-i
nağamat (“taksim of the melody of the compendium of melodies”) or taksim-i
külli (“compendium, universal taksim”) shows both modulation and transposi-
tion to be the tools with which the most elaborate taksim could be constructed.
While the actual modulations and transpositions which Cantemir gave in his
book would be considered pedestrian today, they are not fundamentally dif-
ferent from those techniques used in a modern taksim. Fonton’s description of
several musicians performing taksims “for hours” demonstrates that fifty years
The Taksim and Modulation 301

after the writing of Cantemir’s treatise the taksim was being developed as the
centerpiece of the instrumental concert-cycle ( fasi-i sazende).

4 Modulation and the Küll-i Külliyat Genre

In introducing the “compendium taksim” Cantemir, rather surprisingly, refers

not to any other non-metrical genre but to metrical compositions which fea-
tured extensive modulation:

Those musicians who have attained perfection are able to turn the oppo-
sition and aversion which exists among all the makams and notes into
blending and agreement by means of the power of the science of music,
so that, like a golden chain, the heavenly bodies of the notes, one enter-
ing into another, and one joined with another, a group of makams will
be compounded into one circle of melody and into one makam, and will
become a universal makam (bir makamat külli) produced out of the par-
ticular makams. The peşrevs called Küll-i Külliyat-i Fahte and Külliyat-i
Fahte and the kars called Kar-i Natık have been composed according to
these conditions. In the melody of the taksim, the master musicians, with
a sweet entrance, holding one makam as a basis, play all the makams
upon it, and wander through all of them by leaving one and entering
another (ca. 1700:VII:63).

Following the description, Cantemir speaks of the ideal and ethos of the taksim.

Know that a taksim of the makams of Hüseyni was articulated (taksim-i

makamat-i Hüseyni), and the makams were beautifully arranged and
combined and were performed as a taksim in the form of a Küll-i Külliyat.
Nevertheless, the melody of the taksim is not bound to any usul or to
any regulation. Therefore, it is left to the power of the knowledge of the
musicians, and contained within the will of the instrumentalist or vocal-
ist that he should mix the makams and terkibs according to his desire, so
that elegant and sweet melodies may be manifested.
Finally, he has permission to move in any way that he wishes. However,
with the condition that, whether in entering or exiting he show no aver-
sion, and that, with a sweet entrance and a delicate exit he should show
sweetness in the melody of the taksim and solidity like a strong chain
in the performance of the makams. Afterwards, when he comes to the
domain of the makam in which he had begun the Ağaze and which he
laid as a basis, he should conclude upon its finalis (ca. 1700:VII:67).
302 Chapter 8

Cantemir concludes his introduction by noting that “in any case, only one or
two musicians may be found to take to completion this type of universal tak-
sim” (taksim-i külli) (ibid.:63). This can only mean that this “universal taksim”
was not the standard type of taksim practiced by most musicians. Rather, it
seems to have been an ideal or goal toward which musicians were striving.
Cantemir does not spend as much space on any other aspect of musical
performance or composition; most of his seventh chapter is devoted to the
taksim-i külli (ibid.:·63–7). Although no chapter in the treatise is ostensibly
devoted to the taksim, the description of this genre and its positioning within
the book suggest that his theoretical classification of makams and ŧerkibs rep-
resented only a part of his musical thinking; the relationships between differ-
ent modal species find their fullest realization in the taksim.
As we have seen, Cantemir compared the modulatory movement within a
taksim to the compositional genres kül-i külliyat-i·fahte, külliyat-i-fahte, and kar-i
natık. On page 67 he had referred to it as “a taksim in the form of a küll-i külliyat”
(“küll-i külliyat şeklinde bir taksim”). The külliyat genre was apparently closely
related to the kolliyat mentioned by the sixteenth-century Bukharan writer
Najm al-Dīn Kawkabī, which was, however, a vocal, rather than an instrumental
genre (Jung 1989:154). In the early fifteenth century, Marāghī had mentioned
the vocal genre kull alnaghm. Both of these genres were created by modulating
through the entire modal system—Marāghī’s six avaz and twenty-four shuba.
The term “küll-i külliyat” for a composed modulating vocal genre occurs
in the Ottoman manuscripts discussed recently by Wright (1992b), dating from
the later fifteenth century (Nurosmaniye MS 3652), ca. 1550 (Oxford, Ousley
MS 127–28), and ca. 1570 (Süleymaniye MS 1002) respectively. The three collec-
tions of lyrics contain no more than six examples. Wright concludes that:

In effect, the kulli külliyât may have had almost symbolic importance, rep-
resenting a summit of technical skill but, as a result, existing on the mar-
gin rather than the mainstream of normal compositional practice: it must,
after all, have required an audience of great sophistication—consisting,
one suspects, largely of fellow-musicians—to identify all the transitions
and appreciate the ingenuity of the workmanship (1992b:140).

These fifteenth- and sixteenth-century küll-i külliyats also employed rhythmic

modulation, a technique which would be abandoned in the seventeenth cen-
tury. The example in Oxford (Ousley 128:folio 9a) employs a devotional Arabic
text and is described as a muwashshah kulli (Wright 1992b:140).
It would seem that the major innovation of the seventeenth-century Otto-
mans was to create an instrumental version of this modulating vocal genre.
The Taksim and Modulation 303

Both the taksim and the three kül-i külliyat melodies begin in the makam
Hüseyni, which according to the evidence of Cantemir, Bobowski, and the mec-
muas, was the most-frequently used makam in the seventeenth century. The
taksim-i külli might also begin in makams other than Hüseyni. “let us put into
practice a taksim of one makam, so that it will be in the form of an example
for the other makams” (Cantemir ca. 1700:VII:63). The taksim in Chapter VII
employs forty-one modal entities (makam and terkib). Of the three kül-i külli-
yat melodies, the most elaborate one (on pp. 157–9) employs forty-three modal
entities. In the Collection this küll·i külliyat peşrev bears the alternative title
“Fihrist Peşrevi” (“Index Peşrev”). The complete title is “Külliyat-i Küll·i Kül-
liyat ve Külliyat-i Makamat: Fihrist Peşrevi.” Literally this title can be trans-
lated: “Compendium of the Complete Compendium and Compendium of the
Makams: Index Peşrev.”
The vocal kolliyat was connected with an older Persian poetic tradition,
in which the names of the makams (or pardas) were used as part of a pun,
whereby they had both their musical and their literal meaning. Thus, the
mode Rast also meant “right,” “straight,” “true”; Bozorg meant “large,” and
Kuchek “small”: Shahnaz meant “coquette,” and Nuhuft meant “hidden.” There
was also a large group of mode names derived from geography: Hijaz, Iraq,
Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, and Nishabür. In poetry, these puns might occur in
any context. Some of the earliest examples of this usage occur in the divan
of the eleventh-century poet Manuchehri (Mellah 1943), Others appear in the
works of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, and in the divan of Hafez (Mellah 1932). In these
divans, the mention of makam names was not intended for musical composi-
tion. However, the current Turkish oral tradition does contain some early com-
positions in which the mention of the makam name is coordinated with the
appearance of the makam musically.18
It would appear that the vocal kolliyat genre employed a poetic text as the out-
line for modulation within a composition. It is known that the fifteenth-century
genre kull al-naghm actually used all of the six avazes and twenty-four shubas.
In the late seventeenth century, Ottoman composers employed külliyat poems
as the basis for their musical compositions. An Ottoman example is the kar-i
natık by Hatipzade Osman Efendi, who composed a composition for a text by
the poet Nevres, beginning with the couplet:

18 For example, the “Rast nakış besté” in devr-i revân by the “Persians” (Acemler) modulates
from Rast to Hicaz at the mention of the word Hicaz in the text (“Rast ez Nikrîz ez şâyed
Hicazî bĩşneved,>”). See Rast Faslı part II, “Türk Musiki Klâsiklerinden” No. 3, Istanbul
Beledíye Konservatuan Neşriyati (TMK 1954:37).
304 Chapter 8

Rast geldim mürgizâr içre o şûb-i dilkeşe

Bir usûl ile idüp der çember ittim râm anı

I came across (rast geldim) that bold, seductive beauty in a verdant

meadow.
Forming a strategy (usul), I captured her with a ring (çember)
Üngör 1981–II:900

In the poem, the first misra (hemistich) of every beyt (couplet) mentions the
name of a makam, while the second misra mentions an usul. This type of
kar-i natık is known as değişmeli (“changing”) because each musical section
is composed in a different rhythmic cycle (usul). Osman Efendi’s composition
has thirty couplets, indicating thirty makams and thirty usuls. The kar-i natık
by Ismail Dede Efendi (d. 1846) remains in one usul (sengin semai, 6/4), but
changes its makam in every misra. Thus, its twelve beyts contain twenty-four
makams. All surviving Ottoman kar-i natıks begin with the makam Rast.
Cantemir’s küll-i külliyats all begin in the makam Hüseyni (in the usul fahte),
Bobowski’s begins in the makam Acem (usul düyek), while Evliya mentions a
küll-i külliyat in the makam Buselik (Ozergin 1972:6050).19 The starting of the
modulation with the makams Hüseyni, Acem, or Buselik creates an important
modal distinction between the küll-i külliyat on the one hand and the vocal
kar-i natık and kolliyat on the other. In the seventeenth century the Turkish
makam Rast concluded on the note rast, G, while the makams Hüseyni, Acem,
and Buselik all conclude on the note dügah, A. In both the kar-i natık and the
kolliyat modulations proceed gradually, beginning with the finalis of the first
makam in the piece. Thus, the order of modulation must be different in these
vocal and instrumental genres, because the former begins with finalis G, while
the latter begins with finalis A. The connection of the taksim with the küll-i kül-
liyat, mentioned by Cantemir, is strengthened by the fact that his model taksim
begins in Hüseyni, not in Rast.
In practice, the taksim occurred either as the first movement of the instru-
mental fasıl, or in several different positions within the vocal fasıl. We may
assume that a taksim in a vocal fasıl was obliged to bear some relationship to
the makam of the fasıl, it could not wander through the entire makam sys-
tem. This was especially true of the vocal taksims which occurred following the
peşrevs, and after the saz semai, respectively; these were wedged in between

19 Wright states that Bobowski’s küïliyat in Acem Düyek is an erroneous version of the küïli-
yat by Harun Yahudi transcribed by Cantemir as Hüseyni fahte (1992:48). Other külliyat
transcriptions may be found in Wright 1992a no. 22, 23, The küli-i külliyat is transcribed as
no. 296.
The Taksim and Modulation 305

compositions in a particular makam. The taksim of an instrumental fasıl might

have had more freedom, especially if the musicians played for something like
“whole hours,” as Fonton reports. It would seem, however, that Cantemir’s
taksim-i nağme-i külliyat-i makamat was more of a pedagogic model than an
actual performance item. As a pedagogic model, it was largely (although not
completely) modeled after the küll-i külliyat peşrev.

5 Conclusion

While in other areas the art musical cultures of Turkey and Iran were closely
related, the usage of “improvisation” was fundamentally divergent. The Persian
practice emphasized memorization of discrete melodic sections rather than
extensive performance-generation. Improvisation remained true to the princi-
ples of the avaz, which expressed the meters of Persian poetry, and maintained
the integrity of the individual gushes. Even when much of the modal system,
the rhythmic cycles and compositional forms of medieval Iranian music were
forgotten in the later eighteenth century, the avaz remained as the essential link
with the Iranian musical past. Wide and freer modulation, which had existed
in such medieval Iranian genres as the kolliyat and kull al-nagham, and which
was still somewhat known in the nineteenth century (as murakkab-khani), was
eschewed in favor of greater concentration on closely related modal species,
which were arranged cyclically as the radif. From the seventeenth century until
the present the Iranian avaz has been conceived of as a loose recreation of spe-
cific melodic nuclei, rather than a broad performance generation.
To Cantemir, the major significance of the taksim lay in its ability to create
musical “agreement” or “consonance” by uniting the separate modal entities
of the makam system through modulation. He relates this aspect of the taksim
to the composed genres, the küll-i külliyat peşrev and the kar-i natık. It appears
that the principle of modulation was derived by the taksim from these older
composed genres. While an earlier form of the taksim might have relied less
heavily on modulation, by the end of the seventeenth century extensive modu-
lation was an ideal toward which Turkish musicians aspired.
Modulation was used only sparingly in the composed genres of the
seventeenth-century fasıl and the principal use of modulation was in the tak-
sim. During the eighteenth century the taksim was crucial in the development
of modulation and transposition. Harutin’s treatise shows that transposition
was a major concern of Turkish musicians in the mid-eighteenth century.
Fonton indicates that at this time the taksim, played by several musicians in
turn, became the focal point of an extended instrumental cycle. The creation
of the instrumental taksim was also a major impetus to the development of a
306 Chapter 8

separate instrumental cycle. The fasl-i sazende had become largely a vehicle for
the performance of extended taksims.
In addition to its growing importance as a genre in itself the taksim sig-
nificantly influenced the development of both transposition and modulation
in the composed repertoire as well. The taksim allowed musicians scope to
experiment with transpositions and modulations into little-used terkibs which
would probably not have been accepted in the composed genres at that time.
This seems to have precipitated a process which, by the end of the eighteenth
century, resulted in an unprecedented profusion of new terkibs, as seen in the
treatise “Tetkik ü Tahkik” of Abdülbaki Nasır Dede (1795). At this time com-
positions began to be created in all of the existing terkibs. By the middle of
the following century this greatly expanded modal system for the first time
dropped the distinction between the primary and the secondary modal enti-
ties, the makam and the terkib. This resulted in the creation of what Powers
has called the “open-ended” modal system in which the hierarchy of modal
entities was abandoned; all were equally “makams,” (Powers 1980a:428). The
taksim appears to have acted as the catalyst which allowed the development of
transposition and modulation to stimulate the already-existing Middle Eastern
tendency toward an open-ended modal system, thereby creating the makam
system known today in Turco-Arabian music.

10th–15th c. 14th c.
istihlâl, nashîd al-’arab Qur’ānic tajwîd kull an-nagham
nashîd al-’ajam
15–16th c.

kolliyât
16th–17th c.

kâr-i natik kūlliyât

(vocal) (instrum.)

TAKSÎM
(vocal and instrumental)

19th c.

gazel kasîde instrumental taksîm

Figure 2.1 Development of the taksim
 Part 3
Peşrev and Semai

∵
 Chapter 9

The Peşrev/Pishrow

1 The Peşrev as Genre

The peşrev genre has the richest documentation of any genre of Ottoman
music, with an almost continuous line of notated peşrevs going from the mid-
dle of the seventeenth century until the present day. This documentation is
particularly complete for the seventeenth century. The “Kevseri Mecmuası”
(c.1750) offers the potential of studying the developments of the first half of the
eighteenth century in greater detail.1 There is something of a hiatus between
Kevseri and the creativity of Tanburi Isak (1745–1814). Several of the peşrevs in
the seventeenth-century sources (Bobowski and Cantemir) are attributed to
composers of the sixteenth century, and in some cases, even earlier. Despite
the tendency of oral transmission to efface stylistic individuality, the stylistic
and structural differences separating some of these items from the peşrevs of
the seventeenth century tend to confirm these early attributions. Therefore, it
is possible to describe the Ottoman peşrev over a period of almost five centuries
with considerable detail, whose specificity increases during the period from
1600 to 1700, around 1750, and from the 1780s to the present. No other Ottoman
musical genre, including the instrumental semai, can be described in compa-
rable detail over such a long period. The overwhelming bulk of the Cantemir
Collection, and the majority of the Bobowski Collection comprise peşrevs. For
reasons which are not entirely clear, the Ottomans did not apparently notate
any vocal genres until the later nineteenth century, with the exception of a
single Mevlevi ayin, written down by Abdülbaki Nasır Dede in 1794.
During the seventeenth century, the vocal fasıl was introduced by one or
more peşrevs, but by the early nineteenth century this had been reduced to a
single peşrev. During the course of the fasıl, no other peşrev was performed. In
the instrumental fasıl ( fasl-i sazende), a single peşrev was played as the middle
item, after the improvised taksim, and before the saz semai. By the later nine-
teenth century this had been changed to the order peşrev—taksim—semai.
Within the Ottoman cycle, the peşrev had a rather specific role; not every
feature of Ottoman music is evident from the peşrev. Nevertheless, the facts
of documentation oblige us to devote particular attention to the peşrev

1 The possible dates for the Kevseri manuscript are discussed by Ekinci (2015:42). They appear
to range between 1725 and 1760, with the area around 1740 being perhaps a more likely date.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_013

310 Chapter 9

genre, which perforce becomes the central genre of historically documented

Ottoman music. With the exception of the notations of the vocal fasıl items
by Bobowski, and a few semais written out by visiting Europeans, these vocal
genres (beste, kar, nakş, semai, şarkı) are known only through the Turkish oral
tradition which was finally put into notation during the later nineteenth cen-
tury. The possible relationship of these nineteenth-century notations to their
lost sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century originals must be a sub-
ject of a separate study. The earliest Hamparsum notation manuscripts being
transcribed now under the Corpus Musciae Ottomanicae Project (CMO) of the
Westphalian University of Münster may furnish material for such an undertak-
ing, at least for the mid- to later eighteenth century peşrevs.2
It is obvious that the instrumental repertoire has undergone fundamental
changes in the course of its oral transmission, but it is not clear to what extent
this is true of the vocal component of the fasıl as well.
In Turkey the relationship of the composer to the instrumental genres dif-
fered from his relationship to the vocal genres. The ability to compose in the
vocal genres was considered to be one of the essential qualifications for a musi-
cian of the first caliber. In the major biographical dictionary of musicians, the
“Atrabü’l-Asar” of Şeyhülislam Esʿad Efendi (ca. 1725), only composers of secu-
lar vocal genres, especially the beste, are mentioned. This judgment is echoed
by the later oral tradition, which had created a “lineage” of the science of music
based almost entirely upon composers of vocal music (Feldman 1990–91). The
major exceptions to this “rule” are Gazi Giray Han, Prince Cantemir, Osman
Dede and Tanburi Isak. In the mecmua collections a relatively limited number
of musicians are responsible for almost the entire vocal repertoire. It can be
determined from these mecmuas and from other sources (i.e. “Atrabü’l-Asar”
and Evliya Çelebi), that a single musician might compose many hundreds of
vocal items. In addition, a musician might achieve fame through his vocal
compositions alone, even though he might not be able to perform them as well
as a more gifted or professional singer might. For example, neither Itrî nor his
teacher Hafız Post were known for their exceptional abilities as vocalists, but
their vocal compositions were among the greatest masterpieces of the later
seventeenth century.

2 In 2016, with the aid of Jacob Olley, I was able to accomplish the first stages of such a study
of the ouevre of Tanburi Isak Fresko (d. 1814), according to the earliest manuscript notated
by Hamparsum Limonciyan in 1813 (Arel 110). From this study it was clear that the peşrevs
involved were recognizable in all sections (hane), but that they had undergone some stylis-
tic modernization.
The Peşrev / Pishrow 311

By way of contrast, it was understood that an instrumentalist was primarily

a performer. He would be satisfied with composing a small number of peşrevs
and semais, if he composed any. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that
the items in the Cantemir or Bobowski Collections represent a small frac-
tion of the repertoire actually composed by the musicians mentioned there.
Examples of well-known instrumental performers who composed one or
two (or even no) peşrevs or semais are quite common in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, when the documentation became considerably richer.
Musicians who left substantial corpuses of instrumental compositions are
the exception. Examples are Şerif, Solakzade, Muzaffer, Osman Dede, and
Cantemir from the seventeenth century, Haham Musi and Tanburi Isak from
the eighteenth century, and Tanburi Cemil Bey from the early twentieth cen-
tury. This point was clearly observed by Charles Fonton in the middle of the
eighteenth century:

Therefore it is more difficult than one might think to compose a melody

or a peşrev. … What presents such a great difficulty is that in addition to
the talent that this requires, one must also know all the peşrevs which
have been composed, so as not to repeat them. Otherwise one would be
declared a plagiarist, and plagiarism, especially in music, is a crime less
pardonable in Turkey than anywhere else. We have already said that the
meters or usûls were like the skeleton, and the foundation of the sub-
ject on which the musician must work. Thus, since there are no usûls
on which there have not already been many peşrevs composed, who-
ever wants to be a composer must create, on the meter he has chosen, a
melody of which the accords, the phrases, the harmony, and the theme
must in no way resemble what has been done before on that or any other
meter. … However, such composers are no longer in evidence today; and
to immortalize one’s name it is sufficient to have been able to succeed at
it once or twice in ones life (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:80–1).

Although, judging from the materials in Bobowski and Cantemir, Fonton may
be exaggerating the degree to which the Turks avoided “plagiarism,” the com-
parative rarity of instrumental compositions is borne out by the sources. It
is also possible that the textual component in the vocal repertoire may have
aided in either the composition or the retention of these genres without the
danger of “plagiarism,” in contrast to the peşrev, but, on the other hand, these
fasıl genres all emphasized significant wordless sections (terennüm), whose
“texts” very much resembled one another.
312 Chapter 9

After the middle of the seventeenth century, the peşrev was not an instru-
mental version of any vocal genre. It differs in this from the other composed
instrumental genre, the semai which appears to have developed out of the
vocal semai. After the beginning of the seventeenth century, it appears to
have been only the Ottoman Jews who composed peşrevs for vocal perfor-
mance, due to the prohibition of instrumental music in the synagogue service
(Seroussi 1991). The formal characteristics of the peşrev were not the same as
those of any vocal genre—its division into large-scale and small- scale sec-
tions (hane and terkib), its use of the ritornello principle (mülazime), and its
choice within the usul system all differentiated it from the vocal genres such as
the beste, kar, or nakş. The distance of the peşrev from the vocal forms is also
evidenced by the custom of naming individual peşrevs, which is seen in both
seventeenth-century collections. Each individual peşrev was seen as a distinct,
sometimes named entity, not as a generic combination of makam and usul
which fulfilled a function within the cycle. We learn from the musical treatise
of the Bukharan Darvish Ali Changi (d. 1611) that some pishrows by the slightly
earlier Ostad Qasem Qanuni had names such as Naz va Ghamza (“Mincing
and Coquetry”) or even Dava-ye Dard-e Saram (“Medicine for my Headache”)
(Pourjavady 2005:63). We do not know how old this custom was among either
the Persians or the Turks. In the Bobowski Manuscript the names of peşrevs
might be either Persian or Turkish. In Cantemir they are only Persian.
The names found in Bobowski (ca. 1650) are:

“Kız” “Girl”
“Şukufezar” “Garden in Bloom”
“Ciğer-Delen” “Piercer of the Liver,” i.e. causing intense pain
“Gamze-kar” “Coquettish Glance”
“Bülbül-i Uşşak” “Nightingale of the Lovers”
“Gül-i Rana” “Graceful Rose”
“Naz ü Niyaz” “Coquetry and Entreaty”
“Gül Devri” “Time of the Roses”
“Benefşezar” “Garden of Violets”
“Alem-ara” “Ornament of the World”
“Tatar-name” “Tale of the Tatar”
“Kuzgun” “Raven”
“Revan-bahş” “Life-giving”
“Toz Koparan” “Whirlwind of Dust”
“Mevc-i Derya” “Wave of the Sea”
“Cihan-ara” “Ornament of the World”
“Şah-i Huban” “King of Beauties”
The Peşrev / Pishrow 313

“Dilkeş” “Drawing the Heart”

“Dilnüvaz” “Heart-Caressing”
“Zülf-i Nigar” “Lock of the Beauty”
“Gıda-i Ruh” “Food of the Spirit”
“Ruhefza” “Expanding the Spirit”
“Meclis-ara” “Ornament of the Assembly”
“Bülbül-i Irak” “Nightingale of Iraq”
“Bustan” “Garden”
“La’l-pare” “Ruby”

The names found in Cantemir (Collection) are:

“Gülşen-i Raz” “The Garden of Mystery”

“Fırak-name” “Tale of Separation”
“Ebr ü Kamer” “Cloud and Moon”
“Çak-i Giriban” “The Torn Collar,” i.e. torn in mourning
“Subh-i Sahar” “Dawn of Morning”
“Margzar” “Meadow”
“Kuhpare” “Mountain”
“Baharistan” “Land of Spring”
“Mah-i Dünya” “Moon of the World”
“Perizad” “Fairy-born”
“Ma’şuk” “Beloved”
“Hezar Dinar” “A Thousand Dinars”
“Gamfersa” “Driving away Sorrow”

In contrast to these, most peşrevs for the seventeenth century mehter bore
functional Turkish titles—e.g. “The Ranks” (Tabakat), “Transporting the
Horses” (At Nakılı), “The Standard” (Sancak), etc.
The names of the courtly peşrevs are evidence for a developed ethos, in
which two concepts predominate—beauty and sorrow. Overt mysticism is
expressed only in “The Garden of Mystery” (also the name of a famous Sufi
treatise by Shabistari), and “Food for the Spirit,” a common epithet for the Sufi
sema. These are precisely the themes which predominate in the gazel and
murabba verses which were sung in the fasıl, thus testifying to the thorough
integration of the peşrev into both the musical and poetic world of the courtly
performance cycle.
As was shown earlier, many modal terkibs known from seventeenth-century
music appear rarely if at all, in the peşrevs, leading to the conclusion that the
peşrev was not designed to express the entire makam system; these other
314 Chapter 9

terkibs were used only in vocal compositions and/or in taksims. The exception
to this were the peşrevs termed küll-i külliyat or fihrist peşrevi (“index peşrev”),
which travelled through the entire modal system. Modal usage in the peşrev
changed considerably by the later eighteenth century, allowing a much wider
range of makams to be used in the peşrev.
The usul usage of the peşrev genre also changed considerably between the
seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. While seventeenth-century peşrevs
used most (although not all) of the usul system, there was a preference for
certain short usuls (eight to fourteen beats) which rarely appeared in later
peşrevs. In addition, certain longer usuls rarely appear in later peşrevs (e.g.
evsat). The structural changes in the composition of the peşrev will be doc-
umented below in greater detail. Despite these differences in compositional
structure, usul and makam usage, the name peşrev has been in continuous
use in Turkey for more-or-less closely related genres over a period of approxi-
mately five centuries.

2 Origin and Structure of the Peşrev/Pishrow

In the classical Islamic cultures instrumental music had existed primarily to

accompany vocal music. Instruments were also employed to facilitate theoreti-
cal discussions of intervals and modes. According to al-Fārābī (1965:14–8) the
acoustic realities of the physical lute tanbur did have one major influence on
vocal music—i.e. the equal division of the strings led to the creation of vari-
ant intervals for the wusta or intermediate interval lying between the 2nd and
4th degrees (or frets). One or more of these intervals named after the Abbasid
musician Zalzal were preserved in the later Muslim musics of Iran and the
eastern Arab countries. Islamic cultures appear to have remained conscious
of the potential of instruments to create frivolous and licentious music, espe-
cially in connection with erotic dancing, and therefore continued to subordi-
nate instrumental music to the voice.
Through the Abbasid era the major instrumental genre, known as tarīqah,
rāh, or pishrow (pīshrow) was essentially an instrumental version of the vocal
genre sawt. It seems likely that the intrusion of Turkic musical aesthetics in the
post-Mongol period allowed independent instrumental genres to emerge. On
the basis of recent folklore and medieval descriptions it can be seen that the
non-Muslim Turkic peoples had a rich instrumental tradition during the early
medieval period. In the cities of the Turfan basin the instrumental music of
the Turkic Uighurs is well-documented in Chinese records and on indigenous
The Peşrev / Pishrow 315

frescos which were contemporary with the early Caliphal period of Islam. This
Uighur musical tradition has had a more or less continual influence upon the
music of the cities of Transoxiana, which also benefited from the musical, and
in particular, the instrumental traditions of Bactria. One of the most stable and
widespread features of all the nomadic Turkic cultures of recent Central Asia
are instrumental genres which are not associated with either singing or dance,
and hence hold an independent status (e.g. Kazakh, Kirghiz, Karakalpak, and
Uzbek küi, and Turkmen muqam). Sometimes these instrumental genres are
integrated into the performance of the bard (zhyrau, bakhshy). In recent times
separate instrumental repertoires have existed for long-necked lute (dombira,
dutar), fiddle (qobyz, ghitchak) and flute (sybyzghy, tüdük). The Kazakhs and
Karakalpaks had developed a separate instrumental repertoire for the sha-
man’s fiddle (qobyz), associated with the figure of Qorqyt, a legendary Oghuzic
figure whose tales are documented from medieval Anatolia and Egypt where
Turks had settled. Thus, there is good reason to project these modern instru-
mental genres quite far backward in time.3 In addition, the Turks had played
a crucial role in introducing a military repertoire for the double-reed oboe
(zurna) and percussion into the Middle East.
During the Timurid period, when Turco-Mongol musical influence seems
to have been significant in Transoxiana, a new partly instrumental genre
with no relation to the sawt eclipsed the older pishrow while perpetuating
its name. None of the early pishrows known from Persian treatises or from
the Ottoman notated documents reveal any structural relationship with the
modern nomadic Turkic instrumental genres. None of these nomadic Turkic
genres employ usul cycles, internal hane divisions or prominent ritornellos
which are essential to the pishrow genre in Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and else-
where. Thus, the Turkic element in the pishrow is not evident in its musical
structure but rather in the concept of manifesting the makam in an instru-
mental composition. It is possible that the practice of naming peşrevs, which
is seen in the seventeenth-century Ottoman documents has its origin in the
names of the instrumental küis of the nomadic Turks. By acquiring a name,
the peşrev demonstrated an independent existence, apart from its makam
and usul. The influence of the peşrev of the military mehter ensemble upon
the courtly peşrev, which appears to have been considerable before the fasıl

3 A. Mukhambetova (1989) has attempted to demonstrate connections between the Kazakh

küi and the Bukharan shashmaqom, including its instrumental section. However, if these
transcend musical universal (which is debatable) they can relate only to the new Central
Asian maąom cycles of the eighteenth century, not to the medieval Islamic musics.
316 Chapter 9

form became established in the later sixteenth century, may also have created
a closer connection between the peşrev genre and the culture of the Turks
within Islam.
Nevertheless, in Timurid times and in sixteenth-century Turkey the peşrev
might be performed vocally to specific syllables of the terennüm type (Wright
1992b), and it was only in the early seventeenth century that the peşrev became
purely instrumental in Turkey. The Ottoman synagogue developed vocal peşrevs
with religious texts, and it is not clear whether this was a secondary develop-
ment from the instrumental peşrev, or a continuous transformation of the ear-
lier vocal peşrev. Since the nineteenth century at the latest the peşräv/säqil
genre has only been performed instrumentally in Transoxiana.
The Ottomans inherited the basic structure of the peşrev/pishrow from the
music of late medieval Iran. In Iran, the pishrow genre disappeared entirely
during the nineteenth century, and at the beginning of the twentieth century,
a new form of instrumental genre, called the pishdaramad, was invented, hav-
ing somewhat the same function in the cycle as the pishrow. However, it is not
clear whether the early composers of pishdaramad (or of the Azerbaijani bar-
dasht) were aware of any of the pishrow melodies which had existed over a cen-
tury prior to their era. The term pishrow survives in modern Soviet Azerbaijan,
where it refers to a round-dance connected with the wedding ceremony
(During 1988b:44). The older function of the pishrow (i.e. opening all or part of
the maqām performance) has been taken by the bardasht genre.
The nineteenth-century maqām cycles of the Central Asian cities of Bukhara
and Khiva featured instrumental compositions termed peşräv, muxämmäs,
and säqil, all of which appear to be direct descendants of the medieval Perso-
Turkic pishrow (Jung 1989:185–99). In the modern terminology, the peşravs
composed in the usuls, muxämmäs, and säqil are distinguished by these usul
names, rather than by the name “peşräv.” Nevertheless, they are structurally
rather similar to the genre termed peşräv. Preceding the peşräv, there are other
instrumental genres, known as täsnif (Khw. tän-i maqām), gärdun, and tärçĩ,
whose structure is somewhat different from the peşräv/muxämmäs/säqil
group (Levin 1984:110–5). In both the Bukharan and Khivan maqām cycles,
these genres are performed as part of the instrumental section of the maqām.
In the Khivan maqām (Khw. certim yoli) they appear in the order: tän-i maqām,
tärçĩ, peşräv, muxämmäs, and säqil. In Bukhara they appear in the order: täsnif,
gärdun, tärçĩ, muxämmäs, and säqil.
The relationships between the various musically and textually attested
members of the peşrev/pishrow/peşräv family of genres have been summarized
by Jung (1989:185–9). Early examples of the tarīqah genre (which had preceded
the pishrow genre) notated by Quṭb al-Dīn Shirāzī in the thirteenth century,
The Peşrev / Pishrow 317

have been transcribed by Owen Wright (1978:219–31). For present purposes it

is useful to repeat some of their conclusions and to delineate the issues which
these conclusions suggest for the study of the early Ottoman peşrev.
A single instrumental genre, named tarīqah in Arabic and rāh in Persian
(both meaning “way”) seems to have existed as early as the tenth century,
when it was mentioned by al-Fārābī (Jung 1989:185). It is not clear whether the
Arabic name is a translation from the Persian, or whether both names devel-
oped simultaneously for a newly created genre. In the thirteenth century, Ṣafī
al-Dīn Urmawī wrote that the Arabic tarīqah was synonymous with the Persian
pishrow (< pish = “before” + row = “goes,” ibid.). According to Wright,

the examples of notation given by Safi al-Din are stated to be in two

forms, tariqah and sawt. Of these, unfortunately, little is known: the for-
mer is an instrumental piece, employed chiefly as a prelude to a vocal
composition, the latter appears to be one of the less complex vocal forms.
As the first example demonstrates, a tariqah might be transformed into a
sawt by being sung to words (Wright 1978:218–9).

From the above we can conclude that in the thirteenth century a single musical
form could be performed vocally as the sawt, and instrumentally as the tarīqah
(in Arabic-speaking areas) or the pishrow (in Persian speaking areas), the latter
term being the newer form of the older Persian rāh. On the basis of Wright’s
transcriptions of Quṭb al-Dīn’s notations, it would appear that there is only
a tenuous link, if any, connecting the Ottoman/Persian peşrev/pishrow of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the pishrow/tarīqah of the thirteenth
century. None of the characteristic terms for the compositional features of
the later peşrev/pishrow (e.g. xana, sarxana, tarkib, bazgui, aviza, lazima, zeyl,
and taslim) occur in descriptions or transcriptions of the thirteenth-century
pishrow. Since the pishrow was an instrumental version of the vocal sawt, there
is no reason to relate it to the instrumental genre of later times, which was
never connected in any source with the sawt genre. Of course, the older testi-
mony linking the tarīqah with the Persian rāh would suggest that these genres
were fundamentally instrumental in the tenth century, but we have no way
of knowing the structural relationship between the instrumental genre called
tarīqah or rāh of that period, and the shared vocal/instrumental genre called
sawt or tarīqah in the thirteenth century. It may also be significant that the
seventeenth-century Bukharan musician, Darvish Ali, attributed the invention
of the pishrow to the reign of Timur (1370–1405), and did not connect it with the
earlier pishrow which had been identical to the vocal sawt (Darvish Ali:23b). In
fact, the earliest textual evidence which describes the pishrow using some of
318 Chapter 9

the terms known from the later peşrev/pishrow dates from the later fourteenth
century, i.e. close to the reign of Timur.
In the “Sharh Mawlana Mubarak Shah ” dating from 1375, the pishrow is
equivalent to the tarīqah, and is described as being performed without text,
although it is not clear that this necessarily was a purely instrumental per-
formance. The sawt is no longer connected with the tariqah (Jung 1989:141).
Abdülkadir Meraği (ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī), writing between two and three
decades after the author of the former treatise, writes that the pishrow was
performed without verses (“bi-beyti”) (Marāghī 1977:107). Such a description
allows for the possibility of the existence of vocal pishrows, sung to the usual
non-textual syllables, e.g. terenna, ten dir na, yel, lei, li, etc. In the sixteenth cen-
tury such vocal peşrevs were apparently still known in Turkey.4 Marāghī used
the term xana to refer to the constituent sections of the pishrow, stating that
the pishrow could contain from five to fifteen xanas. He also mentioned that
there was a genre known as zaxma, which resembled a single xana of a pishrow,
but which could also be performed vocally, as the havayi (Jung 1989:145). The
sawt is mentioned elsewhere, but is not connected with the pishrow, and from
these facts we can conclude that the pishrow was no longer an instrumental
version of the sawt. In addition, the term xana was employed to describe the
sections of the pishrow. However, judging from the large number of xanas, and
the absence of any repeating section, it is clear that the pishrow of the later
fourteenth century was considerably different from even the earliest docu-
mented Ottoman peşrevs, e.g. the seventeenth-century notation of the Kürdi
peşrev of Sultan Korkut (Collection: no. 348), or the notation of the Irak peşrev
of “Seyf el-Misri” (Cantemir Collection no. 34).
Aside from its structural differences, the pishrow of the time of Marāghī
was functionally differentiated from the Ottoman peşrev. In the developed
cyclical format of the Ottoman fasıl, the peşrev introduced the entire cycle of
compositions. While the name pishrow (“goes before”) implies some sort of
temporal priority during a performance, no such strict cyclicity had existed
in Perso-Turkic music during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Therefore
the “going before” of the pishrow was of a more restricted sort. According to
Marāghī, in the late fourteenth to early fifteenth century, one or two pishrows
were played to introduce the vocal genre amal. He gives one example of a
tarīqah (= pishrow) in maqām Uzzal, usul muxämmäs, followed by a pishrow

4 Wright has found the non-verbal text (terennüm) for such peşrevs in two Ottoman mecmuas
of the mid-sixteenth century (1992b:34). In synagogue usage vocal peşrevs with poetic texts
were composed into the early twentieth century (Seroussi 1991).
The Peşrev / Pishrow 319

in Huseyni, usul ramal, which introduced an amal, apparently in the maqām

Huseyni (Jung 1989:145–6). The largest compound form in his period was the
naubat al-marattaba, consisting of the genres qawl, tarana, ghazal, and foru-
dasht, (and, in his compositions, also the mustazad), all of which were vocal;
there was no instrumental prelude. In the poetry of Hafez, who was an older
contemporary of Marāghī, the word pishrow does not occur despite the appear-
ance of a large range of musical terms in his divan (cf. Mellah 1932).
During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the pishrow genre was
mentioned frequently by such Central Asian authors as ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī (d. 1501)
and Ẓahīr al-Dīn Babur (d. 1530), but neither author mentions anything about
the compositional structure of the genre. In the “Babur-Nameh” it is not
entirely clear that the pishrow was an exclusively instrumental genre. When
Babur described a certain ud player (Qul Muhammad) he added that “among
the vocalists and the instrumentalists none has composed so many and such
fine pishrows” (Babur 1905:fol. 182). Likewise, ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī is credited with
composing pishrows, although he is not known to have played any instrument.
The prominent position of the pishrow, along with the naqsh and sawt, which
are mentioned more frequently than any other musical genres, indicates that
the pishrow had assumed an importance which it did not yet have in the period
of Timur.
Approximately a hundred years later, the early sixteenth-century Bukharan
treatise of Najm al-Dīn Kaukabī reveals certain structural developments in the
pishrow which prefigure the forms known from the seventeenth to the twen-
tieth centuries in Turkey, and from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries in
Bukhara and Khiva. According to Kaukabī, the pishrow was an instrumental
composition consisting of the three sections sarxana, miyanxana and bazgui.
Among the usuls, four were preferred for pishrow, muxämmäs, turki-zarb,
duyak, and hajaž (Jung 1989:152).
The seventeenth-century treatise of the Bukharan Changi Darvish Ali gives
more explicit information about the pishrow. By this period the Transoxanian
pishrow appears to have been exclusively instrumental. The pishrow com-
prised four sections, three sections termed sarxana, plus a ritornello termed
lazima. The second sarxana was termed miyanxana (“middle section”). He
states that if the first sarxana is in a low register, the miyanxana must be in
high register, but with change of rang (Rajabiy 1963:113). In the seventeenth
century, the term rang (lit. “color”) referred to a compound modal structure,
also known as tarkib. In the twentieth century, rang is employed by Uzbek
musicians as a synonym for namud, which function as “modulations,” refer-
ring to other entities in the maqām repertoire (Jung 1989:204). Thus, the
320 Chapter 9

sarxâna
1 - tarkîb 2 - âvîza 3 - lâzima
sarxâna I + bâzgui + sarxâna II + bâzgui +miyânxâna + bâzgui + sarxâna III + bâzgui
A B C B D B E B
a b c | d e c | f g c | d e c | h i c | d e c | k l c | d e c |
Figure 3.1 Seventeenth-century Transoxanian pishrow (after Jung 1989:187–8)

seventeenth-century Central Asian pishrow contained a modulation as a basic

part of its structure.
The sarxana itself was subdivided into three further sections: (1) tarkib,
(2) aviza, and (3) bazgui (see Fig. 3.1). It would appear from this description
that each sarxana contained only a single tarkib. It would also appear that,
judging by its name (bazgui, “play again”), the bazgui functioned rather like its
modern Bukharan namesake, i.e. as a short repeating section attached to each
sarxana. The aviza. apparently was a development of the melodic material of
the tarkib (Jung 1989:187–8). About the lazima, Darvish Ali writes: “The lâzima
always appears when the sarxâna and miyânxâna with bâzgui are performed
together. Anything that occurs at the beginning of the sarxâna is called tarkîb.
What follows is called âvîza. Whatever remains is called lâzima. The lâzima is
never altered” (Jung 1989:156).
The original material within each sarxana of a pishrow must have been
relatively limited, as this new material could appear only in the single tarkib
which introduced each sarxana. The lazima which ended the sarxana was
identical, and the aviza was apparently a transition from the tarkib to the
lazima. After each sarxana, the ritornello bazgui made its appearance. Unfor-
tunately, this seventeenth-century Bukharan source does not tell us the rela-
tive length of the component sections of the sarxana, or of its relationship to
the bazgui. However, it is instructive to observe the structure of the modern
Bukharan peşräv, muxämmäs, and säqil. While this cannot be proof of the
seventeenth-century situation, the structures seen in the nineteenth/twenti-
eth century bear a close resemblance to what was described by Darvish Ali.
The terms xana, tarkib, bazgui, and lazima are still in use. Only aviza has dis-
appeared. The original material in each xana is confined to a single tarkib,
which is followed by the unchanging lazima, except for the miyanxana (here
the third xana). Then the ritornello, bazgui appears. In the muxämmäs-i
rast, for example, the longest section is the bazgui, which is 32 quarter notes
long, or one cycle of the usul muxämmäs. Each tarkib is eighteen beats
long, while the lazima covers the remaining fourteen beats (18 + 14 = 32;
Jung 1989:190–1).
The Peşrev / Pishrow 321

3 Generic Variation within the Ottoman Peşrev

Throughout its long history, the only composed instrumental genres in

Ottoman music were the peşrev and the semai. Between the sixteenth and nine-
teenth centuries the peşrev was recycled to function in different musical con-
texts. These divergent contexts usually retained the same broad musical form,
but there seems to have been some differences in musical style. The notated
documents do not always distinguish between these sub-genres, and there are
often not sufficient examples on which to base a generalization. Nevertheless,
from the later sixteenth until the later eighteenth centuries we can identify the
following musical contexts in which the peşrev was performed:
1. The courtly fasıl;
2. The fasl-i sazende;
3. The official mehter (enderun);
4. The popular mehter (birun);
5. The synagogue service (vocal peşrev with Hebrew text);
6. The Mevlevi ayin (devr-i kebir peşrev, son peşrev, from later eighteenth
century).
In contexts (1) and (2) the identical peşrev might be used. Contexts (3) and
(4) seem to have been somewhat differentiated. It appears that context
(5) employed the same type of peşrev as (1) and (2), although very few examples
have been studied so far. Although some secular peşrevs of various periods were
used in the Mevlevi ayin of the nineteenth century, the development of the
peşrev in this context appears to have been somewhat distinct (see Wright 1988).
In Ottoman Turkey, all peşrevs of the later sixteenth-early eighteenth centu-
ries can be formally divided into
1. Turkish peşrevs with three or four hane,
2. Persian and Turkish peşrevs without serhane (later seventeenth century);
and
3. The küll-i külliyat peşrev.
In addition, there was also a distinction between peşrevs in short usuls and
peşrevs in long usuls. This latter distinction almost disappeared as the usul sys-
tem underwent expansion during the second half of the eighteenth century,
after which point almost all peşrevs used long usuls. These formal distinctions
did not always correspond to functional generic distinctions. Style remained
independent from formal structure and hence must be approached as a sepa-
rate issue.5

5 In addition to the three or four hanes, some peşrevs in the early seventeenth century had a
final section called “serbend.” Other peşrevs featured an extra section following the second
322 Chapter 9

On the formal level, the most obviously distinctive sub-genre was the küll-i
külliyat (described in Part 2, Chapter 6). Only a few examples survive, but they
differ from all other peşrevs. What distinguishes the küll-i külliyat fundamen-
tally from all other peşrevs is the fact that each terkib of each hane modu-
lates into a different modal entity. The hanes display a modulatory scheme in
which a group of makams sharing a common finalis appear together in suc-
cessive terkibs. The melody of each terkib is distinct from every other—there
is none of the transposition and sequencing found in other peşrevs. All of
Cantemir’s examples contain four hanes and a mülazime. The first hane (ser-
hane) is short while the mülazime is equal in length to each of the other three
hanes. All of his küll-i külliyat peşrevs begin in the makam Hüseyni and use the
usul fahte (10/4). Bobowski’s single example begins in the makam Acem and
uses the usul düyek. The compositional technique of the küll-i külliyat is so dif-
ferent from that of other peşrevs as to be virtually another genre. It was related
to the vocal kar-i natik, and both had apparently descended from the four-
teenth to fifteenth-century Iranian vocal genre kolliyat. Was the küll-i külli-
yat used for pedagogic purposes, or were there other performance contexts?6
The only such context explicitly mentioned was the performance by the
official mehter in the course of a parade before Sultan Murad IV, described
by Evliya: “They hold all their instruments on one note (perde) and perform
the peşrevs küll-i külliyat in the makam Buselik and in other makams, and
‘Şeddüľasr’ and ‘Şükûfezâr’ and the sakil of Solakzade” (Özergin 1972:6050).
Two of these items were mehter peşrevs (Şeddül’asr and Şükufezar). It does
not seem, however that the küll-i külliyat was a specifically mehter genre. Two
of the three külliyat peşrevs in the Cantemir Collection were composed by
musicians with no connection to the mehterhane, Osman Dede, the Mevlevi
neyzen, and Yahudi Harun (Aron Hamon), a Jewish composer of the seven-
teenth century.
Another formally distinct group of peşrevs were the Persian-style peşrevs of
the mid to late seventeenth century. These were formally distinct because they
lacked a serhane, their mülazime functioned as both ritornello and serhane.
Judging from Cantemir’s four examples, this seems to have been a transition
out of the peşrev genre proper into quasi-folkloristic forms. It appears that the

hane, called “zeyľ” (“appendage”). These serbend dropped out of use by the second half of the
seventeenth century, while the zeyl was used marginally. These variant usages should not be
considered as sub-genres.
6 “In effect, the küll-i külliyat may have had almost symbolic importance, representing a sum-
mit of technical skill but, as a result, existing on the margin rather than within the main-
stream of normal compositional practice” (Wright 1992b:138).
The Peşrev / Pishrow 323

new Persian form was used occasionally in fasıls, and no special context is indi-
cated for it. Cantemir even fails to mention that Turkish musicians composed
items in this style as well; it is only by going through his Collection that one
notices several Turkish items without a serhane. Turkish musicians treated
the new Persian form in various ways. In his Persian peşrev in Rehavi, devr-i
kebir, Angeli used all the melodic techniques of his other peşrevs, except for
the serhane. On the other hand, Eyyüblü Mehmed, in his Arazbar devr-i revan
employed the repetitive modular structures of the older Persian peşrevs, which
he did not use elsewhere. The form did not have a long life in Turkey and left
no trace in the later repertoire.
Rhythm and tempo furnished other formal distinctions among peşrevs.
Cantemir points out one rhythmically based distinction which evidently
came into being in the later seventeenth century. Certain peşrevs were per-
formed at a slower tempo than others, and these had correspondingly greater
melodic elaboration. In order to notate these Cantemir employed a spe-
cial “meter” (vezn) termed the “smallest of the small” which allowed him to
indicate the playing of sixteenth notes, which were otherwise unnotated by
him (Cantemir ca. 1700:1:15; cf. below, p. 333). This type of peşrev proved to
be enormously influential in later Turkish music. One of Angeli’s and most
of Cantemir’s peşrevs were of this type. The available notations from ca. 1750
(Kevseri, Fonton 1751:ex. 4) reveal that the technique was expanding at that
time. Fonton describes the virtuoso performance of this type of peşrev, in
which subtle rhythmic phrasing was considered essential (1751:78). By the later
eighteenth century this style had become dominant, totally eclipsing the older
types of peşrev.
During the seventeenth century most of the formal variations within the
peşrev genre were caused by variations in the usage of usul. The styles of
peşrevs in the long and the short usuls were so distinct as to be almost differ-
ent sub-genres. In addition, some of the compound or exceptionally long usuls
determined the entire compositional structure of the peşrev. Cantemir states
that the Turkish peşrevs in the long usul darb-i feth (88 beats) had four hanes,
a mülazime and a zeyl. Other peşrevs might have four hanes or a zeyl, but the
combination seems to have been characteristic of the darb-i feth usul. More
significantly, since no terkib could be less than a single cycle of the usül, and
eighty-eight beats was sufficient for a hane, hanes in this usul contain a sin-
gle terkib. Cantemir seems to have regarded peşrevs in darb-i feth as a distinct
subgenre, as he explained their structure separately from those of the other
peşrevs (Cantemir ca. 1700:IX:80) and he assigned them a special position at
the beginning of his notated Collection.
324 Chapter 9

The two compound usuls, zincir, and darbeyn, display distinctive relation-
ships of melody and rhythm. Darbeyn is composed of two different usuls,
devr-i kebir (14/4) and berefşan (16/4), and this rhythmic structure lent itself
to parallelisms of various sorts. The construction of the melodic line out of
two usuls often suggested an antecedent/consequent structure, which could
be emphasized where the second usul expressed a cadential phrase. Some
items in darbeyn repeated the cadential phrase in berefşan so frequently that
it became virtually the consequent of the antecedent melodic phrases in devr-i
kebir. For example, in the darbeyn peşrev by Ermeni Murad in Kürdi (Cantemir
Collectionmo. 154) (see Ex. 3.1), if b symbolizes the cadential phrase in berefşan,
the entire peşrev follows the following scheme:

hane I
a+b
mülazime c + b | d + b
hane II
e+f|e+b
hane III
g+b|e+b

In addition to the repetitions of the cadential phrase (b) we should also note
the frequent occurrence of part e (devr-i kebir) in both hane II and III. The
individual terkibs in peşrevs in darbeyn were usually composed of one cycle of
the usul.
Zincir appears to have been a development of darbeyn, in that the latter
appears intact as the final two sections of the usul, and it is preceded by three
sections in the usul düyek (8/4), fahte (10/4) and çenber (24/4 or 12/4). The
older version of zincir contained forty-eight beats (8/4 + 10/4 + 12/4 + 14/4 +
16/4) while the newer (late seventeenth-century) version contained sixty beats
(8/4 + 10/4 + 24/4 + 14/4 + 16/4). As in darbeyn, terkibs, in zincir were generally a
single cycle of the complete usul. While the individual mini-cycles of the usuls
were melodically interconnected, they also could be viewed as independent
entities. These structural peculiarities of peşrevs in darbeyn and zincir distin-
guished them from all other peşrevs.
The medium-range and short usuls may be classed as one group which is
symmetrically subdivided and another which is asymmetrically subdivided.
The 16 beat usuls muhammes and hafif belong to the first group, while devr-i
kebir (14/4), fahte (10/4), berefşan (16/4) and devr-i revan (14/8) belong to the
The Peşrev / Pishrow 325

Example 3.1 Kürdi darbeyn, Ermeni Murad (Cantermir Collection: no. 154)

second. Berefşan has an even number of beats, but its internal subdivision is
uneven (3+3 + 2 | 2+2+2 + 2).
In his chapter on the fasıl Cantemir relates that during the standard fasıl
“after the taksim they play one or two peşrevs” (ca. 1700:X:103). In the instru-
mental fasıl he states that only one peşrev was played. Although no source
mentions this specifically it is very likely that when two peşrevs were played
they would have been in contrasting usuls. During the seventeenth century
there was still a sharp contrast between long and short usuls, and slow and
quick tempos in the peşrev.
By the later eighteenth century these sub-generic distinctions between the
long and short usuls had limited application. The only fast peşrev was the son
peşrev at the end of the Mevlevi ayin in a quick düyek. Outside of the rarely
performed düyek, the secular peşrev generally employed usuls of at least six-
teen beats, and tempos were much slower than in the previous century, pos-
sibly four to five times as slow (Wright 1988:75). Equally important was the fact
that the asymmetrical internal structure of several of the usuls, such as devr-i
326 Chapter 9

kebir, fahte, or berefşan were effaced by the new expansion of the usul cycles.
The melodic line no longer corresponded to the largescale divisions within the
usul, which was now perceived only as a broad superstructure with little effect
on the melody. In addition, the peşrev had become almost twice as long as
it had been in the seventeenth century, with four hanes generally employing
four different makams. Therefore, a single peşrev contained as much melodic
development as two or three peşrevs of the earlier period. In the nineteenth
century one peşrev was considered sufficient for the fasıl and for the beginning
of the ayin.
 Chapter 10

The Ottoman Peşrev

The structure of the seventeenth-century Ottoman peşrev is well-documented

thanks to the notated collections of Bobowski (Ali Ufki Bey), i.e, the “Mecmua-i
Saz ü Söz” (ca. 1650), and the notated collection of Prince Cantemir (ca. 1700).
Cantemir gives us a description of the seventeenth-century Ottoman peşrev in
the tenth chapter of his musical treatise:

Description of the peşrev: Peşrevs are of four types. One has three hanes
and a mülazime, one has three hanes but no mülazime; one has four
hanes and one has a zeyl.
“Büyük Muhammes” in the makam Hüseyni has three hanes and a mül-
azime; likewise, “Büyük Muhammes” in the makam Neva, and others like
these. The peşrevs of all the Persian musicians (“Acem sazendeler”) have
three hanes and no mülazime, such as the düyek peşrev in the makam
Beyati of the Persians, and also the sofyan peşrev in the makam Beyati
and others like these.
Examples of the four-hane peşrev: The düyek peşrev in the makam
Segah, called “Sancak”; “Büyük Tabakat” in the makam Mahur and others
like these. All of the peşrevs with zeyl in the darb-i fetih usul, such as the
Buselik peşrev in the usul darb-i ſetih, were composed by Turkish instru-
mentalists (“Rum sazendesi”); compare the others with these (Cantemir
ca. 1700:X:102).1

Cantemir classifies the peşrev repertoire into four groups according to their
large-scale divisions, the most important of which are the sections called hane
(< Pers. xana), and the ritornello termed mülazime. In addition, some peşrevs
featured another section called the zeyl (“appendage”). He does not explain the
position or function of this “appendage,” but from his and Bobowski’s notations,

1 Cantemir (Collection) supplies the scores for all of the peşrevs which he mentions here:
Hüseyni, “Büyük Muhammes,” p. 45 (also Bobowski ca. 1650:18).
Neva, “Büyük Muhammes,” p. 55.
Beyati, düyek, “Persian,” p. 55.
Beyati, sofyan, “Persian,” p. 149.
Segah, düyek, “Sancak,” p. 155.
Mahur, düyek, “Büyük Tabakat,” p. 149.
Buselik, darb-i feth, Şerif, p. 10.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_014

328 Chapter 10

we know that it came after the second hane, without the intervention of the
mülazime, which was played following the zeyl. Most peşrevs had three hanes
and a mülazime. Some peşrevs had four hanes and mülazime; the examples he
gives were both from the military mehter repertoire. Other four-hane peşrevs
were composed in the usul darb-i feth, in eighty-eight beats, and the Turkish
peşrevs in this usul had an obligatory zeyl. According to the conventions of this
usul, every hane, including the zeyl, contained a single eighty-eight beat usul
cycle. The zeyl was repeated like any hane and was succeeded by the mülazime.
Cantemir also mentions what he calls the peşrevs of the “Persian musicians,”
which had a first hane functioning as a mülazime. We learn from his notation
that some Turkish peşrevs also adopted this structure.
In Cantemir’s notated collection, the first hane is usually described as the
serhane or hane-i evvel, the second as hane-i sani, and the third as hane-i salis.
If there is a fourth hane it is the hane-i rabi. Sometimes the second hane is
described as miyanhane (“middle hane”), and the third hane as the son hane
(“last hane”). In our text, we will standardize and abbreviate this terminology:
serhane—H I, mülazime = M, hane-i sani = H II, hane-i salis = H III, zeyl = Z.
In addition to the types which Cantemir mentions here, there was also
another genre known as küll-i külliyat (“compendium”) or fihrist peşrevi (“index
peşrev”), which had apparently descended from a medieval Iranian vocal genre
named kolliyat. The function of this type of peşrev was the presentation of the

Table 3.1 Formal structure of the seventeenth-century peşrevs

(a) three hanes (b) three hanes (e) four hanes: (d) four hanes (e) three hanes,
and mülazime: no mülazime: and zeyl: mülazime and
serbend (only
early seven-
teenth century):

hane I hane I hane I hane I hane I

mülazime (= mülazime) mülazime mülazime mülazime
hane II hane II hane II hane II hane II
mülazime hane I mülazime Zeyl mülazime
hane III hane III hane III mülazime hane III
mülazime hane I mülazime hane III mülazime
hane IV mülazime serbend
mülazime hane IV
mülazime
The Ottoman Peşrev 329

entire makam system, and its structure was considerably different from that of
more normative peşrevs (cf. above).2
To Cantemir, two structural terms define the various classes of peşrevs: hane
and mülazime. However, both Bobowski’s and Cantemir’s notations indicate
that there was a unit of division smaller than the hane. In Cantemir’s collection
sections of each hane are frequently separated by the three Arabic letters waw,
lam, hā. These form the word “velehu” (Ar. “walahū”), “also belonging to him.”
This phrase was a convention of classical poetic anthologies (mecmuas) used
to indicate that the author of the following gazel was the same as the previous
one. In divan collections of a single poet, this sign was simply a way of sepa-
rating the individual poems. Cantemir does not explain the meaning of this
sign, although one can suspect that he borrowed the phrase from literature.
The meaning of the word becomes clearer if we compare Cantemir’s notations
with the same pieces in Bobowski’s collection. In the latter, hanes are divided
into smaller units separated by repeat signs which usually correspond exactly
to the “velehu” of Cantemir’s notations. At times Cantemir chose to write out
the entire repeated section, rather than indicate that this was a discrete section
which was repeated, but in the vast majority of cases his “velehu” is the equiva-
lent of Bobowski’s repeat signs.
It appears that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the melodic lines
were composed of relatively small units called “terkib,” a key word in the con-
temporary conception of melody. The word terkib is not often mentioned in
this sense in these Ottoman sources, but some of Cantemir’s usages indicate
that the individual sections which he marked off by the word “velehu” and
which Bobowski indicated by repeat signs were known as terkib. For example,
in those peşrevs in a compound usul, such as zencir, the hanes are composed of
two or more usul cycles. In these cases, the second usul cycle is called “terkib-i
sani” (“the second terkib”) in the Cantemir notations (cf. Hüseyni, “Büyük
Zencir,” [Collection: no. 188]). Cantemir also used the expression “terkib-I inti-
kal” (“transporting terkib”) to refer to a short melodic unit which linked the
end of the second or third bane with the beginning of the mülazime. From
one of Cantemir’s remarks we can understand that he thought of terkibs as
the primary formal unit within the larger units of the peşrev: “The vocalists
and instrumentalists of the land of Persia compose the taksim in the form of
a peşrev; so that they teach their students each makam’s taksim like a peşrev,
terkib by terkib” (ca. 1700:VII:67).
Terkibs were composed of one or more cycles of the usul, depending on the
length of the usul; a terkib could never end or begin in the middle of an usul

2 I discuss the küll-i külliyat in Part 2, Chapter 8.

330 Chapter 10

cycle. The division of the hanes into terkibs was characteristic of all peşrevs
notated in both the Bobowski and Cantemir Collections, and we may safely
assume that it was characteristic of all sixteenth- and seventeenth- century
peşrevs. In the performance each terkib was played twice; the notations con-
tain not only the repeat signs but frequently prima volta and secunda volta
endings. The generic term for this was teslim (“completion”). Apparently, there
were separate terms for the prima volta (mukaddam) and the secunda volta
(müehhir), but these were only rarely used in the notations.
As discussed in Part 2, chapter 6, the word terkib had a dual meaning. It is
generally interpreted in reference to the makam system, where it may refer
to a compound modal entity. Here, however, terkib signifies a section of the
compositional form. That terkib had acquired this dual meaning before the
seventeenth century, can be seen from its use in the early seventeenth-century
Bukharan treatise of Darvish Ali, where it likewise signifies a section of the
sarxana (= T. hane) of the pishrow. According to Darvish Ali, each sarxana was
composed of three sections—tarkib, aviza, and lazima, which was followed
by a ritornello, bazgui (Jung 1989:187). Lazima was a kind of short ritornello or
long cadential phrase. Occasionally, Cantemir has the word lazime instead of
mülazime, but it is the bazgui which evidently corresponds to the mülazime of
the Ottoman peşrev. The term aviza is not mentioned in any Ottoman source.
Although no notation exists of a seventeenth-century Bukharan pishrow, we
can conclude that this genre was not identical to the Ottoman peşrev because
of the tripartite division of the sarxana/hane, which is not found in Ottoman
sources. Thus, although the Bukharan tarkib was not functionally identical to
the Ottoman terkib, in both cases the same word was used to mean a modal
entity and a section of an instrumental composition smaller than a hane
or sarxana.
The earliest Islamic predecessor of the peşrev was the instrumental tarīqah,
which was equivalent to the vocal form sawt during the thirteenth century.
Quṭb al-Dīn’s transcription of a sawt melody is divided into sections, using dif-
ferent modal species, called tarkib (Wright 1978:219–31). There are, however,
no long repetitive sections corresponding to the bazgui or lazima ritornellos
of the later pishrow. If we take this early vocal item as a paradigm, the divi-
sion into separate melodies using distinct modal species (tarkib) would seem
to have been the origin of the later use of the term to describe the constituent
sections of a xana. In the thirteenth century, it seems to have been understood
that each section would utilize a different modal species, hence the term for
modal species (tarkib) could later became generalized to cover the compo-
sitional divisions as well. However, Ottoman music of the sixteenth and ear-
lier seventeenth centuries no longer relied as heavily on modulation as had
The Ottoman Peşrev 331

Perso-Arabic music of the thirteenth century. In the Turkish peşrev, the divi-
sions into terkibs no longer implied the appearance of a new modal species,
but only a new melodic section.

1 Periodization of the Turkish Peşrev

It is possible to establish several periods of significant change in the devel-

opment of the Turkish peşrev, but due to the unevenness of the available
sources, we cannot be certain that other significant changes had not occurred
during periods from which no primary documents survive. For example, no
notated document survives from the entire sixteenth century, nor from the
period stretching from 1750 to 1800. There can be no doubt that all of the
peşrevs attributed to sixteenth-century musicians by Cantemir or Bobowski
had undergone significant change during the process of oral transmission.
However, the Cantemir Collection in particular shows noticeable stylistic dif-
ferentiation among its peşrevs; they have not all been reduced to a single form
and style by the process of oral transmission. Therefore, it seems possible to
create a broad correlation between the compositional form of a peşrev and the
period in which its creator had lived, without claiming that any of the notated
scores in the Collection represent a form identical or even very close to an
original item of the sixteenth century.
On the basis of the existing documents, the development of the peşrev
from 1500 to 1850 seems to have gone through several stages. I have divided
this three-hundred-and-fifty-year period into eight periods of unequal length,
which are suggested by the availability and nature of the sources. While after
1600 this periodization rests on firm documentary evidence, the sixteenth
century is a rather different problem. It is likely that no scores were writ-
ten in the sixteenth century; in any case none survived. Most of the pieces
ascribed to period 1 (1500–1550) were only notated by Cantemir at the end
of the seventeenth century. Even the peşrevs in the Bobowski and Cantemir
Collections attributed to Gazi Giray Han (1554–1607), a “period 2” composer,
show signs of modernization. It is certainly impossible for our knowledge of
the sixteenth century to match the specificity of the seventeenth and later
centuries. Nevertheless, I have retained the first two period subdivisions
because much of the “Persian” and “Indian” repertoire which is attributable
to period 1 in Cantemir’s Collection, and a few early items in Bobowski (i.e.
the “Dügah-Hüseyni peşrev” of Osman Paşa) show structural differences from
the later material, In addition, the peşrevs of Hasan Can, a well-known figure
of the mid-sixteenth century, do not fit well either with the compositional
332 Chapter 10

patterns of the period 3 items in Bobowski or the period 3 or 4 items in

Cantemir, nor do they resemble the “Persian” items of period 1. However much
these items have been modified, something of their earlier structure seems to
remain. The only other explanation is that they were purposely made to look
archaic or foreign, and this seems less likely.
According to Ezgi (1953:2), the vocal kar and nakş compositions of Abdülali
(known as Hoca-i Sani, i.e. “the Second Teacher”), constitute the oldest ele-
ment in the continuous oral tradition of the Ottoman secular repertoire. He
believed that Abdülali had lived in the second half of the sixteenth century.
Thanks to more recent research by Oransay and Aksoy (2015:31), it is now clear
that he had been an eminent Persianate composer from Basra, who lived until
1644. Alongside this repertoire there are also a few other kar and nakş attrib-
uted to the “Acemler” or the “Hinduyan” (the Persians and the Indians). Most of
these items were documented in mecmua collections of the later seventeenth
century. The mecmuas attribute them either to Abdülali or to the still earlier
ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghi (d. 1435). In his “History” Cantemir mentions the songs
of “Hodja Musicar” (i.e. “the Teacher” Hoca ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghi) as the foun-
dation of the Turkish vocal repertoire (1734:151). In the late nineteenth century,
they were notated by Rauf Yekta mainly from his teacher Zekai Dede (d. 1897),
and they are still performed today as the repertoire of “Marāghī.” Although
these vocal kars and nakş ascribed to “Marāghī” show signs of modernization,
they also display structural differences from the later Ottoman vocal repertoire
in ways which link them with the early “Persian” peşrev repertoire. There is no
reason to believe that there could not have been an instrumental repertoire of
similar age.3
It is possible to push back the date of the Persian peşrev repertoire one gen-
eration earlier, to the reign of Selim I (d. 1520) because Fonton’s Turkish infor-
mants in the mid-eighteenth century believed that this had been the beginning
of the era of maximum Persian musical influence in Turkey (Fonton 1751:32–3).
Other musicians were brought from Iran during the reign of Selim’s successor
Süleyman (d. 1566). One of the Persian peşrevs occurs among a group of peşrevs
in the makam Neva, usul devr-i kebir (Cantemir Collection: nos. 51–56), which

3 It is beyond the scope of the present work to analyze the “Persian” and other pre-seven-
teenth-century Ottoman vocal repertoires which exist in the modern Turkish tradition.
Nevertheless, it would not be unfair to say that the pieces of the Acemler and Hinduyan are
shorter and simpler than the repertoire of Abdülali or ʿAbd al-Qādir. Both repertoires dis-
play the melodic progressions (seyir) of modern Turkish music; they seem to have nothing
archaic in their modality. However, their rhythmic and compositional structures agree in
several respects with the peşrev repertoire of the “Persians” notated by Cantemir. The latter
seem to have dropped out of the living tradition by the later eighteenth century.
The Ottoman Peşrev 333

includes a peşrev by Nefiri Behram, a Turkish musician who was active in the
mehter of Prince Mehmed, the son of Süleyman, in the year 1542. Behram’s
composition shares one of its constituent phrases with the Persian item, and
the two pieces are of almost identical scope. This strongly suggests that the
Persian item is not newer than the middle of the sixteenth century and is pos-
sibly one generation older.
The next group of Iranian musicians in Istanbul had been brought there in
the early seventeenth century by Murad IV Bobowski and Evliya, who knew
some of them personally, refer to them by name, e.g. Çengi Cafer, Şah Kulı,
Şeştari Murad, and not as the “Persians.” It appears likely that when musicians
in late seventeenth-century Istanbul referred to the “Persians,” they meant
either (a) contemporary musicians in Iran, or (b) the well-known group of
Persian musicians who had been brought to Turkey by Selim I in the first two
decades of the sixteenth century. Thus, the originals of some of the Acemi and
Hindi peşrevs with mülazime notated by Cantemir probably date from not later
than the middle of the sixteenth century. This means that by Cantemir’s time
they had undergone oral transmission for at least one and a half centuries. We
have no way of knowing in what ways they had changed during the course of
this transmission. Nevertheless, the differences which they present from the
bulk of the repertoire in Cantemir’s collection, and to a lesser extent from the
repertoire in Bobowski’s collection, suggests that they had not been totally
recomposed during the later seventeenth century, in which case they would
have been modernized to fit into a homogeneous later style.4

1.1 Period 1 (1500–1550)

Period of the “Acemler” and “Hinduyan,” probably the Persian music in the
courts of Selim I (1512–1520) and Süleyman I (1520–1566).
Formal structure: usually H I + M + HII + M + H III + M, sometimes also
H IV + M.
Hanes composed of one or more terkibs. Melodic unit is usually the usul
cycle or the half-cycle (in short usuls). Repetition and imitation are fundamen-
tal compositional techniques, Cycle or half-cycles are often structured in AAAB
or ABAB sections. There are no developed melodic progressions. Modulation is
not essential, but when it appears it may involve entire hanes, or terkibs but not
smaller units or single note alterations.5

4 Wright (2000:542–45) notes the many debatable attributions for peşrevs from (my) periods 1,
2, and 3.
5 These peşrevs, nineteen of which were composed by Persian or “Indian” musicians, repre-
sent the earliest substantial repertoire in the Turkish collections. There are also a number of
334 Chapter 10

1.2 Period 2 (1550–1600)

Mainly peşrevs attributed to Turkish and foreign musicians from the end of
the reign of Süleyman I, Selim II (1566–1574), Murad III (1574–1595), e.g.
Hasan Can, Emir-i Hac, Gazi Giray Han. Melodic units becoming longer than
the half-cycle or cycle, sometimes three or four cycles. Peşrevs of Gazi Giray
appear most “modern” in the length of their melodic units and concept of
melodic progression.

1.3 Period 3 (1600–1650)

Major rulers: Ahmet I (1603–1617), Murad IV (1623–1640); major composers:
Turks—Murad IV, Solakzade, Miskali Ahmed Bey, Şerif, Kemani Mustafa,
Ferruh; Persians—Şah Kulı, Haydar Can, Çenkci Caſer.
Formal structure: H I + M + H II [Z = zeyl] +M + H III + M, or H I + M + H II +
M + H III + M + S (serbend).
Mülazime is usually the longest section, serhane (H I) usually the shortest,
but serhane may be as long as other hanes. Mülazime is the most essential part
of the peşrev. Tentative appearance of melodic progressions, but rarely the
same as after 1650. Repetitive sections fewer than previously. Melodic unit as
long as five to ten cycles. Long descending phrases are common. Terkib divi-
sions usually placed to express melodic progression.

1.4 Period 4 (1650–1690)

Reign of Mehmet IV (1648–1687). Muzafer, Neyzen Ali Hoca, Eyyübi Mehmed,
Edirneli Ahmed, Angeli, Osman Dede.
Formal structure as above, but H I is always half the size of other hanes,
M twice as long or more. Serbend is abandoned. New Persian peşrev form is
sometimes adopted by Turks: M (= H I) + H II M + H III + M. Melodic pro-
gressions, as known from Cantemir and eighteenth-century treatises, etc.
are the rule. Terkibs placed according to these progressions. Hane and terkib
structure of older repertoire often reorganized according to new seyir prin-
ciples. Modulation the rule in H III, but often appears earlier as complete ter-
kibs, or even single-note alterations, sometimes in serhane. Melodic units are

Turkish peşrevs which share their compositional style, and are probably contemporaneous
or nearly so, for example the Neva, devr-i kebir by Nefiri Behram (mid-sixteenth century). A
few of these pieces seem somewhat more developed, e.g. the items in the usul sakil. However,
the fact that they use the 48-beat form of sakil makes it likely that these pieces have been
considerably reworked in the seventeenth century, or are perhaps Persian pieces of the early
seventeenth century, since it is doubtful that a 48 beat version of sakil had existed in the
sixteenth century.
The Ottoman Peşrev 335

large, repetition almost absent. First sign of tempo retardation and increased
melodic density.

1.5 Period 5 (1690–1710)

Cantemir (Kantemiroğlu).
Formal structure the same but no zeyl. “Modern” highly defined melodic pro-
gressions. More frequent modulation in all hanes and mülazime, single-note
alteration, etc. Peşrevs generally longer than previously. Preference for slower
tempos with high note-density.

1.6 Period 6 (1710–1780)

Documents available only for period ca. 1750, reign of Mahmud I (1730–1754).
Mecmua of Kevseri.6

1.7 Period 7 (1780–1815)

Major ruler Selim III (1789–1807). Peşrevs of Tanburi Isak (1745–1814), Formal
structure: H I + H II + H III + H IV. Notations are extant by Hamparsum from 1813.
Mülazime replaced by long cadential formula, but shorter than one cycle.
Terkibs absent. New, doubled usul cycles are in place. Modulation not promi-
nent, melodic progression usually expressed throughout all four hanes.

1.8 Period 8 (1815–1850)

Modern period, leading to decline of courtly patronage. Numan Ağa (1750–1834),
Zeki Mehmed Ağa (1776–1846), Osman Bey (1816–1885), Yusuf Paşa (1821–1884).
Formal structure: H I + T (= teslim) + H II+ T + H III + T + H IV + T.
New, one-cycle ritornello called teslim. Terkibs absent. Hanes usually of
equal length. “Multiple miyan,” i.e. modulation in each hane, leading to “tele-
scoped” seyir in each hane and in teslim. Compound makams predominant,
hence teslim sometimes expresses cadence in final makam of the compound.
Usul system stable since last era.
Available notations in both Hamparsum and some Western notations.

2 Factors Leading to Change in the Formal Structure of the Peşrev

When we analyze the terkib structure of the period 1 peşrevs, we can observe
features which differ quite markedly from the compositions dating from the

6 This important document was published by Mehmet Uğur Ekinci, (Istanbul: Omar and Pan,
2016).
336 Chapter 10

second half of the seventeenth century and thereafter. In discussing these

early pieces, it is difficult to avoid words such as “lack,” “absence,” “rudimen-
tary,” or “mechanical.” “Lack” and “absence” must appear because almost every-
thing which can be associated with the peşrev as it has been known since the
early nineteenth century is lacking in these early peşrevs. “Rudimentary” and
“mechanical” because the structure of these pieces is very close to the surface
and can be sensed quite easily.
While the melodic density of the existing transcriptions of these pre-
seventeenth-century pieces may be suspect, there is little reason to believe
that their structure has been fundamentally altered, because the Turkish oral
tradition appears to have transmitted its older elements without simplifica-
tion. As we will show in the chapter on transmission (see pp. 423–35), some
pieces were preserved almost unchanged from the early or mid-seventeenth
century to the early eighteenth century. Over longer periods, the tendency
seems to have been not to simplify but to “modernize” the older repertoire,
to make it conform to the formal standards of the new time, through a pro-
cess of rhythmic expansion and melodic elaboration. There do not seem to be
any examples of an older repertoire becoming “simplified” or “reduced.” Thus,
if we see what appears to be simplicity in the early repertoire, it should be
taken for what it seems to be, not as a “simplified” version or a more complex
original. This argument should not be over generalized to become an evolu-
tionist scheme for the history of Muslim art musics, implying, that the music
of the seventeenth century was for example more complex than the music of
the thirteenth century. Nonetheless, within Ottoman Turkey we can observe a
steady increase in musical complexity of all kinds from the sixteenth through
the earlier nineteenth century. Let us look more closely at the simplicity of the
pre-seventeenth-century peşrev.
The basic unit of melodic construction is small; either one cycle (devr) of
the usul, or a half-cycle (= our measure and half-measure). The half-cycle is the
rule in the fourteen-beat devr-i kebir, where the terkib is usually composed
of two usul cycles (see Tab. 3.3), but even in the eight-beat düyek, where the
terkib is usually four cycles (see Tab. 3.2), the half-cycle occasionally appears.
The units within the terkib are often combined in binary or four-part patterns.
Sometimes this appears as an ABAC structure, at other times as AAAB. In the
first case the melody of the first cycle is repeated as the third cycle. The sec-
ond and fourth cycles differ, but the fourth will generally end on the finalis or
secondary tonal center of the makam. The third part may be a transposed, or
otherwise varied version of the first part (cycle).
The Ottoman Peşrev 337

Table 3.2 Düyek peşrev

Terkib

2 cycles (= 16/4) + 2 cycles (= 16/4)

8/4 + 8/4 + 8/4 + 8/4
A+B A+C
A+ A A+B

Table 3.3 Devr-i kebir peşrev

Terkib

1 cycle (= 14/4) + 1 cycle (= 14/4)

7/4 + 7/4 + 7/4 + 7/4
A+B A+C
A+A A+B

Such a binary structure sometimes is expanded into three parts by the addi-
tion of an intermediary part, but this middle part is generally a variation of a
section in the previous terkib. While a terkib may use four usul cycles in a short
usul like düyek, the core melodic idea does not extend beyond the cycle or the
half-cycle. In the asymmetrical devr-i kebir, the core melodic idea is confined to
the half-cycle (seven beats). Whole terkibs are frequently repeated further on
in the piece. Thus, part of the serhane may appear in the mülazime, and part
of the mülazime may appear in the second or third hane. Repetition is one of
the most fundamental principles in the construction of these peşrevs, where it
can take the form of transposition, frequently in the second hane (miyanhane),
where part of the mülazime may reappear on a higher pitch.
The terkibs exhibit an arrangement which could almost be described as
paratactic, in that the order of the terkibs after the serhane does not seem
to be essential. It is not unusual to find two or three terkibs following one
another using the same melodic direction and ambitus. The tonal centers of
the makam, and the finalis (karar) will appear, along with cadential formulas,
but this may occur within one terkib, or two or three times in successive terkibs.
Everything which occurs in the pieces is part of the melodic progression of a
338 Chapter 10

particular makam, but frequently the complete melodic progression (as it is

known from later sources) is not fully expressed. Thus, when the karar appears,
it usually does not give the impression that the makam has reached its resolu-
tion. Another technique of these peşrevs which weakens the feeling of melodic
progression is the frequent upward and downward movement of the melody,
either skipping a fourth or more, or else going stepwise up or down an octave.
This type of movement seems to convert the makam into a scale, with little
feeling of seyir. This technique is frequent in the peşrevs notated by Bobowski,
but becomes rare in that part of the Cantemir Collection which was created
after 1650, and hence is not shared with Bobowski.
The repertoire transcribed by Bobowski contains some items whose melodic
progressions are consistent with later Turkish practice, but many others where
the seyir is weak and undeveloped or else somehow divergent from later prac-
tice. The sixteenth-century peşrev repertoire notated by Cantemir (and also by
Bobowski, see next section) reveals a weakness in the development of melodic
progression, not only as expressed in language, but in musical composition as
well. Whereas the entire melodic progressions of the makams can be estab-
lished from the evidence of the seventeenth-century peşrevs, even without
reference to Cantemir’s treatise, the earlier material is not so enlightening in
this respect. What we see in these early peşrevs are scales, with some evidence
of normative melodic progressions, but we cannot discover the complete pro-
gressions of the makams in terms that are meaningful to the Turkish tradition
after 1600.
The binary, repetitive structures in the sixteenth-century peşrevs could
not coexist easily with the concepts of melodic progression known from later
Turkish music, and during the next century we see a gradual abandonment of
all of these techniques. Among the causes for this change, we might consider
an increasing sophistication in the use of rhythm, probably with a decrease
in tempo, but these probably are not sufficient causes to explain all of the
compositional changes. The more elaborate melodic progressions could not
be expressed without a more fixed position for terkibs which emphasized dif-
ferent tonal centers and melodic movements. This increased attention to the
order and placement of the terkibs decreased the incidence of repetition with-
out a clear melodic progression. Likewise, rapid movement up and down the
scale could only be tolerated in an ornamental function, not as an essential
movement within the melody. Together, all of these factors changed both the
surface and the structure of the peşrev, and, we assume, of other composed
forms as well.
Several scholars have noted the change in the relative length of the hanes
and ritornellos and recognized the significance of the change from the long to
The Ottoman Peşrev 339

the short form of ritornello (Oransay 1966:42–3; Reinhard 1973:24). The word
mülazime, which had been used for the long ritornello during the seventeenth
century, was replaced by the word teslim to refer to the short form of the ritor-
nello in the modern peşrev during the early decades of the nineteenth century.
However, the shortening of the ritornello that scholars normally considered to
be the most significant change is only a surface indication of more fundamen-
tal changes in the compositional style. The stylistic changes in the course of the
development of the peşrev did not originate there, rather they were the result
of a number of more subtle aesthetic considerations regarding the melodic
line. This development can be described only if we consider the mutual inter-
action of various elements in the music, i.e. the interchange between rhythm,
tempo, and melodic density, and between modulation and large scale form.
Most important, one has to understand the change in the inner structure of the
melody, and in connection with it, the significance of the concepts of the terkib
and seyir (melodic progression).
The following discussion of the structural development of the Turkish
peşrev will deal with several factors, i.e.:
1. The relation of usul, tempo, and melodic density;
2. Modulation and large scale form; and
3. Terkib and seyir.

2.1 Usul, Tempo, Melodic Density

In the entire Ottoman repertoire these features have undergone a deep mutual
interaction, In the later eighteenth century the rhythmic cycles (usul) of
Ottoman music underwent a significant change. Most of them were doubled,
so that, for example, a cycle of ten beats would appear as twenty, a cycle of
fourteen as twenty-eight, a cycle of sixteen as thirty-two, etc. In some cases,
the doubling seems to have occurred even earlier, i.e. the usul çenber had
twenty-four beats, and sakil had forty-eight beats in the seventeenth century;
both of these usuls seem to have developed out of earlier cycles in twelve and
twenty-four beats, respectively.
Wright has demonstrated that the number of pitch changes (melodic den-
sity) in the seventeenth-century peşrevs in his corpus, as compared with their
versions in later nineteenth-century sources has increased by a ratio of 1 to 5
(Wright 1988:75). The rhythmic cycle in question, devr-i kebir, has increased
in length from fourteen beats in the seventeenth century, to twenty-eight
beats in the nineteenth, with a doubled drum pattern called muzaaf devr-i
kebir in fifty-six beats. While the usul has increased in length by a ratio of 1:2,
the melodic density is 1:5. Many of his charts compare the seventeenth- and
nineteenth-century versions of the identical item, and from them it is clear
340 Chapter 10

that had the former been performed at the tempo of the usul existing in the
latter, each note would have been extended over very long durations; the
performance of a single peşrev would last almost one hour (Wright 1988:12).
Considering the place of the peşrev within the fasıl cycle, a single concert, with
instrumental and vocal compositions, as well as taksims, would have lasted
a minimum of ten hours. As he shows, the only way to explain the discrep-
ancy is by positing that the tempo of performance had decreased by a ratio
of approximately 5 to 1 (“rhythmic retardation”), thus allowing an increase
in melodic density of a reverse proportion (“melodic elaboration”). The gaps
in the usul pattern were now filled in by intermediary drum-strokes, termed
velvele. Wright has convincingly shown that the tempo of the velvele strokes
today corresponds almost exactly to the probable tempo of the original
seventeenth-century usul (1988:75). Thus, the tempo of Turkish instrumental
music has not changed significantly. What has changed is the relationship of
a single beat to the larger rhythmic cycle. While, in terms of quarter notes, the
structure of devr-i kebir has been expanded from 14/4 to 28/4, (the quarter-note
has been expanded to a half-note), the number of intermediary beats, notated
as eighth-notes, has created a rhythmic density from 4 to 5 times greater than
the seventeenth-century structure. The number of drum strokes increased
from 13 to 70 (Wright 1988:8, 71). Thus, the increase in the rhythmic density is
similar to the increase in melodic density. The fundamental pulse underlying
a peşrev in the usul devr-i kebir was much the same in the seventeenth century
as it is today, but fourteen beats of this pulse would go through only a quarter
to a fifth of one rhythmic cycle of a modern piece. In the seventeenth century
it would have comprehended one entire cycle.
This change in the number of beats in the usuls was connected with a
gradual retardation in the performance tempo of the items in these usuls. The
decreased tempo allowed for what Wright has termed “melodic elaboration”
to utilize the space made available by the retarded tempos and the doubled
usul patterns. In comparing the degree of melodic density in peşrevs of the sev-
enteenth and nineteenth centuries, Wright has determined that the melodic
density of the latter is five times as great as that of the former. This also implies
a five-fold decrease in tempo.7

7 Modern Turkish musicians perform seventeenth-century peşrevs in such a tempo. Recordings

of Cüneyd Kosaľs ensemble performing devr-i kebir peşrevs from the Bobowski and Cantemir
Collections, and the recordings which I commisioned from Necdet Yaşar both demonstrate
virtually identical tempos, which are between 4 and 5 times faster than a modern peşrev in
the “same” usul although the fundamental pulse is identical.
The Ottoman Peşrev 341

This discovery of Wright’s is fundamental to any understanding of the

development of the peşrev from 1700 to 1850. Wright has introduced a table
(1988:71) with the probable figures for the rates of increase in melodic den-
sity from 1650 to 1850. He projects “on the assumption of a broadly regular
incidence of change over the following 200 years, a 50% increase in elabo-
ration every 50 years” (ibid.). However, a close comparison of Bobowski and
Cantemir materials shows that the expected increase of 50% between 1650
and 1700 did not occur. Wright got his figures for 1650 and 1700 by compar-
ing one peşrev from Bobowski with Cantemir’s own peşrevs (1988:72). However,
Cantemir’s peşrevs were not typical of his period. Osman Dede was a contem-
porary of Cantemir, yet his peşrevs show a considerably lower melodic density.
If we compare peşrevs in usuls other than devr-i kebir, it frequently occurs that
Bobowski’s version shows a higher melodic density than Cantemir’s. As these
comparisons will demonstrate (in this chapter, below), Bobowski’s versions
seem closer to a performed version, while Cantemir’s are frequently somewhat
schematic. For example, in the peşrev in the makam Hüseyni known as “Büyük
Muhammes,” which Cantemir gave in his tenth chapter as a model of the peşrev
form, the melodic density of his version is almost half of Bobowski’s (Cantemir
Collection:no. 82; Bobowski ca. 1650:18). In the first measure, Bobowski shows
14 pitch changes, while Cantemir shows 9. In many other cases the difference
in melodic density is smaller, but in almost every instance, it is Bobowski’s ver-
sion which has a higher melodic density.
In addition, there is no indication that the usul system underwent any sig-
nificant change from the 1630s (when Bobowski entered the court) until 1700.
While Bobowski does not write out the usul patterns, the relation of melodic
pattern to measure shows no major differences from the items in the Cantemir
Collection. Some changes occurred by the mid-eighteenth century, where they
were indicated by Fonton and Hızır Ağa, but it is only at the end of the eigh-
teenth century that Abdülbaki Nasır Dede showed major elaboration of the
usul system.
The processes of rhythmic retardation and melodic elaboration apparently
began in the last third of the seventeenth century. Cantemir had explained
that certain peşrevs were played at a particularly slow tempo, and that these
had (what we might call) a higher melodic density, necessitating his use of the
“smallest of the small” (asğar-i sağir) meter in order to notate what we would
call sixteenth notes:

One should be aware of the fact that, although the above-mentioned

meter (“the smallest of the small meter”) is half of the small meter, every
terkib which should be composed according to the small meter does not
342 Chapter 10

come under the smallest of the small meter but must be written and
sung according to the small meter. The reason for this is that in some ter-
kibs the meter of the usul (usul vezni) is taken very slowly (aheste aheste
alınur), so that what would be performed twice according to the style
of a quick-moving usul, according to this style would be [performed]
only once. Now, terkibs and peşrevs which were composed according to
a quick-moving [usul] come under the large meter or the small meter,
but those which were composed according to a slow-moving [usul] (ağır
hareketlu) come under the domain of the smallest of the small meter.
That is, however slow is the movement of the usul, the movement of the
meter is to that degree quick (Cantemir ca. 1700:1:15).

These peşrevs which Cantemir notated according to the smallest of the small
meter do not show a greater number of pitch changes than the average (17
for the usul devr-i kebir; Wright gives 19 as the norm for 1700). But, they do
show an increase in the number of attacks, i.e. there are many repeated notes.
As Cantemir states, this increase in the number of notes implies a decrease
in tempo.
None of the pieces which Cantemir notated in this manner also occur in
Bobowski’s “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz”; all were composed either by himself or by
other composers of the second half of the seventeenth century. Bobowski
offers no evidence that this custom existed in his time. Thus, we can conclude
that Cantemir was referring to the beginning of the process of rhythmic retar-
dation which was to continue from his time until the nineteenth century, so
that between 1650 and 1850, the melodic density of the peşrev appears to have
increased by fifty per cent. Wright hypothesizes that this increase occurred reg-
ularly, so that the melodic density of peşrevs in periods falling between these
dates would have a fifty percent increase every fifty years. More recent research
by Jacob Olley suggests that the rate of tempo retardation may have been less
regular than Wright had initially postulated. In addition, there were very likely
more conservative and more innovative usages among different urban social
strata (Olley 2018).
In summary:
1. Between 1600 and 1670 (approximately) no major change occurred either
in the usul system, in the tempo of performance or in the melodic density
of the peşrev melodies.
2. Between 1670 and 1850 the tempos gradually decreased, and conversely,
melodic density increased. By the middle of the nineteenth century this
resulted in a tempo reduction of 5:1 and an increase in melodic density
of 1:5.
The Ottoman Peşrev 343

3. By the last two decades of the eighteenth century, important changes

occurred in the usul system as well. These changes were always in the
direction of doubling. For example, devr-i kebir was doubled to 28 beats,
muhammes doubled to 32 beats, etc. In the small usuls, “heavy” (ağır)
versions appeared: ağır aksak (9/4) alongside aksak (9/8) and ağır aksak
semai i (10/4) alongside aksak semai (10/8). In the case of the small usuls,
both the doubled and original versions continued to be played for dif-
ferent genres. For the larger usuls, usually only the new doubled version
survived. In some cases, however, the old version continued to be per-
formed as a “half” (nim) of the new doubled usul: nim hafif (16 beats <
new hafif in 32 beats < old hafif in 16 beats), nim sakil (24 beats < new sakil
in 48 beats < old sakil in 24 beats).
These changes in usul, tempo and melodic elaboration were relevant to the ter-
kib for a number of reasons. The relationship of rhythmic pulse to the melodic
unit was very different in 1800 from what it had been in 1650 or even 1700.
In 1650 a given number of pulse beats had formed a discrete rhythmic cycle,
an usul. This changed gradually during the 1700s so that at the end the same
number of pulse beats were only a part of a much longer and slower rhythmic
cycle. The melody, however, did not slow down. Rather it continued to move
at the same pace, but the core rhythmic unit was five times as large as it had
been; hence the melody was free to expand. By this time the usul cycle was
long enough to encompass an elaborate melodic movement. The tendency of
the music, however, was to push even beyond the rhythmic cycle, and to join
the melody outside of the boundaries of the rhythmic cycle. Our documents
demonstrate that changes in melodic movement and in rhythmic conceptual-
ization were underway simultaneously during the eighteenth century, and that
the terkib was already obsolete in 1750, almost fifty years before the expansion
of the usul system had reached its final form.

2.2 Modulation and Large Scale Form

The seventeenth-century Bukharan Darvish Ali gave a description of a modu-
lating section in the pishrow (n.d.:23b). The second xana had a special function
in this form, in that a new modal entity (rang) was introduced or a new range
of the original mode was employed. This melodically/modally distinct xana
was called miyanxana (“middle section”). In the early seventeenth-century
Ottoman peşrev the term miyanxana (= miyanhane) was retained and the con-
cept of melodic or modal contrast was further developed. It was expanded
to the third hane, with the second and third hane having different functions.
While in the second hane (miyanhane) the melody was usually taken into a
higher range, often featuring transpositions of earlier material, in the third
344 Chapter 10

hane a new scale could be introduced. By the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury it became almost normative for the third hane to modulate into the Uzzal
makam (using something like an augmented second tetrachord on A), to flat-
ten the sixth degree of any makam ending on A, or to flatten the degree above
A to BŞ. The second hane used a higher (or lower) range than the serhane,
and scalar/modal change was increasingly found in the third hane. In addi-
tion, smaller modulations, affecting part of a terkib, or single-note alterations
became increasingly common everywhere in the peşrev, even beginning in
the serhane.
With our present spotty knowledge of eighteenth-century documents, it is
difficult to account for the turn which modulation and large scale form took
toward the end of the eighteenth century. In many peşrevs of that period, mod-
ulation is often viewed in connection with the overall melodic progression of
the nominal makam of the peşrev, which manifests itself over all four hanes.
Modulation had become subordinated to the expression of the melodic pro-
gression (seyir) of the makam. This process seems to have reached its maxi-
mum point around the turn of the nineteenth century in the peşrevs of Tanburi
Isak (d. 1814). At this period the ritornello virtually disappeared as a discrete
section.8
By the early decades of the nineteenth century modulation again became
increasingly common in each hane. In connection with the increased modula-
tion, the ritornello acquired a novel function: it reinforced the nominal makam
after the modulations which had occurred in the hanes. This was the cause
of the switch to the short ritornello teslim, which was limited to the nominal
makam of the peşrev. In compound makams, the teslim might express only the
final karar of the second makam. By the early nineteenth century the four-hane
peşrev had become normative, frequently with different makams in each hane.
The highest range was usually reserved for the third hane, while the fourth
hane often introduced a makam with a lower range or the lower range of the
nominal makam.
The difference in length between the mülazime of the seventeenth century
and the teslim of the nineteenth century corresponded to an essential differ-
ence in function. Although both the mülazime and the later teslim were “ritor-
nellos” which were repeated after each hane, the teslim can be considered a

8 From 1550 until 1750 the shortest section of a peşrev was the serhane, and the longest was
the mülazime. Between the HI and HII and III a ratio of 1/1.5 is common, although 1/2 also
appears. In a minority of the peşrevs in the collections, HII or III may be as short as the mülaz-
ime. Occasionally, HII is longer than the mülâzime (e.g, Kürdi, hafif; Cantemir Collection:85).
By 1750 the ritornello might be the same length as the serhane. In Isak’s peşrevs the serhane
might still be shorter than the other hanes, but in the course of the nineteenth century, all
hanes tended to become equal in length.
The Ottoman Peşrev 345

“refrain,” i.e. a relatively short section which helps to unify a piece through
repetition. As hanes became increasingly distinct from one another, rarely
containing shared material, and often employing contrasting makams, the
teslim unified the peşrev both melodically and modally. In the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century peşrevs, on the other hand, the mülazime was the core
of the composition; it contained several terkibs, and usually modulations
and transpositions within them. In the seventeenth century there was no
objection to the repetition of the central section of the peşrev, and indeed,
repetition of substantial sections was an inheritance from the earlier Iranian
pishrow. This began to change significantly in the eighteenth century, and in
the nineteenth-century aesthetics the ritornello could no longer be the central
section of a composition.

2.3 Terkib and Seyir

Though the modern Turkish peşrev retained the divisions into hanes with
a ritornello called teslim, the function and structure of the ritornello had
become quite different from what it had been in the peşrev of the seventeenth
century. Parallel to this change, the internal melodic structure of the hanes had
changed as well, and this change is among the most significant if we compare
the modern peşrev with its seventeenth-century antecedents. One of the main
problems in discussing the structure of the peşrev is that both Cantemir and
twentieth-century Turkish musicologists limited their field to the study of the
large-scale form and acknowledged only changes which were clearly reflected
in the terminology. According to this logic, the structure of the peşrev changed
only when the terminology changed, i.e. when the mülazime was replaced by
the teslim.
In fact, the situation is far more complex. Much of the history of the devel-
opment of the Turkish peşrev from the sixteenth to the later nineteenth cen-
tury is the progressive freeing of the melody from the two major structural
constraints—the cycle of the usul and the unit of the terkib. This development
was strongly intertwined with other structural changes and happened very
gradually. Yet, when the older types are compared to the modern peşrevs, it
is the contrast in the melodic conception that appears to be the most striking
stylistic difference.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all hanes and the ritornello were
created out of several distinct sections (terkibs) which, as we have seen, were
repeated, sometimes with first and second endings (teslim). All the peşrevs
in the Bobowski and Cantemir Collections display this structure. The earlier
examples from the sixteenth century are characterized by the abundance of
repetition of melodic segments. These earlier examples, the “Persian” peşrevs in
Cantemir, display a usage of terkib which distinguishes them from the peşrevs
346 Chapter 10

of the middle and later seventeenth century. The terkibs in these early peşrevs
are characterized by repetition of various sorts. On the grossest level, whole ter-
kibs may reappear within one hane (particularly the mülazime) or move from
one hane to another. Parts of hanes may be repeated; e.g. the opening cycle of
one terkib may be repeated in the next or in a later terkib. Many terkibs show
a four-part structure in which parts 1 and 3 are identical (ABAB). Sometimes
a terkib may be composed of one melodic idea repeated three times, dosing
with a different section played once (AAAB). Apart from pure repetition, trans-
position is also common. It is not infrequent for the second hane to transpose
motives from the serhane onto a higher pitch. As a result, the hanes are often
very closely linked by means of outright repetition or transposition.9
In these pieces the order of terkibs within a hane is frequently not essential
to its structure. Two or three terkibs using essentially similar melodic content
may follow one another.10 These terkibs are interchangeable and have no spe-
cific formal function, to the extent that several motives from various terkibs in
one piece may reappear in another position in a different peşrev. These peşrevs
of the sixteenth century show no recognizable melodic progressions. Within
the makam scales the finalis, upper tonic, and one other principal tonal center,
sometimes also an entry point, are emphasized, but the melodic line is short
and modular, rarely resting long enough on any step of the scale to suggest a
specific progression. The early seventeenth-century peşrevs in the Bobowski
Collection display the beginnings of a conception of melodic progression, but
these are not fully developed, and usually differ from the seyirs known from
later Turkish music. Nevertheless, some of the pieces notated by Bobowski,
and most of those notated by Cantemir, i.e. peşrevs from the middle and latter
part of the seventeenth century, display melodic progressions which agree in
most respects with the seyirs known from later sources.
Seyir is a highly culture-specific conception of melodic progression, which
is essentially a feature of the Turco-Arabian musical zone. The term came into

9 The importance of repetition, sequencing and transposition in the early Ottoman peşrev
had been pointed out by Haydar Sanal (1961:95–101), who looked for it, however, only in
the peşrevs of the mehter. He therefore viewed it as being characteristic of the military
musical style, when in fact it was equally current in other peşrevs. I would like to express
my gratitude to Haydar Bey with whom I had extensive conversations in 1983. His book on
the mehter was for decades the only published study of compositional style in any early
Ottoman repertoire.
10 In some cases, Cantemir grouped a number of these very similar items together, on con-
secutive pages; e.g. the Neva devr-i kebir series on pages 30–31. In this series of six peşrevs,
several motives from various terkibs in one piece may appear in another position in a dif-
ferent peşrev, e.g. the opening motive of the Acemi peşrev (p. 30) appears in the mülazime
of the peşrev by Behram (p. 31).
The Ottoman Peşrev 347

use in the late eighteenth century, but the concept seems to have become estab-
lished in Turkish music during the course of the seventeenth century. Seyir dif-
fers from other concepts of melodic progression in that it specifies not only a
hierarchy of tonal centers within a scale, but a specific melodic path, which will
involve not only direction but returning to specific tones, prolonging of these
or other tones, and deviating from the basic scale in pre-determined ways.
The development of seyir created a much larger conception of melody
which, within the hundred years from 1650 to 1750, broke down the modular
melodic usage of the terkib. The terkib divisions were still retained, but the
melody was shaped increasingly as a continuous line in accordance with the
concept of seyir which allowed little room for repetition and imitation. During
the course of the seventeenth century the independence of the terkib was
gradually abandoned. In its place we see a tendency to create a continuous
melody, without any repetition, running throughout the entire terkib. In addi-
tion, the terkibs do not give the impression of fortuitous arrangement. Within
a hane, and especially in the mülazime (which was still the longest section),
the terkibs express the melodic progression (seyir) of the makam in a more sys-
tematic way than had previously been done. Terkibs now tend to close on the
various suspended cadences (asma karar) or on other secondary tonal centers,
before finally concluding on the finalis (karar). By 1750 the terkib divisions had
disappeared from Turkish music.

3 Conclusion

In the course of its four-century-long development, several musical factors

affected the changes in the formal structure of the Turkish peşrev. Of these,
the most important appears to be the development of the seyir concept in the
Turkish makam. Second to this, but occurring simultaneously, was the expan-
sion in the use of modulation in large-scale form. In addition, but beginning
somewhat later, there was a major change in the conception of usul, which
resulted in tempo retardation and melodic elaboration. Acting together,
these factors transformed the surface of the peşrev genre. The first two fac-
tors, i.e. developed seyir and modulation, also helped to produce the major
performance-generated genre of Turco-Arabian music, the taksim, which
emerged at the same period: the second half of the sixteenth to early seven-
teenth centuries. The changes in the surface of the peşrev are significant both
in connection with compositional structure in Turkish music, and as primary
evidence for the development of the concept of makam/maqām as it is known
in modern Turco-Arabian music.
 Chapter 11

Peşrevs and Analyses

1 Period 1 (1500–1550)

No notated document survives from the sıxteenth century (our periods 1 and
2). The principal source for the peşrev of period 1 is a corpus of nineteen items
notated by Cantemir (which are attributed to the Persian Acemi) musicians,
possibly at the court of Selim I (1512–1520), or of Süleyman (1520–1566) as well
as a small group of Turkish peşrevs by contemporaneous musicians (e.g. Nefiri
Behram), and an otherwise unknown “Osman Paşa.” One peşrev by the latter
was notated by Bobowski and later by Cantemir.
As Wright has noted (2000:558–63), many attributions are indeed shaky.
Nevertheless, there is something to be learned by comparing these items,
which Cantemir had placed closely together in his Collection.
All of the following analyses will employ these symbols: the serhane is rep-
resented by Hane I or H I, mülazime as M, hane-i sani (miyanhane) as Hane II
or H II, hane-i salis (son hane) as Hane III or H III. Terkibs are represented by
capital letters, e.g. the second terkib of the mülazime is MB, the first terkib of
the third hane as H III A. In the eight-beat usul cycle düyek each cycle cor-
responds to a bar and is numbered by Arabic numerals. In the fourteen-beat
cycle devr-i kebir, the bar will contain two half cycles of seven beats each. Each
of these half-cycles will be numbered by an Arabic numeral. Thus, the third
bar of the second terkib of the second hane of a peşrev in devr-i kebir is referred
to in the text as H II B:5–6. In two of the peşrevs (both in devr-i kebir), there
is a motivic analysis and chart as well, and in these cases I have indicated the
motives by means of lower-case letters.

1.1 The Persians (Acemler)

Many of the constituent cycles of the terkibs are repetitions or rearrangements
of earlier cycles: MA:2 (motive d) is repeated as MB:2, and as MC:2; a slight
variant (ď) appears as MB:3, as MC:3, and as H II A:4. MB:1 (e) reappears with a
new half-cycle as MB:3, as H II A:I and H II A:3, as H II B:1, as H III B:1, and, in
a slightly variant form, as H II A:2. H II B:1–2 reappears as H III B:1–2. H 1:3–4
(a + b) is repeated as a cađential formula in MD:3–4, and in H III B:3–4.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_015

Peşrevs and Analyses 349

Example 3.2 a) Neva, devr-i kebir, Acemi (Cantemir Collection: no. 52)
b) Neva, devr-i kebir, Acemi, serhane and mülazime A
c) Neva, devr-i kebir, Behram, serhane A, B
350 Chapter 11

The ratios of the sections of the peşrev in Ex. 2.2 are:

hane I: 1 terkib 2 cycles

m̲̲ ü̲ l ̲a̲̲ z̲im
̲ ̲ e̲: 4 terkibs 2 cycles each
hane II: 2 terkibs 2 cycles each
hane III: 2 terkibs 2 cycles each

All these repetitions and rearrangements often form an ABAC structure which
is essentially a two-part structure with varied endings. This ABAC structure
can be seen in MA (c + d + c + ď), etc. The mülazime is formed entirely out of
two-part units of a half-cycle each, with the addition of a coda (MD) formed by
a paraphrase of MA; MA:1 and MA:2 are almost identical; each half-cycle begins
with the same 3-beat-phrase, while the first half-cycles of Ma:1 and Ma:2 are
identical. The terkibs B and C of the mülazime (M) are almost identical; they
have the same melodic progression, which they share also with H II A.
H III A modulates into the scale of Uzzal, but still forms an ABAB struc-
ture with its first half-cycle a transposition (one third lower) of MA:1. Thus,
although MA:1 uses the scale of Neva (A-B-c-d-e-f#-g-a) and H III A:1 that
of Uzzal (A-B-c#|-d-e-f#|-g-a), they must be perceived as variants of a single
motive (marked c and c1).
Turning to the melodic movement of this peşrev, we observe that the ser-
hane presents a recognizable introductory section of the makam Neva, rising to
the tonal center (d), emphasizing the yeden (supporting note) c, then ascend-
ing from the lower fifth (G) to the upper third (f#), before descending from d to
A, the finalis. However, beginning with MA the next two hanes are dominated
by a single motive which concentrates on the pentachord above the tonal cen-
ter (d), emphasizing the fourth degree (g). While such a movement exists in
the currently known seyir of Neva, it is not possible to create such an extended
movement without showing the earlier parts of the seyir, and without conclud-
ing with a reintroduction of one of the earlier sections. Such a movement is

A
H I: x+x|a+b
A B C D
M: c + d | c + d | e + d | e + d’ | f + d | f + d’ | c + x | a + b |
A B
H II: e + e’ | e + d | e + x | x + b |
A B
H III: c’ + x | c’ + x | e + x | a + b |
Figure 3.2 Neva devr-i kebir (Acemi) hanes, terkibs and cycles
Peşrevs and Analyses 351

not warranted either by the modem practice, and the currently known reper-
toire, or by the recorded seventeenth-century repertoire. Nothing in this peşrev
following the serhane shows any evidence for a melodic progression of the
makam Neva as it is known from 1650 until the present.1

hane I: 2 terkibs a = 4 cycles

b = 3 cycles
mülazime: 4 terkibs 4 cycles each
hane II: 3 terkibs a = 4 cycles
b = 6 cycles
c = 4 cycles
hane III: 3 terkibs a = 3 cycles
b = 1 cycle
c = 2 cycles

Cantemir’s description of the scale and melodic progression of Pençgah

(ca. 1700:IV:44) essentially agrees with the current repertoire, a large portion
of which is attributed to composers of Cantemir’s era. The makam became
much less common after the eighteenth century. His description and the mod-
ern repertoire show Pençgah to be a compound (mürekkeb) makam composed
of Nişabur and Rast. In terms of scale this requires an alternation of the third
degree between B (segah) and B (buselik), of the fourth between c (çargah)
and uzzal (c#), and of the seventh between f# (evç) and acem (f). The melodic
movement commences from G (rast) and demonstrates the progression of
Rast, before modulating to Nişabur, using B, c#, and d. From there makam Uzzal
appears with a temporary stop on A. The conclusion is in the makam Rast.
Neither the scale nor the melodic progression of Pençgah are evident in
“Gülistan” (see Ex. 3.3). The scale and most of the melodic movement is that of
Nişabur, except for the finalis on the note G (rast). We might characterize the
modality of this piece as Nişabur with a finalis (karar) on G, but without the
modal cadences of the makam Rast. By the middle of the seventeenth century
this was no longer an acceptable melodic progression for Pençgah.
Both the serhane and mülazime are formed out of a few motives, which are
partly shared in both sections, and are arranged in pairs. The most important
motive is the opening cycle of terkib A (serhane). This motive is repeated in
terkib B, and in M B. Later on, it reappears as cycle 1 of H 1 T A. Terkib A of the
serhane can be seen as a two-cycle unit with a teslim, in which cycle 2 is the

1 For a seyir of Neva see Yekta (1921:2999). I recorded a rather similar seyir from Necdet Yaşar on
15-8-87. Also see chapter on semai here.
352 Chapter 11

Example 3.3 Pençgah, “Gülistan,” düyek, Acemlerin (Cantemir Collection: no. 27)
Peşrevs and Analyses 353

Example 3.4 Uzzal “Bustan”, düyek, ʿAcemi, serhane and mülazime B (Cantemir Collection:
no. 29)

prima volta, and cycle 4 is the secunda volta. Cycle 3 is a reduced version of A 1,
consisting of only the dominant and finalis of the Rast scale on which Pençgah
is based. A 4 is repeated verbatim as cycle 3 of B. Terkib B is essentially a repeat
of terkib A except for the insertion of a variation of the second section con-
structed out of a repetition of the opening 4 beats, thus creating a three-unit
version of a binary structure.
The mülazime shifts the tonal center higher, to the dominant fifth degree
(neva, d). The binary structure of the serhane does not appear in terkib A of the
mülazime, but it returns in terkib B, which opens with the first cycle of H I A.
The second part of H I is expanded into two cycles, concluding on the finalis
(G). However, the terkib does not end here; the first four beats of the first part
are joined with the last four beats of B 3 to form the final cycle of the terkib.
H II modulates into the makam Mahur, whose tonal center is the note ger-
daniye (g), the upper tonic of rast (G). Both terkibs A and B are constructed in
an ABAB pattern. The first half of terkib B is a transposition of terkib A one tone
higher. The first cycle of H III repeats the opening of H I A and B. New material
enters in cycles 2 and 3 of A, and all of B. Both terkibs close with cadence no. 3,
which had appeared in M B. Thus, repetition and binary structures are essen-
tial to each hane and almost each terkib in the “Gülistan” peşrev (see Fig. 3.3).
Rather similar conclusions may be drawn from another Persian peşrev in the
usul düyek, in the Uzzal makam, known as “Bustan,” which Cantemir notated
on the following page of his collection (no. 29) (see Ex. 3.4). The names of
these peşrevs mean “rose-garden” (gülistan) and “garden” (bustan) and both
are in the same usul. Possibly their positioning in the Collection indicates that
they were felt to be linked in some way, such as having the same composer or
354 Chapter 11

A B
H I: a + b + x*+ 1 |
A B A C
M: x + d + cad 2 | a + b* | x + cad 3 | x + d + cad 2 | f + f 1 | f 2 + d 2 | cad2
A B C
H II: g + h | g-1 + h-1 | g + 1 + h + 1 | g+h | i + j | x* + 1 | g-5 + cad 1 |
A B
H III: a + x | x + cad 3 | x + x | x + cad 3 |
Figure 3.3 “Gülistan” hanes, terkibs and cycles

originating in the same historical period, etc. It is evident from the scores that
their conception of composition is rather similar.
“Bustan” is more or less of the same scope as “Gülistan” except that the mül-
azime has only two terkibs compared to four in “Gulistan.” The entire mülazime
of “Bustan” is created out of imitative sequences. The only pure repetition is
line 1 of MA which reappears as line 6. The next three lines contain a sequence
whose nucleus is one cycle long and which is transposed downward three
times, each time by a tone. Line 7 is another series of half-cycle transpositions
(on e, d, c, and B ). New melodic material appears only in line 5 and 9, where
there is some intervalic variation as well.
The scale of the makam Uzzal, but almost nothing of its melodic progres-
sion is evident in “Bustan.” The only important tonal centers are e and A (fifth
and finalis). From the serhane it is not clear whether the melody is ascending
or descending, as both tonal centers have almost equal attraction. Neither ser-
hane nor mülazime show any secondary tonal centers. The melody is generated
by transposed sequences and leaps of a fourth. By any known standards of
seyir this is not the makam Uzzal or the modern Hicaz, except for the cadential
formula, which was used in an Uzzal semai in the Bobowski Collection (see
Part 3, chap. 7). The seyir of Uzzal will be discussed at length under period 3.

1.2 Osman Paşa el-Atik

Bobowski opened his collection, the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” (ca. 1650), with the
fasıl in the makam Hüseyni. The first piece in this fasıl is a peşrev in the düyek
usul by a certain Osman Paşa, termed “the Old” or “the Ancient” (“el-Atik”) (see
Ex. 3.5). The identity of this Osman Paşa has not been determined, but the fact
that he is called “Ancient” and that the peşrev is the first item in the first fasıl
of the collection indicates a certain antiquity. Stylistically, the peşrev is closely
related to the Persian peşrevs in Cantemir. Cantemir also has a version of this
item (Collection:no. 316) which differs from Bobowski’s in small but significant
Peşrevs and Analyses 355

details, exemplifying the changes occurring in the conception of melody dur-

ing the seventeenth century.
Ratios of Bobowski’s version:

hane I: 1 terkib 4 cycles

Mülazime: 2 terkibs 4 cycles each
hane II: 2 terkibs 2 cycles each
hane III: 1 terkib 2 cycle
hane IV: 1 terkib 4 cycles

The makam Hüseyni has remained an important makam in Turkish music since
the sixteenth century, if not earlier, when it had sometimes been called by the
name “Kürdi.”2 Bobowski’s title names the makam as “Dügah-Hüseyni” although
the piece heads the section in Hüseyni. A makam named “Dügah-Hüseyni” is not
documented, to my knowledge, in any Ottoman source. This dual makam-title
probably indicates that by the early seventeenth century the makam known
both as Hüseyni and Kürdi was acquiring a more codified melodic progression
and that the older items in the known repertoire did not always fit into the cur-
rent makam categories. Fifty years later, Cantemir’s treatise still shows much
confusion in defining the makams Uşşak and Dügah, considered to be a single
makam by the author, in opposition to many other musicians who considered
them to be distinct (Cantemir ca. 1700:111–125; Feldman 2022:201–02).
Bobowski’s piece shows only the rudiments of the seyir of the makam
Hüseyni; a tonal center on e (hüseyni) and karar on A, plus brief pauses on g
and c. The ağaze (opening point) on A, rather than c or e, and the absence of
any significant secondary tonal centers reveals the distance of this item from
the later conception of seyir. What we see here is more properly the scale of
Hüseyni rather than its seyir. This vagueness of seyir can be observed in other
items in “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” which are nominally in the makam Hüseyni.
In Bobowski’s version repetition, imitation, and simple binary structures
predominate. The serhane is reused without any change as terkib B of the mül-
azime. Both the second and third hanes are created by simple imitation. The
melodic periods are not significantly longer than in the Persian peşrevs.
Another stylistic link with the Persian peşrev is the near-identity of the
rhythmic formula found in the serhane of Osman Paşa’s düyek peşrev and the
Persian peşrev in Pençgah “Gülistan” (Cantemir Collection:no. 27):

2 For the seyir see Yekta (1921:2997). He also supplies a transcription (Ibid.:2979) of what may
be the oldest surviving item in this makam.
356 Chapter 11

Example 3.5 Dügah-Hüseyni, düyek, Osman Paşa el-Atik (Bobowski ca. 1650:1)

Example 3.6 Osman Paşa, H I and “Gülistan,” H I

Peşrevs and Analyses 357

A
H I: a+b|
A B
M: x + c | x + c* | a + b |
A B
H II: d + d - 1 | d-2 + d-3 |
A
H III: e + e + 1 | x + b |
A
H IV: f + x | f + x | x + f |
Figure 3.4 Osman Paşa, hane, terkibs and cycles

Ratios of Cantemir’s version:

hane I = mülazime: 2 terkibs (+ repeat of A and intikal)

hane II: 1 terkib (equals Bobowski’s M)
hane III: 1 terkib (equals Bobowski’s H IV)

The differences between these two versions are slight, but nevertheless required
some recasting of the original. Cantemir has redefined the usul as muhammes,
a sixteen-beat cycle, twice the length of düyek. Bobowski’s version had four
hanes. Cantemir has presented the piece as a later seventeenth-century Persian-
style peşrev with three hanes and no separate mülazime, as he writes, “serhane
ve mülazime.” In order to do this, he (or his source) eliminated Bobowski’s third
hane and put H IV in that slot. Cantemir’s version has a one cycle “terkib-intikal”
(“transporting terkib”) (see Ex. 3.7) at the end of his serhane/mülazime, whose
function is to ease the abruptness of the jump from the descending phrase at
the end of the mülazime to the opening on a in H II. This terkib repeats the first
cycle of the serhane, and is an ascending melody:

Example 3.7 Terkib-i intikal from Cantemir’s H I

Cantemir had used the same phrase as part of a thirty-two-beat phrase with
which he closed his H I B, corresponding to Bobowski’s MA (see Ex. 3.8).
Bobowski’s version shows something of the seyir of Hüseyni by halting on g
and c in his first two cycles (sixteen beats), but he concludes with a simple
358 Chapter 11

Example 3.8 Comparison of Bobowski’s MA and Cantemir’s H I B. (Hüseyni, Küçük

Muhammes, Osman Paşa, Cantemir Collection: no. 316)

cadential formula in his last two cycles. Where Bobowski’s melody dropped
sharply from e to A within sixteen beats, Cantemir’s arches up and down
from e and down to d, then up to g, down from f# to d, rises from B to e,
then falls from d to B, and from c to G, before concluding with A and e. This
section constitutes the principal melodic difference between the earlier and
later versions.
Bobowski’s H IV and Cantemir’s H III modulate into the makam Uzzal. It is
probably not accidental that Cantemir’s version jettisoned the older H III, with
its melodic sequence in the first cycle. Such melodic sequences still existed in
the second half of the seventeenth century, but they were no longer a major
part of the functioning compositional style.
Bobowski’s version of the peşrev of Osman Paşa seems to be closely
related stylistically to the Persian and other peşrevs of the first half of the
sixteenth century. Its compositional techniques appear much the same, and
the dimensions of its melodic periods, terkibs and hanes are identical. The
main differences between this item and the Persian peşrevs seem to be the
appearance of a fourth hane, and possibly a somewhat sharper awareness of
melodic progression. However, its relative weakness of seyir can be judged by
contrasting it with the later version from the Cantemir Collection. The latter,
while attempting to keep to the shape of the original, has in fact modified it
by eliminating melodic sequences and adding small sections to express the
melodic progression.
Peşrevs and Analyses 359

2 Period 2 (1550–1600)

It is likely that many items in both the Bobowski and Cantemir Collections
date from this period, but the musical history of the era is so poorly known
that few of the musicians’ names can be identified. As in the preceding period
we cannot be sure to what extent the pieces may have been modernized before
being recorded in the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz,” the older of the two collections. It
seems that a reasonable candidate for the role of representative peşrev com-
poser for the period from 1550–1600 would be Hasan Can (1490?–1567), one
of the few well-known musical figures of the era (Sanal 1961:160–1, 193–200;
TMA 1969:253–4).3 This particular peşrev, in makam Hüseyni, usul düyek (see
Tab. 3.4), was still famous in the first half of the seventeenth century, when
Evliya Çelebi reports that it had been performed by the mehter ensemble at an
outdoor procession for Sultan Murad IV (Sanal 1961:161).

Table 3.4 Hüseyni, düyek, Hasan Can (Bobowski ca. 1650:24)

hane I: 2 terkibs, 4 cycles each.

mülazime: 3 terkibs
terkib A 2 cycles
terkib B 9 cycles
terkib C 4 cycles
hane II: 3 terkibs
terkib A 6 cycles
terkib B 4 cycles
terkib C 4 cycles
hane III: 2 terkibs
terkib A 7 cycles
terkib B 10 cycles
serbend: 1 terkib 4 cycles

3 Hasan Can’s father, Isfahanli Müezzin Hafız Mehmed, had been in the service of the
Akkoyunlu Sofu Halil and then of the Safavid Shah Ismail. He was taken from Tabriz by
Sultan Selim I in 1514. Hasan Can established the relationship of “boon-companion” (nedim)
with both Selim I and Suleyman I (“The Magnificent” 1520–1566). He was both a member of
the ʿulamāʾ and a teacher of music at the court. His son, Sadettin, became a Şeyhülislam and
a leading historian, and the founder of an important family in the Ottoman higher ʿulamāʾ.
Besides belonging to a different class from the other professional musicians taken by Sultan
Selim from Tabriz to Istanbul, he was a generation younger than most of them, and his musi-
cal formation took place partly in Turkey.
360 Chapter 11

Example 3.9 Hasan Can, düyek, serhane, mülazime, hane II (Bobowski ca. 1610:24)
Note: In this piece I have halved the temporal value of Bobowskľ’s notes (his half
note to a quarter note), in order to correspond more closely to Cantemir’s ver-
sion. Complete transcriptions of both versions are found in Sana! (1961:193–200).

The proportions of the individual sections of this item suggest significant

development in compositional technique since the last period. Both Hasan
Can’s and Osman Paşa’s peşrevs are in the düyek usul, but in the latter the ter-
kibs are four or two cycles long. In this peşrev, terkibs may be two, four, six,
seven, nine, or ten cycles. Thus, the periods are both longer, and more varied.
Even without looking at the score, this suggests that repetition and melodic
sequences must be less important than previously.
The earlier compositional techniques are virtually absent from the serhane
and mülazime. The individual cycles are linked in a variety of ways to form
Peşrevs and Analyses 361

continuous melodies, without unit repetition. The serhane repeats the notes
e-A of the end of H 1:1 as the opening of H 1:2, and again as the end of cycle 3.
Unlike the earlier items, however, this jump from the tonal center to the karar
is not a marker between units; rather it links the melodic units by transforming
a closing into an opening phrase There are melodic sequences in serhane and
mülazime, but these are not the simple ascending phrases of the previous era.
For example, in H1B, the first four cycles form a melodic sequence, but they are
not literal transpositions, and there is a rapid shifting of tonal center from a to
b before resolving briefly on d (cycle 2). Almost all of MB is constructed out of
similar sequences, but their patterns change quickly, and they do not always
go in the same direction. One sequence begins in cycle 5, ascending from A
(dügah), then descends in 6 to G, then moves up (in 7) to B, before resolving
on A in the last three cycles. These compositional techniques demonstrate a
degree of sophistication, but not of the sort characteristic of Turkish music in
the seventeenth century or thereafter.4
The great value of this piece is the insight it affords into how composition
was developing in the second half of the sixteenth century, when seyir was
not yet a dominating principle. The relative sophistication and attractiveness
of Hasan Can’s use of melody are undeniable, but he achieved this without a
developed use of seyir. In terms of melodic progression, H I and H II are no
more “seyir-conscious” than the peşrevs of the “Persians” or of Osman Paşa.
In H I A we see the same movement from A to a, then from e to A that had char-
acterized Osman’s serhane. In H I B the upper range of the makam is attacked
without any use of secondary tonal centers. MB does pay some attention to the
note c (cycles 2 and 3), but basically the entire terkib has little to do with the
seyir of Hüseyni. Seyir is totally left behind in H II, which begins with a sweep-
ing ascent from G (rast) to ď (tiz neva) and continues with a long series of
melodic sequences in the upper range. Cantemir’s version retains most of the
earlier H I, M and H II, but shows significant reworking of H III. The substance
of Bobowski’s H III has been left intact, but the whole is preceded by a new
terkib of eight cycles whose function seems to be to exploit an area of the seyir
of Hüseyni which the original had barely touched.

4 The whole gives the impression of a changing bourdon. We know that in the seventeenth
century this piece was performed as part of the mehter repertoire with trumpet drones, but
it is doubtful that Hasan Can, who was a courtier and alim had composed it for this outdoor
ensemble. Despite Sanal’s admirable research, we do not know enough about the style of
the mehter to speculate about the possible utilization of movable drones in composition.
Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol’s more recent (2011) recordings of his own ensemble using variable
drones demonstrate much creative artistry.
362 Chapter 11

Example 3.10 Hasan Can, H III (Bobowski and Cantemir)

Bobowski’s H II was entirely in the upper range, while H III A began to

touch on the note g (gerdaniye), which was to become a major secondary tonal
center of the makam; by the later eighteenth century a new makam (Gülizar)
would emerge out of this tonal emphasis within Hüseyni. Bobowski’s H III A is
meant to utilize this area, but Cantemir’s version gives a more extended mel-
ody which uses much the same ambitus as the earlier H III A.
Bobowskľ’s and Cantemir’s version differ only in some details of rhythmic
phrasing, and in the division into terkibs. The identical melodic material in the
mülazime is divided into four terkibs by Bobowski, while Cantemir’s has only
two. Bobowski’s terkibs succeed one another without teslim, while Cantemir’s
Peşrevs and Analyses 363

version ends with elaborate teslims, Where Bobowski has held notes, Cantemir
introduces ornamental runs. In Hane III Cantemir’s version modulates into
Uzzal and Zirgüle, and it is not unlikely that Bobowski’s version was meant to
do the same, had he introduced the necessary accidentals (c# and G#).5
In addition, the intervallic alternation which is a standard feature of the
modern seyir is absent. Basic notes in this category are f, c# and B instead
of f#, c and B . This contrast may be seen as early as the second half of the
seventeenth century in the serhane of the “Fihrist Peşrevi” (küll-i külliyat) on
page 157 of the Cantemir Collection, which is a telescoped version of a norma-
tive melodic progression of Hüseyni including its closely related terkib Şiraz.
The progression seen here could be taken as standard even for many items of
the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (e.g. the Ağır semai of Zaharya,
d. ca. 1760).
The Hüseyni düyek peşrev of Hasan Can affords some insight into the rather
obscure period 2 (1550–1600). The melodic movement of this mid or late
sixteenth-century peşrev represents the basic scale degrees from A to ď, with
e as a major resting point, although not the main tonal center. The melody of
Hasan Can’s peşrev seems to be generated essentially by scale, not seyir. It is
likely that where the melodies of the two items agree they reflect a conception
of melodic progression as it had existed in period 2. By period 4 these melodic
conceptions were considered archaic. Most of the repetitive compositional
techniques of the earlier period were abandoned, although various types of
melodic sequencing were still important. The scope of the peşrev, i.e. the length
of melodic units and of individual sections, was larger than before, close to

5 Another item which seems to reflect the compositional style of period 2 is the “Büyük Zincir”
in Hüseyni by Gazi Giray Han (1554–1607), the ruler of the Crimea, which appears on page
101 of the Cantemir Collection. Other peşrevs and semais of his appear in the two collec-
tions under the names “Tatar Han” or “Tatar.” Although Cantemir’s score was written approxi-
mately a century after the piece was composed, it is comparable to Hasan Can’s Hüseyni
düyek in its general scope and its use of makam. Another link to the sixteenth century is
furnished by its usul. Zincir is a compound usul constructed out of düyek, fahte, çenber, devr-i
kebir, and berefşan. In the two collections çenber is normally twenty-four beats. Here çenber
consists of twelve beats. This detail points to a period prior to 1600.
None of the items known today as the compositions of Gazi Giray Han appear in the col-
lections, except for the Mahur düyek peşrevi which entered the modern repertoire through
the 1920’s publication of Rauf Yekta. The modern compositions of “Gazi Giray Han” seem to
be predominantly early nineteenth-century pseudographia. The most popular items today,
the peşrevs in Şedd-i Araban, Beyati-Araban, and Hüzzam employ makams which came into
existence in the mid- and later eighteenth century, nearly two centuries after his lifetime.
Gazi Giray was also an important literary figure. His life and poetic works are discussed in
Ertaylan 1958.
364 Chapter 11

what they would become in the next period. However, melodic progression did
not seem to have much effect on composition, and fairly sophisticated results
could be obtained without relying heavily on seyir to guide the melody.

3 Period 3 (1600–1650)

The compositional structures and modal usage of the seventeenth century are
far more accessible than those of the previous century, which are only available
in the versions which had been notated in the two great seventeenth-century
collections, the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” of Bobowski and the collection of Prince
Cantemir. The primary source for period 3 is the Bobowski Collection. While
Bobowski notated some pieces which were composed prior to the seven-
teenth century, his collection is primarily a record of the repertoire which he
played at the court. For this reason, the documentation for period 3 is particu-
larly rich.
The melodic progression of the makam-i Acem (see Ex. 3.11) seems to have
undergone change since the mid-seventeenth century, and the various early
and later sources present the makam rather differently. Therefore, one cannot
be as definite about the nature of the seventeenth-century seyir of Acem as
for Irak or Neva. Nevertheless, while the melodic progression visible in “Gül-i
Rana” seems essentially consistent with Cantemir’s description, the only tones
which have undisputed prominence are f (acem) and A (dügah). The notes g, e,
d, or c, which are supposed to be major tonal centers according to the various
descriptions of the makam (and in the later repertoire), have only an ambigu-
ous significance here. The melody brushes past them on the way to f or A. In
“Gül-i Rana” the serhane shows the note d to be more important than e, as is
indicated by Cantemir and many later writers.
While imitation and repetition are not absent from this piece, their role
is much less than in the earlier Persian peşrevs. The second cycle of the ser-
hane is little more than a transposition one fourth upward of the first cycle,
but this imitation forms part of a broader melodic movement, with a clear
direction toward the note acem (f), the tonal center in the seyir of the makam
Acem. Terkib D of the mülazime is dominated by an imitative sequence, but
this is part of a long descending phrase, comprising ten cycles. The remaining
six cycles of terkib D consist of another imitative sequence forming another
descending phrase. Bobowski’s MD (= Cantemir’s MB) features two descend-
ing sections; the first from cycles 3 to 7, and the second from cycles 9 to 12,
which leads into a cadence. Altogether, the descending sections stretch over
fourteen cycles. The early peşrevs have nothing like these prolonged descents.
Peşrevs and Analyses 365

Example 3.11 Acem, “Gül-i Rana” düyek (Bobowski ca. 1630:159 and Cantemir
Collection: no. 138), H I, M, H II
366 Chapter 11

Example 3.12 “Gül-i Rana,” H III

Such long descending phrases became characteristic of the peşrevs of the later
seventeenth century, e.g. by Angeli and Cantemir, but they were less common
in the earlier seventeenth century.
Not only has the concept of melodic unit expanded beyond the half cycle
or cycle, (without having recourse to AAAB or ABAB patterns), the terkib is less
inviolable as a unit. Terkib D of the mülazime has thirteen cycles, comprising
two distinct melodic units, of seven cycles and six cycles, respectively. Three of
the four cycles of the serhane are composed of the transpositions of the mel-
ody of cycle one. This melodic nucleus is transformed in cycle 4 of MA, and in
cycle 1 of MB, (the phrasing is even closer in Cantemir’s version). MA is divided
into two melodic units, the first consisting of three cycles, and the second of
two cycles. Cycle 4, which opens the second unit, is reused in MB as the first
cycle of a four-cycle terkib, which does not repeat the melodic material of MA.
Although MA cycle 4 and MB cycle 1 are identical, they are performing different
melodic functions in rather distinct melodic environments.
Hane III is created out of a single melody of four cycles, first played in A,
then in E. We should probably accept Cantemir’s rendering of the two melo-
dies as Uzzal and Zirgüle. Many of the perşevs in Cantemir’s Collection create
their third hane through a modulating melody which is then transposed up or
down a fourth or a fifth.
Although there is small-scale repetition and transposition, the melodies
of the individual cycle units do not display the binary and repetitive struc-
tures, nor the concentration on a single tonal area which dominated the two
Acemi peşrevs. “Gül-i Rana” represents a stage of development intermediate
between the sixteenth-century “Persian” perşevs and the pieces by Ali Hoca
and Muzaffer in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Peşrevs and Analyses 367

Example 3.13 (Uzzal), devr-i kebir, Şah Murad (Bobowski ca. 1650:319–20)
368 Chapter 11

The peşrevs of Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) total eleven pieces, of which
seven were notated by Bobowski (see Ex. 3.13) and four by Cantemir. It seems
likely that Bobowski had been a court musician while Murad was still ruling
(Behar 1991:18), so there is no basis on which to question the authenticity of
Bobowski’s transcriptions. Sultan Murad died at the age of thirty-eight, and
so he was of the same generation as Muzaffer and other musicians who were
active between 1650 and 1680.

hane I: one terkib, 2 cycles.

mülazime: four terkibs
terkib A: 2 cycles
terkib B: 3 cycles
terkib C: 2 cycles
terkib D: 2 cycles
hane II: four terkibs
terkib A: 21/2 cycles
terkib B: 1 cycle
terkib C: 2 cycles
terkib D: 2 cycles
hane III: five terkibs
terkib A: 1 cycle
terkib B: 1 cycle
terkib C: 2 cycles
terkib D: 1 cycle
terkib E: 2 cycles

The scope of this piece is not much more ambitious than that of the Persian
peşrevs of the previous century. Although there are hanes consisting of as
many as four and five terkibs, the terkibs themselves are short, usually two or
even one usul cycle. As might be expected, the shortness and evenness of most
of the terkibs is the result of a highly symmetrical and repetitive compositional
structure (see Fig. 3.5).
Repetition, particularly of the ABAB type, is seen in every hane of this peşrev.
The compositional technique might be compared in this respect to the Acemi
peşrevs of period 1. However, in H II A there is a rhythmical asymmetry. After
a half-cycle of 7/4 the next phrase continues for fourteen beats with no clear
demarcation into seven-beat units; this apparently forms a twenty-one beat
phrase. After this, the next phrase fits into the two half-cycle form of fourteen
beats. It is a descending phrase which is allowed to continue for fourteen beats
Peşrevs and Analyses 369

A
H I: a+x|a+x|
A (cadence) B C D
M: a +x | cad | b + c | b + x | b + c | x + x | cad | x + x | cad
A B C D
H II: d + x | d + x | e + x | e + x | e + x | f + x | f-3 + x |
A B C D E
H III: x + g | x + g | i + j | i + j’ | j + j’ | x + x | x + x |
Figure 3.5 Hane, terkib structure

without a clear caesura, and this creation of a sweeping descent is a herald of

the style of the second half of the seventeenth century.
The seeming modernity of the piece is not due to its compositional struc-
ture, which is clearly archaic, but mainly to its use of melodic progression. It
is possible to extract from the peşrev something resembling a seyir of Hicaz
or Uzzal (see Ex. 3.14), minus the modulations which entered this makam in
the eighteenth century, e.g. the brief appearances of the makams Nişabur and
Evç. Likewise, the sixth must remain constant (as a neutral tone), whereas
in the modern Hicaz/Uzzal, the sixth degree is highly variable (cf. Yekta
1921:3006).6
This seyir, derived from the piece itself, is expressed by the melodic move-
ment within each terkib, by the positioning of each terkib within its hane, and
by the placement of the hanes. Ex. 3.14 shows the terkibs of the peşrev (indi-
cated by letters) which correspond to the seyir. While this seyir does not corre-
spond exactly to any modern seyir, and there is no detailed seyir available from
the seventeenth century, it is clear that several tonal centers receive emphasis
in a specific order, not only the points of entry and ending, and (optionally)
one other tonal center. The path of the melody is complex, involving many
forward and returning movements. Large leaps are avoided, and the areas sur-
rounding the principal tonal centers are covered before any broader movement
is undertaken. In short, this is a seyir in the modern Turco-Arabian tradition.
A comparable melodic progression for Uzzal could not have been extracted
from a period 1 composition, such as the Persian peşrev “Bustan” discussed ear-
lier (Ex. 3.4 and 3.14a).

6 Yekta’s seyir is of the modern Hicaz variety of this makam, which has d (neva) as its tonal
center. In period 3, both Hicaz and Uzzal tended to emphasize e more strongly.
370 Chapter 11

Example 3.14 Seyir of Uzzal in Şah Murad’s peşrev

Despite the many repetitions, at times terkibs are joined in order to lengthen
the period and express the melodic progression more fully. In H II, terkibs A,
B, and C all end upon the note a (muhayyer). Their endings do not mark essen-
tial caesuras; rather the melody and the seyir are allowed to continue almost
seamlessly between them. Particularly in H II, the repetitive returns to caden-
tial formulas are laid aside in favor of longer periods and more continuous
melodic progression.
What is striking in the peşrev of Murad IV is the creation of the rather modern
seyir without a correspondingly modern compositional technique. The com-
poser has woven his seyir through the various terkibs while allowing for con-
siderable repetition created by repeated sections and frequent long cadences.
Peşrevs and Analyses 371

Within the contemporaneous Bobowski Collection other peşrevs show more

modern compositional techniques, i.e., less repetition and longer periods,
sometimes with modern seyirs, or sometimes without them. Considerations of
space prevent us from viewing the variety of melodic and compositional tech-
niques which were documented by Bobowski. Murad IV’s peşrev represents
one important approach to makam and composition in this period.

4 Period 4 (1650–1690)

The only available source for the peşrevs of this period is the collection of
Prince Cantemir (ca. 1700), as well as some items in Kevseri. Unlike Bobowski,
Cantemir did not concentrate primarily on the peşrevs of his own generation.
He notated his own peşrevs, and those of his teachers and informants, but in
addition to these, he has a wide variety of peşrevs, principally from the first half
of the seventeenth century, in their “modernized” forms, as well as some older
pieces. For the peşrevs of period 4 the Cantemir Collection does not present
problems of misattribution and oral transmission because the author person-
ally knew many of the composers, such as Angeli, Eyyubi Mehmed, and Ali
Hoca, and their students.
One of the hallmarks of the style of period 4 is a longer conception of
melodic line which is not usually dependent upon sequences and imitation to
achieve its greater scope. This tendency can be seen even in the shortest and
simplest peşrevs. A good example is an anonymous düyek peşrev in makam
Nühüft which employs the newer Persian peşrev form which combined the
serhane and mülazime (see Ex. 3.15). This usage and the fact that this item
appears only in the Cantemir Collection suggest that it was not created prior
to 1650.
This mülazime contains three terkibs. Terkib A has six usul cycles, terkib B
has six cycles and terkib C has eight cycles. The overall length is not greater
than Hasan Can’s peşrev, but the melody is constructed in a totally different
manner. There are few transpositions and sequences, which may be seen only
in terkib C, cycles 5 and 6. The cadential formula is long, covering a full two
cycles, and it is varied considerably at each repetition. Each terkib is divided
into introduction, middle section, and cadence. The introduction begins and
closes on the note d (neva), the tonal center of the makam Neva and of its şube
(terkib) Nühüft. The middle section descends to A (finalis of Neva), while the
cadence reaches the finalis of Nühüft (E). In terkib A these sections are two
372 Chapter 11

Example 3.15 Nühüft düyek, serhane/mülazime (Cantemir Collection: no. 230)

cycles each. In terkib B the introduction is three sections, and the middle is one
cycle. In terkib C the introduction is four cycles, the middle is two cycles. Each
introductory and intermediary section is closely related, but each one contains
subtle differences involving range and/ or single-note alterations. For exam-
ple, the introduction of A and B uses the altered notes c♯ and f, but in rather
different orders. Terkib A descends from d to c♯ before climbing gradually
upward, while terkib C moves upward as far as g before descending by means
of f and dispenses with c♯. These movements show a very clear conception of
melodic progression which will not permit sudden ascents, descents, repeti-
tions, or transpositions without a definite modal function. The progression of
Nühüft displayed here can be considered modern.7 In this case there seems to
be a close connection between melodic progression and the construction of
the melody.

7 This was Necdet Yaşar’s opinion when he recorded this peşrev for me in July of 1987.
Peşrevs and Analyses 373

5 Neyzen Ali Hoca8

The form of Neva used in this peşrev (see Ex. 3.16) has elements of the modern
makam Beyati. This is not surprising, as Cantemir’s contemporaries believed
that there were “twenty-four varieties of Neva,” all sharing the tonal center of
the note neva (d), which was also the tonal center of both seventeenth-century
and modern Beyati. Today, such a seyir in Neva would be criticized as, to use
Necdet Yaşar’s term, “Beyatileşme” (“Beyaticizing”). Nevertheless, this peşrev
displays a conception of melodic progression which is very close to the modern
one, while the sixteenth-century example is much further away in this regard.
In addition, the melodic progression is expressed in a group of tightly linked
terkibs composed of several usul cycles. The melody extends beyond the limits
of the single usul cycle, sometimes for several terkibs. While some repetition is
still evident, it is no longer the essential compositional technique which it was
in the sixteenth-century peşrev.9
The opening of Neva is clearly expressed in the serhane. This opening sec-
tion is continued into terkib A of the mülazime. We should notice cycle 2 of
MA, which ends with a suspended cadence emphasizing c and B, raised to a
natural, a rather sophisticated technique, that links this piece with modem
practice. M B introduces the notes e and the flattened third (f), while main-
taining the tonal center on neva (d). The finalis is reinforced at the end of both
terkibs by the identical cadential formula. The second hane introduces the area
from d to a, with a flattened sixth degree above neva, before descending to

8 Four pieces by “Ali Hoca” appear in the Cantemir Collection, and none in the Bobowskĩ
Collection. This suggests that he was active in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Neyzen Ali Hoca is one of four individuals named as sources in the seventh chapter of
his treatise (ca. 1700:VII:53). The appellation “Hoca” (“The Teacher”), designates him as
a master of the classical repertoire. We may conclude that he belonged to the genera-
tion immediately preceding Cantemir’s. His peşrevs are recorded in the later part of the
collection, near the works of musicians such as Kanbosu Ahmed and Eyyubi Mehmed
Çelebi, who lived in the second half of the seventeenth century. The structure of Ali
Hoca’s peşrevs are similar to those of Muzaffer, who is known to have been active in the
last decades of the seventeenth century.
9 Necdet Yaşar’s seyir of Neva, which I recorded in 1987, does reach a similar movement, but
only in the second half of the seyir, after a section emphasizing the pentachord from d to
a, with a descent featuring a flattened third degree above neva (đ), followed by a descent
to the finalis (A), then another section emphasizing the tetrachord from e to a, with a
passing flattened b, and another descent to the finalis. Only after these areas are dealt
with does the g play a significant role. Although this seyir is modern, it is more consis-
tent which the repertoire from. 1650 to the present than is this pre-seventeenth-century
peşrev. This point can be seen by looking at two Neva peşrevs which are from the earlier
and later parts of the seventeenth century.
374 Chapter 11

Example 3.16 Neva, devr-i kebir, Ali Hoca, (Cantemir Collection: no. 231)

neva in B 2, and then to the finalis (A) in B 4. Although this piece is approxi-
mately three hundred years old, it expresses a melodic progression which is
remarkably close to Tanburi Necdet’s (see Ex. 3.80). The major difference in
seyir begins in H III, where the makam Nihavend is introduced. This was cer-
tainly not part of the seyir of Neva, but it was apparently a standard modula-
tion in the seventeenth century, as evidenced by its numerous occurrences in
the Neva repertoire recorded by Cantemir. However, after the appearance of
Nihavend, H III B reintroduces the standard seyir of Neva by creating a terkib
out of material from H II A and MB which reiterates the higher ambitus of the
makam and the final descent. H III B 1 concludes on the tonal center, d, while
H III B 2 concludes on the finalis, A.
Although Ali Hoca’s piece is not without repetition and imitation, (especially
in MA, with its ABAC structure), the conception of melody extends beyond the
terkib to encompass two and even three terkibs. The melodic movement of the
serhane is continued into MA, and the movement of MB continues without
interruption into H II A and B. Here it is impossible to separate the conception
of melodic progression from that of melodic movement within several rhyth-
mic cycles and terkibs.
Peşrevs and Analyses 375

Example 3.17 Irak, devr-i kebir, Ali Hoca (Cantemir Collection: no. 229)

hane 1: 1 terkib 3 cycles

mülazime: 3 terkibs 2 cycles each
hane II: 2 terkibs 2cycles each
hane III: 2 terkibs
terkib A 1 cycle
terkib B 2 cycles
376 Chapter 11

The melodic progression visible in the next peşrev does not differ in any essen-
tial point from the modern practice or from the modal description written
by Cantemir (see chapter 6, part 2). When Necdet Yaşar recorded it for me
in 1987, he regarded it as an example of the “makam Irak that we know” (see
Ex. 3.17). This progression is clearly expressed in the mülazime, which com-
mences on F♯, then jumps up to d (neva), so that it can descend to A, in the
manner of Uşşak. Terkib C descends toward D (yegah), and then ascends to A,
before closing on F♯. H II introduces the note c♯, which had already appeared
in the cadential formula, and makes a temporary stop on the upper tonic (f♯,
evç). Other features of the seyir appear in the serhane, such as the suspended
cadence on c, and on B. There is also a brief introduction of the note saba (d ♭.)
Today, this note is played somewhat higher, and is called “kapalı neva” (“closed
neva”), to distinguish it from the modern note saba. This brief modulation in
Irak forms the basis for the makam Bestenigar (Yekta 1921:3008). Other nota-
tions in Cantemir show the same usage, e.g. his version of “Bülbül-i Irak” which
introduces saba in the serhane (Collection:no. 35). This small modulation is
also characteristic of the modern seyir (e.g, that of Necdet Yaşar).
The asymmetry of this piece, compared with the previous examples, sug-
gests that a binary structure may not be as prominent. The first halves of the
two cycles of H III A are identical for the first five of their seven beats, but
other than these nothing approaching a binary structure exists in this peşrev.
Those terkibs which close on the finalis of the makam (ırak, F♯) show a uniform
cadential formula (H 1:5–6, MB:4–5, MC:4–5, H III B:4–5), but this is a stable
feature of Turkish musical style well into the twentieth century, and it is not
connected with a binary or other repetitive structure.

Example 3.18 a) Bestenigar, Numan Ağa, teslim; b) “Bülbül-i Irak,” (Cantemir

Collection: no. 35), serhane; c) “Irak devr-i kebir,” Ali Hoca, serhane
Peşrevs and Analyses 377

Single melodic units usually extend through one, two, or even three cycles
of the usul. For example, in H I bars 1–2 and 3–4 form one melodic unit, fol-
lowed by the cadential formula (5–6). In MA the melodic unit extends for two
cycles; in MB and MC for one cycle (followed by cadence). As in Sultan Murad’s
peşrev, the terkib endings in H II do not mark essential caesuras; the melody
flows continuously through two cycles of A (1–4) and one of B (1–2) before
returning to the cadential formula (4–5).
Nevertheless, the division of the melody of each hane into terkibs is still a
significant feature of the style of this piece, as it is of the period in general.
Each terkib closes on a note which is of major importance in the makam, here
F♯ (ırak), A (dügah), and f♯ (evç). The only other resting point of importance in
makam Irak is the note c (çargah), and this note appears at the end of the first
cycle of the serhane. Each terkib forms a self-contained unit, that possesses a
logic within the discourse of the makam and the particular melody. Within the
mülazime, for example, we might think that terkibs B and C could be reversed,
as both have the same finalís. In fact, they are in their proper places, because
the arching ascent from and descent to the finalis in terkib C would suggest the
ending of the hane, and so had to be placed in the final position.
A single melodic nucleus undergoes several transformations in this piece.
The melodic nucleus of the first half cycle of the serhane reappears with slight
rhythmic displacement as the first three beats of the cadential formula (see
Ex. 3.19).
This cadential formula is varied in MC, leading first to D (yegah), the low-
est note in the extended “tonal domain” (hükm), i.e. seyir, given by Cantemir
(ca. 1700:111:23), and then to A (dügah), the most important suspended cadence
(asma karar) of Irak, before repeating the cadential formula on F♯. A further
displacement of the cadential formula appears in cycle 1 of MA, where it leads
upward to d (neva), an important tonal center of the makam, in place of A, to
which it leads in its original position. This new function of the melodic nucleus
is repeated in the first cycle of MB, now leading toward A (dügah). The second
hane moves this nucleus upward, going from e to f♯ (the upper tonic of Irak),
and from f♯ to a, in H II A:1 and H II B:1.

Example 3.19 Melodic nucleus in serhane, cadential formula and M C (Irak, Ali Hoca)
378 Chapter 11

In H III A the nucleus reappears at the beginning of every cycle, this time
opening on d (neva). H III has changed the makam to Uzzal, so that the melodic
nucleus which opens each cycle of A employs c♯ instead of c. In H III A, bars 1,
3, 4, 5, and 8 are almost identical. Although this usage is reminiscent of a repet-
itive binary structure, its function is quite different. The transformation of
the familiar melodic nucleus within a new makam, plus the appearance of a
long parallelistic structure serve to differentiate the third hane from anything
which has come before, while at the same time linking it with the melodic
nucleus which had appeared in the earlier hanes. This sudden “simplification”
of the compositional technique coupled with modulation to a new makam are
typical characteristics of the period 4 peşrevs—many similar examples can be
adduced in the Cantemir Collection. Under all this transformation and dis-
placement we can perhaps still sense the repetitions and transpositions of the
early sixteenth-century style, but they are almost unrecognizable among the
new techniques of composition.
A typical feature of the peşrevs of period 4 is the telescoping of various
aspects of the seyir in the serhane, while the mülazime shows a more norma-
tive melodic progression. In this peşrev there is a normal opening emphasizing
the notes F♯ and c (bars 1–2), then an interlude of the “Bestenigar” type of Irak,
with the notes d ♭ and c (3–4), followed by a cadence with the alteration of c
to c♯ (5–6), which normally would occur much later in the seyir. The mülazime
shows a more normative melodic progression for the makam. The use of H II
to demonstrate the highest point of the makam is an ancient compositional
feature, seen in the earliest Turkish and Persian peşrevs (period 1). However,
in this piece, as in Sultan Murad’s piece in Uzzal, H II expresses not only the
highest part of the makam, but a definite part of the seyir, in this case it is the
makam Evç which normally appears as the highest point of the makam Irak,
emphasizing the note f♯ (evç), which is the octave above the note ırak. Thus,
this later seventeenth-century peşrev displays a nearly complete seyir of the
makam Irak.
The documentation of period 4 is rich enough to contain several somewhat
diverse compositional strategies. While both Ali Hoca and Tanburi Angeli
used developed seyirs, their compositional styles were noticeably different.
Other contemporary musicians, such as Eyyûbî Mehmed Çelebi, continued
to create peşrevs which were reminiscent of period 3 or even period 2 in their
compositional structures and undeveloped seyirs, while at the same time
introducing frequent modulations and note alterations. Ali Hoca’s peşrevs are
good examples of the direction in which the genre would move in the suc-
ceeding periods.
Peşrevs and Analyses 379

6 The Peşrevs of Cantemir

In Turkey, the role of the composer has been openly acknowledged in a more
continuous way than in the other maqām centers after the sixteenth century.
This is especially true of the vocal repertoires, less of the instrumental. In the
secular vocal repertoire, the importance of such figures as Hafız Post, Mustafa
Itri, Zaharya, Sadullah Ağa, and especially of İsmail Dede Efendi (in the nine-
teenth century) is stressed and is associated with specific repertoire items. In
Halveti and Mevlevi dervish music there is a chain of composer/musicians
going back to Zakir Hasan in the sixteenth century, Ali Şirügani, Osman Dede
and Itri in the later seventeenth century.
The patterns of transmission for instrumental music were rather differ-
ent. During the seventeenth century the instrumental repertoire did not con-
tain many peşrevs from the previous eras, nor were many of these associated
with known musicians. Among the few surviving names are Şehzade Korkut,
Nefiri Behram, Hasan Can, Emir-i Hac, and Gazi Giray Han. Within the seven-
teenth century, however, there were small bodies of material associated with
well-known musicians. While oral transmission encouraged misattributions,
particularly where names were similar (as in büyük and küçük Solakzade),
there appears to have been considerable internal stylistic consistency with
pieces attributed to such musicians as Solakzade, Murad IV, Ali Hoca, et al. In
the previous chapter we have analyzed peşrevs by individual, named compos-
ers such as Hasan Can, Sultan Murad IV, and Neyzen Ali Hoca. However, by the
early nineteenth century the stylistic coherence of these repertoires was weak-
ened or entirely eliminated by the methods of oral transmission and especially
by the inclusion of pseudographic compositions from a later era. The oeuvre
attributed to Prince Cantemir (Kantemiroğlu) exemplifies the problems of
analyzing the individual output of an Ottoman composer.
When Charles Fonton arrived in Turkey in the 1740s, he found the peşrevs
and semais of the Moldavian prince to be a respected part of the Ottoman rep-
ertoire. Fonton was able to adduce Cantemir as an example of the most popular
and respected Ottoman composer. “… [the Orientals] would be as insensitive
to the harmonious accents of the Lullys and Tartinis as they would be enthusi-
astic about an air by their famous Cantemir” (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:2).
Fonton was able to transcribe a peşrev by Cantemír which was based on
an original composition (Bestenigar berefşan) but which showed some of the
rhythmic and melodic characteristics of the mid-eighteenth century. In the
1780s Toderini also spoke of the importance of Cantemir as composer, per-
former, and theorist (Toderini 1789:220). The Hamparsum Collection, a gen-
eration later, contains a large repertoire of peşrevs attributed to Cantemir, but
380 Chapter 11

even those items which seem to be based on authentic compositions have

been altered to the point of unrecognizability. When Todor Burada collected
the repertoire attributed to Cantemir in the early part of this century, the
peşrevs and semais he found were part of the oral tradition and bore no appar-
ent relationship to anything in the Cantemir Collection. Today, it is this oral
tradition which stands in the place of the oeuvre of Prince Cantemir. There
is no doubt that several of these pieces are elegant examples of the peşrev
and semai genres. The peşrevs are apparently close to the style of the early
to mid-nineteenth century and they deserve the regard with which they are
viewed by contemporary Turkish musicians. Nevertheless, they reveal little
about the actual role of Cantemir in the development of the instrumental
genres. These peşrevs are thoroughly “modern” works. The well-known Sazkar
peşrev of “Kantemiroğlu” can be compared to the Rehavi peşrev of İsak. The
Neva peşrev is perhaps more modern, and can be compared with the peşrevs
of Numan Ağa (d. 1834) or even Tanburi Osman (d. 1885). Within this current
“Kantemiroğlu” repertoire, the semais are much shorter than the modem norm,
and they do have some structural peculiarities. For example, the well-known
semais in the Neva and Uşşak makams seem considerably shorter and older in
style than the semais of Tanburi İsak (d. 1814), and they give the impression of
being reworkings of semais of the early eighteenth century. The Pençgah saz
semai is in fact a reworking of an anonymous semai in the same makam found
in the Cantemir Collection (see Part 3, chap. 7). Therefore, in discussing the
style of Cantemir it is best to ignore the entire corpus attributed to him in the
Hamparsum documents. These pieces can be analyzed as items of the early to
mid-nineteenth century or as examples of oral transmission of earlier pieces,
sometimes, but not necessarily connected directly with Cantemir as a com-
poser. It is only by analyzing the seventeen peşrevs in the collection (Tab. 3.5)
which were signed “Kantemiroğlu” or “Cedid” (“New”) that we can assess the
relationship of Cantemir’s style to that of his contemporaries, teachers, and
recent predecessors.10
As Wright points out (2000:548–52), one may hold reservations about some
of these pieces as authentic compositions of Cantemir. In particular, no. 227
(Rast, berefşan) may well be spurious (Wright 1992:477).
The following section will analyze two of Cantemir’s authentic peşrevs: the
Muhayyer muhammes (7) and the Buselik-Aşirani berefşan (4). In both cases
the style of Cantemir will be delineated both by means of internal analysis

10 Popescu-Judetz (1973) includes the Acem-Yegahi berefşan peşrev on p. 185 as Cantemir’s

but fails to explain the basis of this attribution. Neither the score nor index mention
Cantemir’s name or the term “cedid.”
Peşrevs and Analyses 381

Table 3.5 Compositions of Cantemir

(1) Hüseyni, sakil “Subh-i Sahar” (no. 198)

(2) Rast, berefşan (no. 227)
(3) Isfahan, remel (nazire) (no. 278)
(4) Buselik-Aşirani, berefşan (no. 279)
(5) Geveşt, sakil (no. 280)
(6) Bestenigar, berefşan (no. 281)
(7) Muhayyer, muhammes (no. 285)
(8) Mahur, darbeyn (no. 289)
(9) Sultani Irak, devr-i kebir (no. 290)
(10) Zengüle, devr-i kebir (no. 302)
(11) Rast, düyek “Mevc-Darya” (no. 310)
(12) Pençgah, devr-i kebir “Huri” (no. 321)
(13) Uşşak-Aşirani, darb-i feth (no. 323)
(14) Beyati, çember “Gamfersa” (no. 331, 351)
(15) Büzürk, darbeyn (no. 332)
(16) Buselik, devr-i revan (no. 335)
(17) Sipihr, fer’ muhammes (no. 336)

and by means of comparison with earlier works in the same makam. It would
be desirable to analyze all seventeen peşrevs, but these two may be taken as
representative of the range of Cantemir’s compositional style.

7 Muhayyer Muhammes

The Cantemir Collection does not contain another peşrev by a different

composer in the same makam and usul as this one. Therefore, for compari-
son I will use the Muhayyer peşrev “Margzar” in düyek by Eyyubi Mehmed
Çelebi (see Ex. 3.20). In Cantemir’s seventh chapter, he appears as “Tanburi
Mehmed Çelebi,” and he is one of the four authorities whom the author quotes
(ca. 1700:VII:53). Seven of his peşrevs are included in the collection, so we
may conclude that Cantemir regarded him as an important musician. He was
probably somewhat younger than Tanburi Angelos, as he is not mentioned by
Evliya Çelebi.
The terkib structure of Mehmed Çelebi’s peşrev is typical of later seventeenth-
century peşrevs in düyek. The terkibs are all four cycles long, and the melody is
continuous through these cycles. The melody fits Cantemir’s hükm in a general
382 Chapter 11

Example 3.20 Muhayyer, düyek, Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi, “Margzar,” (Collection: no. 235).
Serhane and mülazime

way, particularly in its emphasis on e (hüseyni) and a (muhayyer), the two tonal
centers, and the introduction of saba in the descent to the fínalis A. There are
two unexpected modulations; the appearance of tiz saba (d♭), which creates
the makam Saba on a, and the raising of the subtonic from G to G (zirgüle)
Peşrevs and Analyses 383

Example 3.21 Muhayyer, muhammes, Kantemiroglu (Collection: no. 285). Serhane

in the cadence. These sudden modulations are characteristic of the style of

Mehmed Çelebi, as seen in his other peşrevs in the collection, e.g. Nühüft dar-
beyn (Collection: no. 215).
Despite the presence of these “modern” features, Mehmed Çelebi’s peşrev is
in other ways rather archaic. We may note the repetitions of one-cycle units in
terkib B of the mülazime, and the ascending runs from the finalis to the upper
tonic in the same terkib. These runs point to a more basic archaism of the
piece, i.e. the weakness of melodic progression. While this peşrev is in the scale
of Muhayyer and uses a characteristic modulation of the makam (i.e. to Saba),
the entire serhane and mülazime concentrate on a single section of the seyir.
The serhane telescopes the entire seyir by jumping from the opening section
(a–e) to the modulation and final cadence. The mülazime quickly rises to the
highest point of the ambitus of Muhayyer, and it does so in a schematic fash-
ion, using rhythmically equal notes, i.e. quarter-note or eighth-note groupings,
with little pause on subsidiary tonal centers. Whenever the melody appears
to be settling on one of these other tonal centers (as in the eighth cycle of
MB), it immediately ascends to the upper part of the makam, using a melody
which has been used several times before (in cycles 1, 4, 5 and 6). It is impos-
sible to speak here of the transformation or displacement of melodic nuclei,
as we could in Ali Hoca’s Irak devr-i kebir. The melodic movement in Mehmed
Çelebi’s peşrev emphasizes the three major tonal centers of the makam (e, a,
A), without creating very specific melodic formulations, i.e. a sort of “generic
Muhayyer” which does not attempt to express more than the general outline
of the makam.
It would appear that the compositional techniques used by Mehmed Çelebi
arose from a conception of makam in which a codified melodic progression
384 Chapter 11

Example 3.22 Muhayyer muhammes, mülazime

Example 3.23 Muhayyer seyir in serhane and mülazime

was not yet the ground on which the specific melody was built up, either by
way of conformity or contrast. In this respect, the piece is not very different
than many peşrevs from the earlier seventeenth century, and even bears com-
parison with the early “Persian” peşrevs of the sixteenth century.
However, the differences separating this piece from earlier items is evident
when one views earlier peşrevs in muhammes, e.g. the “Büyük Muhammes” in
Hüseyni (Collection:no. 82), and the “Büyük Neva” (Collection:no. 63), both
cited by Cantemir as models of the peşrev. The segmented, discrete melodies
Peşrevs and Analyses 385

a) Seyir of Hüseyni, after Yekta 1921:2997–8

b) Seyir of Buselik, after Yekta 1921:9001–2

c) Seyir of Muhayyer, after Yekta 1921:3003–4

Example 3.24 Muhayyer muhammes, H II and H III
386 Chapter 11

of the second and third hanes are somewhat closer to an older style, but the
serhane and mülazime show several features of which Cantemir could not have
had a clear model in earlier compositions.
The new approach of Cantemir is evident from the serhane (Ex. 3.21), which
is twice the length of earlier peşrevs in muhammes—four cycles instead of
two. This increase in length is not caused by repetition or imitation; rather, a
single melodic nucleus is transformed in a variety of ways. Cantemir states this
melody in the opening half-cycle, then immediately restates it in the following
half-cycle, but with a slight variation in the first quarter-cycle, introduces the
note b above the upper tonic (a), thus barely suggesting the upward melodic
progression that soon appears. The next cycle (2) introduces a new melody,
employing the next note of the scale (ď; tiz neva); this melody is in turn varied
in the following quarter-cycle. The second half-cycle leads straight to the upper
reaches of the makam by means of a simple four quarter-note stepwise ascent.
The next cycle (3) momentarily descends two steps, only to rise again to ď, from
whence the melody brushes past a raised seventh degree (g ) before coming
to rest on the principal tonal center of the makam, the note a (muhayyer). The
last cycle (4) reiterates the opening melody, then descends to the cadential
formula which will be repeated throughout the piece. This degree of unifica-
tion and development of the serhane had not appeared in any earlier peşrev in
Cantemir’s collection.
In his mülazime (Ex. 3.22) Cantemir states a new melody at the beginning of
terkib A, and it appears in varied form at the beginning of each cycle in A and
B. While this melody reaches to the upper limit of the ambitus of the makam
Muhayyer, each terkib closes on the note e (hüseyni), the secondary tonal cen-
ter of the makam. Terkib C commences from this secondary tonal center (e),
and introduces a flattened sixth degree (f), and, briefly, a flattened fifth (e♭,).
The fourth terkib (D) emphasizes the note c (çargah), before returning to e,
and then to the cadential formula. Mülazime A and B and mülazime C and
D express clearly differentiated parts of the seyir that are also different from
the serhane. Terkibs A and B express the apex of the seyir in the range from a
(muhayyer) to ď (tiz neva) and concluding on e (hüseyni). Terkibs C and D con-
centrate on the range e- g-f-e-d-c and c-d-e-d-c-B A (see Ex. 3.23).
If we compare the melodic movement of the serhane and mülazime to Rauf
Yekta’s melodic progression of Muhayyer, (unfortunately written in “waltz
time”), the similarity is evident (Yekta 1921:3003–4. Cf. Ex. 3.24c). The order
of appearance of the principal tonal centers is very similar, including the flat-
tening of the sixth in Yekta’s fourth line, and the closing on c at the end of that
Peşrevs and Analyses 387

line. Only the flattening of the fifth in the peşrev appears idiosyncratic,11 apart
from which, the peşrev displays something very much like the modern seyir
of Muhayyer. This modern-looking seyir of Muhayyer was not entirely novel
at the end of the seventeenth century, however, as it already appears in the
devr-i kebir peşrev by a certain Ferruh which was notated in rather similar form
by both Cantemir and Bobowski (Bobowski ca. 1650:12 “Hüseyni;” Cantemir
Collection:no. 81). Nevertheless, for a musician like Eyyubi Mehmed, who was
a generation younger than Ferruh, it was still possible to utilize the older seyir
concept. It is likely that before 1650 this seyir was emerging as a sub-species of
Hüseyni and was only codified late in the seventeenth century; Bobowski did
not classify Ferruh’s peşrev as Muhayyer but as Hüseyni.
The second and third hanes return to the range of Hüseyni, the parent
makam of Muhayyer, in conformity with the seyir of Muhayyer. This return is
fully developed, and the modal functions of H II and H III are clearly differen-
tiated. H II involves the core ambitus of Hüseyni, while H III expresses çargah
(c) as its tonal center. Much more than the serhane and mülazime, these two
hanes are extremely parallelistic, but this parallelism is strictly controlled by
the larger plan of the piece. The first half-cycle of each of the three cycles of
II A are almost identical, while the first half of cycles 2 and 3 are exactly identi-
cal (Ex. 3.25).

Example 3.25 Opening half-cycles of cycles 1, 2, 3 (II A)

Terkib B opens with a new rhythmic idiom which will repeat itself at the begin-
ning of each cycle in H II B, in H III A and B.

Example 3.26 Rhythmic pattern of H II B

This sets up a controlled tension which is released in H II C and which returns

to the melody of mülazime B (Ex. 3.27).

11 It may not be irrelevant to observe that this modulation is very characteristic of modern
Greek popular music, and we should not rule this out as an element in Cantemir’s musical
choice here. For example, his devr-i revan peşrev in Buselik (Collection:183) is replete with
references to the folk kalamatiano dance genre.
388 Chapter 11

Example 3.27 MB and H II C

H II B and C both cadence identically from muhayyer (a) to hüseyni (e) in a

manner which almost quotes the cadence of MA (Ex. 3.28).

Example 3.28 Cadences of H II B, C and MA

H II C differs from the terkibs which surround it by virtue of its rhythmically

flowing character. Not only does it break the parallelism of the opening rhyth-
mic formula, but it allows no melodic division between the first and second
cycles. This feature contrasts with all other cycles in H II and H III which are
end-stopped. Thus, H II is an artfully crafted hane which begins with an orderly
retreat from the apex of the seyir down to its lower range and conclusion, but
then recreates the upward flow of the melody heard in the first two terkibs of
the mülazime.
H III is orderly and parallelistic, except for one reference to the more rhyth-
mically syncopated section of H II C (transposed down a fifth) (Ex. 3.29).

Example 3.29 H II C and transposition in H III A

The opening four beats of each cycle express the tonal center çargah (c) and
the pedal note G, but each cycle utilizes a different constellation of pitches
surrounding çargah.
While the fact that we can see this modern-looking seyir in the peşrev is
important, we are struck even more by Cantemir’s compositional technique
in utilizing this melodic progression. In the mülazime he contrasts an ascend-
ing melodic nucleus with a small descending melody to reach the secondary
tonal center, e (MA). He returns twice more to this melodic idea, and each
time descends to the same tonal center by different means. This confirms the
impression left from the serhane and mülazime, namely that in Cantemir’s
music, melodic progression had assumed an intimate coexistence with the
particular melody. This connection was developed beyond anything seen
Peşrevs and Analyses 389

before, and which pointed toward the direction in which Turkish music was to
proceed throughout the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

8 Buselik-Aşirani Berefşan

The second example by Cantemir, the Buselik-Aşirani berefşan (Collec­

tion: :no. 279), is probably the most ambitious piece in his collection. In terms
of sheer length, treatment of rhythm, melodic development, relation of melody
and codified melodic progression, and modulation, no other peşrev by Can-
temir or by any other composer of the later seventeenth century is as inven-
tive as this piece. It had evidently been one of the most popular of Cantemir’s
peşrevs, because two separate versions are preserved in the Hamparsum nota-
tion (Wright 1988:4). Of course, these nineteenth-century versions obscure the
actual significance of this piece by anticipating many stylistic developments of
the period in which they were notated.
Both Bobowski’s and Cantemir’s collections contain items in Buselik-Aşirani
(in the former, called “Aşiran Buselik”). The most elaborate of the pieces in
Cantemir’s collection, other than his own berefşan, is an anonymous peşrev in
düyek (Ex. 3.30). According to Bobowski, it was composed by a certain “Derviş
Süleyman” (ca. 1650:357).
This piece uses the “ağaze·on-e” version of Buselik. In this regard it may
be significant that while Bobowski describes this peşrev as “Aşiran-Buselik,”
Cantemir classifies it as both “Buselik-Aşirani” and “Huzi-Aşiran.” A peculiarity
of its modal usage is the prominence of the tone below the principal tonal cen-
ters. Thus, where e is prominent, d appears immediately afterwards; where d is
prominent, c appears. At other times c is skipped entirely, as in the cadence of
H I (measure 6). The shift of tonal center from e to d to c creates a melodic pro-
gression which is very different from that of Hüseyni. The frequent leaps from
A to d also weaken the feeling of e as tonal center. Here e functions as the ağaze
(opening point), but it does not retain the role of tonal center to the extent that
it does in the makam Hüseyni. The serhane and mülazime both display a strong
downward movement, stronger than other items in Buselik or Buselik-Aşirani.
The second hane centers on g, which does not figure prominently in Yekta’s
or other seyirs (see Ex. 3.24b). However, some seventeenth-century items do
feature this note, e.g. the “Nazire-i Sakil-i Acemi,” in the Cantemir Collection
(Collection:no. 334), whose serhane commences from g (gerdaniye).
This composition embodies principles which we have observed in other
peşrevs of the seventeenth century. Much of the serhane and mülazime emerge
out of a single melodic nucleus, which is stated first in the first measure of
the serhane and appears again in the third measure. This apparent ABAC
390 Chapter 11

Example 3.30 Buselik-Aşirani, düyek (Collection: no. 112)

structure seems reminiscent of the sixteenth-century peşrevs, and it undoubt-

edly descends from them, but its structure is more complex here. The C section
(fourth measure) does not close the phrase, but rather leads into a cadence
which extends over four measures, i.e. the length of the original melody. The
Peşrevs and Analyses 391

first measure of the mülazime (which has only one long terkib), is an abbre-
viated version of the first melody, and it is repeated more elaborately in
measure 5. Thus, the first four measures form a small terkib-like section within
the larger terkib. The fifth measure begins an eight-measure melody which
leads into the four-measure cadence of the serhane. The second hane is only
five measures followed by one-measure teslim endings, but within the short
space the tonal centers and rhythmic organization are shifted with subtlety.
The third measure seems to be a three- measure melody followed by a teslim,
but on closer inspection, it can be seen that only the fifth and sixth measures
repeat the first and second. The seventh and eighth measures are a shortened
version of the cadence. Although this peşrev is not very ambitious in its volume
or use of modulation, within its limited range it is a well-unified work which
handles melody, rhythm, and melodic progression with considerable skill.

Example 3.31 Kürdi, usuleş berefşan, Tanburi Angeli (Collection: no. 304),
serhane

Example 3.32 Buselik-Aşirani, berefşan, Kantemiroğlu (Collection: no. 279), serhane

392 Chapter 11

Cantemir’s peşrev is not in düyek, but in berefşan, in sixteen beats (Ex. 3.32).
Unlike other sixteen-beat usuls (e.g. muhammes, hafif ), berefşan exerted a
strong influence on the structure of the melodic line. The resulting patterns
were quite similar and are evident when we compare the serhane of a berefşan
peşrev by Angeli (Ex. 3.31).
In both items the melody of each measure is divided into two sections
which correspond to the two sections of the usul. The first section is phrased:
half/quarter/half/quarter/half-note, and the second quarter/quaiter/quarter/
quarter/half, or some variation of these.
In Cantemir’s piece the serhane and fourth hane are both nine usul cycles
(= 18 measures) long. The mülazime is thirteen measures, while the second
hane is only four measures long. Very few items in the Cantemir Collection
approach the volume of this berefşan peşrev. The melodic density is also very
high, far higher than the other examples in the same usul. The piece is notated
in the “smallest of the small” meter, which partially accounts for the high
melodic density.
Cantemir’s approach to composition in the Buselik-Aşirani peşrev is
rather different from that in his Muhayyer muhammes peşrev. Despite the
greater complexity of his style in the latter piece, as compared to composers
of the previous, and of his own generation, it was still dominated by a few
melodic ideas. In the Buselik-Aşirani he is evidently attempting something
quite different.
Cantemir uses the serhane and mülazime in a way which we also have not
seen before. In the later seventeenth-century peşrev, there was usually a close
melodic connection between serhane and mülazime. As we have seen, the
melodic progression of the makam is most fully expressed in the mülazime,
while the serhane presents either an introductory part of the progression,
or a telescoped, abbreviated movement through the principal tonal centers.
Frequently a melodic idea is first stated in the serhane, and then developed
in the mülazime. In this peşrev, however, several very different melodic move-
ments are taking place in the mülazime (Ex. 3.33), none of which have a very
direct connection with the serhane, or, rather the connection is much more
complicated than in the normative style.
The serhane (HI) contains three terkibs of three measures each, and devel-
opment of melodic ideas is essentially confined to a single terkib. Cantemir
also divides the terkibs so that each one expresses a new section of the
melodic progression of the makam. His version of Buselik favors c as the ağaze.
Therefore, the opening half-measure of the terkib A stresses c strongly—six
out of eight notes. There is repetition in the first two measures, but it is not
Peşrevs and Analyses 393

Example 3.33 Buselik-Aşirani, mülazime

symmetrical. The second and fourth half-measure are almost identical, but
the first and third are divergent. The third half-measure is repeated as the first
half-measure of the final measure, leading into the cadential formula, which
is repeated throughout the peşrev. Unlike the düyek peşrev of Derviş Süleyman
this cadential formula is very short, only a half-measure. The modulation
into Aşiran is accomplished as a sudden contrast. Terkib C is mainly in the
makam Hüseyni, which Cantemir had described as part of the “tonal domain”
of Buselik. He utilizes terkib B as a bridge between these two terkibs. The first
measure of B begins and ends on c, but the melody rises twice to e. The second
394 Chapter 11

measure uses a pedaling technique (which we had seen in the Muhayyer

muhammes, hane II and III) to emphasize e and then d. When the G and d
appear, they lead directly into the note c in the following half-measures. All
this serves to destabilize our impression of the c tonal-center, and to prepare
us for the modulation to Hüseyni in the third terkib. This highly symmetrical
treatment of a complex melodic progression is apparently without precedent
in the early repertoire.
The first terkib of the mülazime seems to be a mirror image of the last ter-
kib of the serhane. A better metaphor might be an upside-down reflection in
water. The last terkib had expressed the arc-like movement of Hüseyni from e to
a and back, while this terkib begins on a and works back down to e by means of
several jumps upward and downward, with occasional halts midway, at f♯. Its
rhythmic phrasing seems to be totally new. Nothing in the piece has prepared
the listener for the eighth/quarter/eighth pattern with which the terkib begins.
In terkib B, the midway suspended cadence on f♯ (evç) functions as a new tonal
center, from where the melody modulates abruptly to Zirgüleli Hicaz. Terkib C
continues the new modality, without any apparent reference to the serhane or
to the nominal makam of the peşrev. By the next measure the return to c sig-
nals the point in the melodic progression of Buselik at which we had entered.
Now the raised leading tone (G ) is no longer part of Hicaz, but rather the final
cadence of Buselik. Before we can fully absorb the finality of this cadence, the
melody plunges still lower, to end on Aşiran (E).

Example 3.34 Hicaz Evç Zengüle

However, the mülazime is still not over. Now, at last, in the fifth terkib (E) we
can hear something relating more closely to the serhane. The arching Hüseyni
melody of the serhane’s terkib C is transformed into a broader arch, first
descending from a and b, and then arching up and down from e to a and back.
The next measure completes the return to Buselik, including what seems to be
the final cadence, but once again the melody is stopped abruptly at the caden-
tial formula of Aşiran.
Peşrevs and Analyses 395

Example 3.35 Buselik-Aşirani, H II

Example 3.36 Buselik-Aşirani, H III

This final terkib (ME) is not really an end, however. When the second hane
begins, we understand that it has been a bridge between the mülazime and the
new hane. Most of the second hane is a development, in a higher range, of the
last terkib of the mülazime.
This same relationship exists between the last terkib of the second hane, and
the first two terkibs of the third hane. The melody of the H II B is shifted down
to A. The raised leading tone (G ) of Buselik is now something entirely differ-
ent; it is the third step of Zirgüleli Hicaz on aşiran (E).

Example 3.37 a) H II B; b) H III A; c) H III B

396 Chapter 11

Example 3.38 Buselik pentachord, Zengüle pentachord

This move anticipates the function of aşiran in the modulation of the final
cadence of the makam Buselik-Aşirani; and it also links these melodies with the
modulation into Zirgüleli Hicaz in the mülazime. In the second measure of ter-
kib B, the identical melody is transposed up a whole octave to the note e, hence
the makam is now Şehnaz. Although only the lower tetrachord of this Zirgüleli
Hicaz had appeared earlier, the transposition to e requires the d leading tone
to remind us that we had been listening to Zirgüleli Hicaz, whose complete
scale requires this note. The third terkib returns to the ambiguous tonality of
Buselik, while the raised leading tone beneath the e tonal center is a trace left
from the earlier modulations. By the next half-measure, the melody returns to
Buselik, and closes with the cadential formula in Aşiran.

9 Conclusion

Both Cantemir’s Muhayyer and Buselik-Aşirani peşrevs show considerable dis-

tance from the style of the later seventeenth century. The distinctiveness of
their style can be seen in (1) their scope, (2) their handling of rhythm, (3) the
independence and interconnectedness of their terkibs and hanes, and (4) the
modernity of their melodic progressions (seyir).
1. Apart from the küll-i külliyat peşrevs, which are a distinct genre, these are
among the longest peşrevs in the collection.
2. Both peşrevs display broad rhythmic structures which utilize parallelism,
radical variation and selective rhythmic quotation. The melodic density
of the Buselik-Aşirani is high—no other peşrev in berefşan has a compa-
rable density.
3. In Muhayyer Cantemir links the melodies of the serhane (H I) and MA
and B, while creating a new section in MC and D. H IIA and B concentrate
on a new tonal center with no reference to H I and M, but H II C echoes
much of the melodic movement of MB. A new tonal center is reached
in H III. Even more complex relationships between hanes and terkibs
are seen in the Buselik-Aşirani. While parallelism and transposition are
much in evidence in the Buselik-Aşirani H II and H III the function of the
melodies of these sections within the entire peşrev shows a more ambi-
tious scheme than earlier. The development of a melodic nucleus which
Peşrevs and Analyses 397

had been perfected by composers like Angeli and Ali Hoca prepared the
ground for some of these techniques, but Cantemir has taken them much
farther than these composers of the previous generation.
4. Particularly in his Muhayyer, Cantemir envisioned the entire peşrev as
an expression of the seyir of the makam, and sharply differentiated the
modal function of each hane.
The most developed example of Cantemir’s mature style is his Buselik-Aşirani
berefşan; it is the single documented peşrev that clearly foreshadows the devel-
opment of the Ottoman peşrev in the mid to late-eighteenth century. Evidently
musicians of that period wished to associate the more “progressive,” innovative
style of peşrev with the name of Cantemir, who seems to have held the highest
position among the composers of instrumental music between 1700 and 1750.
This stress upon the influence of Cantemir agrees with the emic perception of
his significance within Turkey, which is comparable to that of his older con-
temporary Buhurizade Itri in vocal music, and to Tanburi Isak in instrumental
music, a century later.
 Chapter 12

The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev

Historical and literary evidence documents several areas of interaction

between Persian and Ottoman Turkish art musics. During the earliest period
(fifteenth to later seventeenth centuries) the direction of major musical influ-
ence was moving from Iran to Turkey. However, the musical evidence which
might illustrate these interactions have usually reached us through an oral
transmission. For the most part this is the vocal repertoire of kar and nakş with
Persian texts which were notated in the late nineteenth or early twentieth cen-
turies. There was also an instrumental repertoire of the “Persians” which was
notated by Cantemir. This repertoire displays clear connections with evidently
sixteenth-century peşrevs created by Turkish musicians, and can be viewed
in terms of the structural changes which occurred within the Turkish peşrev
genre. These Persian peşrevs are closely related in style to the earliest Turkish
peşrevs appearing in the Cantemir Collection. None of them are ascribed to
any particular musician, and they were evidently remote from both Persian
and Turkish performance practice of the later seventeenth century.
Cantemir was aware of another repertoire of peşrevs and semais which he
also considered to be “belonging to the Persian musicians” (“Acem sazendeleriñ”;
ca. 1700:X:102). He describes a specific structure for these instrumental pieces,
and names two peşrevs which exemplify it. This structure can be seen in four
explicitly Persian peşrevs in his collection, and in a number of Turkish peşrevs
which used the Persian form. All of these Turkish peşrevs were composed by
musicians of the second half of the seventeenth century (e.g. Angeli, Eyyubi
Mehmed) or seem stylistically related to that period. Bobowski’s London col-
lection contains only a single peşrev and a few semais with this structure.1
While Persian musicians were no longer common at the Ottoman court dur-
ing Cantemir’s lifetime, they were very much in evidence while Bobowski (Ali
Ufki) was in service there under Sultan Murad IV who had brought a number
back with him from Iran, Iraq, and the Caucasus to Istanbul. A couple of these
men are described by the poet Cevri in the 1630s. The fact that this “Persian”
peşrev/semai structure appears far more frequently in Cantemir’s collection
than in Bobowski’s probably indicates that it was rather new in the earlier sev-
enteenth century and grew in popularity first among Persian musicians, and

1 Bobowski (ca. 1650:170): Saba, hafif with three hanes: serhane/mülazime¦ miyanhane, soñhane
by “Torlak” (“The Wild Man”), a Mevlevi musician also known as “Torlak Neyzen Dede.”

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_016

The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 399

then among Turks later in the century. Thus, this type of peşrev was apparently
the Persian peşrev as it was known in Cantemir’s own time. Cantemir was also
aware of Persian performance practice in relation to the taksim. While it is
possible that he may have heard Turkish musicians imitating the Persian per-
formance practice, he specifies “the vocalists and instrumentalists of the land
of Persia” (“diyar-i Pars hanendeleri ve sazendeleri”; ca. 1700:67) and also their
“students” (“şagirdleri”; VII:67). All of this suggests some familiarity with actual
Iranian performance practice, not merely the memory of such practice as it
had survived in Istanbul.
Cantemir never explicitly distinguished between these two groups of Per-
sian repertoire. Evidently, he assumed that his readers would understand that
in some cases his references to “Persian” musicians, musical practices and
compositional forms related to contemporary Persians who were well known
to these readers, while in other cases the “Persians” referred to earlier Iranian
musicians who had lived in Istanbul in the sixteenth century. To add to the
confusion there was yet another group of “Persian” musicians who had been
taken to Istanbul by Sultan Murad IV from Baghdad and the South Caucasus
in the early seventeenth century. Unlike the earliest group and the latest group
these “Persians” are always referred to by name (e.g. Çenkçi Cafer, Şah Kulu)
and never as the “Persians.” The notated scores of their peşrevs in the two col-
lections resemble other peşrevs of period 3; they show no affinity with either
the earlier or later group of “Persian” peşrevs.
The latest repertoire of Persian peşrevs, dating from the period from 1650
to 1700 reveals a significant turning point in the relationships between the
two national musics. In his tenth chapter Cantemir distinguishes between the
Turkish and Persian peşrevs solely on the basis of the mülazime. As he says
there, the Persian musicians perform their peşrevs (and semais) without a true
mülazime. Rather, the serhane is repeated as the mülazime. He fails to mention,
however, that Ottoman musicians of the later seventeenth century occasion-
ally imitated this Persian form. For example, his own music teacher, the Greek
Tanburi Angeli (Angelos) composed a peşrev in makam Rehavi, usul çenber
(Collection:no. 297) which lacks a distinct serhane and mülazime. Cantemir
wrote above the opening section “serhane ve mülazime.” In the Bobowski
Collection, all of the Turkish and Persian peşrevs have a serhane and mülazime.
Cantemir himself does not seem to have employed this form of peşrev, but his
older contemporary Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi does have a peşrev of this type.
The peşrevs composed by Ottoman musicians in the new Persian style show
all the makam, seyir, and rhythmic characteristics of the other contemporane-
ous Turkish peşrevs. This style seems to have been a fashion brought about by
contact with Iranian musicians in the mid-seventeenth century. It is not clear
400 Chapter 12

how much longer this form was employed in Turkey, but it has left few traces on
the later Ottoman repertoire.2 Apart from these Turkish peşrevs in the Persian
form, Cantemir also notated four peşrevs of the new Persian type composed by
Iranians. He mentions two of them in his tenth chapter—in Beyati, usul sofyan
(ca. 1700:X:149), and Beyati, usul düyek (Collection:no. 286). In the collection
there is also a Beyati peşrev in usul devr-i revan (ibid.:no. 102), and a Neva peşrev
in usul fer’-i muhammes (ibid.:no. 68). This is a small sample, but each one dis-
plays a sharp stylistic distinction from all other items in the collection. This
stylistic distinction is created by the use of rhythm, by the relationship of usul
cycle and terkib, and by the use of makam and seyir. These four items are not
closely related to any known repertoire of Turkish music. The fact that they
are anonymous and that two of them are well enough known to be used by
Cantemir as examples of a genre suggest that they were not created during his
own lifetime, but somewhat earlier. It is reasonable to conclude that these four
items are documents of Persian music from the second half of the seventeenth
century. As such they are unique documents—no other Persian music was to
be notated until the later nineteenth century.3
There is nothing to suggest that this new style of Persian peşrev had any
formative influence within Turkey. We have seen that some Turkish musicians
imitated their formal structure, but not any other musical feature. These four
Persian peşrevs show the following characteristics:
1. Usul patterns are limited, and folkloric rhythmic patterns are introduced
into the peşrev.
2. Terkibs are short, often corresponding to a single cycle of the usul. As a
result, the overall scope of the peşrevs is small, comparable to the shortest
Turkish peşrev from period 1 or 2, and much smaller than the contempo-
raneous Turkish peşrevs of period 3 or 4.
3. The modular antecedent/consequent structure of the early “Persian”
peşrevs is replaced by a binary structure, or by AAAB phrasing for the
entire terkib. Whereas the earlier modular structure had involved small
antecedent/consequent units placed variously among the terkibs, the new

2 One such remnant is the “yürük saz semai” in makam Nühüft attributed to Şeyhülislam Esʿad
Efendi in Rauf Yekta’s Darülelhan Külliyati (1924–30:no. 67).
3 These four Persian peşrevs do not agree with the description of the pishrow genre given by
the roughly contemporaneous Darvish Ali of Bukhara (see Part 3: chapter 9, Fig. 3.1). The lack
of agreement between this Transoxanian form of pishrow and any of the Persian or Turkish
peşrev forms suggests that Central Asia might have developed a separate form of pishrow
which was never identical with any of the forms in use further west.
The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 401

peşrev might divide a whole terkib into two units, creating a mirror-like
structure.
4. Cadential formulas are sometimes replaced by more variable cadences
involving repetitions of notes adjacent to the finalis.
5. All four Persian peşrevs diverge somewhat from the nominal makams and
their seyirs as they were known in the mid- to late seventeenth century
in Turkey.
The lack of a distinct serhane, and the smallness of scope make these peşrevs
appear simpler than any Turkish peşrevs. This simpler structure may reflect an
earlier form of the peşrev genre which had been retained in Iran, where the
longer usuls may have been used only for vocal genres (During, personal com-
munication). Another explanation would be that the simpler structure of the
Persian peşrevs may have been related to the abandonment of the developed
usul system and all of the medieval compositional forms, generally thought
to have occurred in Iran only after the middle of the eighteenth century, and
certainly after the fall of the Safavid Dynasty in 1722 (During 1991). In that case
the simplification of the instrumental forms would have coincided with the
development of the avaz as the central genre of Persian art music.
The contemporaneous Turkish musicians, so habituated to adopting musi-
cal norms from Iran, did compose peşrevs using the new simplified form.
However, nothing in the documented Turkish examples from this period
indicates that the assimilation of the simplified formal arrangement led to
an internal restructuring of the Turkish peşrev. On the contrary, the Turkish
peşrevs in the Persian form employ most of the compositional devices of the
contemporaneous Turkish peşrev, and none of those of the Persian peşrev.

1 Peşrevs and Analyses

The first peculiarity of this piece (Ex. 3.39) is its usul. Sofyan was the simplest
usul in Turkish urban music, and it was never used for peşrevs. Cantemir states
that sofyan (4/4 ) was one of the usuls used in the popular song genre
şarkı, the other being devr-i revan. It had other uses as well, e.g. the Sufi ilahi
(hence the usul name ‘Sofyan’ = “The Sufis”).
The performance technique of this peşrev is also peculiar, Cantemir writes
the following instructions (in Persian): “Baz gu terkib-i sani der mülazime
ba’dehu serhane ve mülazime mükerrer kun batamam” (“Play again the second
terkib of the mülazime, after which repeat the entire serhane and mülazime”)
(Collection; 149).
402 Chapter 12

Example 3.39 Beyati, sofyan, Acemleriñ (Collection: no. 286)

H I A contains twelve usul cycles. The first eight may be divided into two
larger units, the first one beginning and ending on d (neva) after resting on G
(the subtonic, T. yeden) for a whole unit. The second unit begins on d and con-
cludes on G, repeating the second cycle of A as its fourth cycle. The following
four cycles are a prolonged approach to the subtonic.
Terkib B begins on d and concludes on the finalis (A) after a five-cycle secunda
volta reminiscent of the prolonged approach to the subtonic featured in terkib
A, Both terkibs use a “mirroring” technique, whereby in H I A the two half-notes
on G are mirrored by the two half-notes on d, and (in cycle 6) the concluding
half-note on d is mirrored by an opening half-note on d in the following cycle.
The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 403

Example 3.40 Beyati, düyek, Acemleriñ, M (Collection: no. 100)

This appears to be a faithful transcription of a foreign musical structure; there

is nothing like it in neither the Bobowski or Cantemir Collections nor in later
Ottoman music.
The hanes are quite independent; there are no rearranged or repeated ter-
kibs or terkib sections. There are some units of four cycles, sometimes using
literal repetition, H I B begins with such an AAAB phrase. H III A has an ABCB
structure in its opening four cycles.
This next piece (Ex. 3.40) displays the lower tetrachord of the eighteenth-
century makam Beyati, i.e. it lacks the note “beyati” (e♭) which had been char-
acteristic in the seventeenth century. The alternation o£ the sixth degree
(f to f♯) is typical of both seventeenth-century and modern Beyati. However,
beyond these scalar features there is little of either the old or the new Turkish
makam Beyati. The piece does begin on d, which is standard practice for Beyati,
but immediately heads down to G, and stays there for an entire cycle, and then
does a cadence on G. This movement effectively cancels out the makam Beyati.
The Turkish makams Uşşak and Beyati and the Persian dastgah Shur are closely
related, and it is likely that the original of this item had been composed in a
modal structure which had elements of all of these.
Although the nominal usul is düyek (the most common usul for the
seventeenth-century peşrev), the rhythmic structure of this piece does not cor-
respond to düyek. The rhythm is based on a 3-3-2 quarter-note pattern which is
404 Chapter 12

familiar from the modern folk music of Central and Eastern Anatolia, as well
as Northern Azerbaijan (but not Iran proper). However, the Turkish art tra-
dition has defined itself over a period of four centuries by not allowing this
Anatolian/Azerbaijanian rhythmic pattern to enter the repertoire. Therefore,
the appearance of the rhythmic pattern announces a foreign, non-Ottoman
origin. Since the art tradition then, as now, had no name for this pattern,
Cantemir had little choice but to select an available usul such as düyek.
The first two lines (four-cycles) of HIA are constructed out of AAAB phrases.
The second line is a rhythmic variant of the first. H I B has an antecedent/con-
sequent structure, but the antecedent is transposed down a fourth. In the
broadest sense this repetitious pattern is reminiscent of the Persian and
Turkish peşrevs of period 1, but the independent modularity of their constit-
uent sections is not characteristic of this piece. Instead, there seems to be a
broad underlying repetitiousness throughout the entire mülazime (= H I) as
though each line and each terkib were a variant of every other one. In addition,
the internal rhythmic patterning of each section is exotic to any period of the
peşrev as it exists in the Turkish documents.
The proportions of this item are unusual for any period of Turkish music.
The terkib A of the mülazime (= H I A) contains fifteen cycles, while B and
C have only four cycles each. While H I does end with a one-cycle cadential
phrase, this particular cadence is not found in the Turkish corpus for Beyati or
Uşşak (Ex. 3.41).
While the scale of this peşrev is identical to the Beyati of seventeenth-century
Turkish music, its melodic progression is not. Throughout the mülazime there
is a strong emphasis on the note c, which dominates the first two lines of terkib
A and returns in terkibs B and C. Lines 3 and 4 of A emphasize the notes B and
d, and concentrate on the tetrachord from A to d, paying no attention to the
notes above d.
In seventeenth-century Turkish music the makam Beyati emphasized the
note beyati (e♭) and its alternation with hüseyni (e). The area from d to f was

Example 3.41
Turkish cadences in Beyati and Uşşak: a) Nefiri
Behram, sakil (Cantemir Collection: no. 159); b) Nefiri
Behram, fahte (ibid.: no. 58); c) Solakzade, devr-i kebir
(Bobowski ca. 1650:106)
The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 405

Example 3.42 Beyati, semai-i Ahmed Çelebi, H I, M (Cantemir Collection: no. 264)

Example 3.43 Beyati, düyek, Acemleriñ, H II and H III (Collection: no. 100)

crucial to its melodic progression. This can be seen in the following, roughly
contemporaneous Turkish semai by Edirneli Ahmed Çelebi:
The peculiar construction and makam usage of this peşrev continues in the
second and third hanes (Ex. 3.43).
H II is a mere terkib (of four cycles). H III contains two terkibs of four cycles
each. Despite the rudimentary looking AAAB structure of H I A, the remainder
of this long terkib displays a rather sophisticated structure with rapid shifts of
rhythmic phrasing and melodic direction.
H II, H III A and B conclude on the note segah (B ). This was also true of
H III A and B of the previous example (Beyati, sofyan). This strong emphasis
on segah in the concluding hane is alien to Turkish practice and points to a
specific Iranian modality, perhaps something akin to the later Persian dast-
gah Afshari.
406 Chapter 12

Example 3.44 Beyati, devr-i revan, Acemleriñ (Collection: no. 102)

The usul and makam usage of this piece (Ex. 3.44) do not seem remarkable
within the seventeenth-century Turkish corpus. However, the extreme short-
ness of the terkibs is unknown in period-4 items in devr-i revan. HIA contains
two usul cycles plus a third cadential cycle. HIB is more substantial, plus a
repeat of cycles three and four and the same cadential cycle (H I A 3 = H I B 7).
This cadential phrase is not typical of Turkish music because it emphasizes
only the karar and yeden (A and G) and not the fifth, fourth or third above the
karar. H I B has an antecedent/consequent structure in cycles three and four,
in which the first seven beats of cycle three are repeated as the first half of
cycle four.
The relationship of this Persian piece to Turkish practice can be better
understood by comparing it with a roughly contemporary Turkish peşrev in
the same usul and makam, that uses the new Persian peşrev form. The only
comparable item in either collection is the devr-i revan Persian style peşrev in
Arazbar by Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi (Ex. 3.45). The seventeenth-century terkib
Arazbar was compounded from the makams Gerdaniye and Beyati.
The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 407

Example 3.45 Arazbar, devr-i revan, Eyyubi Mehmed (Cantemir Collection: no. 283), H I

This serhane ve mülazime (H I) fulfills the same function as the compara-

ble section of the Persian peşrev above. However, the difference in scope is
apparent. The Persian H I A has three cycles, while H I B contains five cycles
with a repetition of two cycles. The Turkish piece is considerably larger.
Eyyubi Mehmed’s serhane ve mülazime is composed of five terkibs, all having
four cycles. Nevertheless, it still features antecedent/consequent structures
throughout most terkibs. Terkibs A, C, D and E are created out of ABAC struc-
tures. As a compound modal entity, Arazbar allows a wider melodic movement
than Beyati. Terkibs A, B and E utilize the Gerdaniye element (emphasizing the
note gerdaniye, g), while terkibs C and D are in Beyati. This fact alone imparts a
wider ambitus to the Turkish item. It would seem that the Turkish composer is
emphasizing these repetitious patterns as a gesture toward the Persian peşrev
form, perhaps conflating the newer and older styles of Persian peşrev. When
we view a Turkish peşrev in the same usul by the same composer, the difference
in compositional style is apparent (Ex. 3.46).
Here the makam and the large-scale structure differ from those of the pre-
vious two items. Nevertheless, what is significant for us is the total absence
of antecedent/consequent and other repetitive compositional techniques. MA
and MB must be interpreted as continuous melodic lines extending for four
complete usul cycles each (4 × 14/8 = 56/ 8). These melodic lines have not been
created by means of repetitions, sequencing, or transposition. This conception
of melodic line is characteristic of Turkish peşrevs of period 5 and thereafter
into the Modern Era. We see here that the same Turkish composer was able
to utilize the older Persian compositional techniques as well as the new more
408 Chapter 12

Example 3.46 Evç, devr-i revan, Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi (Cantemir Collection: no. 328), H I
and MA and B

experimental methods of some of his Ottoman contemporaries. Thus, we can

conclude that the Persian peşrev in devr-i revan was less exotic than the other
new-style Persian peşrevs we have seen, but represented an approach to com-
position which was being abandoned by the Turkish musicians of the later sev-
enteenth century.
The sixteen-beat usul fer-i muhammes was very rare in the seventeenth-cen-
tury Turkish peşrev repertoire (only two items in Cantemir). However, nothing
in the collection in this usul, or in the far more common muhammes (also in
sixteen beats) corresponds to the relationship of terkib and usul cycle evident
in this peşrev (Ex. 3.47). Each terkib in each hane is composed of a single usul
cycle. This is completely alien to Turkish practice in any usul. Turning to the
internal structure of the terkibs, a binary antecedent/consequent structure is
evident throughout each one. However, this binary structure is not the same
as the type found in the early Persian peşrevs or their Turkish counterparts,
because in this piece the antecedent is in every case a literal repetition. In MA,
the first and third quarter-cycle are identical; in MB the first and third are iden-
tical, and the same is true in every terkib. It is only the consequents which allow
for any variation. The repetition here is always on the level of the antecedent;
no other terkib sections or whole terkibs can be repeated. This structure is also
alien to the early Perso-Turkish peşrev, to the late seventeenth-century Turkish
peşrev, or to any form of peşrev known thereafter.
The makam usage of this Persian item shows the scale, ambitus and gen-
eral melodic direction of the makam Neva. Nevertheless, its rapid upward and
downward movements, from the ağaze d to the karar A and from f♯ to A, cancel
out the appearance of a specific seyir of Neva, which was quite developed by
the second half of the seventeenth century.
The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 409

Example 3.47 Neva, fer-i Muhammes, Acemleriñ (Cantemir Collection: no. 68)

It is probably more fruitful to compare the compositional structure of this

piece, as well as the Beyati düyek, with folk dance genres in Anatolia, Iran, or
Azerbaijan rather than with the Turkish peşrev of any period. For example,
the well-known halay melody from Sivas (Central Anatolia) (Ex. 3.48) displays
some like the antecedent/consequent structure seen in the Persian peşrev.
To conclude, we can describe these four Persian items as coming from a
non-Ottoman musical tradition. They are the only pieces in the Cantemir
Collection whose foreign origin is evident from their internal structure. While
they are a small sample, it is possible to draw conclusions from their appear-
ance in the collection. These pieces were not notated by a Persian musician or
by a foreigner resident in Iran, and so are not primary documents comparable
to the notations of Bobowski, Cantemir, Fonton, or Kevseri, but they can only
be explained as having come from a primary Iranian source. While nothing in
the modern Azerbaijanian or Iranian repertoires may correspond very closely
to these pieces, their compositional structure does not appear as alien to the
Iranian musical sphere as they do to the Ottoman.
410 Chapter 12

Example 3.48 Sivas halayı

Although the Persian peşrevs have a much smaller scope and a shorter
melodic line than the Turkish peşrevs of the later seventeenth century, they
are by no means rudimentary. Their use of rhythm is inventive in a manner
alien to the Ottoman tradition, and they are not dominated by the modular
repetitious structures of the older Persian peşrevs in the Ottoman corpus. They
seem to show a compression of compositional ideas which was the opposite of
the process which occurred in the Ottoman peşrev. The Turkish compositional
strategy led, in the course of the eighteenth century, to a large expansion of the
rhythmic cycle and melodic line, while the Persian/Azeri strategy brought the
peşrev closer to folkloristic patterns, and ultimately led to its extinction as an
independent genre.
In Iran by 1800 the pishrow was evidently extinct, and during the nineteenth
century it became customary to begin a concert with the daramad of the dast-
gah (During 1984:156). At the beginning of the twentieth century the famous
musician Mokhtari Rokneddin Khan created melodies for group performance
prior to the daramad. His contemporary Darvish Khan invented a new form
The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev 411

Example 3.49 Esfahan: “Pishdaramad-e qadim,” version of Montazam Hokama

called the pishdaramad (“before the daramad”). His first creation was in the
Abu Ata mode and in a slow triple meter. Later Rokneddin Khan composed
a pishdaramad in Chahargah in duple meter, apparently inspired by military
music (ibid). Considering that even the fundamental distinction between
pishrow and semai (in triple meter) has been forgotten, and the mülazime
ritornello is absent, there would not seem to be any continuity between the
earlier Persian pishrow and the modern pishdaramad. However, it is possible
that other composed rhythmic instrumental melodies in the modern dastgah
repertoire, whether termed pishdaramad or zarbi (“rhythmical”), may have
absorbed parts of older pishrow melodies. One such melody, which is called a
“pishdaramad-e qadim” (“ancient pishdaramad”) in the mode Esfahan, appears
in a manuscript of the early twentieth-century musician Montazam Hokama
(Ex. 3.49), in the repertoire of the setar player Forutan and (under the rubric
of Shustar) in the muqam of northern Azerbaijan.4 The general scope of the
melody, its rhythmic idioms and general style may be compared with the Neva
fer-i muhammes in Cantemir’s Collection (Ex. 3.47).

4 I would like to thank Jean During for sharing these pieces with me.
 Chapter 13

Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire

The documents of the Ottoman repertoire allow us to follow the patterns by

which earlier items were transmitted to later generations of musicians. Unlike
the notated repertoire of a literate musical culture, the Ottoman repertoire was
transmitted in an essentially oral manner (Behar 1993). The form in which the
“same” item appears in later manuscripts is rarely the result of a literate manu-
script transmission, but rather of an oral transmission documented in writing.
The fact that an earlier notated version of a piece may exist is not usually rel-
evant to the process of oral transmission.
The repertoire of peşrevs and semais performed during the entire seven-
teenth century is relatively well-known. Charles Fonton’s description of the
process of instrumental composition (1751:80–1; above III, chap. 1) makes it
clear that peşrevs and semais were never very numerous. The creators of the
peşrevs and semais were usually professional instrumentalists, performers who
composed very little. This situation contrasts with the creators of vocal music,
who were often primarily composers, rather than performers, and whose
documented compositions frequently run into the hundreds. Apart from the
mehterhane, the peşrevs and semais were the opening and closing items of the
courtly vocal fasıl, and the composed element of the fasıl of the instrumental-
ists which centered around the taksim·improvisation. In his mecmua Bobowski
(ca. 1650) divided his material into twenty-two fasıls, a very similar arrange-
ment to the divisions of the other mecmua collections (without notation) of
the seventeenth century. Cantemir (ca. 1700:IX:103) mentions that two peşrevs
might be performed at the beginning of the vocal fasıl, whereas only a single
peşrev was performed at the beginning of the fasıl of the instrumentalists. This
limited role for the peşrev and semai can explain the relatively low number of
existing items in any one period. In addition, there must have been finite lim-
its to the mnemonic capacity of musicians operating without notation, espe-
cially with non-textual genres. The four hundred instrumental items notated
by both Bobowski and Cantemir respectively, represented the repertoires of
two musicians of European origin who knew how to use musical notation. We
must assume that an individual Turkish musician performed fewer instrumen-
tal items. The two notated collections represent the combined knowledge of
several Turkish informants.
At present, the surviving Turkish instrumental repertoire falls into two rather
well documented historical periods: (1) the seventeenth century, (2) the later

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_017

Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 413

eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Thus, there is a considerable gap

between 1700, when Cantemir notated his own compositions, and the period
of Tanburi Isak (1745?–1814), whose peşrevs were notated by Hamparsum
Limonciyan (1768–1839), and therefore can be considered primary documents
of the repertoire of the beginning of the nineteenth century. On the other
hand, some of the Hamparsum versions of peşrevs by mid-eighteenth-century
composers, such as Haham Musi (i.e. the generation prior to Isak) show signs
of modernization—they have the formal structure of the early nineteenth cen-
tury. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century peşrevs continued to appear in very
modernized form in the nineteenth-century notated collections of Mandoli
Harutin (1875), Necip Paşa (d. 1883), and İsmail Hakkı Bey (1866–1927).
Thus, the sources which can be used to study the transmission process are
distributed rather unevenly. The process of transmission itself is also not a uni-
fied phenomenon, but rather a cluster of related and unrelated processes. At
times it is possible to distinguish each process, but otherwise one may blend
into another.
The simplest and most easily identifiable phenomenon is manuscript trans-
mission, of which the best example is Mustafa Kevseri’s copy of the Cantemir
manuscript, and probably also Mandoli Harutin’s copy of Hamparsum
Limonciyan’s manuscript (TMA I 1969:248). Although Turkish scholars, such
as Yekta and Ezgi have worked with both manuscripts, they conducted no sys-
tematic comparison. Both copies were completed within approximately fifty
years of the date of the original, during which time both performance practice
and (especially in the eighteenth century) compositional form had changed
somewhat. Nevertheless, the later writers attempted to copy, not develop, the
internal structure of the earlier collections.
Cantemir’s collection contains roughly one hundred items (out of 250)
which were previously notated by Bobowski in the middle of the seventeenth
century. Nevertheless, Cantemir’s versions are not dependent on Bobowski’s,
as the manuscripts were apparently no longer in Turkey when Cantemir cre-
ated his collection and treatise. It would seem therefore that the shared mate-
rial in the Cantemir Collection represents the shape in which the items had
been transmitted orally for approximately fifty years.
The historical depth of the two seventeenth-century sources is quite differ-
ent. Bobowski’s collection, while earlier than Cantemir’s, does not contain as
many items which predate the seventeenth century. The “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz”
(ca. 1650) contains mainly the repertoire of one generation which was current
when Bobowski himself was employed by the court, i.e. material of the 1620s to
1640s. The best-represented composer in the collection is Solakzade (d. 1658).
Nevertheless, the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” does contain some music attributed
414 Chapter 13

to earlier musicians, such as peşrevs by Nefiri Behram, Emir-i Hac, Hasan Can,
and Gazi Giray Han from the mid to later sixteenth century, and other musi-
cians from unspecified earlier periods, e.g. Osman Paşa or Seyf el-Misri.
Of the remaining two hundred and fifteen peşrevs in the Cantemir Collection
which do not appear in the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” over half are attributed to
named musicians of his own generation or of the two generations preced-
ing him (Derviş Osman, Dervish Mustafa, Angeli, Eyyubi Mehmed, Ali Hoca,
Ibrahim Ağa, Zurnazen Ahmed Çelebi, Muzaffer, Şerif, Harun Yahudi, Hacı
Kasım, Kanbosu Mehmed, Kemani Mustafa, Derviş Receb, and Küçük Hatib),
including twenty of his own pieces and seventy by these other musicians. Of
the sixty remaining peşrevs nineteen are attributed to the “Persians” (Acemler)
and the “Indians” (Hinduyan). The other forty odd peşrevs are either anony-
mous or bear composers’ names which are otherwise unknown (e.g. Ağa Riza,
Küçük Kul, Ermeni Murad Çelebi, and Kapucı). In addition, there are two or
more items which predate the sixteenth century (Korkut, Seyf el-Misri). There
is no control document for these pre-seventeenth-century items in Cantemir,
so there is no way to judge the degree to which they may have been altered in
the course of transmission. There are some differences in attribution between
Cantemir and Bobowski so there is always the possibility of misattribution
except for pieces by Cantemir himself or by his teachers and informants such
as Tanburi Angeli, Ali Hoca, and Mehmed Çelebi. In the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz”
the same is true except for peşrevs by Sultan Murad IV and well-known con-
temporaries of the author, such as Solakzade, Şah Kulı, Çenkçi Cafer, Ahmed
Bey or particularly famous earlier pieces, like the peşrevs of Emir-i Hac or
Hasan Can. On the other hand, the fact that these two independent collections
separated by fifty years and based on different musical sources agree on the
attributions of many of their shared repertoire suggests that the majority of
their attributions are reliable. The limited reliability of some of these attribu-
tions have been pointed out by Wright (2000:558–63), and in the notes to his
edition of the Cantemir Collection (1992a).
Closest to written transmission are the items in which Bobowski’s and
Cantemir’s versions are essentially similar with regard to the number and
length of the terkibs within each hane and in which every significant note of
the older version appears in the newer version. In these cases, the major differ-
ence lies in the rhythmic phrasing. Sometimes this has its origin in the style of
transcription of each writer, and at other times in a small difference in musical
interpretation. In addition, the use of single-note alteration may be somewhat
fuller in the later version, and this may reflect either greater precision on the
part of Cantemir, or else a change in musical style. These transcriptions dem-
onstrate that the oral tradition was capable of maintaining stable versions of
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 415

pieces of some complexity for at least fifty years. In addition to several items
in the Cantemir Collection, Charles Fonton’s version of the Saba hafif peşrev
by Ahmed Çelebi shows a similar process of retention over a fifty-year period.
Other examples show a somewhat different process. In these cases, all ter-
kibs are in the same position, but the melodies of some terkibs take a significant
new direction, usually suggesting a change in ambitus or melodic progression
in the later period.
More extensive change is represented by the addition of new terkibs, which
have the effect of framing the older composition, thus creating an expanded
new work. These new versions seem almost akin to the muhammes genre in
Ottoman poetry in which one couplet (beyt) of an older gazel forms the nucleus
for three additional lines, thus forming a five-line stanza. In the peşrevs of this
type the new terkibs fill out the melodic progression which was less developed
in the earlier items. Some peşrevs also show a reinterpretation of the usul, i.e.
muhammes (16 beats, not to be confused with the poetic genre of the same
name) for düyek (8/4).
The nature of our two seventeenth-century sources suggests that, apart
from the individual styles of transcriptions of the two authors, the use of
note-alteration and modulation was expanding during the century, so that the
later version routinely demonstrates both techniques more extensively.
Important factors leading to formal stability in the transmission of peşrevs
within the seventeenth century were the lack of change in the usul system, and
in the melodic density of musical phrases as well as the minimal change in the
formal structure of the peşrev genre. The major formal changes in the peşrev
genre from 1650 to 1700 were: the abandonment of the serbend, the decreased
use of the zeyl, and the occasional use of the new Persian peşrev form which
lacked an independent serhane. Broader changes began to occur at the end of
the century. At this time a new type of peşrev was created for performance at
a slower tempo, marking the beginning of a process of melodic elaboration
which became dominant in all peşrevs during the course of the next century.
Angeli’s Rehâvî çenber and Cantemir’s Buselik-Aşirani berefşan are examples of
this newer type of peşrev. Fonton’s version (1751:no. 4) of Cantemir’s Bestenigar
berefşan peşrev furnishes an example of the process of tempo retardation and
melodic elaboration in the course of transmission. By the middle of the eigh-
teenth century the formal structure of the peşrev was changing. The number
and relative length of hanes and use of the terkib were now different than they
had been before.
After the middle of the eighteenth century the formal changes in the peşrev
genre were overtaken by even broader developments in the usul system and
tempo of performance. Most of the older usuls were expanded to twice their
416 Chapter 13

previous length. They were performed at an even slower tempo, which seems
to have gradually reached one fifth of the seventeenth-century tempo by the
middle of the nineteenth century. The rhythmic intervals were filled in with
intermediary (velveleli) strokes on the percussion instruments, while the inter-
nal break-up of the usul was often quite different from its older form. Most
significantly, the relationship of melody to usul underwent a radical change,
as the melody was no longer tied to the internal subdivisions of the old and
relatively short usul cycles. This change led to internal subdivisions within the
melody which did not correspond closely to the subdivisions of the usul. All
of these changes in musical structure and performance practice resulted in a
situation in which transmission of an older element of the repertoire was not
as straightforward a matter as it had been in the seventeenth century. By 1800
any peşrev which had been created a century, or even fifty years earlier, was
part of a different genre whose norms were no longer the functioning norms
of Turkish music.
Therefore, the nature of oral transmission over the one hundred twenty to
one hundred and fifty years separating the seventeenth-century items from their
form in the Hamparsum notations is radically different from the oral transmis-
sion between the fifty odd years separating the two major seventeenth-century
sources.1 The different types of transmission were affected not only by the

1 Until now the only published study of the nature of the transmission of any aspect of the
Ottoman repertoire is the monographic article by Owen Wright (1988). This monograph
addresses a highly specific repertoire as well as broader issues in the transmission of Turkish
instrumental music from the earliest known period (later fifteenth century) until the 1860s.
The part of the repertoire addressed is a small part of the corpus of peşrevs in the usul devr-i
kebir used today in the ayin ritual of the Mevlevi dervishes. This mini-corpus consists of
four peşrevs ascribed today to Osman Dede (d. 1730). In fact, most of these peşrevs had been
composed by other musicians of the seventeenth century, and they appear in the Cantemir
Collection, and sometimes also in the Bobowski Collection, which predates the lifetime of
Osman Dede. Although the surface appearance of these modern peşrevs is strikingly differ-
ent from the seventeenth-century pieces with which Wright identifies them, he has created
a formula which convincingly demonstrates how the original items were transformed into
the shape in which they appear in a Hamparsum document of the 1860s, and also into the
closely related form in which they had been transmitted by Zekai Dede (d. 1897) to Rauf
Yekta. In the course of his study, Wright defined certain general principles which appear
to lie behind the surface transformation of these seventeenth-century peşrevs. The present
research has helped to confirm some of these principles. At the same time, it has shown that
the main thrust of Wright’s research into what he calls the “Mevlevi peşrev” is relevant only
to a very small corpus. Application of his formulas to other parts of the Ottoman repertoire
met with very limited or no success. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish the general prin-
ciples of transformation from the specific formulas which turn out to apply only to the four
seventeenth-century peşrevs which the Mevlevi dervishes have retained and transformed in
their functioning repertoire.
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 417

length of time separating a given item from its appearance in notation, but also
by the specific types of changes which had occurred in Turkish music in each
historical period. Hamparsum’s versions of peşrevs by mid-eighteenth-century
masters like Haham Musi or Arapzade display the formal characteristics of the
early nineteenth century. His versions of peşrevs by seventeenth-century musi-
cians such as Cantemir, Muzaffer or Şerif are even more distant from any pos-
sible seventeenth-century form.
These nineteenth-century versions of peşrevs by seventeenth-century
musicians display the results of a musical process which may be said to have
begun not earlier than the last third of the seventeenth century, rather than
a continuous process which had begun centuries before. It is likely that the
changes in melodic progression and modulation had developed more incre-
mentally over a period of two centuries or more, but the changes in the
usul system and in the formal structure of the peşrev seem to be less grad-
ual and more precisely datable. Apparently, once a certain critical mass had
been reached in the changes affecting usul, tempo, compositional structure,
melodic progression, and modulation, that is, once these different types of
changes which had been developing at different rates came to interact simul-
taneously, the nature and pace of change became greater and faster than they
had been in the mid-sixteenth to later seventeenth centuries. This period
of maximum interaction can be shown to have occurred by the early eigh-
teenth century.
The radical formal and stylistic transformations of the music of the later
eighteenth century dictated major alterations in the form in which an ear-
lier item could function in the current repertoire, and therefore in the form
in which it could appear in the post-eighteenth-century notated sources. The
shape of seventeenth-century items in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
Turkish repertoires, is essentially beyond the scope of the present study. Briefly,
we may note that in some cases the melodic structure of the original was main-
tained completely, but the time values for each pitch were expanded, and the
resulting long notes were elaborated upon to create new, micro-level melodies
which came to obscure the older melodic structure. That is, they were usu-
ally too independent to be understood as ornaments for the original melody.
While the eye could detect the older melody by reading a score, this was not
the Turkish practice in the nineteenth century, so that the aural impression
of an independent melody took precedence. We simply do not know whether
musicians and connoisseurs of the generations of Hamparsum or Mandoli
could pick out the framework of a seventeenth-century melody while listening
to its elaborated new version. Twentieth-century Turkish musicians certainly
cannot do so. A number of seventeenth-century peşrevs in the usul devr-i kebir
418 Chapter 13

(14/4) were retained by the Mevlevi dervishes in rhythmically and melodically

expanded versions (Wright 1988).
However, the majority of peşrevs attributed to musicians of the sixteenth or
seventeenth centuries (in the nineteenth-century sources) do not seem to have
even this tenuous relationship to the music of those eras. Every aspect of their
melodic movement as well as of their musical form is typical of the nineteenth
century. Most of the currently performed peşrevs and semais attributed to Gazi
Giray Han and all of those attributed to Cantemir fall into this category. Some
of these pieces may be outright pseudographia, others may show the conse-
quences of steady and incremental modernization from earlier generations, or
they may be the products of the technique known as the musical nazire.
Cantemir does not discuss the musicological meaning of the term “nazire”
which has apparently disappeared from modern Turkish musical terminol-
ogy. Nazire is a literary term referring to “parallel” compositions. The framing
method of the muhammes (mentioned above) could be employed to create a
new poem out of an older poem, or else a new poem could be written without
quoting the older poem. In this case the new poem would use the meter, rhyme
and/or redif (repeating monorhyme) as well as some images or words of the
original. The aesthetic of the nazire encompassed everything from a pedestrian
rearrangement of the original to a totally new creation which only referred
obliquely to the older poem. Several nazires might be created out of one
well-appreciated gazel. Ottoman poets dispelled any possible “anxiety of influ-
ence” by attempting to outdo, to excel the older poem. In some cases, the nazire
might be a more original and brilliant poem than the “original.” Therefore, it is
not correct to view the nazire as an “imitative” or “derivative” work, although
it might be just that in the hands of an amateur poet. The Ottoman literary
terminology does not distinguish between a truly imitative poem by such an
amateur and a masterpiece by a great poet which seeks to outdo its original,
although their aesthetic aims and means were extremely diverse.

As we have seen earlier, the choices generally made in the realms of

rhyme, rhythm and strategy are actually relatively limited, and for almost
any poem there exists a large number of very similar poems—similar,
at least, on the surface. Thus, the nazîre differs from other poems not so
much because it is externally “like” another poem, but because the simi-
larity is intended (Andrews 1976:166).2

2 The poetic nazire was the topic of a conference I had organized at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1996, in which our late colleague Walter Andrews had participated, along
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 419

From the small corpus of peşrevs in the collections in which one of a pair is
described as a “nazire,” it can be seen that different techniques were used in
these cases. A number of the surviving examples seem like totally distinct
compositions whose “reference” to an older peşrev is only found in one ter-
kib in the second or third hane. Other nazires show no identifiable relation-
ship other than makam and usul and the number and length of the terkibs. We
are reminded of Fonton’s remarks about the absence of “plagiarism” among
Turkish musicians:

What presents such a great difficulty is that in addition to the talent that
this requires, one must also know all the peşrevs which have been com-
posed, so as not to repeat them. Otherwise one would be declared a pla-
giarist, and plagiarism in music, is a crime less pardonable and more rare
in Turkey than anywhere else (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:1).

In other cases, the nazire clearly acknowledges the older peşrev in some part of
the serhane or mülazime, but even in these cases the nazire is not an imitation
or even a variation, but a new composition. Specific examples of the nazire
will be analyzed in a separate section below. However, from the point of view
of the transmission of the repertoire, it can be seen that in an oral musical
culture the existence of one or more nazire peşrevs in addition to an “origi-
nal” complicated the transmission process. How would later generations know
which of the two or three peşrevs was really the work of the musician whose
name it bore? Would a peşrev be transmitted in addition to one or two nazires,
or would the newer peşrev be preserved as representing the older piece? The
modern repertoire seems to have been transmitted without records of these
nazire compositions.3
Closely related to the issue of the nazire is that of pseudographia, compo-
sitions published by their authors as the work of older musicians. The moti-
vations of the newer composers were opposite, however. In the nazire the
composer entered into a competition with a musician of the past, while in the
pseudographic composition he effaced his own musical personality. The need
for pseudographia was evident in musical cultures like the Ottoman (or the
Maghribi/Andalusian) in which prestige was attached to a historically based

with Mehmet Kalpaklı, Paul Losensky, and Robert Dankoff. The papers were published in the
Turkish Studies Association Bulletin vol. 21, no. 2, fall 1997 (Special Issue on Ottoman Poetry).
3 Wright does note the existence of a peşrev by Ahmed Ağa “in the style of” of Salim Bey in a
Hamparsum document of the mid-nineteenth century (Wright 1988:71, note 103).
420 Chapter 13

composed repertoire, and not only to supposedly ancient musical principles.

While antiquity was necessary to the identity of the culture, pure archaicism
would have no function in the contemporary musical culture. The retention of
an “ancient” repertoire evidently became a particularly critical issue after the
Turkish musical structures underwent fundamental change in the eighteenth
century. In many cases the modernization of the ancient was the solution.
However, the step to pseudographia was not taken as lightly in every sphere of
the Ottoman musical culture. Within the Sufi musical tradition of the Mevlevi
dervishes, the existence of fragmentary anonymous items from the distant past
was considered preferable to sprucing up the repertoire with pseudographic
compositions. But within the secular courtly tradition there was no strong
objection to pseudographia; there was no rigid boundary separating historical
antiquity from an inflated, mythical antiquity. The first might span a century or
more, while the second spanned several centuries. How far back the mythical
repertoire might extend can be seen from a tale related by Fonton:

The tanbur is, after the ney, the most esteemed instrument in Turkey. It
is more ancient than the ney as well, for if we are to believe the Turks,
who are the only sources that we can cite, they received it from the
philosopher Plato who according to them had a perfect understanding
of music and was the inventor of this instrument on which he played
several melodies which he composed himself, and that have suppos-
edly been preserved to the present. Several Turkish musicians boast that
they know these tunes, which they guard jealously and will teach no one
(Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:4).

One of these peşrevs was apparently extant in the seventeenth century and
was notated by Cantemir (Collection:no. 165), but such spectacular pseudo-
graphia were the exception. During the seventeenth century the bulk of the
Ottoman instrumental repertoire was contemporary or one or two generations
old. Bobowski’s collection does not seem to contain anything older than a cen-
tury. Cantemir seemed to have entertained a more scholarly interest in the his-
tory of the repertoire than Bobowski, who was a practicing slave-musician at
the court. This difference probably explains the appearance of a substantial
Persian repertoire from the mid-sixteenth century in Cantemir’s collection
while it is absent in Bobowski’s. The two collections contain very few items
which were attributed to musicians known to have lived before the sixteenth
century, such as Prince Korkut and the enigmatic Seyf el-Misri, who apparently
lived in Timurid times (according to the seventeenth-century Bukharan trea-
tise of Darvish Ali (Rajabov 1963:1131)).
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 421

Cantemir wrote reverently of the “songs of Hodgia Musicar,” i.e. Abdülkadir

Meraği (ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghi, d. 1435), one of the last great Muslim musicians
of the Middle Ages, and of his student “Gulam the Arabian” (Cantemir 1734).
Fifty years later Charles Fonton repeated the legends told about these figures by
the musicians of Istanbul. The contemporaneous mecmuas always allot prime
space to the texts of the kar and nakş compositions posthumously attributed
to Marāghi and Gulam, and occasionally also to songs by Persian musicians
whose works probably did remain in the Ottoman repertoire. In fact, the works
of Marāghi were apparently not entirely pseudographic but rather misattribu-
tions of earlier Turkish and Persian works (Ezgi 1953:240). Of course, we can-
not know whether the modem “Marāghi” repertoire and the one referred to by
Cantemir represent a continuous chain of transmission, although the evidence
of the mecmuas which are coeval with Cantemir suggest that some continuity
from the period of Abdülali in the earlier seventeenth century is likely. That is,
Cantemir may well have been referring to earlier forms of the pieces known
today as the oeuvre of Marāghi.4
However, there was no instrumental counterpart to this repertoire. It seems
that the prestige of purely instrumental music had increased in the Ottoman
period to the point where it did not correspond to any instrumental repertoire
of earlier eras. There was no substantial instrumental repertoire attributed
to Marāghi or to the musicians of the Timuríd period whom we know from
other sources. The peşrevs of the anonymous “Persians” and “Indians” in the
Cantemir Collection were at least a century more recent than the period of
Marāghi, and they certainly did not have the prestige of the “Marāghi” reper-
toire of vocal music. First, their composers were not remembered by name,
but only collectively, and second, they were not so universally known as the
kars ascribed to Marāghi. Even an early historical figure like Prince Korkut,
who certainly was important in the history of makam music in Anatolia was
not granted a substantial posthumous repertoire. There were small repertoires
attributed to two historical semi-Ottoman figures of the sixteenth century:
the Egyptian mehter musician Emir-i Hac and the Crimean ruler Gazi Giray
Han. These pieces were preserved for over a century (by Cantemir’s time) and
must have been viewed as “classics.” Of the two, Gazi Giray remained a “living
classic” who demanded posthumous composition to enhance his continuous
position within Ottoman music up through the nineteenth century. However,
it appears that for eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Turks the real “clas-
sics” of the earlier instrumental repertoire were the creations of Ottoman

4 For an example of a stylistic connection between an anonymous “Acemi” vocal item and an
early peşrev in the Cantemir Collection, see Feldman 2022:197–199.
422 Chapter 13

musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—Solakzade, Muzaffer,

Kantemiroğlu (Cantemir), Arapzade, Haham Musi, and Kemani Corci. There
was no perceived need to forge links with the Mongol or Timurid eras, as there
had been for the vocal repertoire. Pseudograpahía could be confined to the
figures of the Ottoman past.

1 Transmission of the Peşrev during the Seventeenth Century:

Peşrevs and Analyses

In some cases, a peşrev which had been notated by Bobowski appears in

Cantemir’s work with minimal change (Ex. 3.50). The changes which do
appear have more to do with the method of notation employed by these two
writers, than with any difference in the pieces themselves. Cantemir employed
an alphabetic notation in which each fret on the tanbur corresponded to a
letter or combination of letters in the Arabic alphabet; every note occurring in
the piece could be transcribed with an alphabetic symbol. Bobowski, on the
other hand, employed Western staff notation. He grouped his material in fasıl
according to makam, e.g. “der makam-i Buselik” (“in the makam Buselik”), fol-
lowed by the name of the item. The notes of his scale must therefore be inter-
preted according to the intervallic structure of the makam which he named.
When we compare his and Cantemir’s versions of shared pieces, modulation
is always more extensive in Cantemir’s version. While Western sharp and flat
signs could only approximate some of the intervals of Turkish music, Bobowski
did employ them to indicate the appearance of some accidentals. The fact that
he did indicate accidentals fairly frequently suggests that the relative scarcity
of accidentals in his notations is a faithful reflection of the musical style of the
first half of the seventeenth century. To support this thesis, we might note that
Cantemir’s transcriptions of what were considered to be early items, such as
the “Persian” and “Indian” peşrevs have far fewer accidentals than the reper-
toire from the second half of the seventeenth century.
This example (3.50) demonstrates the type of difference in accidentals
which often can be observed between these two sources. Bobowski’s transcrip-
tion indicates nothing other than the basic scale of the makam Irak (F♯, G, A,
B ; c, d, e, f♯) while Cantemir has B (segah) alternating with B♭ (nihavend). In
the mülazime Cantemir indicates the appearance of d♭ (saba) in the place of
modern “kapalı neva” while Bobowski has no such indication.
The second major difference in notation concerns rhythm, in which dif-
ferences between our two notated sources are generally of two types. As
Wright has observed, Bobowski, who was a santur (dulcimer) player, probably
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 423

Example 3.50 a) Peşrev-i Hünkar, Irak, Emir-i Hac (Bobowski ca. 1650:134), H I, MA, B, C;
b) Same (Cantemir Collection: no. 299)

introduced certain rhythmic idioms from his own instrument into his tran-
scriptions. As the following comparisons of Cantemir’s and Bobowski’s ver-
sions will show, Cantemir frequently notated long notes at the beginning or
in the cadence of a phrase without any rhythmic subdivision, while Bobowski
indicated the rhythmic idiom which was actually played there. In these cases,
Bobowski’s version is more reliable than Cantemir’s.
The examples below (Ex. 3.51) are taken from the beginning of the serhane
and the mülazime of the peşrev called “Kız düyeki.” There is a slight melodic dif-
ference in Cantemir’s serhane, but the most significant difference between the
two versions is the higher melodic density of Bobowski’s:12:10 in the first exam-
ple and 11:7 in the second. This higher melodic density is created by rhythmic
patterns employing eighth notes. In the second 4/4 unit of example 1, Cantemir
has only e, f♯, d where Bobowski fills in with e, f♯, g, f♯, g. Most tellingly,
Cantemir’s mülazime opens with a whole note held on a, where Bobowski has
a, g, a, g, a; five notes for Cantemir’s one. This difference is typical of these two
424 Chapter 13

Example 3.51 a) Kız düyeki, H I, MA interlinear

notated sources. This is, of course, the opposite of the theory of the progressive
increase in melodic density expounded by Wright (1988). It seems clear that
what we are seeing is not a diachronic change in musical structure, but a differ-
ence in notational practice. In transcribing this peşrev, Cantemir used what he
called the “great meter” (vezn-i kebir), in which no more than two pitches could
be written over a single numeral. As a result, more complex rhythmic groupings
could not be expressed. He was aware of this deficiency, and he described the
great meter as follows: “Observe that although it appears that one can perform
the quantity and quality of the melody of the terkib which you see by means
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 425

Example 3.52 “Gül-i Rana,” serhane, interlinear

of a simple beat, nevertheless one cannot articulate the delicacy of the terkib
according to the conditions set by the composer” (Cantemir ca. 1700:1:12).
Cantemir’s notations in the great meter are no more than outlines of the
melody; the rhythmic nuances were meant to be filled in by the performer.
It is possible to learn much about these nuances by comparing these simpli-
fied transcriptions with the transcriptions in the small and the “smallest of the
small” meters and with the transcriptions of Bobowski. Thus, these surface dif-
ferences between the material in Bobowski and Cantemir have nothing to do
with diachronic musical change. They also give no evidence for an increase in
melodic density during the second half of the seventeenth century, except for
those peşrevs which were written in the smallest of the small meter.
We may examine Ex. 3.11 and Ex. 3.12 from the previous chapter, “Gül-i Rana.”
Bobowski and Cantemir present the same hanes and their constituent terkibs
in the same order. The nature of their differences is evident from a comparison
of both versions of the serhane alone (Ex. 3.52).
In Chapter 11 certain differences between the two versions of “Gül-i Rana”
(Ex. 3.11 and Ex. 3.12) were noted. In addition to rhythmic differences, there
were also slight melodic differences. If we turn once again to the one terkib
serhane of both versions, Cantemir shows relationships between notes where
Bobowski concentrates entirely on a single tonal center. Thus, it is probably
intentional that Cantemir introduces the terkib with both G and A (G appears
three times in the first cycle), whereas Bobowski repeats the note A with only
a single mention of G. In the next cycle Bobowski leaps directly to d, whereas
Cantemir bounces off the A.
Differences can also be seen in each terkib of the mülazime. Cantemir’s ver-
sion expands terkib B of the mülazime from four to seven cycles. This expan-
sion is mainly a variation of the first cycle of the terkib.
426 Chapter 13

Example 3.53 “Gül-i Rana,” MB

The melodies of terkib D also are not identical, but the differences do not
seem to involve any difference in melodic conceptions. Both versions use the
same notes with the same rhythmic configurations, with only slight differences
in the order in which they appear. These kinds of variations between versions
could have existed even in the lifetime of Bobowski—they do not imply a
newer kind of musical thinking, or a long oral transmission.
Another pair of peşrevs (Ex. 3.55 through Ex. 3.57) show similar kinds of
variation, but this time taken slightly further, into the area of ambitus. In both
Bobowski and Cantemir the piece is entitled “Bülbül-i Aşık.” Bobowski classi-
fies it as Uşşak, while to Cantemir its makam is Neva. According to Turkish
music after the mid-seventeenth century, its makam can be nothing but Neva,
because its tonal center is certainly neva (d), and not dügah (A). It is clear from
Cantemir’s remarks about Neva, Uşşak, and Dügah that both the terminology
and structure of these makams were still somewhat fluid in the seventeenth
century and had only reached something like their present form at the end
of the century. This piece is one of the very few seventeenth-century peşrevs
which is still performed today in a form perceptibly related to the original.
During the nineteenth century it had been adapted by the Mevlevi dervishes
as one of the son peşrevler which closed the ayin ceremony. Both Yekta and
Heper had published different versions of it. During the last ten years, a vari-
ant of Yekta’s version has once again become rather popular as an independent
piece, sometimes played at the end of a series of secular items.
At first glance, Bobowski’s and Cantemir’s versions are rather similar. They
both are unusual in that the mülazime is the shortest section of the peşrev, a
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 427

Example 3.54 “Gül-i Rana,” MD

Example 3.55
“Bülbül-i Aşık,” (Bobowski
ca. 1650:63) “Bülbül-i Aşık”
(Cantemir Collection: no. 71)

mere single terkib compared with three terkibs for the other hanes. They have
the same number of terkibs, arranged in the same order. Cantemir’s version has
no accidentals at all, so no question of modulation or note-alteration arises.
Although the differences between these two pieces are strictly on the
micro-level, they are not entirely arbitrary. Even in the first terkib of the ser-
hane, the fact that Cantemir brings the melody up to e before dropping back
to the tonal center d, is suggestive of the seyir of the later piece, H I B (Ex. 5.56)
shows a slightly larger difference, apart from the different rhythmic idioms
(which may be only notational). Bobowski’s version strikes the note c (çar-
gah) and then leaps abruptly to f♯ (evç). Cantemir first touches the B (segah)
before reaching to f♯, and reintroduces the c before resolving on d (neva). Evç
428 Chapter 13

Example 3.56 H I B

is the fifth above segah, and in the later music, leaps from segah to evç are
considered more consonant than from çargah to evç. Thus, to use the modern
Turkish expression, Cantemir has “softened” (yumşatmış) the “hardness” of a
rather dissonant leap in the melody.
With H I C a larger variation begins, which continues throughout the piece.
In the middle of cycle 2, Cantemir’s version changes the leap up from F♯ to
g to a stepwise movement from F♯ to G. Bobowski’s version descends from g
to c, touching the B below, while Cantemir’s goes down as far as D (yegah).
Bobowski’s version never touches this lower pentachord below A (dügah), but
Cantemir reintroduces it in the mülazime, when the melody reaches F# (ırak).
The use of this lower pentachord presages later Turkish practice. Cantemir
states that the notes below ırak were seldom used, even E (aşiran) was only the
finalis of a series of compound terkibs. He does not mention terkibs ending on
D (yegah) in his treatise, but he does include one peşrev in a terkib called Acem
Yegahi, with finalis D. This is apparently the earliest appearance of a makam
or terkib with such a finalis, which would become increasingly common in the
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 429

Example 3.57 H III B, Bobowski and Cantemir

eighteenth century (e.g. Yegah, Sulţani-Yegah, Şed-i Araban, etc.). In the sixth
cycle of terkib B Cantemir returns to the melody of the earlier version. This
necessitates a leap of a ninth from D to e, which would have already seemed
archaic in Cantemir’s time.
In H III B (Ex. 3.57), Bobowski’s melody leaps abruptly from d to f♯, and
Cantemir’s version simply omits the entire cycle, preferring to continue step-
wise from e to d, and then arch up to g and back to d.
Although the nineteenth- and twentieth-century peşrev versions are beyond
the scope of this study, I will introduce one (Ex. 3.58) in this case, because
it demonstrates clearly the changes in melodic progression which were only
hinted at in the Cantemir version. It is highly unusual that the usul structure
of the modern versions is identical to the two seventeenth-century versions;
there is no evidence of tempo retardation or increase in melodic density.
It would seem that the new function of the piece as the final peşrev of the
Mevlevi ayin demanded the quick düyek usul which was already in use in the
seventeenth century rather than any rhythmic expansion into ağır düyek, hafif
or muhammes. Nevertheless, the peşrev as a whole has been abbreviated. As
is usual in Mevlevi son peşrevler, there is only a single hane and no ritornello.
The ambitus of the piece is closer to Bobowski’s version than to Cantemir’s
because the entire lower pentachord has been eliminated. Nevertheless, the
evidently modern, “seyir-conscious” melodic conception resembles the ele-
ments of Cantemir’s version which were pointed out above. From beginning
to end the melodic movement is more stepwise and arched, avoiding what are
considered dissonant, “hard” leaps, and the melody moves gradually around its
430 Chapter 13

Example 3.58 “Son Peşrev” (Bülbül-i Uşşak), Heper 1979:67

tonal centers, rather than leaping from one to another. Its first cycle is closer
to Cantemir’s version than to Bobowski’s because of its use of e in addition to
c and d. In line five it moves gradually around the tonal center (A) rather than
moving abruptly from A to d, which occurs only in the following cycle. Similar
differences in treatment were pointed out, for example in Cantemir’s version
of “Gül-i Rana” compared to Bobowski’s.
The leaps which do exist, as from B to f♯ (line three), or from A to a (line six)
are considered more consonant in modern Turkish music. Even these leaps
give the piece an archaic feel within the modern repertoire, but they are more
acceptable than the sudden jumps of the earlier versions. A characteristically
modern feature is the variability of the sixth degree from f♯ to f, which had
not yet appeared in Cantemir’s version, although it was evidently beginning to
appear in newer pieces within his generation.
Cantemir uses the Hüseyni peşrev called “Büyük Muhammes” as a model of
the peşrev genre. Both his version and Bobowskl’s contain serhanes of a single
terkib. However, while the latter’s mülazime contains two terkibs, Cantemir’s
has six! Bobowski’s second hane has one terkib, while Cantemir’s contains
three. Both third hanes contain three terkibs, and here the difference lies not
in length, but in modulation. Cantemir’s version retains the modulation to
Şehnaz of the original, but where the latter seems to return to the nominal
makam (Hüseyni) by the middle of the second terkib, Cantemir’s version con-
tinues the modulation throughout the three terkibs of the third hane.
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 431

In both versions the serhane is a single terkib, although rhythmically,

Cantemir’s version is far less precise than Bobowski’s, both serhanes are very
similar. What is particularly significant is that the later version sees no need to
“improve” the seyir of the earlier one, except for the third cycle, where Cantemir
introduces more of the note c. Otherwise, Bobowski’s version sounds much
more “modern” than the Osman Paşa composition. Movement is stepwise and
arching, leaps are few, and confined to cadential phrases. Important second-
ary tonal centers and stopping points of the makam, e.g. g, a, and some f♯, are
introduced as early as the second cycle, thus giving an impression of seyir.

Table 3.6 Hane and terkib structure of Hüseyni, “Büyük Muhammes,” (Bobowski
ca. 1650:21–2 and Cantemir Collection: no. 82)

Bobowski Cantemir
Serhane Serhane
A A
Mülazime Mülazime
A
A B
C
D
B E
F
Hane II Hane II
A A
B
C
Hane III Hane III
A A
B | (X) B | (X)
C xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx C

Unfortunately, Cantemir’s notation is so vague (perhaps in part because the

piece was so well-known), that it is not easy to interpret exactly what his
added terkibs were meant to impart to the melody or melodic progression of
the older version. For example, MC seems to be concerned with the introduc-
tion of the flattened sixth degree, f (acem), and some of the seyir which might
go along with that. We might conclude that what these vaguely written terkibs
are meant to express are precisely seyir movements, i.e. additional elements
432 Chapter 13

Example 3.59 “Büyük Muhammes” (interlinear). (Continued on next page)

Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 433

Example 3.59 “Büyük Muhammes” (interlinear)

434 Chapter 13

of melodic progression which were absent. The existing notation for his MF
can tell us little beyond that. Much of the melody of his H II is certainly irre-
trievable, but underneath these quarter, half, and whole notes we can detect a
normative seyir of Hüseyni, without any of the abrupt and “dissonant” “hard”
leaps which might have appeared in an earlier peşrev. The difference between
the two versions becomes greater in H III. Both versions seem to modulate into
the makam Şehnaz, emphasizing g♯, a and e, but their treatment of melody
becomes quite divergent. In H III B, Bobowski stays in the upper range for only
one cycle before abruptly dropping back into the original pentachordal range
of Hüseyni. In terkib C he introduces a repetitive melodic sequence before
cadencing in Hüseyni. Cantemir’s version maintains the range of Şehnaz for
three full cycles, creating a sweeping descending melody which links terkibs
B and C. The amount of material in H III is the same in both versions, but
the modernity of Cantemir’s version is evident both from the point of view of
seyir, and that of terkib structure. It can be readily seen that these two points
are related—the later musician’s need to express more fully the seyir of Şehnaz
led him to discard the earlier terkibs and create a new melody which would be
continuous, and flow through two separate terkibs.

2 The Nazire (“Imitatio”)

The Cantemir Collection contains ten pairs of peşrevs which are linked in a
manner which differs from these more or less closely related variants of the
same peşrevs; these are the peşrevs termed “nazire.”
In the poetic tradition, the original poem and several “parallels” were
sometimes preserved, in addition to the names of the poets, about whom in
most cases a minimum of biographical data is also extant. The appearance of
the name of each author in the tehallus (nom de plume) of the final couplet
enables us to know who the authors were. If they were of different genera-
tions, the priority of one poem can be established. However, if, as sometimes
occurred, the poets were of the same generation, it may be impossible to be
sure which poem was the original.
In only one instance does Cantemir provide the names of both the com-
poser of the original and that of the “parallel” composition, but in this case
they are both his contemporaries—“Der makam-i Hüseyni, Külli Külliyat,
fahte” by Kutb-u Nayi (Osman Dede, d. 1730), and “Nazire-i Külliyat, fahte” by
Muzaffer. In three instances he includes the names of the composers of the
originals (Seyf el-Misri, Ferruh and Kutb-u Nayi) but not of the nazires. In the
last case he only had the music for the nazire (“Sünbüle, nazire-i Kutb-u Nayi,
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 435

devr-i kebir”), while the original is listed as one of the “pişrevat-i na-mevcud”
(“unavailable peşrevs”) for which he evidently could not locate the music. Oth-
erwise, he has no composer listed for either original or nazire, so that we have
no way of knowing how long a temporal gap separates the two.
The nazire poems of Turkish, Chaghatay, or Persian literature are frequently
very different poems from their models. Some “parallel” poems may directly
respond to their original, others may develop certain images or themes, while
others seem to show little more than a formal relationship. The crucial differ-
ence between poetry and music in this regard, is that music cannot express a
purely “formal” relationship without sharing some substance as well. The sur-
viving identifiable corpus of this type is not large, and within that corpus sev-
eral items do not show demonstrable formal relationships beyond the identity
of makam and usul. We must assume that the composer of the nazire peşrev
was in some sense “inspired” by the older piece, but he did not always quote
directly or rearrange parts of the original in his own work. It does not seem that
the existing corpus of nazire peşrevs allows for the construction of any formula
to explain the transformation of an original into a nazire.
Bobowskl’s collection contains two pairs of peşrev and nazire:

Hüseyni, Şükufezar (p. 25) Nazire-i Şükufezar (p. 50)

Neva, fahte, Küçük Ahmed Bey (p. 71) Peşrev-i Beyazid, Nazire-i Küçük
Ahmed Bey (p. 83)

Cantemir’s collection contains twelve pairs of original and nazire, plus one
nazire without an original:

Original
Küll-i Külliyat, Harun Yahudi (no. 22)
Muhayyer “Küme,” Acemi (no. 37)
Neva, fahte, Beyazid (no. 60)
Neva, muhammes-i kebir (no. 63)
Hüseyni, sakil, Ferruh (no. 79)
Hüseyni, “Şükufezar Hasan Can”
(no. 25)
Baba Tahir “Varsaği” (no. 157)
ʿIrak, Seyf el-Misri (no. 34)
Isfahan, remel (no. 277)
Pençgah, Nefir-i Dem (no. 265)
Hüseyni, “Gamzekar” (no. 327)
Nazire
Nazire-i Küll-i Külliyat, Muzaffer
(no. 24)
Nazire-i Küme (no. 36)
Nazire-i Beyazid fahte (no. 59)
Nazire-i muhammes (no. 64)
Nazire-i sakil (no. 80)
Nazire-i Şukufezar (no. 90)
Nazire-i Varsaği (no. 158)
Nazire-i Seyf el-Misri (no. 194)
Nazire-i Isfahan, Cedid (no. 278)
Nazire-i Nefir-i Dem (no. 301)
Nazire-i Gamzekar (no. 314)
436 Chapter 13

Example 3.60 Serhane-mülazimes of Neva fahte

Buselik, sakil-i Acemi (no. 161) Nazire-i sakil-i Acemi (no. 334)
Sünbüle, Nazire-i Kutb-u Nayi (no. 41)

Cantemir himself composed one of these nazires, i.e. “Nazire-i remel, cedid”
(no. 278) signed “Kantemiroğlu.” Bobowski also has a number of examples of
originals and nazires, or just of the nazire. In one instance there is a series of
four “intertextually” related items in both collections. At times it is possible to
trace a series of nazires spanning both the Bobowski and Cantemir Collections.
In Bobowski, under “Fasl-i Neva,” we find:
1. Küçük Ahmed Bey, Usuleş Fahte
2. Bayezid, Nazire-i Küçük Ahmed Bey
In Cantemir:
1. Der Makam-i Neva, Fahte-i Bayezid
2. Der Makam-i Neva, Nazire-i Bayezid
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 437

Their respective serhanes are arranged above (ex. 3.60). Küçük Ahmed Bey
was apparently a musician of the early seventeenth century, several of whose
peşrevs were notated by Bobowski and Cantemir.
It is clear that these serhanes have nothing in common beyond a general
sense of the scale and melodic progression of Neva. The same seems to be true
of their mülazimes and other hanes. Cantemir includes a Persian peşrev listed
as “der makam-i Buselik, usuleş sakil, Acemleriñ” (no. 161), and later on (no. 334),
“der makam-i Buselik, Nazire-i sakil-i Acemi.”
The Acemi peşrev seems stylistically linked to the early Persian peşrevs. Due
to the fact that sakil is a long usul (48 beats), binary structures and repetitions
based on cycles and half-cycles cannot appear in this Buselik peşrev. However,
the opening section of the serhane has the same rhythmic idiom as two other
early peşrevs we have seen, the “Gülistan” in Pençgah, and the Hüseyni peşrev
of Osman Paşa (see Part 3, chap. 11, Ex. 3.5). It seems to break the long usul
into small periods, as for example in the first terkib of the mülazime. The
nazire seems more like a peşrev of the second half of the seventeenth century
because of its longer periods within the usul cycle. Even apart from these dif-
ferences in compositional strategy, the melodies seem to have nothing in com-
mon beyond scale. In both serhanes the tonal center is e (hüseyni), but the
Acemi piece ascends to it from A, while the nazire descends from g. This note,
g is very prominent in the serhane of the nazire and somewhat in the mülaz-
ime, but it is barely touched in the original. The notes d (neva) and B (Buselik)
are very prominent in the serhane and mülazime of the nazire, but hardly at
all in the original. The original forms a cadential phrase by means of B and
G before reaching A, but the nazire simply descends from e to A. The open-
ing terkib of the mülazime of the Acemi piece uses a narrow ambitus (e-d),
then (c-d-B), before jumping up a seventh and descending toward the finalis.
The mülazime of the nazire uses an entirely different range, the area from d

Example 3.61 Buseliķ, Sakil-i Acemi (H I)

438 Chapter 13

Example 3.62 Acemi, Nazire-i sakil-i Acemi (serhane, mülazime)

to a, emphasizing g. In short, there is no obvious way to compare this pair of

peşrevs. Another pair of peşrevs in the Cantemir Collection (Ex. 3.63 and 3.64)
furnishes more material for comparison.
The formal structure of these peşrevs differs: the original is a standard
three-hane peşrev, while the nazire is cast as a new “Persian”-style peşrev with
a combined serhane and mülazime. The composer of the nazire has dispensed
with the entire serhane and based much of his serhane upon the cadential
phrase of the mülazime of the original (Ex. 3.65).
The importance of this phrase for the nazire can be understood from its
appearance as the second cycle of terkib A of H I, and its subsequent repetition
five times in this hane. The remainder of H I is built up largely on the “repeat-
ing” (mükerrer) phrase following terkib C. The second hane of the original and
the nazire both use the upper pentachord of Hüseyni, termed Muhayyer, par-
ticularly emphasizing the note g. Other than this modal usage the two hanes
seem quite dissimilar. Both third hanes emphasize the tone c (çargah). In the
nazire this leads to a modulation into the makam Saba whose tonal center is c.
The structure of these two pieces is of some interest in attempting to under-
stand the nazire process. The serhane of the original is totally discarded. In the
nazire the mülazime ignores the earlier section of the original mülazime and
concentrates upon one phrase, which it utilizes in creating new melodies. The
second and third hanes are not closely related melodically, but they use the
identical range and modulations. Only a very little bit of the original peşrev
appears in the nazire, yet the general structure of the original can be recog-
nized in the new peşrev.
Cantemir himself furnishes another example of the creation of a nazire
peşrev (Ex. 3.66 and 3.67).
The relationship of these two pieces is most evident in their respective ser-
hanes. Both pieces begin with the same four-beat phrase, but Cantemir has
expanded the material in the serhane into two terkibs. The ascending phrase
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 439

Example 3.63 Der makam-i Hüseyni usuleş düyek, “Gamzekar” (Collection: no. 327)
440 Chapter 13

Example 3.64 Der makam-i Hüseyni usuleş düyek, nazire-i “Gamzekar” (Collection no. 314)
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 441

Example 3.65 a) Cadential phrase of M of “Gamzekar”; b) H I A of

nazire

Example 3.66 Der makam-i Isfahan, usuleş remel (Collection no. 277)

in the penultimate section of the rhythmic cycle of H I in the original (last ten
beats of remel) seems to underlie Cantemir HI terkib B.
The mülazime of the two peşrevs do not seem to be closely linked. The
original opens the mülazime with a four-beat phrase quoted from the ser-
hane. Cantemir dropped this section and created a new terkib with a different
442 Chapter 13

Example 3.67 Nazire-i Isfahan, usuleş remel, Kantemiroglu (Collection no. 278)

melodic direction. Cantemir’s mülazime emphasizes the alternation of the 3rd

degree of the scale, c and c♯, with c appearing to introduce the note d♭, (saba)
and in phrases which descend toward the sub-tonic G (rast). In the original the
use of c and c♯ was more mechanical. The note c was used throughout terkib
A of the mülazime, c♯ in the first measure of terkib B, while terkib B returns to
the c. Cantemir’s indebtedness to the original Isfahan peşrev would seem to be
over after the serhane. Nevertheless, by quoting briefly from and developing
part of the serhane of the original, and then going on to compose a totally new
composition, Cantemir evidently considered that he was faithful to the tradi-
tion of the nazire.

3 Conclusion

In the later seventeenth century, a sizable repertoire of peşrevs from the first
half of the century was still known. The broader structure of these pieces
remained the same—the melodies, order and length of terkibs was usually
respected. However, the individual terkibs could be lengthened, and new parts
might be substituted for the old. New terkibs were sometimes introduced, sur-
rounding the older ones. On the micro-level, subtle changes took place in the
introduction and repetition of notes. As a result of all of these changes, the
late seventeenth-century versions of these earlier peşrevs were transformed to
allow greater scope to the flow of melody within and between the terkibs. This
in its turn was frequently a function of the greater development of the codified
melodic progression (hareket, seyir).
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 443

Any form of the nazire was very different than this kind of transmission.
The available evidence concerning the nazire is somewhat contradictory;
it is difficult to see how all the different degrees of relationship or lack of it
between two composed items could have been subsumed under a single term.
Nevertheless, the core of the melodies themselves were not deleted or funda-
mentally altered.
The nazire was primarily a new composition, which might resemble the
original in more or less subtle ways, but some of these resemblances may be
too subtle for us latecomers to detect. In some cases, nazires were made out of
peşrevs whose original creator had been forgotten, or conversely the original
composer’s name was remembered while that of the creator of the nazire was
lost. We have no way of knowing how many nazires were created on the basis
of a single original, or how many generations of nazires may have existed. Once
one or all the composers’ names had disappeared, distinguishing the various
originals and nazire-imitations would prove quite taxing. By the early nine-
teenth century, the item which was notated under the name of Kantemiroğlu,
Şerif, or Gazi Giray Han may well have been the last in a chain not only of oral
transmission of essentially “the same” pieces, but also of a chain of nazires in
which the original had become progressively less recognizable.
As we have seen in the nazire-i Isfahan, the alteration undergone by an instru-
mental item after only a single generation of nazire-creation could be consid-
erable. If we multiply this degree of change several times and allow for the
vagueries of oral transmission, the form in which the early repertoire appears
in the nineteenth-century documents becomes more comprehensible. What
may appear as sheer pseudographic composition (as in the putative works of
Gazi Giray Han and Kantemiroğlu) may in reality have been the result of sev-
eral generations of new nazire compositions plus the loss of the older versions.
In such cases, any attempt to derive a formula to recreate the lost “original” of
a seventeenth- or mid- eighteenth-century peşrev from its nineteenth-century
form will prove to be futile. The latter may not be simply a version of the for-
mer; rather it may be the last in a chain of compositions, each one of which
was predominantly a new item, which may only have quoted sparingly from an
older version or from the original. The introduction of nazires into the reper-
toire over a period of generations would tend to erase the distinction between
transmission and new composition.
By the middle of the eighteenth century far-reaching formal changes in
the peşrev genre had begun to take hold. As a result of these, the transmis-
sion of the older repertoire was no longer accomplished by means of the
techniques known from the previous century. Older pieces began to be
altered to suit the current taste, ultimately leading to the form in which the
444 Chapter 13

seventeenth-century repertoire was recorded in the Hamparsum documents

of the nineteenth century.

4 Transmission of the Peşrev in the Eighteenth Century

The essential source for the transmission of the seventeenth-century instru-

mental repertoire into the eighteenth century is the Kevseri Mecmuası, which
was unavailable when this book was written. Two other contemporaneous
transcriptions done by the Frenchman Charles Fonton describe certain char-
acteristics of the musical taste of the mid-eighteenth century. The present sec-
tion will present an analysis of the two transcriptions by Fonton.

4.1 Fonton
In his “Essay sur la musique orientate comparée à la musique européene,” written
in 1751, Charles Fonton presented six musical examples.
The first, a peşrev, is unidentified and untitled. The second, a Saba şarkı,
in the sofyan usul, is called “Chanson Turque.” The third is called “Air Arabe;”
the fourth is called “Air de Cantemir,” the fifth has no title, and the sixth is
called “Danse Grecque.” It is composed of four distinct items, apparently a cycle
of dance-tunes. Two of the peşrevs had appeared earlier in the collection of
Prince Cantemir; the “Air de Cantemir” is the Bestenigar berefşan by Cantemir,
and the untitled fifth item is the Saba hafif peşrev by Edirneli Ahmed Çelebi.
As a primary source Fonton is obviously in a different category from
Cantemir and Bobowski. The latter two, while of European origin, were “insid-
ers” who had become Turkish musicians. Fonton remained a sympathetic,
knowledgeable, and observant outsider. Nevertheless, his transcriptions are
of an entirely different caliber than those of other European observers of the
seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. He was the first non-Ottoman European
to attempt to transcribe any major genre, (i.e. using a large usul pattern), and
hence the first to attempt to transcribe a peşrev. Thirty years later, Toderini
did attempt to notate a saz semaisi, but he failed to understand the rhythmic
basis of the piece he transcribed (1789-II:271). This charge cannot be leveled
against Fonton. His “Chanson Turque” (1751:no. 2) is a şarkı in the Saba makam,
sofyan usul which he transcribed with such accuracy that the piece could eas-
ily be introduced into the modern vocal repertoire. The rhythmic precision
of his notation of this şarkı should convince us that his rhythmical interpre-
tation of the peşrevs is reliable. His transcriptions demand close attention
as contemporary documents, particularly precious in this part of the eigh-
teenth century.
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 445

Zurnazen Edirneli Ahmed Çelebi was a zurna player and composer for the
unofficial (birun) mehter ensemble, whose repertoire consisted of dance tunes
and popular versions of courtly fasıl cycles. Ahmed Çelebi had lived in the
middle of the seventeenth century (d. 1680?) and his pieces were transcribed
both by Bobowski and by Cantemir (Sanal 1961:151–4). Fonton (1751:no. 5) pres-
ents his Saba peşrev as his fifth musical example without any identification.
Neither the makam nor the usul, nor even the peşrev genre are mentioned.
We also do not know whether Fonton transcribed this piece from a mehter
ensemble, or from an indoor orchestra. In his little treatise, his essential sub-
ject is the music of the classical orchestras, i.e. the peşrev, semai, and taksim
genres. He illustrates their instruments, the tanbur, ney, keman, miskal, and
küdum, but not the zurna and other instruments of the mehter. He includes
a suite of dance music and a peculiar “Air Arabe” which are both examples of
musical genres which he did not discuss in his book, so it is conceivable that he
took Ahmed Çelebi’s piece from an urban mehter ensemble. Fonton states that,
although he tried to locate it, he was unable to find a copy of Cantemir’s musi-
cal treatise, and he was therefore unaware that two of his musical examples
had appeared in Cantemir’s collection. His versions are representative of the
form which seventeenth-century peşrev items had assumed by the middle of
the eighteenth century through the process of oral transmission.
The most obvious difference between the two versions is that Fonton has
failed to note the flattening of the fourth scale degree (d♭), and he has gratu-
itously sharpened the f on his staff. He does give the natural f in the course of
the transcription, e.g., in the section corresponding to MA, but he never intro-
duces the needed d♭ We might think that this un-Western interval was omitted
out of aesthetic bias, but his “Chanson Turque” is also in the Saba makam, and
he includes the d♭ correctly and also cancels it during the modulating miyan
section of the şarkı. This latter transcription proves both that something akin
to the modern Saba interval existed in the mid-eighteenth century, and that
Fonton was capable of perceiving it correctly. The absence of this note in the
peşrev transcription may be explained by a change in the performance practice
of this particular piece, or as an oversight on the part of Fonton, who also made
no attempt to transcribe the hafif usul pattern, rendering this and the other
peşrevs in common time.
The other difference relates to tempo. The most common temporal unit
in his transcription is the half note, so that his rhythmic cycle is not 16/4 but
32/4. In most places his half-note corresponds to Cantemir’s quarter note.
While a century earlier Bobowski had employed the half note as his standard
time-unit for peşrevs and other genres, Fonton was much more specific, and
makes frequent use of quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes in his transcriptions
446 Chapter 13

Example 3.68 Saba, hafif, Edirneli Ahmed Çelebi, (Cantemir Collection no. 94 and
Fonton 1751: no. 5)
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 447

Example 3.69 Bestenigar, berefşan, Kamtemiroğlu, (Collection: no. 281) “Air de Cantemiŗ,”
(Fonton 1751: no. 4; Hane I, A, B, C, D)

(especially no. 2, the “Chanson Turque”). Therefore, the use of the half note
here should probably be taken literally. Aside from the grace notes indicated
in the mülazime, however Fonton’s version shows almost no melodic elabora-
tion compared to the original. Cantemir had transcribed the Saba peşrev in the
“large meter” (vezn-i kebir), which indicated that it was meant to be performed
rather quickly. This is consistent with Ahmed Çelebi’s reputation as a composer
of light, dance-like pieces, and with the usage of the usul hafif. As Sanal notes
(1961:152), Ahmed Çelebi’s “Rakkas” (“The Dancer”), while ostensibly in hafif,
contains sections which are broken up like düyek (8/4). In addition, Cantemir
could not decide what was the usul of that item. In the collection itself he
wrote it as “hafif,” while in the index it is given as “düyek.” All this suggests that
in the seventeenth century, the Saba hafif peşrev must have been performed at
a relatively quick tempo. Its ponderousness in Fonton’s transcription should
therefore be understood as a sign of tempo retardation.
In Cantemir’s treatise, hafif had had sixteen beats. According to Hızır Ağa
(roughly fifty years later), hafif had thirty-two beats. In his book, Fonton gives
a pattern which is too long to have fit the old sixteen-beats pattern, so we must
conclude that these two mid-eighteenth-century sources agreed that hafif had
thirty-two beats. Ahmed Çelebi had composed his peşrev in the “old” usul hafif
in sixteen beats; this is evident from the structure of his terkibs. Fonton does
not change the original terkib structure of the piece; for had he done so, the
thirty-two beat drumming pattern would have conflicted with the sixteen-beat
448 Chapter 13

melodic pattern. From his transcription we cannot tell how this conflict was
resolved. However, the existence of the doubled version of the usul hafif is
another confirmation that tempos had decreased markedly by 1750.
The major difference in melody occurs in the second hane. Fonton’s ver-
sion has a slightly higher melodic density, but more important, a rather dif-
ferent melodic movement. Both melodies resolve on the note e (hüseyni), but
Cantemír’s version leaps A-f♯-g-a, barely touching e until the karar is reached.
This seems to be faithful to the melodic usage of the period of Ahmed Çelebi:
the mid-seventeenth century; Cantemir has not restructured the piece to con-
form to late seventeenth-century usage. However, Fonton’s informants evi-
dently could no longer tolerate such an archaic seyir usage, and their version
moves stepwise from e, arching upward while emphasizing each note in the
arch; e-f♯-g and a, before resolving on e. The third hanes, in the makam Uzzal,
are once again identical. Although Ahmed Çelebi’s peşrev was almost a century
old by the time it was notated by Fonton, and Cantemir’s peşrev was only fifty,
it is in the latter that greater divergence is observable. The “Air de Cantemir”
can be identified as the peşrev in the makam Bestenigar, usul berefşan, written
in the “small meter” (vezn-i sağir) on page 145 of the collection (see Ex. 3.69).
This usage indicates that the tempo of this item had been somewhat slower
than the Saba hafif peşrev.
In seventeenth-century Bestenigar melodic progression is rather obscure,
since it is one of two extant examples of this makam (the other is a düyek peşrev
in the “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz,” under “Fasl-i Segah,” [ca. 1650:195]). Cantemir con-
sidered it to be a “specious makam” and there was some confusion about it in
his time. During the eighteenth century it disappeared entirely, and its name
was appropriated by a new terkib which had branched off from the makam Irak.
In Cantemir’s time it had its finalis on segah (B ). Fonton fails to notate either
the B for the f♯, both of which were still neutral notes (and not one-comma
flats as later); evidently, he was unsure of how to indicate these intervals.
The melodies in this hane (and in others as well) are very similar, except that
we see marked tempo retardation and some melodic elaboration. This peşrev
is the first notated document which reveals that these processes were under-
way in a form intermediary between Cantemir’s peşrevs in the “smallest of the
small” meter and the modern peşrev repertoire. A count of the note changes in
the first cycle in this hane reveals a total of 14 for Cantemir’s original, and 25 for
Fonton’s version. Wright had hypothesized that a peşrev of the mid-eighteenth
century should have a total of 29 note-changes per cycle (1988:71), so this figure
is certainly within the expected range. This difference in melodic elaboration
contrasts with the almost complete agreement about melodic movement and
progression. The mid-eighteenth-century musicians saw no need to modernize
Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire 449

Example 3.70 Usul and opening cycles peşrevs in berefşan; (pattern of berefşan)
a) Kürdi, Angeli (Cantemir Collection: no. 304)
b) Bestenigaŗ, Kantemiroğlu (Collection: no. 281)

these elements in Cantemir’s peşrev, but only to decrease the tempo and then
to elaborate the melody somewhat to fill in the required time.
In his treatise, Fonton supplies more evidence for the practice of tempo
retardation when he indicates that there were two forms of the usul berefşan.
Unfortunately, unlike Cantemir, he does not indicate the place of each beat in
the usul pattern, but he does give slightly differing forms for the usuls called
“berefşan” and “lenk berefşan,” just as he does for “fahte” and “aksak fahte.”
Both lenk and aksak mean “limping,” “lame” and are used to indicate either an
asymmetrical or syncopated rhythmic cycle. The usage of lenk fahte has sur-
vived into nineteenth-century Ottoman music as a ten-beat cycle, while fahte
has twenty beats. Several of the old seventeenth-century usuls have survived
as “lenk” usuls, while the modern, doubled versions have inherited the old
names. Thus, the older fahte in ten beats became “lenk fahte” while the new,
twenty-beat usul became “fahte.” Some of the old usuls disappeared, e.g. the
old devr-i kebir (14/4) went out of use, while the old name was inherited by the
doubled form of the usul (28/4). The form Fonton gives as “lenk berefşan” is
identical to Cantemir’s version of the usul. This indicates that the older, quicker
and shorter version of the usul had survived but with the modifier “lenk,” while
the newer form was simply “berefşan.” Although Fonton fails to mention any
usul in connection with the “Air de Cantemir,” we can probably assume that it
had been rephrased to correspond to the newer, doubled and slower version of
the usul berefşan.
While the change in tempo was probably unconscious, its effect upon the
surface of the melody was far-reaching and had to be controlled by conscious
musical decisions. The difference in melodic elaboration, and in the rela-
tionship of usul and melody is striking in these two versions. The Bestenigar
berefşan is one of the simplest peşrevs of Cantemir, in that the relation of usul
and melody is direct and uncomplicated. As such it can be compared to earlier
composers who had used the usul berefşan, for example Angeli (Ex. 3.70).
The degree of melodic elaboration and the melodic density of the first two
are much the same, while the third is considerably more elaborate. Berefşan
450 Chapter 13

was one of the few longer usuls (like devr-i kebir) in which the melody had to
follow the accents of the drum beat quite closely. Even without the informa-
tion in the treatise, it would be quite possible to reconstruct the berefşan usul
just from the melodic patterns of the first two examples. In the third example,
however, the melody departs significantly from the usul pattern. In the modern
Turkish repertoire, including mid-eighteenth-century vocal items which were
transmitted orally until the later nineteenth century, melodic patterns have
little overt connection with the usul. Bestes frequently use the ağır (heavy)
berefşan pattern in 32/2, which allows for long held notes and much melodic
elaboration. In this regard, the significance of Fonton’s transcription is that the
melody has been elaborated in a manner which is beyond merely “filling in”
the gaps left by the retardation of the tempo, in that the fundamental relation-
ships between notes have been altered.
In the first cycle of the serhane Cantemir’s original has three half-notes in
the first half-cycle, and two in the second. In Fonton’s version this rhythmic
pattern is no longer evident; the older rhythmic idioms have been replaced
by new ones, without altering the movement of the melody. In Fonton’s ver-
sion of the Saba hafif peşrev, with the exception of H II, the original melody
was untouched, except for the retardation of tempo and a few grace notes.
Here, the treatment is much freer. As this is the only available example in the
usul berefşan from the mid-eighteenth century, and as even the usul pattern of
berefşan from this time is not clearly known, it would be fruitless to speculate
on the rules which may have governed the transformation of older peşrevs in
this usul. What is clear is that the processes of tempo retardation and melodic
elaboration were certainly in progress in 1750, and that the repertoire which
had been inherited from the previous century was subject not only to one, but
to a variety of processes of transformation as part of the transmission.
 Chapter 14

The Instrumental Semai

Semai is a musical term with several distinct meanings. The musical forms and
rhythmic patterns connected with the word semai display multiple intercon-
nections and have been highly productive within several genres of Turkish
music. In secular Turkish music of the later seventeenth century, semai had
referred to 1) a vocal genre, which had been sung after the nakş, and 2) an
instrumental genre which ended the composed portion of the fasıl. By the
early nineteenth century, these meanings had become somewhat more dif-
ferentiated. The vocal genre had split into two subgenres, the ağır (“heavy”)
semai in ten beats, and the yürük (“quick”) semai in six beats. In addition, these
two usuls (10/8 and 6/8) and slower variants of them (in 10/4 and 6/4) were
the rhythmic bases of some items in the semi-classical şarkı genre, while the
nakş had disappeared as an independent genre. The instrumental genre had
changed its rhythmic and compositional structure and was now called the saz
semai (instrumental semai) to distinguish it from the vocal genres.
The Mevlevi ayin, (also called sema) employed the semai usul. It is likely
that this usage originated in the sixteenth century or earlier, but no document
survives. Within the Mevlevi ayin, semai comprised three distinct genres:
1. The instrumental composition which ended the composed portion of
the ayin—not the same as the semai of the fasıl.
2. Several portions of the ayin itself; principally the second half of the
Third Selam.
3. Certain hymns (ilahis) which were sung after the ayin proper.
We will discuss the instrumental semai of the Mevlevi ayin briefly, later in
this chapter.
All of the above semai genres utilized a single rhythmic pattern, which was
also called semai. The semai rhythmic pattern in 6/8, phrased düm tek tek düm
tek, in Harutin (1968:112):I”. II. was also the basis for other Sufi genres,
which were not called semai. These include many of the hymns of the Bektaşi
dervishes, called nefes; certain songs of the aşık musicians who had been affili-
ated with the Bektaşiye; and certain hymns of other tarikats (Feldman 1992:188).
Within Ottoman secular music, semai was the only term which could refer to
two rather distinct vocal and instrumental composed genres. This bifunction-
ality of the term semai seems to mirror the Mevlevi practice in which much of
the vocal third selam is composed in the semai usul, while the last composed
musical genre in the ceremony/performance is the instrumental soñ semai. It

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_018

452 Chapter 14

is also possible that both the courtly and Mevlevi practice are derived from
an earlier Anatolian Sufi ritual in which the semai had been performed both
vocally and instrumentally.1
The persistent association of the rhythm semai with Sufi genres lends weight
to the etymological derivation of the name from the sema (Ar. samāʿ), the spiri-
tual “audition” or concert of the medieval Sufis (sema < Ar. samaʿa: “to hear”).
While sema is a venerable term in Sufism, that had been brought into a great
many Muslim languages, semai has a much more limited diffusion. It is pos-
sible that the term may have been used for Sufi genres in several portions of the
Muslim world, but its known documentation is principally within Ottoman
Turkey, in seventeenth-century Iran, and possibly in modern Central Asia.2
Unlike the peşrev, which, as a musicological term appears as early as the
fourteenth century, and as a musical genre, can be traced to the tarīqah—an
instrumental version of the sawt—mentioned by al-Fārābī in the tenth cen-
tury, semai is not documented prior to the seventeenth century. Therefore,
while the peşrev must be considered an ancient musical genre which had been
played in much of the Middle East at various periods and survives today in
separate Turkish and Uzbek/Tajik forms, the semai seems to have been created
by the Anatolian and/or other Oghuz Turks. The Ottoman documentation of
Iranian semais can be explained as either 1) a Safavid borrowing from Ottoman
music, or 2) a feature of the Oghuz/Seljuk musical culture which was held in
common by Anatolian and Iranian Turks, and which entered Iranian art music
either through the Anatolian Safavids, or through a much earlier stratum of
Oghuz Turks.
The rhythmic pattern of the seventeenth-century semai is highly distinctive
in Anatolia and the rest of the Middle East. At present it is extremely rare in
Anatolian folk music of any region, nor is it well known in the Arab Levant.
Where it does appear there, it is clearly a reflex of the urban semai. The entire
Iranian region is rich in triple meters, but almost all of the triple rhythmic pat-
terns found in various genres of Iranian music are foreign to Turkish music and
differ significantly from the semai. The geographical area where a rhythmic
pattern closely resembling the semai is most widespread today is Khwarezm

1 The modern Alevi sect of Anatolia has instrumental music for the ritual dance called semah
(< sema), but these do not use the semai usul, and the vocal hymns are termed nefes, not
semai. Unlike the nefesler of the urban Bektaşi tarikat, the Alevi nefesler do not use the
semai usul.
2 In the instrumental portion (čertim yoli) of the Khwarezmian maąom-i Näva, and in the cor-
responding section of the Bukharan maqom-i Dugah, there is a genre termed säma. Like the
Ottoman semai, it is a quick, short instrumental piece, played toward the end of the cycle.
Unlike the former, it is in 4/4, rather than 6/8. The name säma is not identical to semai, and
at present the relationship of the Uzbek säma to the Ottoman semai is unclear.
The Instrumental Semai 453

(in the western part of former Soviet Uzbekistan), including the adjacent des-
ert areas formerly ruled by the Khivan Khanate, and which are now part of the
Turkmenian Republic. In both Khwarezm (Khiva) and Bukhara an usul known
as ufor has a pattern which is expressed with drum mnemonics identical to or
resembling closely the Ottoman semai. In Khwarezm this is expressed as gul
tak tak gul tak (i.e. the same pattern as Harutin’s düm tek tek düm tek), and in
Bukhara as bum bum bak bum bak, i.e. with a substitution of a bass for the first
treble stroke (Matyakubov 1992:404–5). The centrality of this rhythmic pattern
is evident in many Khwarezmian musical genres, including the ufor, which
closes the instrumental section of the maqom, and in the dutar maqoms (e.g.
“Ali Qämbär”), which are considered emically to be among the most ancient
musical genres of Khwarezm. Ethnically, the Khwarezmian people combine
indigenous East Iranian, Oghuz Turkic and Kiphchak Turkic elements. Thus,
the semai/ufor usul may actually furnish a relatively rare connection between
Central Asian Turkic and Ottoman music.3
The name ufor (< Ar. awfar) means “most abundant,” “numerous” and this
may refer to the ubiquitousness of the rhythmic pattern in Oghuz Turkic music.
Despite its Arabic name, this usul does not appear in any Arabic or Persian
musicological source prior to the sixteenth century, when it is found in the
Bukharan treatise of Najm al-Dīn Kaukabī (Jung 1989.132). There is thus little
cause to doubt that the ufor/evfer/semai usul pattern is of Central Asian origin.
This usul name is also known in Turkey, where it is pronounced evfer. However,
in most early Turkish sources, and in the later tradition, evfer is an usul in nine
beats, not six beats.
The hypothesis of a Central Asian origin for the rhythm of the instrumental
semai is also supported by the rhythmic structure of vocal semai, and certain
unusual instrumental semais. Some early nefes hymns and some of the vocal
semais in the Bobowski Collection employ a pattern which differs substantially
from that of the standard semai of the seventeenth century. It is based on the
alternation of quarter and half notes:

Example 3.71 Nühüft saz semai (Cantemir Collection: no. 266)

3 A possible Khwarezmian connection with one of the earliest items in the Cantemir Collection
is discussed in Feldman 2022:224–27.
454 Chapter 14

Example 3.72 Semai, Beyati, Şah Murad, Fatih-i Baghdad (Bobowski ca. 1660:134)

Example 3.73 Segah nefes: “Şol cennetin irmakları”

This pattern became very rare in any genre of Turkish music after the seven-
teenth century. It is however a common rhythmic pattern in modern Mongolian
and Tuvan dance music. The following tune (Ex. 3.74) was used by a Tuvan
singer of khomei (harmonic singing) in 1988 who claimed that the melody was
used as a traditional tune for wrestling (Tuv. khuresh = Turk. güreş).

Example 3.74 Tuvan khomei tune sung by Genady Chash (1988)

This Mongolian rhythmic formula is almost identical to that in the Turkish

nefes. Evidently this formula was more recessive than the standard semai usul,
and by the later eighteenth century it had disappeared from every Turkish secu-
lar genre and survived only in a few items in the Sufi repertoire. The more com-
mon, “Khwarezmian” pattern lasted somewhat longer, and is still preserved in
many items of the yürük semai genre, in the fourth hane of the modern saz
semai and in the son yürük semai of the Mevlevi sema.

1 Semai-i Sazende in the Later Seventeenth Century

Cantemir refers to the closing instrumental genre of the fasıl as the semai-i
sazende (“semai of the instrumentalist”). During the later eighteenth century
this term was replaced by the term saz semai or saz semaisi (“instrumental
The Instrumental Semai 455

semai”), by which the genre is known in contemporary Turkey, and the Arab
Levant, Cantemir describes the semai-i sazende as follows:

The semais are made like the peşrev. The instrumentalists compose
them with three hanes and one mülazime (ritornello). The semais of the
Persian instrumentalists have only three hanes—the serhane is used as
the mülazime. Some of them also have a zeyl. Only the semai called the
“Great Semai” (“Büyük Semai”) in the makam Hüseyni, after complet-
ing three hanes, has an additional terkib which is called the sine-bend
(“breast-band”) (ca. 1700:X:102).

As in his description of the peşrev, Cantemir refers only to the large-scale com-
positional form and makes no mention of the terkib or modulation. Cantemir
does not give the notation of the “Great Semai” which employs the additional
hane. However, Bobowski has several semais with such a hane, which is termed
there not sine-bend (“breast-band”) but ser-bend (“head-band”). We may assume
that these had served the same function; they closed the composition with-
out the repetition of the ritornello. Cantemir’s collection does contain several
Persian peşrevs, which function without the serhane as mülazime, so, as he sug-
gests, these peşrevs can be used as a model for the structure of the Persian semai.
The available notations for the seventeenth-century semai form are far
fewer than for the peşrev; forty in Bobowski’s London MS and thirty-six in the
Cantemir Collection. This is approximately one-eighth of the total of peşrevs in
these collections. Not only is the number of semais fewer than the peşrevs but
their temporal depth is not as great. The Cantemir Collection contains a con-
siderable number of peşrevs whose originals must be attributed to musicians
of the sixteenth century (periods 1 and 2), as well as many from the first half of
the seventeenth century (period 3).
Both authors treated the semai differently from the peşrev. In addition to
notating far fewer of them in both collections, they rarely included the name
of the composer of the semais as they had done for the peşrev. Whereas many
of the peşrevs in both collections bore distinctive names, none of the semais
had names, apart from Cantemir’s sole example of the Büyük semai. Cantemir
had included nineteen peşrevs ascribed to the “Persian” or “Indian” musicians
of the past, but for the semai he only wrote in the names of two “Persian”
semais in the margin but was unable to locate the music. These facts lead to
the conclusion that the semai repertoire did not have the historical depth of
the peşrev. Musicians evidently did not usually preserve very old semais, as
they occasionally did in the case of the peşrev.
In contrast to later practice, seventeenth-century musicians did not feel the
need to “complete” their peşrevs with a semai, as Tanburi Isak was to do in the
456 Chapter 14

later eighteenth century. This cannot be due to the vagaries of transmission,

because Cantemir himself notated only one of his own semais (Geveşt; Collec-
tion no. 284). Bobowski included a number of semais of his own composition,
signed in Arabic semai li-sahib ül-kitab, “semai by the author of the book,” but
no peşrevs. This confirms the impression that there was no necessary connec-
tion between the composer of a peşrev and the composer of a semai which
might follow it.
We may conclude that in the seventeenth century the semai was not con-
sidered to be as important or prestigious a genre as the peşrev. Even in the
middle of the eighteenth century Fonton thought of the semai as the “presto”
movement which concluded the peşrev, he never mentions it separately. In the
course of the eighteenth century the semai was to go through several structural
developments, at the end of which it would emerge as a considerably more
sophisticated form. By the early nineteenth century it would seem to have
been treated with a respect almost equal to that of the peşrev.4
Given all the limitations of the sources, it will not be possible to analyze
and periodize the semai with the detail brought to bear on the peşrev. In addi-
tion, the shortness of the seventeenth-century semais and their rhythmical
uniformity obviates or severely curtails the possible discussions of rhythmic
retardation, melodic elaboration, melodic progression, and compositional
form. Nevertheless, there were certain changes in the compositional form of
the semai which may be described. In the chapter on the peşrev we had intro-
duced a scheme of eight periods. Notated documents of the semai are available
for five of these periods.
The conclusions adduced in the chart of periodization below depend on a
much smaller corpus than that for the peşrev. Not only is there less structural
variety within the two collections, but often there are no items in the same
makam to serve for comparison. For example, while Cantemir notated four
semais in the mürekkeb makam Pençgah, there are none in Bobowski, probably
because this subsidiary modal entity was not yet the nominal makam of inde-
pendent compositions in the first half of the seventeenth century. Likewise,
there is nothing in Bobowski’s collection to correspond to Cantemir’s semais in
Kürdi, Nuhüft, Şuri, Rehavi or Hicaz. Within the other makams (e.g. Rast, Segah,
Irak, Acem, and Buselik) a good number of the semais in Cantemir are almost
identical to those in Bobowski; they do not show the kind of reworking which

4 In Turkey during the past thirty years the saz semai has come to eclipse the peşrev in the rep-
ertoires of instrumentalists. In the later twentieth century very few peşrevs were performed
in full, other than a handful which are performed in the Mevlevi ceremony, all of them in
the usul devr-i kebir, whereas any professional instrumentalist must be familiar with a large
number of saz semais.
The Instrumental Semai 457

marks many of the peşrevs which appear in both collections. Despite all these
caveats we can still observe differences between the typical usage of these
two collections.

2 Periodization of the Semai-i Sazende/Saz Semaisi

Period 1–2 (1500–1600): No notated documents.

Period 3 (1600–1650): Formal structure: HI + M + HII + M + FIIII + M, or HI +
M + HII + M + H III + M + SB. Repetition and antecedent/consequent struc-
tures are common in all hanes, but especially in mülazime. Incipient seyir, but
often not developed. Terkibs usually four, six, or eight units of 6/8.
Period 4 (1650–1690): Formal structure: HI + M + HII + M + HIII + M or
M + HII + M + HIII + M. Repetition, antecedent/consequent structures much
reduced. Seyir more pronounced, with separate tonal centers clearly marked.
Modulation more frequent within hanes. Terkibs and hanes often longer than
before, 8 to 12 measures.
Period 5 (1690–1710): Appearance of the semai-i lenk (“limping,” i.e. asym-
metrical semai) usul, (10/8) used in all hanes: HI + M + HII + M + H III +
M. Rhythmic modulation back to semai or sengîn semai usul (6/4) in third or
fourth hane.
Period 6 (1710–1780): No available document.
Period 7 (1780–1815): Aksak semai usul (10/8) standard in all hanes. Terkibs
absent. Four hanes, generally without ritornello. May be rhythmic modula-
tion in H IV (to 10/16 or 6/8). Seyir of nominal makam expressed throughout
entire composition.
Period 8 (1815–1850): Aksak semai usul in hanes I, II, III and teslim (ritor-
nello), hane IV modulates to 6/8 or to 6/4 (sengin semai). Makam modulation
in hanes II and III. After 1850 hane IV may use a variety of 6/8 patterns instead
of the older semai.

3 Analysis of the Seventeenth-Century Semai Documents

Bobowski’s semais all use the same usul (6/8). Cantemir’s collection contains
two markedly different types of semai, one older group in the normal semai
usul in 6/8, and another newer group in the semai-i lenk usul in 10/8. Cantemir
separates the two into separate sections. The first group appears between
pages 125 and 136, while the second is placed on pages 137, 138, and 148. Several
of Cantemir’s first group of semais are ascribed to musicians of the second
half of the seventeenth century (period 4), such as Edirneli Ahmed Çelebi, Ali
458 Chapter 14

Hoca, and Çelebiko. The Bobowski Collection contains a number of anony-

mous semais whose use of seyir and compositional structure is quite differ-
ent from those in the Cantemir group. It is possible that some of these semais
found only in Bobowski actually belong to period 2, like the Dügah-Hüseyni
peşrev by Osman Paşa “el-Atik” which introduces his collection. It would seem
that some of the period-3 repertoire survived intact into the next era because
of its structural affinities with the later music, while other more archaic items
were forgotten.
The makam Neva furnishes us with some material for comparison because
Bobowski includes six semais in this makam while Cantemir has one. Yekta
gives the following ambitus for Neva (Ex. 3.75):

Example 3.75 Ambitus of Neva (after Yekta 1921)

This ambitus contains several subsections, which can be presented in the fol-
lowing Ex. 3.76:

Example 3.76 Tonal centers of Neva

This Ex. 3.76 shows a lower tetrachord (A-B♭-c-d) plus an upper pentachord
(d-e-f♯-g-a). There is also the sub-tonic (yeden) G, and an upper extension to
b♭ In addition there are also two other significant tonal areas involving the
trichord above and below the pivotal pitch neva (d). Within these trichords the
note c (çargah) usually functions as a temporary stopping point.
The seyir of the modern makam Neva emerges in a taksim by Necdet Yaşar
(Ex. 3.77) and in the seyir published by Yekta (1921:2999) (Ex. 3.78). We will
concentrate on the earlier parts of the seyir, which can be observed in the first
two lines of the taksim transcription and in the first three lines of Yekta’s seyir.

Example 3.77 Neva taksim (opening), Necdet Yaşar (after J. Frigyesi)

The Instrumental Semai 459

Example 3.78 Seyir of Neva (after Yekta 1921)

The serhane and mülazime of Cantemir’s single semai in Neva correspond well
to the modem seyir.

Example 3.79 Neva (semai), H I (Cantemir Collection: no. 257)

The serhane and mülazime of this composition display agility in moving

around the seyir of Neva. As in the serhanes of peşrevs, the serhane of this semai
presents the different elements of the seyir in a condensed fashion. In the first
two measures the composer avoids any note-repetitions, preferring to let his
melody meander from the sub-tonic (G) to the d, then back via c and B and
down again, ending on B . In the following two measures he assigns promi-
nence to c by rising from it to the trichord above d, and descending from e to
B before closing on d.

Example 3.80 Neva (semai), mülazime

460 Chapter 14

The first terkib of the mülazime (MA) is arranged in antecedent/consequent

series in which the antecedent (A) pedals from the d and moves upward. This
antecedent has two forms, one is employed in measures 1 and 5, while the sec-
ond is in measures 3 and 7. However, there are no repetitions in the 4 conse-
quent phrases, three of which conclude on d, while only no. 3 concludes on
a. They all use very different melodic paths to reach these concluding notes.
Thus, the antecedent/consequent structure does not resemble the more
repetitive forms seen in the Acemi peşrevs (e.g. Neva, devr-i kebir). The second
terkib (MB) contains only four measures, but each one treats a different sec-
tion of the makam. Measure 1 arches from f# to and up to g, while measure 2
imitates a rather similar movement as d-B -d. Measure 3 repeats measure 2
of the serhane, and then telescopes measure 3 and 4 of serhane to achieve a
single cadential phrase which contains almost the entire seyir of Neva within
two measures.
The compositional technique of this semai is not at all rudimentary. Necdet
Yaşar regarded the piece as a good example of the makam Neva and could eas-
ily find the modern seyir in it (except for the karar on d, which he regarded as
the “old” form of the makam Neva).
In the Bobowski Collection the semai in Neva which is closest to the piece
in Cantemir is the one by Solakzade (d. 1658), who was one of the leading com-
posers at the court while Bobowski was a musician there. It is possible that
Cantemir’s piece was also based on a composition by Solakzade, but probably
not this particular semai.5

Example 3.81 a) (Neva) Semai-i Solakzade, H I (Bobowski ca. 1650:100); b) (Neva) Semai,
(Cantemir Collection: no. 257), H 1

5 This possible attribution to Solakzade depends on the list of semai composers written in the
margin of the index. Cantemir listed five semais, the first being by Solakzade, but he only
included the notation for one. Since Solakzade’s name appears first on the list it is possible
that we have his semai in the collection, but this is far from certain.
The Instrumental Semai 461

The melodic movement of these two serhanes is very similar, including the
prominent yeden (G) in measure 2 of the Bobowski piece, which causes the
melody to bounce from G to d. This is much like what the Cantemir piece does
in its measure 1. Stylistically these two serhanes are very close; there would
seem to be no grounds for assigning them to different periods. However, the
difference between the two semais is more apparent in their mülazimes.
Neither MA nor MB have the complexity of the Cantemir piece. MA here is
essentially one descending motif with its cadence on d. MB is a mere three mea-
sures and it contains much note-repetition and likewise features a step-wise
descent. The ability to handle the different tonal centers and to compress the
seyir into very few measures seen above in the Cantemir semai are absent in
this piece.

Example 3.82 (Neva), Semai-i Solakzade, mülazime

The Solakzade is in fact the most complex of the Neva semais in the Bobowski
Collection (Ex. 3.82). The others rely more on earlier compositional techniques
and on other conceptions of seyir. We do not know whether these other semais
are perhaps a generation earlier than this Solakzade item, or whether some
musicians who were contemporary with Bobowski and Solakzade persisted in
an earlier style.

Example 3.83 (Neva), semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:76), H I

The first two measures of this semai show much the same melodic movement
as the two previous semais, except for the return here to the karar A. However,
the last two measures have a smaller ambitus, and measure 4 begins with a
three-note repetition of the pitch d. The five-measure continuation of HI is
almost a repeat of the first four measures, except for the simplified phrasing
462 Chapter 14

of measure 5 (= measure 1) which begins with a jump from G to B This jump

occurs in the other Neva semais in Bobowski and seems to indicate a variant
seyir. Such a movement would be considered out of place in the modern Neva
seyir, because it is characteristic of Segah and Rast and their sub-makams.
None of the Neva peşrevs in Cantemir employ this movement.

Example 3.84 (Neva) semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:76), MA, MB

The repetition of the pitch d in measure 4 of HI appears not to have been for-
tuitous, because we observe that the entire mülazime relies heavily on this
repetitive pattern. Furthermore, MA is built entirely on an ABAC structure in
which each measure is introduced by a three-note repetition beginning on
d, then c, then d and then B . This three-eighth note repetition of d occurs
again in measure 1 of MB, and then reappears with the semi-cadence from H I
(measure 4), which is now measure 4 in MB. Measures 2 and 3 are recombina-
tions of material from H I; measure 2 here is a quotation from measure 2 of
H I, while measure 3 repeats the jump from G to B of measure 1. The only new
material is the descent from g to e in measure 1.
The frequent note-repetitions, the repetition of whole measures and the
appearance of an ABAC structure (in MA) containing a simple sequence, are
all reminiscent of the early Acemi peşrevs of Cantemir, which are apparently
period-1 material. The difference in seyir also suggests a somewhat earlier
period (i.e. pre-seventeenth century).

Example 3.85 (Neva) semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:77), H I, MA, MB

The Instrumental Semai 463

The first two measures are focused very strongly on d, beginning with a
five-note repetition in measure 1. The conclusion of H I blends smoothly with
the beginning of MA, and together they form a seyir-like movement in the
serhane and mülazime. The archaic jump from G to B is emphasized through
its appearance in both measures 1 and 2 of MB. Although elements of seyir
are present, the handling of the different tonal centers is less developed than
in the Solakzade piece and the semai in Cantemir. These last two semais in
Bobowski (page 76 and 77) both display a less developed use of seyir and com-
positional form than the former two items. They would seem out of place in
the Cantemir Collection and are among the more archaic-looking items in the
Bobowski Collection.
We will conclude this analysis of the Bobowski semais by comparing one
of his most archaic items with its modem descendant. The Neva semai on
page 75 is still in the current Mevlevi repertoire as a “son yürük semai” which
concludes the ayin ceremony. Although the modern Mevlevi yürük semais are
outside of our topic, this comparison has heuristic value as it calls attention
to those elements in this seventeenth-century semai melody which could not
be retained in later styles. Unfortunately, we do not have the intermediate
eighteenth-century stages through which the melody had passed.

Example 3.86 (Neva) semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:75), H I, M and H II

464 Chapter 14

This overview of three sections of this semai reveals that large-scale repeti-
tion is a basic compositional technique. Measure 1 of H I is repeated verbatim
in measure 2. Measures 2 and 3 of H I reappear as measures 1 and 2 of MA, then
as measures 3 and 4 of MB and as 1 and 2 of MC. MB introduces this repeated
phrase by a two-measure sequence which ascends one note (from B to c). The
serhane (HI) is the basis for both terkibs of H II; in HII A the melody of H I is
transposed up a fifth, and in B it is transposed up a fourth.
Every compositional technique in this item has its parallel in the Acemi
peşrevs of period 1; it is among the most archaic-looking semais in the Bobowski
Collection. Yet, for unknown reasons it was not dropped from the repertoire.
Rather it became the object of recomposition, and in its reconstructed form is
still part of the Mevlevi repertoire. However, its distance from later composi-
tional styles will emerge when it is compared with its modern reincarnation.
Unlike those peşrevs in the Mevlevi repertoire which are based on
seventeenth-century originals, the modern versions of the seventeenth-
century semais have not expanded their rhythmic structure or elaborated their
melodies (see Wright 1988). The semai usul in this piece is identical to the
form in the Bobowski Collection, and its melodic density is much the same.
Moreover, the length of these two pieces is roughly comparable. Like all the
Mevlevi son semais and son peşrevs, this semai lacks any breaks or divisions,
whether into hanes, mülazime/teslim or terkibs.

Example 3.87 Mevlevi son yürük semai (after Cüneyt Kosal)

The Instrumental Semai 465

Yet even without these divisions, it is clear that the first four measures are
largely identical to the serhane of the Bobowski item, while after these four mea-
sures, the piece has nothing in common with the earlier semai. Furthermore,
the function of the first four measures here is different from that of the serhane
in Bobowski. In the latter the serhane was the melodic nucleus of the entire
composition. Its second half formed the basis for all three terkibs of the mül-
azime, while all four measures of the serhane were transposed to form both
terkibs of the second hane. In the Mevlevi piece the old serhane is quoted, but
never again used in any fashion.
The new semai is essentially a three-part composition. In the new Mevlevi
piece, the old serhane is followed by a four-measure bridge which very deftly
presents much of the modern seyir of Neva, including the drop to the yeden
G in measure 1, alternation of the sixth degree (f# > f), then the rise to g and
the pause on f#. There follows a leap to a, then a four-measure descending
melody (repeated twice), after which the sixth degree is permanently altered
to f, and the descent continues to the karar A. The semai concludes with a
long (eight measure) cadential melody in the style of modern Beyati with its
minor sixth. By modem standards this is a very “simple” composition within
the simplest instrumental genre in the entire classical repertoire. Nevertheless,
the sophistication of its compositional technique distinguishes it from its early
seventeenth-century counterpart.
Several of Cantemir’s semais in the old semai usul display a structure which
differentiates them considerably from anything in the Bobowski Collection.
Although most of these items in the Cantemir Collection are anonymous, we
might assume that they represent a style contemporaneous with the author, or
perhaps dating from the previous generation. Both their compositional struc-
ture and their use of makam represent a bridge between the seventeenth cen-
tury and modern Turkish music. A good example of this type is the semai in
makam Kürdi on page 135 (Ex. 3.88–90).
The rhythmic phrasing here is different from that in most of the semais in
either the Bobowski or the Cantemir Collections. The feeling of three quar-
ter notes predominates over six eighth notes, and implies a somewhat slower
tempo. All the terkibs (except for H III B) are eight measures long, so the
melodic line is longer than in most other semais, where four-measure bars
were common.
There is no fasıl for makam Kürdi in the Bobowski Collection, so makam
usage cannot be viewed comparatively. Cantemir classified Kürdi as a makam
of secondary scale degree (na-tamam perde). Its characteristic note is B♭,
which was called nihavend by Cantemir, but is known as kürdi today. None of
466 Chapter 14

the older compositional techniques are evident in this piece. The hanes and
terkibs are not connected by means of transposition, sequencing or repetition.
The serhane opens with an unusual makam usage. The melody jumps from the
karar A to what should have been the fifth (e, hüseyni), which is the tonal cen-
ter of Kürdi, but instead strikes e♭ (beyati). The serhane has a very compressed
structure, consisting of a repeated opening phrase of two measures, and then
a cadential phrase of four measures. Unlike most of the semais we have seen,
neither part of the serhane is developed in terkib A of the mülazime. MA opens
with a wide-ranging melody using the sixth degree of the scale and reaching
up to the octave and the ninth. The melody of the serhane is further developed
only in MB. The melody and tonality of MA skips MB and continues in MC.
This “scrambling” of the melody is not evident in the other semais in either
Cantemir or Bobowski.

Example 3.88 Kürdi, semai (Cantemir Collection: no. 265), H I, M A, B, C

H II A functions as the traditional “miyanhane” of the peşrev or semai by creat-

ing an ascending melody in the upper range, in this case the upper tetrachord
of the makam. This melody follows the general style of MA and MC, but it does
not develop them by transposition or sequencing; rather it does so by means
of new melody material using the same tonality and range. H II B effects a
descent from the upper range employing minimal phrasing which consciously
differentiates itself from previous melodies in the piece. It also calls attention
to itself by skipping the sixth degree (f#), which appears to be a reference to
earlier pieces in Kürdi which had had weak or absent sixth and second degrees.
Unlike almost all the semais seen above, the descending terkib here is not a
mechanical repetition of earlier melodic patterns in the piece, but an entirely
original section.
The Instrumental Semai 467

Example 3.89 Kürdi semai, H II

Example 3.90 Kürdi, semai, H III

As is often the case, H III (Ex. 3.90) offers major modulation. However, the
modulations seen here are without precedent in the seventeenth-century cor-
pus and presage the usage of the early later eighteenth to nineteenth centuries.
H III A begins with the note c, whose modal significance is entirely obscure
until the melody leaps up a fifth and descends by means of f# and e♭. This short
modulation is one of the only appearances in either seventeenth-century col-
lection of a variant of Uzzal on d (neva), which is part of the family of augmented
second tetrachords transposed onto d in modern Turkish music. Despite the
ubiquitousness of this modal phenomenon in the modern repertoire (called
Araban), it is almost unknown in the notated seventeenth-century corpus and
it is not described by Cantemir in his treatise. H III B effects the transition from
the previous to a new modulation. In H III C the fourth degree is flattened
to d♭ (saba) while the second degree remains flat (nihavend). The resulting
modal entity is known today as Saba Zemzeme. It is remarkable that Cantemir
does not mention this terkib (or any comparable terkib under a different name)
anywhere in his treatise; it is not among the subordinates (etba of the makams
Kürdi or Saba), nor in the lists of functioning and obsolete terkibs. The ancient
terkib Zemzeme which he mentions (VIII:75) has an unrelated structure.
The appearance of these two modern modal entities Araban and Saba
Zemzeme within this piece, combined with the comparative modernity of its
compositional techniques suggest that its unknown creator was one of the
musicians living toward the end of the seventeenth century. He had accepted
468 Chapter 14

the newer approaches to both makam and composition which would expand
further in the course of the following century. While many of the semais in the
Cantemir Collection are “backward looking” in that they are either identical
to or stylistically comparable to items in the Bobowski Collection, this anony-
mous semai in Kürdi represents a bridge between the seventeenth-century and
later Turkish music.6
It would appear that the changes which the semai underwent in the course
of the eighteenth century went along two rather different tracks. On the one
hand, the older semai form in the 6/8 semai usul was developed by means
of melodic elaboration as seen in Yekta’s version of Esʿad Efendi’s “yürük saz
semaisi” in Nühüft (Yekta 1924–30:no. 67). There are very few surviving exam-
ples of this elaborated version of the old semai, which was virtually extinct
by the nineteenth century. On the other hand, at the close of the seventeenth
century a new usul was introduced into the semai genre, and this innovation
led to even more fundamental changes within the genre.

4 Semai-i Lenk/Aksak Semai

All of the instrumental and vocal semais notated by Bobowski are in the old
6/8 semai usul. Thirty of Cantemir’s thirty-six instrumental semais are in this
6/8 usul. However, the remaining six use a different usul structure in 10/8.
Tanburi Harutin, writing after 1740, is aware of two forms of semai—the old
6/8 pattern, and a newer 6/4 pattern (sengin semai < P. “heavy semai”)—but
he does not give the 10/8 pattern. Cantemir does not mention the sengin semai
usul, but some of his six semais in 10/8 modulate rhythmically into the 6/4
pattern. Fonton, writing in 1751 gives all three semai patterns—semai, sengin
semai, and aksak semai. Therefore, the diachronic periodization of semai in
connection with usul would appear to be as follows: until ca. 1670 only semai
(6/8); 1670–1750, mainly old semai, but some aksak semai (10/8) and some sen-
gin semai (6/4); 1750–1800, all three patterns; 1800–1950, mainly aksak semai,
some sengin semai, almost no old semai.

Example 3.91 Semai usul patterns

6 The relative “modernity” of this Kürdi semai was no doubt one of the reasons that induced
Necdet Yaşar to record it for me in 1987.
The Instrumental Semai 469

Cantemir (ca. 1700) mentions four different semai usuls: the simple semai
(6/8), semai-i harbi (“martial semai”) in 12/8, semai-i raks (“dance semai”) in
10/8, and semai-i lenk (“limping semai”) in 8/8. This classification is problem-
atic. In the list of usuls on page 133, semai-i lenk does not appear. In its place
we find semai-i raks in 10/8 (i.e. 10 beats according to the “small measure”).
Linguistically, semai-i lenk is the Persian form (or original) of the Turkish term
aksak semai, which came into fashion around 1750, and has remained in use
ever since then (P. lang/lenk = T. aksak “lame, limping”). This term aksak is the
same one which was later adopted by Béla Bartók, and after him by general
musicology to describe additive asymmetrical rhythms. By the middle of the
eighteenth century the term “aksak” was in use for a popular usul in nine beats.
Thus, it would appear that to the Turks, aksak referred to an asymmetrical usul.
The linguistic Turkification of lenk to aksak would be a normal development
within eighteenth-century Turkey, cf. seventeenth-century (Persian) semai-i
sazende > eighteenth-century (Turkish) saz semaisi. However, Cantemir’s
diagram of the usul semai-i lenk on page 85 clearly shows an eight-beat pat-
tern. This eight-beat pattern does not appear anywhere in his notated col-
lection, while the ten-beat “semai-i raks” is the rhythmic basis of six notated
semai items. Therefore, we may suspect that Cantemir simply wrote the incor-
rect numeral in his diagram of semai-lenk; probably substituting a 1 for a 3 in
the last beat. Haşim Bey’s copy of Cantemir’s usul drawings does not contain
semai-i lenk, so it cannot be used for comparison. The descriptions of this 10/8
usul as “limping” (i.e. asymmetrical) and “for dancing” are not contradictory,
as they refer to different aspects of the usul, i.e. musical structure and generic
function respectively.7

7 Cantemir employed what he termed the “vezn-i sagir” (“the small meter”) when transcribing
quick-moving usuls. In his first chapter, he explains that the quick devr-i revan usul could
not be written with the “great meter” (vezn-i kebir). In his collection, peşrevs in devr-i revan
are transcribed by him according to the “small meter” (as he notes in his marginalia). These
must be transcribed in modern notation in 14/8 time. This is the same as the modern devr-i
revan, because this particular usul has not undergone significant change. The same was
undoubtedly true of the semais; However, he states this explicitly only once, in the semai in
Geveşt, which has the remark vezn-i sagir in the margin. This newer style semai must there-
fore be transcribed as 10/8. All the older semais must be transcribed in 6/8. In the notation,
Cantemir does not indicate the number 1 under the notes, except where two notes divide a
single “beat.” Otherwise, the numbers 2 or 3 are written under the letter/notes. In the “small
meter,” the number 1 must have a value of one eighth-note. Therefore, the appearance of two
letter/notes over the number “1” must be transcribed as sixteenth-notes.
470 Chapter 14

The 6/4 sengin semai usul appears to be a development of the 6/8 semai,
by means of the principle of retardation which operated in most areas of
Turkish music (Wright 1988). The asymmetrical aksak semai (or semai-i lenk,
or raks) cannot be so readily explained. The modem aksak semai usul is vir-
tually identical to the same usul (iqʾā) in Levantine Arab music. However, it
appears that this Levantine rhythmic cycle is derived from the Turkish cycle,
so this relationship does nothing to explain the Turkish phenomenon. The
modern aksak semai is quite different from any rhythmic cycle occurring in
Anatolian folk music, although many regional styles feature rhythmic cycles
in 5/8 which seem to display some connection with the aksak semai. The
Anatolian rhythmic cycles in 5/8 have been adopted into Ottoman music
(of the later eighteenth–nineteenth century) as “Turk aksağı” (“aksak of the
Turks”). However, the six aksak semais in the Cantemir Collection (Ex. 3.92)
display a rhythmic structure which is not identical to the aksak semais in the
current repertoire.

Example 3.92 Aksak semais from Cantemir (serhanes)

a) Acem; b) Hüseyni; c) Rast (Gazi Giray); d) Geveşt (Cantemir);
e) Buselik-Aşirani
The Instrumental Semai 471

In example 94 (Ex. 94: Baba Mest), the opening three eighths is always
expressed as quarter note/eighth note. The two quarter notes in the middle of
the usul are never further divided. The final three eighths are divided only as
quaver-crotchet, or crotchet-quaver, or else left as an undivided three eighths
unit on a single tone.
Nowhere does Cantemir explain the rhythmic structure of these semais in
ten beats. However, this pattern can be extracted from his transcriptions (cf.
Wright 1992a:536–47).
Fifty years later Fonton gave the drum-pattern for what he called aksak
semai: düm tek tek düm tek. While this pattern was identical to the old semai
(which he called yürük sema’i) in 6/8, it was evidently phrased in 10/8.
This pattern is well-known in modern Turkish music of several genres, not
as aksak semai, but as curcuna (Iraqi Ar. jurjina). This curcuna usul has a wide
but quite specific geographical distribution today. To the southeast it extends
as far as the city of Baghdad, where it has been incorporated into the maąām
al-ʿIraqī in the maqāms Halīlawī, Bājlān, and Rashdī (al-Rajab 1961:59). It is a
constant feature of the Kurdish, Assyrian, “Turkmen,” Jewish and Armenian
folk music of northern Iraq (“Kurdistan”). Within Anatolian Turkey, its distri-
bution is heaviest east of the Taurus mountain range, and in Adana and Ayntab
(Gaziantep). To the north, it extends to Erzurum, but becomes very rare in the
historically Georgian, Laz, and Armenian regions to the north and northeast.
It is not documented in Caucasian (Russian) Azerbaijan, but it is known in the
Iranian part of the region. In Anatolia, it is extremely rare west of Sivas, and
virtually unknown in Aegean Turkey. Thus, it can be called characteristic only
of eastern, and especially southeastern Anatolia.
Within eastern Anatolia, it occurs in a variety of genres and functions. In
several regions it is a rhythmic pattern for village dance music, e.g. the dance
şirvani of the Gaziantep region (Ex. 3.93). However, it was also ubiquitous
in the music of the towns, such as Diyarbekir, Urſa, Malatya, Elaziğ/Harput.
The distribution of the curcuna usul would appear to rule out any possibil-
ity of its diffusion through Ottoman music, for the usul is weakest where the
influence of Ottoman music was strongest, i.e. in western Anatolia and the
Balkans, at least since the middle of the eighteenth century. The “düm tek tek
düm tek” drum pattern given by Fonton (1751:65) is precisely the drum pattern
used today by davul drummers for the Şirvani halayı. Judging by Fonton’s evi-
dence, this rhythmic structure was still dominant in the aksak semai during the
mid-eighteenth century.
In seeking an explanation for this intrusion of an East Anatolian/Mesopo-
tamian rhythmic structure into Ottoman music of the period ca. 1670–1770,
I would tentatively put greater emphasis on the urban, rather than the rural,
472 Chapter 14

Example 3.93 Şirvani (halay), Gaziantep

use of the usul. The best explanation probably lies with the singers and musi-
cians from Diyarbekir, Bitlis, Urfa, and Ayntab who achieved wide promi-
nence in the seventeenth century, as noted by Evliya Çelebi and Esʿad Efendi
(cf. I:4: pp. 44–45). The economic and cultural links between these southeast
Anatolian cities and the cities of Mesopotamia, including Baghdad, were an
enduring historical legacy, which continued at least until the early eighteenth
century. Several of these cities were far more prosperous in the seventeenth
century than they would be one century later—after the major shifting of
international trade-routes—and so they were able to maintain urban musi-
cal establishments of considerable sophistication. The incursion of the Kurd-
ish/Iraqi curcuna into the Turkish semai genre is probably the result of the
influence of the music of these east Anatolian cities.
An analysis of one of the semais in the new asymmetrical semai usul in the
Cantemir Collection (no. 268; Ex. 98) will demonstrate the distance of this
newer form both from its parent semai genre and from the modern saz semai.
The sheer scope of this piece is well beyond any of the semais using the old
usul notated by either Bobowski or Cantemir.

H I A: 6 measures of 10/8
H I B: 14 measures of 10/8
M A: 12 measures of 10/8
M B: 18 measures of 10/8
H II A: 3 measures of 6/4
H II B: 3 measures of 6/4
H II C: 6 measures of 6/4
H III A: 3 measures of 6/4
H III B: 3 measures of 6/4
The Instrumental Semai 473

Example 3.94 Hüseyni, semai-i Baba Mest (Cantemir Collection: no. 268)
(Continued on next page)
474 Chapter 14

Example 3.94 Hüseyni, semai-i Baba Mest (Cantemir Collection:no. 268)

The break with the past can be seen in several aspects of the shape and pro-
portions of this piece. Not only are most terkibs far longer than previously—four
measures had been standard in period 3 and eight in period 4—but the pro-
portions are highly irregular. The serhane has a second terkib, which in itself is
unusual, and it is over twice as long as the first terkib. The second hane is very
short, while the third hane is inordinately long. In addition to these irregulari-
ties, all of HII and terkib A of H III are composed of sub-terkib units marked
“mükerrer.” This marking was used by Cantemir to indicate small phrases,
below the terkib level, which must be repeated more than once. He does not
specify how many times; it was evidently left to the judgment of the performer
or performers. It was highly unusual for the mükerrer mark to be used as fre-
quently as it is here, effectively cutting up the terkibs into small, two or three
measure repeated units. Evidently this must be viewed in the context of the
rhythmic modulation which these last two hanes express.
The modern saz semai contains four hanes in which the last hane modulates
from 10/8 into 6/8, i.e., returns to an usul closer to the old semai. The beginning
of this practice must be sought in period-5 semais such as this one. However,
here the rhythmic modulation begins in the second hane and continues into
the third; there is no fourth hane. Here the modulation is not into the old
semai, but into something akin to the sengin semai, the retarded version of the
old semai.8 The change of usul which occurs in H II is used to negate the old
principle of the “miyanhane,” by which the second hane must be performed in

8 Some modern saz semais also use this retarded version as a modulation.
The Instrumental Semai 475

a higher range. In the modern saz semai the teslim in the original aksak semai
usul (10/8) follows the rhythmic modulation in the fourth hane. This is a return
to the basic usul of the composition. However, here the müłazime in 10/8 fol-
lows H II in 6/4, and then returns again and is followed by H III in 6/4 and
returns to close the piece in 10/8. Therefore, the rhythmic modulations in this
piece can be viewed as:

HI 10/8
M 10/8
H II 6/4
M 10/8
H III 6/4
M 10/8

The composer prepared for the reentry of the mülazime after H II by the
appearance of the pitch a (muhayyer) held for three beats, apparently a break
in the usul to act as a transition from the 6/4 usul to the 10/8 usul.
H I, M and H II are all in the makam Hüseyni, modulation occurs only in H III
A which features Uzzal, H III B returns to Hüseyni. The seyir of Hüseyni has
been discussed earlier in connection with Bobowski’s and Cantemir’s versions
of the peşrevs by Osman Paşa and Hasan Can. While early (period 2) peşrevs
such as these had used minimal versions of the makam without a developed
seyir, Baba Mesť’s semai shows every essential aspect of Hüseyni as it is known
from modern Turkish music. The entire terkib B of the serhane is devoted
to demonstrating the tonal area around c, which is generally ignored in the
period 2 pieces in Hüseyni. Moreover, the introduction of tonal centers shows
the “seyir-consciousness” of modern practice. H I A emphasizes the karar A and
the principal tonal center e, with some pauses on the yeden G. HIB deals with c
and G, then works its way up to a and bd, and includes a passing introduction
of f (in place of f#) on the way down to the karar. MA deals with the upper pen-
tachord of Hüseyni, while MB returns to the middle range of H I A. Thus, the
basic seyir of Hüseyni is thoroughly presented in the serhane and mülazime.
H II is primarily involved in rhythmic modulation, so it deals only with the
principal tonal center of the makam. H III A modulates into Uzzal, but in its
second line it rises from the note below the yeden (F# in this case) up to the
upper tonic (a) and then descends while modulating into Şehnâz, the Uzzal
tetrachord on e. H III B is constructed entirely out of a descending pattern
within the close of the seyir of Hüseyni.
Many of the old style semais in Cantemir feature a compression of the
seyir into a short space (e.g. Neva semai). Baba Mest has adopted a different
476 Chapter 14

ąpproach, allowing the seyir to be expressed not over a single terkib, but over
several hanes. Something of this technique was seen in the anonymous Kürdi
semai in Cantemir (no. 265), but it is taken further in this Hüseyni semai
(no. 268).
None of the older compositional techniques are in evidence here. Outside
of cadential phrases, repetition plays virtually no role in this piece. Note
repetitions here serve to emphasize major tonal centers (A, e, a) within the
context of seyir, but they never dominate the melodic space, as they had, for
example in the Neva semais in the Bobowski Collection. At present we do not
have access to notated semais of the eighteenth century until the period of
Isak (1775–1814). We must assume, however, that the semai of Baba Mest and
similar works represented a long step toward the creation of the compositional
norm of the semai of the eighteenth century.

5 Transformation of the Old Semai

As we have seen, the saz semai repertoire of the seventeenth century was not
very numerous nor of great antiquity in comparison to the peşrev. However, the
expansion of the semai at the end of the seventeenth century seems to have
added prestige to the genre. A number of saz semais from the seventeenth cen-
tury seem to have been preserved in the nineteenth century and in the present.
Since this is not a large number of items, it is sufficient to present two exam-
ples of different strategies in the preservation of the old instrumental semai.
Some of the Mevlevi son yürük semais derive more or less directly from
seventeenth-century secular sources. Earlier in this chapter we observed the
transformation of one of the semais of the Bobowski Collection in makam Neva

Example 3.95 Uzzal, semai (Bobowski ca. 1650:323)

The Instrumental Semai 477

Example 3.96 Son yürük semai (Heper 1979:115)

Table 3.7 Pençgah semai

Cantemir (6/8) Yekta

Serhane Hane I (10/8)

[____________________] [____________________]
[xxxxxxxxxxx]
Hane II (10/8)
Mülazime [xxxxxxxxxxx]
[ ------- ---- [____________________]
-------
Hane II Hane III (10/16)
[____________________] [____________________]
Hane III Hane IV (6/8)
[ [

within the modern Mevlevi ceremony. In that case the new version retained
only the serhane of the original and went on to create an entirely new piece. In
other cases, the new version was of the same scope or a slightly reduced ver-
sion of the older semai.
The old serhane of Ex. 3.95 has become the first line of the Mevlevi
piece (Ex. 3.96), while the mülazime is now the basis for the second line. The
scope of the two pieces is much the same. The major change is the much
higher melodic density of the newer piece, with its rapid sixteenth note fill-ins.
Within Ottoman secular music a rather more complex process occurred.
Several saz semais are attributed to Cantemir in the later tradition. I have not
been able to connect these with any early document with the exception of the
semai in makam Pençgah. The original version of this semai (Ex. 3.97) occurs on
page 127 of the Cantemir Collection, where it is listed anonymously. In Yekta’s
478 Chapter 14

Example 3.97 Pencgah, semai (Cantemir Collection: no. 243)

version (1924–30:171) (Ex. 3.98) the usul has been altered from 6/8 to 10/8 and
10/16 (curcuna). While the quick sections of the old semai have been retained
with little change, the first and second hanes of the new piece used the 10/8
aksak semai usul and these have been subject to considerable rhythmic adjust-
ment and new composition. The macrolevel relationship between these two
items can be explained by Tab. 3.7 above.
The latter hanes of both items (II and III in Cantemir, III and IV in Yekta)
are almost identical, given the rhythmical alteration. The earlier two hanes are
clearly based upon the same melodic material, but the later version has been
expanded in several ways. On the level of makam, melodic sections featuring
the alteration of B for B (segah for buselik) and c for c# (çargah for hicaz)
become prominent. This begins in Yekta’s first hane, where a one-measure
melodic nucleus (Ex. 3.98) introduces an entirely new section of the hane and
is further transformed in the first half of the second hane.
Once we allow for the development for this new modal material in the sec-
ond half of H I and the first half of H II, the relationship between Cantemir’s
and Yekta’s versions becomes clearer (Ex. 3.100).
The Instrumental Semai 479

Example 3.98 “Pençügah makamıda saz semaisi Kantimir oğlu’nun” (Yekta 1924: no. 171)
(Continued on next page)
480 Chapter 14

Example 3.98 “Pençügah makamıda saz semaisi Kantimir oğlu’nun” (Yekta 1924: no. 171)

Example 3.99
Melodic nucleus in Yekta’s
version
The Instrumental Semai 481

Example 3.100 Cantemir and Yekta versions, partial interlineal transcription

6 Conclusion

The semai as a musical genre was deeply connected to both the ethnic and the
religious identity of the Anatolian Turks. As a Sufi genre it was used primarily
by the two tarikats which had been most influential in pre-Ottoman Anatolia,
i.e. the Mevleviye, and the conglomeration of early Anatolian Sufi movements
which became known in Ottoman times as the Bektaşiye. Those tarikats which
became strong in Turkey after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, and
especially after the conquest of Constantinople (1453) did not feature the semai
in their liturgies. While the Mevleviye and the Bektaşiye represent the oppo-
site poles of Sufism in Turkey in most other respects—one is Sunni, the other
Shia, one is elite, the other relatively popular, etc.—both of them named their
rituals “sema,” and both of them performed some music in the same musical
semai genre as a part of these rituals. It appears very likely that the instru-
mental semai entered the secular fasıl from the Mevlevi ayin. When Cantemir
notated his collection, there was already a tradition that the instrumental
semai had been performed by Jalal al-Din Rumi’s son Sultan Veled (makam
Irak, “Sultan Veled” no. 253; Feldman 2022:225). While many of the Sufi tari-
kats active in Ottoman Turkey had already been established in older Muslim
countries, only the Mevleviye and the Bektaşiye orders constituted themselves
within the confines of Anatolia, spreading elsewhere with the expansion of the
Ottoman State centuries later. In addition, the two reputed “founders” of these
orders were born in Central Asia, so their careers formed a direct link between
Central Asia and Anatolia.
Turkish Sufis had employed various musical instruments during their ritu-
als, and therefore the semai developed both instrumental and vocal forms.
The semai is unique among Turkish classical compositional forms in its lack
of definition as either vocal or instrumental. This ambivalence probably stems
482 Chapter 14

from two sources—the traditions of both instrumental and instrumentally

accompanied vocal music in the Sufi sema, and the early history of Muslim art
music, in which certain vocal forms could also be performed instrumentally
(e.g. tarīąah and sawt).
In addition to the religious factor, there was also a related ethnic factor
which was somewhat independent. The closest musical affinities of the rhyth-
mic structure of the documented semai lie in the area close to the Oghuz
homeland—Khwarezm, rather than Anatolia or any other region of the Middle
East proper. The older form of the semai was therefore part of a Turkic, rather
than an Anatolian musical heritage. The gradual decline of the Turkic com-
ponent is seen in the rhythmic change which occurred in both the vocal and
instrumental semai at the end of the seventeenth century. The new rhythm
of the semai was a non-Turkic regional feature whose diffusion extends from
Baghdad to Central Anatolia. It is remarkable that this aspect of the musi-
cal “Anatolianization” of the Turks occurred as late as it did. This new form
of semai was borrowed and assimilated by the Levantine and Tunisian Arabs,
partly because its rhythmic structure was already familiar to the Arabs from
the music of Iraq and northern Syria.
The old semai usul was evidently widespread in many vocal and instrumen-
tal genres in an early period, but it appears to have disappeared from Anatolian
Turkish folk music by the nineteenth century. It was preserved by the urban
Bektaşi and Mevlevi dervishes, and also as the yürük semai vocal genre of the
fasıl, and in occasional survivals of the ancient semai, which were termed
“yürük saz semai” to distinguish them from the dominant newer form. It was
not Anatolian folk music, but Ottoman art music and Sufi music which pre-
served this aspect of the Central Asian Turkic musical past.
The semai is the only musical genre in Turkey which has been able to link
up such diverse musical spheres as elite and popular Sufism, secular art music,
military music, vocal and instrumental music. Despite the transformations of
the later seventeenth century, the older semai has retained its shape in several
genres and has even managed to preserve certain antique compositions. Other
musical genres, such as the older forms of the peşrev, were totally transformed,
and their older versions discarded.
The Ottomans never claimed a pan-Islamic origin for the semai. While
Fonton’s informants claimed that Eflatun (Plato) had composed peşrevs, they
did not mention anything about his semais. Without ever self-consciously
bringing forth the semai as a “Turkic” cultural feature, the Ottomans chose not
to sever this humble, but omnipresent link with a part of their historical past.
This ethnic conservationism was apparently reinforced by the Sufi associations
of the musical form. Thus, there was a coalescence of two essentially distinct
The Instrumental Semai 483

cultural features. Unlike the founders of the Kadiri and Rufai Sufi orders, Jalāl
al-Dīn Rūmī, and Hacı Bektaş Veli were both Central Asians, and the Sufi orders
which grew up around them both emphasized music and movement. To later
generations of Anatolian-born Turks, the music of part of the sacred dance was
inextricably associated with a cultural identity, in which both ethnicity and
religion played a role. It is probably this dual identification, and not ethnicity
alone, which allowed the “old” semai to perpetuate itself in Turkish music.
It is of course significant that during the Third Selam of the Mevlevi ayin the
shift from the longer usul devr-i kebir to the short semai usul is always effected
by the appearance of the same Turkish-language poem by Eflaki, in praise of
Rumi’s son Sultan Veled (d. 1312). It is as though the Turkish verse was used
as a kind of “signal” for the sudden appearance of the ancient Turkish semai
usul. This verse and its music were even documented by Bobowski as Devran-i
Dervişan-i Zi-Şan; “The Whirling of the Illustrious Dervishes” (Sloane p. 42; see
Feldman 2022:219–223).
The shift to the new aksak semai rhythm and compositional structure is only
partly comparable to the changes which overtook the peşrev genre during the
course of the eighteenth century. As we have seen, in the peşrev the change in
tempo and usul structure produced a fivefold decrease in performance speed
and a five-fold increase in melodic density, while the drum-beats of the usul
patterns tended to double (14/4 > 28/4; 10/4 > 20/4; 16/4 > 32/4). Had the semai
developed in a similar manner to these other usuls, its essential function as
a “presto” section following the peşrev in the fasl-i sazende or concluding the
entire concert in the general fasıl, would have been lost. This probably would
have necessitated the creation of a new quick-moving genre as a finale. Only
the Mevlevis retained the old rhythmic structure and something like the old
tempo. In secular music the new saz semai is something of a compromise in
that the usul itself was almost doubled (from 6 to 10 beats), tempo was some-
what decreased, and melodic periods were expanded. Nevertheless, there was
no five-fold change in tempo as in the peşrev.
Rhythmic modulation was an essential feature of the aksak saz semai from
its earliest stage. This took the form of combining the new semai usul with a
form of the old one. In the earliest aksak saz semais the development of seyir
within the hanes, and later the introduction of different makams in each hane,
plus the transition from mülazime to teslim seems to have paralleled the same
developments within the peşrev. In the later seventeenth century (period 4)
the old semai experienced significant development in all the above respects.
These developments were further expanded after the old semai was largely
replaced by the aksak saz semai at the close of the seventeenth century.
 Chapter 15

Conclusion

1 The Departure of Turkey from the “Persianate” Musical Sphere

The Ottoman mythology of the “lineage” of music is designed to give the

impression that Turkish music had emerged out of Iranian music. The identity
of the Azerbaijanian ʿAbd al-Qādir Marāghī (d. 1435) as the “founder” of Turkish
music was stated by both Cantemir and Fonton, reflecting the oral tradition of
the Ottoman musicians of their day. Fonton’s statement that the Persians had
been the “masters” of music to the Turks resonates in writings about music up
to the present time (Popescu-Judetz 1981:99). This mythology was cultivated
by the Ottomans in order to increase their legitimacy as representatives of the
Islamic Great Tradition in music, which had traveled from the ancient Greeks
to the Caliphal Arabs to the Persians to the Timurids and then to the Ottoman
Turks (Feldman 1990–91:92).
While Persian music must have been an important model for the Turks
of Anatolia in Seljuk times, the Ottoman musical documents of the fifteenth
century suggest that Anatolia was developing its own musical standards. Even
the writings of Marāghī at the beginning of the century list certain musi-
cal instruments as being typical of the Turks of Anatolia. However, the cre-
ation of an enlarged Ottoman Empire in the early sixteenth century which
included campaigns in Iran brought about a closer musical relationship of
Iran and Anatolia. At this time several Iranian musicians were brought back
as captives to the Ottoman court and there was an evident desire on the part
of sultans Selim I and Süleyman to pattern the music of their courts on that
of the Safavids. Apparently, there were no specifically Turkish musical forms
performed at the court, and the use of typically Turkish instruments, espe-
cially the various forms of tanbur were discouraged or even excluded from the
courtly ensemble. During the early seventeenth century Iranian musicians still
had a substantial role in the Ottoman court music, and Persian songs were
sung in the capital.
Throughout the seventeenth century the Persians (Acemler; sazendegan-i
Diyar-i Pars) remained the only national group whose music could be articu-
lated as a meaningful “other.” While very rarely a musician is described as being
“Mısri” (Egyptian), “Şamlı” (Syrian) or from the “Maghreb” no musical charac-
teristics are ever ascribed to these countries. The Greeks are never mentioned
as having a separate musical identity. In Cantemir’s treatise the word “Rum”

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004531260_019

Conclusion 485

(Byzantium or Anatolian Turkey) refers to all performers of Ottoman music of

whatever ethnicity or religion. No word seems to have existed to describe an
“Egyptian,” “Syrian,” “Arabian,” or “Greek” musical style. By way of contrast “in
the Persian style” (Acemane) or “in the style of Khorasan” (tarz-i Horasan) were
common descriptive terms. To Esʿad Efendi in the early eighteenth century,
and to Hızır Ağa in the mid-eighteenth century “Acemane” seems to have char-
acterized a well-known collection of musical traits.
Persian musicians were welcome in Turkey until the end of the seventeenth
century. From Cantemir’s remarks, and from the slightly later comments of
Tanburi Harutin (who lived in Iran for several years under Nader Shah), it
appears that Turkish and Iranian music were not yet mutually exclusive
domains even in the early eighteenth century. Nevertheless, Turkish music was
undergoing certain developments with which Iranian musicians could not
have been familiar. By the later seventeenth century, the structural changes
and developments in genre within Turkish music had become significant to
the point where the Iranian musicians could no longer master them without
lengthy apprenticeship in Turkey. By the time Cantemir wrote his treatise,
the Iranian musicians performed a rather simpler form of peşrev and an out-
moded, “formalized” (kalıplı) type of taksim, and therefore could not present
an instrumental fasıl which would have interested a Turkish audience. In the
vocal composed repertoire, the situation was somewhat different. Although
the newer Turkish vocal genres were unknown to the Persians, the older
Persian genres were still part of the Ottoman repertoire, and so Persian rendi-
tions of these items would still have been appreciated (Cantemir 1734:97–102;
Feldman 2022:149–52).
Whatever the earlier relationship between Persian and Turkish styles may
have been, by the second half of the seventeenth century these two musics
followed different roads of development. Ottoman music preserved certain
aspects of previous genres and forms which had existed in medieval Persian
music and developed them further. In Turkey new forms were created while
others were dropped; cyclical performances came to dominate both courtly
and Mevlevi Sufi music. Certain forms, such as the instrumental peşrev and
semai were the objects of continual structural and stylistic experimentation. At
the same time, a new genre developed, both in the vocal and in the instrumen-
tal repertoire, which was not composed, but generated during performance,
and which featured extensive modulations. This performance-generated
genre, called taksim, appears to have developed with significant input from
a secularized form of the Qurʾānic chant that was performed by professional
singers trained in both religious and secular singing, and was then taken up
and developed by the instrumentalists as well.
486 Chapter 15

Persian music did not develop in these directions, and its social context
was also different. The final division between the two musics took place in
the second half of the eighteenth century. The Persian art music which was
transmitted into the Modern Period is characterized by specialization and the
reduction of genres. These are manifested by the elimination of every genre
other than the rhythmically free avaz from the core of the art repertoire, and
on the microlevel in the division of all modal entities into their smallest con-
stituent units (gushes). Theoretically the modal system is grouped into a closed
hierarchy of dastgah “families.”
By the following generation Ottoman music developed in a different way
in virtually every area of aesthetic choice. Where Persian musicians in Central
and Western Iran lost interest in the very concept of usul, Ottoman musicians
not only preserved this concept but began to view it as crucial to the structural
design of the composition. The usuls continually expanded and the complexity
of the relationship between usul and melody increased. In Persian music, fully
precomposed forms were virtually eliminated while in Ottoman music great
emphasis was placed on further developing such forms. In Persian music all
instrumental playing was subordinated to the vocal avaz, whereas in Ottoman
music instrumental forms continued to develop, particularly the peşrev and
semai along with the distinct instrumental fasıl which featured elaborate tak-
sim playing.
While Persian music insisted on a hierarchical “closed” modal system,
Ottoman music gradually developed an “open-ended” system of compound
makams (see Powers 1980a:428). By the end of the eighteenth century, in
Persian music cyclicity was expressed through an approximate order in the
performance of gushes. In Ottoman music composed forms were arranged
cyclically in the fasıl and the modal entities and modulations employed in
non-metrical improvisations (taksim) followed no fixed or even approximate
order. In Persian music the improvisation during the avaz ultimately had
a tune-like basis growing out of the melodic nucleus of the gushe, whereas
in Ottoman music such a tune-like basis was categorically rejected. All vocal
art music in the Persian tradition derives metrically and structurally from the
meters of poetry, but in Ottoman music many composed forms emphasized
the long usuls which did not allow for the simple expression of poetic meters
(Aksoy 2008:17–35).
The divergence in these many structural features of Ottoman and Persian
music was paralleled by a less tangible differentiation in aesthetic decisions
which was clearly apparent by the beginning of the Modern Era. The concept
of irony, through which two separate and sometimes opposed meanings can
Conclusion 487

be expressed simultaneously, can provide insight into this aspect of much

Ottoman music.
Musical expression within the Ottoman secular repertoire is lighter, less
“serious” than what would be demanded in a composition for the Mevlevi
ayin, for example. But this “lightness,” which we might term irony is not at
all the same as the “lightness” of certain types of şarkı which are meant to be
somewhat frivolous or sentimental. The secular repertoire of the Ottoman
court is still essentially serious music but this seriousness is different from that
of Sufi music. The latter aspires to elicit a mystical feeling, the total oblivion
of the listener and participant into a transcendental state of mind. Indeed,
secular Ottoman music may have something of this quality, but this must be
balanced by something else which might be described as delightful or witty.
This wittiness presents itself in structural/compositional ideas involving ele-
ments such as unusual modulations, melodic designs, the correlation of usul
and melodic phrasing. But the exact nature of irony is difficult to define; it is a
consensus among the connoisseurs of the music. Such differentiation among
serious-mystical, serious-secular and light-secular strata of the repertoire and
their appropriate genres was essential to the aesthetics of Ottoman music.
It is characteristic that the Mevlevi composer Zekai Dede (d. 1897) is some-
times criticized today for having too much of the “flavor of the dervish lodge”
(tekke çeşnisi)—that is, a moral earnestness and spiritual emotion in his secu-
lar compositions.
Thus, apart from the many differences in technique and genre separating
the Ottoman repertoire from the Persian dastgah, it is the ironic distance and
mild humor of much of the former, as opposed to the unrelenting mystical
yearning of the finest classical singing or playing in the latter, which accounts
for the gap separating the modern forms of these two formerly kindred musics.
In the Modern Period an awareness in Turkey of the music of Iran as a model
or even as a closely related music disappeared, and with it the term “Acemane”
which is no longer understood by Turkish classical musicians.1

1 Turkish classical musicians today generally view the Iranian dastgah as a kind of folk music,
a development of the folklore of the Iranian territories which took the place of the older
Persian art music. As one musician explained to me: “to them it is classical music but to us it
is folk music.” In Istanbul it is generally held that Turkey possesses the authentic Persian art
music in the form of the compositions of Marāghī, the sixteenth- and seventeenth century
Acemler and the oldest ayins of the dervishes of Mevlana Rumi. The intonation of Persian
music, which had apparently been current in Turkey until the beginning of the Modern
Period, makes them “uncomfortable” (rahatsız). These modern views, which I frequently
met with in Istanbul during the 1970s and 1980s, are introduced here to demonstrate the
488 Chapter 15

2 The New Ottoman Style of the Eighteenth Century

Among the many differences which separate the art musics of Turkey and Iran
today, the concept of genre is one of the most crucial. While Cantemir’s treatise
suggests the existence of something resembling the avaz in seventeenth-century
Iran (ca. 1700:VII:67), the avaz became the central, almost the sole genre of
Persian art music only during the Modern Era, especially the nineteenth cen-
tury. During the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries many of the
older Persian compositional forms (e.g. the kar, the naqsh, and the pishrow)
were still performed in addition to the avaz.
On the other hand—as Cantemir shows—within Ottoman music the dis-
tinctions among genres and their constituent forms were already significant in
the later seventeenth century, and the precision with which these distinctions
were made continued to grow throughout the Early Modern era. In Turkey all
classical genres were arranged cyclically, with separate courtly and Sufi cycles
( fasıl and ayin). Within each cycle format composed and non-composed
forms both had significant positions. The Mevlevis also employed a composed
rubato form of considerable complexity and length (naat). Even within the
non-cyclical zikr (dhikr) ceremonies of Sufis other than the Mevleviye, elabo-
rate compositional forms were developed, such as the rubato durak and the
metrical tevşih ilahisi. The composed genres of the secular and Sufi repertoires
were created along different compositional principles, i.e. different use of
modulating sections (miyan), use of or choice within usuls, relations of usul to
melody, use of non-textual sections or refrains (terennüm), etc.
Throughout the Early Modern and Modern Eras, it was common for one
individual to master a variety of genres, which nevertheless retained their for-
mal characteristics. The strict differentiation of genre coexisted with a broad
leeway of the individual musician to participate in many of them. By the end
of the eighteenth century, we find a wide variety of secular, Sufi, vocal and
instrumental genres composed by figures such as Selim III and Ismail Dede
Efendi. It was possible, even desirable for one musician to encompass the
emotional realities represented by several genres. A Sufi or a müezzin did not
lose his primary “spiritual” or “religious” identity by composing in a variety of
secular genres; the Mevlevi İsmail Dede is even remembered for his series of

fundamental difference between the significance of Persian music for Turkish musicians
of the Early Modern and of the Modern Period. The fact that most of these judgments are
applied equally to the muqam music of Azerbaijan, whose people are in some sense “Turks,”
but which shares much of its musical structure with the Persian dastgah, shows that they are
based on musical, rather than ethnic, factors.
Conclusion 489

dance-cycles for the transvestite dancing boys. Thus, the fact that “worldly”
and “spiritual” genres fell within the expressive means of a single individual
contrasted sharply with the rigid and partly coercive social categories of the
Classical Age. In other spheres of life several of these social distinctions were
still valid, but they had little significance in the realm of music; this would
seem to be evidence for the secularism and incipient modernity of the Middle
Period of Ottoman society.
From the early seventeenth century the servants of the court, the women of
the seraglio and the members of aristocratic families were frequently amateur
performers of an informal vocal repertoire accompanied by folk-derived lutes.
Due to this circumstance the popular music of the capital was incorporated
into the music of the court; by the middle of the century one of these genres,
the şarkı, with its simplified Turkish lyrics had become particularly popular
among these members of the elite. This genre became one of the principal
forms of “light” music in the court.
Within both the secular and Sufi composed genres some distinction was
made between the rhythmical organization which was linked to bodily move-
ment and that which was not. Many usuls were associated with dance-like
movements, even though not all were related to pure dance (raks). All Sufi cer-
emonies, including the Bektaşi sema, Sunni zikr and Mevlevi ayin (or sema)
employed dance-like rhythms. A seventeenth- century Sufi poem links the
musical expression of rhythm with ecstatic mystical union (vusul): “He is the
joy of those who know rhythm (ehl-i usul) / He is the truth of those who know
Union (ehl-i vusul)” (Feldman 1992:191). The vocal and instrumental genres
known as “semai” seem to have entered the courtly fasıl through the Sufi
sema and retained its rhythmic structure even without a dance component.
The military too had its own “dance”; the Janissary troops joined battle with
a peculiar dance-like formation consisting of two steps forward and one step
backward, executed to the music of a peşrev. However, the new instrumental
fasıl-i sazende had no connection with any form of dance-music. Dance-suites
developed as a different genre entirely, which used neither the peşrev nor the
semai forms.
As the music of the Early Modern Era developed, the distinction between
dance and non-dance became much sharper. Both vocal and instrumental
genres were created in the longer usuls which previously had been only rarely
employed. The longer usuls were created by lengthening and slowing down
the earlier, shorter usuls and filling in the long notes with new rhythmic pat-
terns and melodic elaborations. Due to this process of tempo retardation and
melodic elaboration many of the measured genres of Ottoman music have
acquired a rhythmic structure which is slow and ponderous, affecting the
490 Chapter 15

development of melody and ornamentation in these genres. By the begin-

ning of the nineteenth century even the short, dance-like usuls (such as semai,
aksak, and aksak semai) acquired a new doubled version, termed “heavy” (ağır)
which broke the previous link with dance. This “heavy” and ponderous qual-
ity became the hallmark of most of the Ottoman repertoire. Contemporary
Turkish musicians sometimes speak of “dignity” (vukur) and “seriousness”
(ağır başlık) as distinguishing features of this music. The classical style of
instrumental improvisation, especially for ney and tanbur, share many of these
stylistic features, even though they are rhythmically unmeasured.
In accordance with this principle, the classical style as performed on the
core instruments, tanbur and ney, eschews the display of outward virtuos-
ity, that is, any demonstration of pure manual dexterity. A characteristic of
Turkish virtuoso playing is the introduction of rubato in the midst of a mea-
sured composition. This is never done by means of subdivision of the rhythm,
which would lead to a greater number of strokes (on the tanbur), but rather
by an alternative subdivision of the rhythmic cycle, often resulting in fewer
strokes. Thus, the most personal, “free” element of the performance does
not lean toward a display of virtuosity, rather, it slows down the pace of the
music. Such techniques are alien to the neighboring musical cultures of Syria
and Egypt as we have known them since their earliest recorded documents.
While the music of these countries shared in the general process of tempo
retardation of eighteenth-century Ottoman music, their modern performance
practice (especially on the ud) emphasizes a metrically precise and intricately
subdivided phrasing which may allow for considerable dexterity on the part of
the instrumentalist. Modern Turkish musicians frown on this kind of playing,
which they sometimes refer to as “cümbüş” (frivolity), and which they often
associate with the ud, an instrument which had been excluded from Ottoman
music from the late seventeenth until the late nineteenth centuries.2 They
regard the ney and the tanbur as the most classical instruments partly because
they are the least capable of “cümbüş.” The playing technique of the tanbur,
with its long multi-fretted neck and long inflexible plectrum can accomplish
such “frivolous” phrasing only with difficulty. It is true that a more virtuoso style
was introduced in the late nineteenth century by Tanburi Cemil Bey (d. 1916)
and became influential in twentieth-century Turkey, but the style that is con-
sidered most classical (klasik) and traditional (geleneksel), best represented

2 A “classical” style has developed on the ud in Turkey only since the second half of the twenti-
eth century, thanks to musicians such as Rüştü Eriç and Cinuçen Tanrıkorur. The famous ud
players of the first half of the century, such as Yorgo Bacanos, Udi Nevres and Şerif Muhiddin
Targan were virtuosi in a “light” classical style.
Conclusion 491

by Necdet Yaşar, following his teacher Mesut Cemil (the son of Cemil Bey),
preserves a technique which originated with Tanburi Isak (d. 1814). A major
component of this traditional style (especially in solo performance, but also in
ensemble performance), is the alteration of the rhythm in sections of a com-
posed peşrev or semai, allowing both for retarded tempos and for new phrasing
of the rhythm within the original tempo.
In the middle of the eighteenth century Fonton observed a technique which
was evidently quite similar to this:

Frequently, however, the great masters among them disguise the meter
in its execution such that it is unrecognizable to the others. It is not that
they are deviating from it, for they would not be esteemed for that, rather
they mix all of the embellishments of the Art which go unnoticed by the
Common Crowd (Fonton 1988–89 [1751]:1).

Earlier, Cantemir had noted the practice of performing certain peşrevs at a

very slow tempo, so that the melody was able to create more intricate patterns
between the beats of the rhythmic cycle. This practice, coupled with the even-
tual doubling of the length of the rhythmic cycles themselves, led to a much
looser connection between the rhythmic cycle and melodic rhythm. During
the eighteenth century, the compositional structure of the peşrev changed,
decreasing the amount of repeated material, and increasing the amount of
modulation in each section. As a result of these structural changes in both the
composed and improvised elements of instrumental music, the instrumental
genres became more specialized, and less a matter of accompaniment for the
vocal genres.
Such techniques, as Fonton states, were not directed toward “the Common
Crowd.” While the vocal technique of Ottoman music retained the “loud and
full” (ibid.) technique characteristic of the müezzins of the mosque until after
World War I, instrumental playing tended toward a more inner-directed tech-
nique, well-suited to the salons of the aristocrat-amateurs. Beginning in the
early seventeenth century there was an increasing domination of the creation
and performance of secular art music by individuals whose professions seem
to have been something other than music, and who could be considered “ama-
teurs.” The pattern of elite amateurism was one of the most durable aspects
of Turkish art music, surviving in recognizable form until after the Second
World War.
Vocal music was the specialty of the influential group of experts repre-
sented by the orthodox müezzins, on the one hand, and the dervish naathans,
durakçıs, zakirs, and ayinhans, on the other. During the eighteenth century,
492 Chapter 15

the entrance of Greek church cantors (psaltes) augmented this proliferation

of religious vocal specialists. While the musical genres performed by these
specialists had several different structures—including ametrical improvised,
ametrical composed, quasi-metrical rubato and composed, and purely metri-
cal forms—they all were essentially independent of instrumental genres, and
most of them involved a highly ornamented and melismatic vocal style. The
fact that on the one hand, the courtly vocal repertoire was increasingly per-
formed by religious musical specialists who were not usually instrumentalists
while, on the other, the instrumental genres were increasing in complexity and
independence, resulted in a severance of the two types of musical expertise.
The Mevlevi dervish musicians had a long tradition of interest in and respect
for instrumental music. The instrumental semai seems to have been part of
their sacred repertoire since early times, and the peşrev was incorporated dur-
ing the later eighteenth century. Mevlevi musicians had entered the secular art
music by the seventeenth century, and their style of playing the newly devel-
oped Mevlevi ney influenced the development of the courtly instrumental
genre. In Ottoman Turkey, the institution which corresponded most closely
to a public concert performance was the Mevlevi ayin. The Mevlevis allowed
their performances to be viewed by an audience, and they constructed their
performance spaces (semahane) with an audience in mind. Anyone, including
women, non-dervishes and non-Muslims, was free to observe the sema perfor-
mance. The Mevlevi ayin can be considered an art music used for a purely tran-
scendental function, which was combined in performance with a ritual dance.
Although a considerable degree of religious tolerance was part of the Mevlevi
tradition even prior to the seventeenth century, the creation of the ayin as a
public concert-performance, especially in Istanbul, must be viewed as part of
the pattern of secularization seen elsewhere. Likewise, the widespread eclecti-
cism of the other Sunni tarikats that allowed multiple initiations of the same
individual and permitted sheikhs with multiple initiations to perform mixed
zikr ceremonies (Feldman 1992:189) demonstrates, if not secularism, then at
least a form of social tolerance created by this “locally generated modernity”
(Abou-El-Haj 1992).
Thus, we can see some common patterns in the social organization of
music and the society which supported it, in the rise of a distinctively Otto-
man form and repertoire of art music, and in the elaboration of a developed
musical style. Evidently, by the later seventeenth century the amount of
social change which affected the diffusion, transmission and performance of
music had reached a critical mass. While neither the foreign specialist nor the
slave-musicians entirely disappeared, these two types of musicians no longer
had the greatest prestige. It is possible to describe certain evident changes in
Conclusion 493

the classical genres and in the instrumental ensemble that were temporally
co-terminal with the definitive establishment of the post-classical Ottoman
form of musical organization. During the two centuries between 1650 and
1850 the genres of the secular, dervish and religious branches of Ottoman art
music did not undergo any fundamental change. The patterns of genre and
form which had emerged between gradually became solidified and each genre
developed rather independently. These changes are significant, and apparently
“goal-directed,” although most of them must have seemed incremental at the
time that they occurred (see Blacking 1977).
By the mid-seventeenth century, the new form of social organization and
the musical phenomena were both established, and they formed a social and
musical equilibrium for at least a century-and-a-half. The end of the eighteenth
century appears to mark another major shift in the structure of Ottoman
music. The basic features of the social organization of art music maintained
themselves well into the nineteenth century, and some even longer, surviving
several structural changes in the music itself.
While the relative wealth of the Ottoman state during this era was undoubt-
edly a factor, it is likely that the continued development of music in Turkey
was also caused by the social equilibrium which allowed several social classes
to interact in the context of a musical repertoire and style which was able to
preserve a large measure of its continuity while allowing considerable change.
The new secularized and somewhat modernized conceptions of professional-
ism, of musical structure and of the role of instrumental music in this entire
complex created a synthesis which was capable of enduring the changes in
political, economic and cultural life well into modern times.
Glossary

Pers. = Persian; Ar. =Arabic; T. =Turkish

ağaze (Pers. āghāz) the opening tone of a mode.

amel (Ar. ʿamal) courtly genre of Persian music from the fourteenth–seventeenth
centuries. Consisted of four sections, with two musical strophes; one modulating
strophe, and a ritornello. It began with Persian verses, and then the syllables tan
tan. Employed medium to longer usul cycles.
aruz (Ar. ʿarūḍ) metrical pattern in poetry.
askeriye (Ar. ʿaskariyya) the Ottoman ruling class.
aşık (Ar. ʿāshiq) “lover,” or by extension a dervish or a wandering bard or minstrel.
avaz (Pers. āvāz) a subsidiary modal entity.
ayin (Pers. āyīn) “ceremony,” used broadly for the Mevlevi sema. More specifically
it refers to the vocal compositions within the four selam sections, created by a
single composer.
ayin-i şerif “The noble ceremony”; designates in particular the Mevlevi sema.
Bektashi Sufi order named after Haci Bektaş Veli (1209–71) but largely originating
among the Alevi. It became the Sufi order of the Janissary (Yeniçeri) Corps of the
Ottoman army.
beste (Pers. basta) “composition”; development of the quasi-folkloric murabba in
early 17th-century Ottoman vocal music; after the later seventeenth century, it
became the dominant vocal form of the Ottoman fasıl.
beyt (Ar. bayt) “house”; the couplet within Persian and Ottoman poetry.
cariye (Ar. jāriya) a slave-woman.
çeng Persian and Ottoman harp.
dede (T.) “grandfather,” dervish of the Mevleviye.
dergah (Pers. dargāh) “court”; any dervish convent.
derviş (Pers. darvīsh) “poor man,” dervish; follower of one of the Sufi tarikat orders.
devir (Ar. dawr) “cycle” or revolution; 1. In music: one complete unit of a rhythmic
cycle (usul); 2. In the Mevlevi mukabele: one complete cycle of the ceremony and
its music; later replaced by selam.
devran (Ar. dawrān) “circling,” hence 1. epoch; 2. circling motion during the zikr.
devşirme (T.) Levy of male children from Christian families in the Balkans, for ser-
vice in the imperial palace and in the Janissary Corps. Apparently instituted by
Sultan Murat I (1360–1389), it remained in force until the seventeenth century.
divan (Ar. dīwān) book of collected poems.
496 Glossary

durak (T.) Pre-composed rubato genre of the Sufi tarikats, especially the Halvetiye
and Kadiriye, employing Turkish texts. Stylistically and in performance practice,
durak displays similarities to the naat genre.
fasıl (Ar. faṣl) “season,” hence 1. group of musical compositions in the same makam.
2. later seventeenth-century Ottoman concert suite with fixed order of genres in
the same makam.
fasıl-i sazende ( faṣl-i sāzende) the performance-cycle of courtly instrumentalists,
consisting of taksim, peşrev, and saz semaisi (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries).
gazel (Pers. ghazal) dominant form of Persian and Turkish lyric poetry, based on
couplets (beyt).
hafız (Ar. ḥāfıẓ) a Qurʾānic cantor.
Halvetiye Turkish Sufi order originating in fifteenth-century Azerbaijan. By the fol-
lowing century, it became one of the dominant orders of the Ottoman Empire.
hane (Pers. khāna) “house.” Used for a section of the instrumental peşrev.
hanende (Pers. khananda) “singer” in an Ottoman urban or courtly context. In
seventeenth-century Iran it came to refer specifically to performers of the com-
posed repertoire in the usul system.
hareket (Ar. ḥaraka) melodic progression.
hükm (Ar. ḥukm) tonal domain, ambitus.
ilahi (Ar. ilāḥī) “divine,” hence Sufi hymns of the Turkish orders.
ilmül musiki (Ar.) ʿilm al-mūsiqā, the science of music, i.e., the theory and practice of
“artistic” music, or musique savante.
Kadiriye A major Sufi tarikat which entered the Ottoman Empire in the fif-
teenth century.
kalemiye (Ar. qalam “pen”) the bureaucatic section within the ilmiye/ulema.
kar (Pers. kār) leading genre of courtly Persian music from the fifteenth century,
composed also by Ottoman musicians since the seventeenth century and there-
after. It used Persian texts; the first strophe beginning with non-textual syl-
lables followed by Persian verses and returning to non-textual syllables again.
Employed medium to long usul cycles.
Karamanid leading Anatolian political dynasty based in Konya. They gradually
came to replace the Seljuks from the mid-thirteenth century. Their territory was
finally annexed by the Ottomans in 1486.
karar (Ar. qarar) finalis; final tone of a mode.
külli külliyat (Ar. kull-ī kulliyāt) lit. “compendium,” a peşrev employing the entire
makam system.
hanegah (Pers. khānagah) Sufi lodge or convent.
Khorasan Northeastern province of Greater Iran. In the Timurid era, its leading city
was Herat.
kudüm Small kettle-drums used in the Mevlevi mukabele and in the courtly fasıl.
Glossary 497

kul (T. “slave”), a janissary.

levend (T.) irregular military force.
makam (Ar. maqām: “place”) used since the fifteenth century for “melodic mode,”
including both scale and codified melodic progression.
meclis (Ar. majlis) “assembly,” hence a formal social gathering.
mecmua (Ar. majmūʿa) “collection.” In Ottoman usage a book with song-texts,
grouped according to makam, and including the name of the genre, its usul, the
name of the composer of the music, and sometimes also of the poetry. Ali Ufuki
Bey’s Mecmua Saz ü Söz in the British Museum Library (London) is a unique
mecmua collection written in Western notation circa 1650.
mehter, mehterhane (Pers. mihtar) “greater.” Military and ceremonial outdoor
ensemble of the Ottoman State.
mesnevi (Pers. masnavī, Ar. mathnawī) long, narrative or “thematic” poem in
rhythmed couplets. In the Mevlevi context referred to the Mesnevi-i Manevi
(Mathnavī-yi Maʿnāvī) of Jalaluddin Rumi.
mevlevihane (Pers. maulawī-khāna) “house of the Mevlevis”; a Mevlevi dervish lodge
of any size and capacity.
mıskal (mıṣqāl) panpipes; a major wind instrument of Ottoman music employed
until the earlier nineteenth century.
mısra (Ar. mıṣrāʿ) hemistich; the first line of a beyt (couplet).
miyan (Pers. miyān) “middle”; hence the variant B section of a vocal composition,
sometimes modulating from the melodic mode of the A section.
müezzin (Ar. muʾadhdhin) mosque singer who sang the formal Call to Prayer (adhān).
muhib (Ar. muḥibb) “affectionate”; a non-initiated “follower” of the Mevleviye.
mukabele (Ar. muqābala) “facing one another,” term used since the fifteenth cen-
tury for the entire Mevlevi sema ceremony. In the twentieth century it is used
to refer to the entire ceremony, including the Naat-i Peygamberi and the instru-
mental peşrev.
mülazime (Ar. mulāzima) hane (section) functioning as a ritornello in a peşrev
(sixteenth–late eighteenth century).
murabba (Ar. murabbaʿ) Ottoman vocal composition based on four poetic lines gen-
erally with AABA musical structure. Developed out of a quasi-folkloric form by
the later seventeenth century as the courtly murabba beste.
musahib/musahip (Ar. muṣāḥib) official “companion” of a sultan.
naat (Ar. naʿt) “poetic eulogy,” hence Naat-i Peygamberi: “Hymn to the Prophet
Muhammad.” In Mevlevi music, refers to the composition in makam Rast by
Buhurizade Itri (d. 1712). These relate to the durak genre of other Sufi orders.
naqsh (T. nakış) one of the lighter genres of Persian art music from Timurid times. In
Turkey it might use either Turkish or Persian lyric and a refrain with non-textual
syllables (ya la lā).
498 Glossary

nawba/nevbet 1. Medieval Arabian music: a turn in performance. 2. Ottoman music:

a performance cycle in mehter music.
nawbat al-murattaba A composed cycle in fourteenth-century Iranian music.
nazire (Ar. naẓīra) 1. (literary): an “imitative” or parallel poem. 2. (musical): an “imi-
tative” or parallel peşrev.
nedim (Ar. nadīm) “boon companian” of a sultan.
ney From Pers. (Ar. nāy) “reed,” hence “reed-flute.” A dominant instrument among
medieval Sufis, and the leading instrument among Mevlevis.
neyzen Performer on the ney.
peşrev (Pers. pish-rav, pishrow) “goes before.” The leading genre of Ottoman instru-
mental music, based on Timurid antecedents. During the sixteenth century it
was developed by mehter musicians, and by the later-seventeenth century, it
became the opening part of the Ottoman fasıl concert.
rabab (rabāb) Short-necked Iranian lute with a skin face, favored in the Seljuk era.
By the later seventeenth century, it went out of fashion in Turkey. The name was
later reused for a skin-faced Persian spike fiddle.
reaya (Ar. raʿāyā) tax-paying Ottoman subjects.
redif (Ar. radīf) ‘monorhyme’ ending each poetic couplet (beyt).
rind (Pers. lit. “thug”). Someone—including some Sufis—who seek the spiritual
through idiosyncratic, or antinomian behavior.
rubai (Ar. rubāʿī) Dominant quatrain form of Persian poetry.
sazende (Pers. sāzanda) instrumentalist.
selam (Ar. al-salām) “peace.” Through a semantic shift, by the early seventeenth cen-
tury it came to replace devir as the term for the separate cycles of the Mevlevi ayin.
sema (Ar. samāʿ: ‘audition’). Form of mystical music and “dance” favoured by medi-
eval Sufis. Throughout their history the Mevlevis continued to use this term to
refer broadly to the entire mukabele ceremony, and to the whirling of the sema-
zens within that ceremony.
semazen (Pers. samāʿ-zan) among the Mevleviye, a dervish who practiced the sema.
semai (semāʿī) 1. Musical genre of Ottoman music; 2. Short usul in 6/8, which formed
the basis for the semai; 3. Instrumental and vocal sections of the Third Selam
within the Mevlevi sema.
serbend (Pers. sar-band, “wreath,” also “sinebend/sīna-band”): a section following the
mülazime after the third hane of a peşrev (seventeenth century).
serhane (Pers. sar-khāna) opening hane of a peşrev.
seyfiye (Ar. sayf = sword) the elite military section of the ruling class.
seyir (Ar. sayr) “journey,” hence melodic progression within a makam.
şeyh (Ar. shaykh) “sheikh,” “elder,” “leader of a tribe.” Hence the head of a branch of a
Sufi Order. Among Mevlevis the head of a particular mevlevihane.
Glossary 499

sipahi (Pers. sipāhī) 1. A timar-owning cavalryman of the seyfiye class. 2. member of

one of the six standing cavalry divisions of the Ottoman court.
şarkı (Ar. sharqi) urban form of the türkü folksong, first developed in the first half of
the seventeenth century.
şube (Ar. shuʿba) a subsidiary modal entity.
taksim (Ar. taqsīm) “division,” term for improvisation in flowing rhythm that first
appeared in later 16th century Ottoman music. It was also much developed by
Mevlevi neyzens.
tanbur (ṭanbūr) Long-necked Turkic lute whose antecedents were developed in the
fifteenth century, but that came to dominate the Ottoman instrumentarium
after the second half of the seventeenth century.
tarikat (Ar. ṭarīqa) A hierarchically organized Sufi order.
taṣawwuf (Ar.) The mystical movement within Islam known in English as Sufism.
tecvit (Ar. tajwīd) the chanting of the Qurʾān according to flowing rhythm but using
the makam system of art music.
tekke (T.) lodge or convent of any dervish order.
terennüm (Ar. tarannum) text of a musical line with either non-verbal syllables or
conventional words and exclamations.
terkib (Ar. tarkīb) 1. Secondary modal structure, subordinate to a makam. 2. discrete
section of a composition.
teslim (Ar. taslīm) 1. repeated closing phrase of a terkib in a peşrev (seventeenth c.).
2. short ritornello of a modern peşrev (later eighteenth–twentieth c.).
tezkire (Ar. tadhkira) a biographical dictionary of poets, clergy, sufis or musicians.
timar (Ar. tīmār) a grant of land in return for military or administrative service.
türkü (T.) Turkish secular folksong.
ʿ ulamāʾ (Ar.) sing. ʿālim; the Islamic clergy.
usul (Ar. uṣūl) “rule”; rhythmic cycle. Usuls can be short, medium, or long.
vezn (Ar. wazn) “measure”; hence the long and short syllables of the poetic metrical
system known as aruz. Cantemir (ca. 1700), however, used it only as a term for
relations of tempo and note-density in his notational system.
yeniçeri (T.) Janissary division of the seyfiye class.
zemin (Pers. zamīn) “ground”; in music the basic A section of a vocal composition.
zeyl (Ar. dhayl) “appendage”; a short section performed following the second hane of
some peşrevs (seventeenth century).
zikr (Ar. dhikr) the basic form of devotion among most Sufi orders. For some it
involved quiet chanting of Divine Names and meditation. For others the singing
of ilahi hymns and circular or other movements.
Figure Credits

1.1 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Palis (A 95/56, NAF 4023, Fol. 122)
1.2 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1344, fol. l9r)
1.3 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1517, fol. 412a)
1.4 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (no. 57.61.16)
1.5 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1344, fol. 404a)
1.6 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul
1. 7 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1793)
1.9 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1793)
1.11 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (A.3593, fol. 58a)
1.12 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (A.3593, fol. lO0b). Collection
Kurt and Ursula Reinhard, Berlin
1.13 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (A 95/57, NAF 4023, Fol. 132)
1.14 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (A 95/53, NAF 4023, Fol. 96 Bis)
1.16 Istanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi, Türkiyat Enstitüsü, No. 2768
1.17 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (A 95/54, NAF 4023, Fol. 106 Bis)
1.18 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1793)
1.19 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul
1.20 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1793)
1.21 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1793)
1.22 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul
1.23 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (A 95/55, NAF 4023, Fol. 116)
1.24 Collection Kurt and Ursula Reinhard. Courtesy of Ursula Reinhard,
Berlin
1.25 Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Istanbul (H.1793)
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Türk Musikisi Güfteler Antolojisi [“Anthology of the Lyrics of Ottoman Music”], Vol. I.
İstanbul: Eren Yayınları.
Uzunçarşılı, İsmail Hakkı 1977
“Osmanlılar Zamanında Saraylarda Musiki Hayatı” [“Musical Life in the Palaces During
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Index

Entries are presented in alphabetical order: diacritical signs have no influence upon the posi-
tion. Ü, ö, and ä are treated like u, o and a; the ı is treated like i, ş like s, ç like c, etc. Musicians who
appear in one source but are otherwise unknown do not appear in the index.

Abbasid era 314 Ahmed III (r.1703–1730) 23, 54, 67, 72, 97,
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Abdülkadirzade) 111 205n6
Abdal Khan 45, 84, 287 Ahmed Ağa (Musahib Seyyid, Vardakosta)
Abdülahad Nuri (Halveti Şeyh) 94 67, 72, 131, 256, 419n3
Abdülali (Hoca-i Sani, “Second Teacher”) Nihavend peşrevi by 419n3
45, 332, 421 Ahmed Bey, Küçük 435–437
Abdülaziz (Ottoman Sultan, r. 1861–1876) 5 Ahmed bin Şukrullah 100, 282
Abdülbaki Nasır Dede 21, 26, 64, 85, 89, 135, Ahmed Çelebi (Diyarbekirli) 71
207, 210, 215, 233, 255, 260, 266n4, 306, Ahmed Çelebi (Edirneli, Zurnazen) 405,
309, 341 444–445, 457
general scale according to 217 Beyati, semai-i 405; Saba hafif perşev
Abdülhamid I (r. 1774–1789) 97 444
Abdullah Buhari 170 Ahmed Çelebi (Kemani) 124, 287
Abdullah Efendi 162 “Air Arabe” 25, 444–445
Abdülmecid (r. 1839–1861) 5, 161 “Air de Cantemir” 25, 444, 448–449
accidental 26, 199, 358 Aka Gündüz Kutbay. See Kutbay 91–92
accompaniment 33, 87, 90, 104, 130, 135, 172, Aleppo 24, 44–45, 163, 283
287–288, 491 Alevi 184–185, 452n1
rhythm 130; Turkish concept of 288 ayin 184; ceremonies 185; ritual 184;
Acemane 45, 485, 487 rural order 185
Acemi 45, 58, 246, 272, 275, 333, 348, 421n4, Ali Ağa 300
435, 437, 460 ʿAlī al-Darwīsh 222
“Acemler” 59, 264n2, 303n18, 332–333, 348, Ali Beg el-Santuri 158. See Ali Ufki Bey 17,
414, 484, 487n1 60, 83, 237, 327
See also musicians, Persian 333, 414 Ali Çelebi, Küçük
Adana 471 Ali Hoca 186, 246–247, 265, 299, 334, 366,
Adrianople (Edirne) 44 371, 378–379, 397, 414
ağa 57 peşrev Irak devr-i kebir 321; peşrev Neva
ağaz 235, 268, 300 devr-i kebir 265, 397
ağaze 196, 233, 240, 243–244, 246–247, 252, Ali Nutki Dede 90
258, 260, 262, 267–270, 301, 355, 389, “Ali Qämbär” 453
392, 408 Ali Şirügani 41, 379
ağaze-i külliye 268 Ali Sultan 66
ağaze-i mahsusa 268 Ali Ufki Bey 17, 60, 83, 237, 327. See also
ağır (versions) 343 Bobowski 17
ağır semai 179, 182, 343, 363 Allaettin Yavaşça. See under Yavaşça 45
Aheni Çelebi 72 alteration 161, 165, 240, 243, 261n1, 297–297,
Ahizade 16n2, 21 299, 335, 378, 414, 443, 478, 491
Ahmed (Şehzade) (r. 1494–1512) 57 rapid note 161; single note 165
Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) 16, 23, 95 amal genre 33
520
Amasya 48, 57, 65–66, 105, 111, 142
amateurs 5, 35, 38, 74, 84, 172, 491
ambitus 240, 244, 249, 251, 258, 260, 262,
265–266, 337, 362, 374, 383, 386–387,
407–408, 415, 426, 429, 437, 458, 461
of makam Evç 240; of makam Irak
263; of makam Neva 458
amir xv
Anatolia 11n8, 16, 19n6, 30–31, 44–46, 48,
65, 70–71, 74, 79, 87, 93, 96, 99, 103–104,
108, 111, 113, 132, 142–143, 145, 168, 170,
227, 249, 315, 404, 409, 421, 452, 471,
481–482, 484
central 96, 249, 409, 482; modern
folk music 404; eastern 404,
471; modern folk music 404; folk
music 208; folk usage of 227;
medieval 315; Muslim 56;
pre-Ottoman 11, 44; southeast 30,
44, 93, 472; southern 31;
western 474
Anatolian 11, 16, 39, 44, 46, 48, 58, 97, 111n3,
113, 127, 132, 146–147, 151, 168, 170, 174,
184, 404, 452, 470–472, 482–483
art music tradition 6, 11, 173, 281;
cities 44, 46, 48, 66, 472; folk
music 404; popular affection 184;
rulers, pre-Ottoman 11, 44,
56, 97, 104, 481; rural style 39;
Safavids 452; Sufi ritual 452;
Turkish culture 81; Turkish folk
music 249; Turkish literature 143;
Turkish musical tradition 36;
Turkish society, Ottoman 11, 56;
Turkish society, pre-Ottoman 11, 56;
Turks 116, 481
Angelos (Tanburi) 64, 70, 381, 399
berefşan peşrev 392; Kürdi berefşan
peşrev 449; Rehavi çenber peşrev
415; Rehavî devr- i kebir peşrev 323
anthology 177
antiquity 101, 157, 163, 250, 354, 420, 476
classical 277 mythical 420
aqaz 268
Arab 44, 46, 53, 79, 93, 100, 151, 197, 221–224,
241, 259, 278, 279n5, 281, 283, 289, 293,
314, 452, 455, 470
cities 46; countries 151, 197, 222,
259, 267n4, 278, 283, 289; countries,
Index
eastern 314; Islam, older centers
of 79; musical zone 346;
world 79, 293
Arabia 111
Arabian music 2, 201, 221, 258
medieval 498; modern 279; modern,
studies of 279; urban 276
Arabic 4, 21, 47, 64n15, 82, 112, 157, 177–178,
180, 197–199, 201, 221–222, 259,
265–266, 278, 280, 282, 294, 302, 317,
329, 348, 422, 453, 456
alphabet 422; music, pre-Islamic 30;
origin, name of 104; speaking
areas 317 texts 292; verse 157
Arabo-Turkish taqsīm/taksim 293
Arabs 108, 198, 482, 484
Arapzade 417, 422
archaism 383
Arel, Sadettin 9, 212, 222
Arel-Ezgi system 220
aristocracy 13, 52–53, 55–56, 79, 97–97
bureaucratic 97; mercantile 97;
Ottoman 53
aristocrat 491
aristocratic amateurs 5
aristocratic households 13
Armenian 13, 21, 23, 40, 85, 199, 272, 471
musicians 21; society 23
Armeno-Turkish 23
Armory 72
Aron Hamon (Yahudi Harun) 40, 42, 322
art music 4–11, 13–14, 29, 44–46, 50–51,
53–56, 66, 74–75, 78, 85–86, 88, 92–94,
96–98, 125, 128, 131, 143, 143, 153, 158,
173, 180, 208, 212–213, 227, 249, 279,
281–282, 289, 296, 401, 452, 482,
486–488, 491–493
of the Timurid courts 105; secular 13,
46, 55–56, 74–75, 87, 92–93, 282, 482,
491–492; urban 227
art-musical event, public 190
artisan 76
artisanal groups 76
asğar-i sağir 341
aşık 103, 451
rural 103; urban 103
askeri 46, 51, 87
asma karar 258, 260, 268, 270, 377
astrological language, medieval 86
Index 521

astrology 86 “Babur-Nameh” 31, 33n6, 34–35, 319

Ata Bey, Tayyarzade 73, 38n10 Bactria 315
ʿataba 283 Baghdad 4n1, 44–45, 59, 93, 100, 145, 182,
“Atrabü’l-Asar” 22, 39–44, 67, 72, 75–76, 89, 198, 261, 278n1, 286, 399, 471–472, 482
94, 310. See Esʿad Efendi 39, 44 conquest of 59
audience 6, 190, 275, 302, 485, 492 bağlama 65
avaz, modern Persian vocal 292 Bahçesaray 46
vocal 292, 486 bakiye 209, 214, 219, 223–224
aviza 317, 320, 330 bakiye diyezi 220
avvad 111 bakhshy 315
Avvad Mehemmed Ağa 130 Balkan 44, 46, 93, 168
awfar 453 cities 44, 46; lands 44; provinces 47
“Axe-bearer” 70 Baluchistan 112
Aya Sofya mosque 60, 67 Banāʾī 34
ayaklı keman 125, 127 barbat 108
ayin, Mevlevi barbut 167
compositional structure earliest Anatolian 168
notated 78, 187; in makam Beyati bardasht 316
41; in makam Çargah 196; in bards
makam Dügah 226, 241, 252; in epical 112, 132n8; professional 103;
makam Ferahfeza 86; in makam Turkic 113
Hicaz 209, 213–214, 217, 251; in bashraf
makam Hüseyni 227; in makam basic scale degrees 165, 195–199, 202, 207,
Pençgah 270, 275–276, 456, 477; 225–228, 231–233, 235, 239, 244, 246,
in makam Rast 235–236, 270, 273, 250, 262–263, 265, 269, 273–274, 298,
304, 351; in makam Segah 90, 363
240; in makam Suzidilara 89; basit makams 221
in makam Uşşak 212, 214, 254; bäyat 200
notated documents of 189; opening bayaz 19
promenade of 90; structure of the Bayezid (Şehzade) (r. 1535–1561) 168
xxiii; vocal 188 bazgui 317, 319–320, 330
ayinhan 104 beat 268, 324, 328, 334n5, 449–450, 469n7
Ayni 16, 80, 82–83, 87, 125, 143, 158, 162, 190 bečar 168
Ayntab 45, 71, 471–472 Bedr-i Dilşad 282
Azerbaijan 113, 132, 281–282, 316, 404, 409, Bektaşi
411, 471, 488n1 dervishes 451; order 481; rituals 90;
northern, modern folk music 404; sema 489
Soviet 316 Bektaşiye 451, 481
Azerbaijani 4, 49, 113, 116n4, 316 Belgrade 153
Azerbaijanian music, modern 178 bemol 208, 216, 218–219
Azeri 116 bendir 102
Azeri rud-i hani 114 Beñli Hasan 187
Aziz Dede 86 Beşiktaş district 59
beşlik 224
bab el-saada ağası 47 beste
Baba Mest 471, 475–476 in Mahur 64; in Rast 64; in terkib
Hüseyni, semai-i 473–474 Sazkar 214, 235–236
Babur (Zabir al-Din, Sultan) 31, 319 beste-í kadimler 17, 38, 188
522 Index

Beyazid II (r. 1481–1512) 87 C major scale 207

Biblical psalms 18 cadence
Biblical tradition, figures of 82 final 241, 394, 396; modal 351;
biographical suspended 260, 270, 373, 376–377,
dictionary 1, 22–23, 38n10, 39, 41, 142, 394
310; information 70 cadential
birinci beste 182 formula 335, 337, 354, 358, 370–371,
Birthday of the Prophet 94 373, 376–377, 386, 393–394, 396,
Mevlid poem on the 102 401; formula, Ottoman 330;
Bitlis 4n1, 45, 84, 287, 472 melody 465; phrases 212, 214, 248,
de Blainville, Charles 125 324, 330, 404, 406, 431, 437–438, 460,
“blended” terkib 256 466, 476
Bobowski, Wojciech 17. See also Ali Ufki çagana 168
Bey 2, 60, 83, 327 Cairo 5, 24, 44, 283
Bobowski Collection, 263, 309, 311, 373, calligrapher 42–43
416n1, 453, 458, 460–461, 463–465, 468, calligraphy 47, 98
476. See “Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” 17 Can, Halil 85–86, 92
copies of the 170 Cantemir, Demetrius 20, 54. See also
Turc 292 19 Kantemiroğlu, “Air de Cantemir”
bodily movement 102–103, 489 general scale according to 18
“Book of Travels” 12, 19. See “Seyahatname” peşrevs of 379, 449, 462
19, 38n10, 45, 59, 76, 84, 101, 287 Bestenigar berefşan 379, 415, 444,
Evliya Çelebí 101, 38n10, 59, 76, 101, 287 449; Buselik-Aşirani berefşan
Bosnia 4n1, 103, 132, 168 380, 389, 397, 415; Muhayyer
Bosnians, Muslim 47 muhammes 380, 392, 394;
Bosphorus 59–60 Nihavend devr-i kebir 253;
Bostancı corps 71 Sazkar 214, 235–236, 257, 380;
bozuk Sultani-Irak devr-i kebir 257;
court woman with 169 Zengüle devr-i kebir 381
“breast keman” 125 Cantemir Collection 2, 207, 237–238, 252,
British consul 163 263, 276, 298, 309, 318, 322, 331–332,
Brun, Corneille Le 172 338, 341, 344, 358, 363, 371, 373, 378,
buʿd 21 380–381, 387, 389, 392, 398, 409,
Buhurizade, Mustafa Itri 42, 69, 90, 95, 397 413–416, 421, 434, 438, 453n3, 455, 463,
Bukhara 13, 33n6, 181, 316, 319, 400n3, 453 465, 468, 470, 477
Bulgaria 56, 278 Cantemir Treatise 12, 21–23, 89, 146, 179,
Buonanni, Filippo 155, 157 209, 225, 232, 248, 261n1, 273, 285, 300,
Burada, Todor 380 338, 355, 447, 484, 488. See also “Kitabu
bureaucracies İlmu’l Musiki ala Vechi’l-Hurufat” 21
government 51; Ottoman state 46; cantor, professional 97
religious 51; secular 56; upper 97 çäpbäyät 200
bureaucratization cariye 63–64
of music 67; of religious institution 74 çarpare 103, 130
Bursa 44, 94 Çarşeb Mustafa Ağa 39, 170
büyük mücenneb 223 çarta 43, 140, 144–145, 167–168, 174
Büyük Oda 48 çartar 43
Byzantine rule 66 Çartari Murad 59
Byzantines 87 castanets, wooden 103
Index 523

categories of makam music 12, 56, 66, 96, Chaghatay 31n3, 32n4, 36, 108
119, 132, 153, 161, 167–168, 172, 175, 191, divan 36; literature 435
276, 421 change
Caucasus 398 diachronic musical 425; in courtly
cavalry, semi-feudal 71 music 49; in instrumentation 99,
çavuşan 68 101, 101; in Sufi practice 79;
Çelebiko 18n5, 40, 458 intonational 219; musical 14;
celebratory music 103 note- 448
Celveti “Chanson Turque” 25, 444–445, 447
dervish 20, 60; order 60; tarikat 83 chief of the divan 72
Celveti Şeyh Mahmud Aziz Hudayi 95 Chinese 99, 162, 176n1, 314
Cem, (Ottoman Prince) 87 chorus of zakirs 103
“Cemaat-i mutriban” 87 Christian
Cemal-i Halveti 114 areas 48; Orthodox ix traditions 83
Cemil Bey (Tanburi) 5, 128, 311, 490 Christian-born youths
çeng çingene 117n6, 118
construction of the 122; cultural cins (genus, jins) 224
associations of the 117, 119; decline citterns 172
of the 133; European form 153; classes, social
Persian 153 player 105; player, educated 170; elite military 47; higher,
male 166; player, Turkish 118; ruling 97; upper 35; urban 103;
Turkish 118 urban, lower 128
çengi (female) 118 Classical Age 50n12, 51, 53, 56, 489
Çengi Ahmed 152 classification, chronological 2
Çengi Behram 57 clergy 13, 24, 47, 49, 74–75
Çengi Cafer 43, 59, 152, 333 closing phrases 293
Çengi Hasan 66 coda 350
Çengi İbrahim 43, 152 “Codex Vindobonensis” 116, 122–123, 158
Çengi İbrahim Ağa 152 çögür 77, 155, 167–168, 170, 172
Çengî Mustafa 43, 152 player 155
Çengi Nimetullah 65 collections
Çengi Yusuf Dede 16n2, 17, 43, 151, 233 of fasıl lyrics 42; important
“Çenginame” 118 mecmua 19, 252, 332; lyric 237;
“Çengname” (Ahmed-i Dai) 100, 119, 122, 143 notated 2, 17, 22, 89, 186, 323, 327,
Çenkçi Cafer 399, 414 412, 469, 481; Ottoman mecmua 177;
Central Asia repertoire 2, 235. See also
modern 112; southern 4; southern, mecmua 18; Turkish notated 17
Timurid 39 comma 211–215, 220, 223–224
Central Asian common songs 168, 170
authors 319; cities 316; courts 105; composed forms
instruments, medieval 158; Iranian 181; Turkish 181
origin 99; Turkic music 453, 482; composer
Turks 200 free local 1; instrumental 3, 38, 40;
ceremonial music 12 Jewish 41, 322; non-Muslim 40; of
certim yoli 316, 452n2 courtly music 89; of the fasıl 41;
çeşte 168 Ottoman 45, 163; secular 88;
Cevri (İbrahim Çelebi) 300 Turkish 181; vocal 41; woman 63
524
composition
by unknown composers 188;
classical 244; conception
of 354; cycle 318; fasıl 42,
75; in Persian language 16; in
Turkish language 17, 178, 180, 182;
instrumental 41, 298, 311, 315–316,
319, 330, 412, 451; instrumental,
process of 412; metrical 78,
282, 301; Mevlevi 16, 94; most
elaborate 89; new versions of 415;
Ottoman musical 92; “parallel” or
“imitative” 3. See also nazire 419;
pseudographic 379, 419–420,
443; secular 95, 487; secular
fasıl 42; Sufi 18; three-part 465;
unmeasured 95; vocal 40; vocal,
documented 412; vocal, fasıl 18, 23,
76, 92, 185, 189
compositional
feature, ancient 38, 188, 378; genres,
courtly 62, 88; genres, Sufi 38,
80; practice 263; principles 2,
488; structures 332n3, 378; style,
Ottoman 488; technique 231,
322, 360, 368, 370, 373, 278, 288, 460,
464–465
compositional form
large-scale 455, 464; medieval 178;
most complex 92; Ottoman 188
compound
makam 64, 196, 231, 235, 241, 254, 280,
296, 298, 486; modal structure 319
compound forms 240
concept of musical hierarchy 221
theoretical 221
conception of music 83
secular 81; Sufi 81
conception of musiki, Ottoman 12
conceptualization of music in words 8
concert-cycle 177, 180
instrumental 301
concert-suite 29, 33, 176n1
“Concerto turco nominado izia semaisi” 25
conservatories 277
consonance 284–285, 296, 305
Constantinople
conqueror of 87; Conquest of 44, 87,
481
Index
Constantinopolitan
contexts
cultural 162; musical 282, 321;
secular 3, 119; social 163, 178, 289,
486; Sufi
Corci (Yorgi, Kemani) 128, 422
cosmology of music, medieval Islamic 80
costume
Mevlevi 134; Persian 158; secular
137
couplet (beyt)
final 82, 261, 434
court
culture 53; document 1, 37;
ensemble 58, 101, 104; Herati 29,
33–35; interpreter 69; Iranian 133;
medieval Muslim 66; medieval Near
Eastern 30; Ottoman 1, 19–20, 29,
31, 57–58, 60, 94, 96, 100–101, 104, 108,
123, 125, 127, 291–292; Turco-Muslim,
earlier 291; Turkish 29; Muslim
30; musicians 60; orchestra 25;
provincial 48, 65; record 20, 47,
62, 153; singer 19; Timurid 32, 36,
105; Transoxanian 181; woman
170, 173
court music 1, 12–13, 30, 35n9, 36, 87, 123,
128, 174, 189, 283, 484
instrumental 189; Ottoman 36, 87, 123,
283, 484; repertoire 90
Covel, John 25, 88, 107, 135, 154
creation of music, myth of 82
Crimea 4n1, 17, 18n5, 72, 88, 97, 173, 363n5
Crimean khans 46. See also Tatar 17
Crimean ruler 37–38, 73, 421
Croatia 103, 168
culture 6, 11n8, 29, 38, 48, 50, 52, 54, 73, 79,
98, 316, 420
religious 13, 48, 56, 96, 290; secular 13;
Sufi 53
cumhur 41
cycle
four to five part 177; instrumental 184;
Ottoman 309
cyclical
concert form 78; concert formats,
developed 1, 78, 178; format 78, 95,
176–178; genre 33; principle 92
cyclicity 176, 178–179, 181, 187, 318, 486
Index 525

cymbalom 157 degrees

portable 161 neutral scale 208; second scale 210,
cymbals 102 212–214; second scale, neutral 208
Della Valle, Pietro 25, 88, 163, 166
dāʾira 178 demkeş 92
daire 65, 88, 102–103, 267, 269, 287 Derviş Mahmud bin
dairezens 88 Abdülkadirzade 65–66, 105, 111
Damascene 25, 73 Derviş Ömer. See Ömer Gülşeni 67, 70, 84,
Damascus 39, 44, 93, 138 93–94
dance Derviş Osman 89, 133, 414
indoor 103; masked 152; ritual 492; Derviş Receb 414
round- 316; sacred 483 Derviş Süleyman 133, 389, 393
dance music dervish
indoor 173; modern Mongolian 454; genres 1, 41, 62, 94; instrument 82;
outdoor 173; Tuvan 454 lodges 6; music 6; musician 19;
dance-tunes 276, 444 neyzen 17, 43; order 6, 55;
dancer/s 63, 68, 103, 117–118, 130, 158, 447 origin 102; ritual 95; sema
male 158; professional woman ritual, earlier 9, 90; tekke 41;
dancing vocal genres 41; whirling 483;
boys 33, 77, 489; girls 65; women 117; zakir 379; zikr 287
women, professional 103, 117 devr 336
“Danse Grecque” 25, 444 devr-i kebir peşrev 321, 387
Danubian Principalities 4n1, 166. See also devşirme 47–49, 51n12, 55–58, 60, 63, 70, 72,
Moldavia, Wallachia, Romania 46 75, 96, 111, 122, 285
dār al-saʿāda ağası 47 boys 111
dar-saqi 181 deyiş 170
daramad 258–259, 410–411 dik 209, 213, 219–220
darbayn 180 Dikmen, Halil 80, 86
Darülelhan 222 Dilhayat Hanım 63
Darülelhan Külliyati 400n2 “dissonant” leaps 428, 434
Darvish Ali 33, 180, 312, 317, 319–320, 330, divan 36, 72, 78, 111, 135, 163, 173, 286, 303,
343, 400n3, 420 319, 329
Darvish Khan 410 Divan, Imperial 163
Daryal, Vecihe 157 divan efendisi 72
dastgah Divine Names, chanting and breathing 102
Abu Ata 411; Afshari 405; Divine service 83
Azerbaijanian 178, 288; Bayat-e Diyarbekir 4n1, 44–46, 71, 471–472
Kord 259; Çargah 200; documents
Chakargah 200; Dugah 200; court 1, 48, 68, 76, 101; financial 20;
Esfahan 411; Homayun 211, 217; notated 14, 43, 189, 245, 252, 263,
modern Persian 178, 211, 251, 261; 273, 321, 457; of Iranian instrumental
Rast-Panjgah 258–259; Segah 211; music 484; of the ayin 78,
Shur 211, 218, 403; system 178, 208, 189; Ottoman notated 108, 315;
258–259; system, modern 200 semai 482; Turkish 131
Daul İsmail Efendi 20 Doğancı Odası (Falconry chamber) 48
davul drummers 471 Doğani Ahmed Dede 134
defterdar 72 dombira 315
defter 68 dombra 200
526 Index

Donado, Gio. Battista 25 Emirgun 59, 69, 144

dörtlük 224 enderun 68, 73, 154, 321
double-reed oboe 65, 315. See also Enderunlu Hüseyin Fazil Bey 118
zurna 65 endings 330, 345, 350, 370, 377, 391
drinking parties 117 Enfi Hasan Ağa 70–71
drone 179, 183–184, 288, 295 ensemble
drum courtly 58, 101, 104, 106, 130, 143, 166,
beat, accents of 450; mnemonics 453; 484; courtly, Ottoman 106, 125, 128,
strokes 340 134, 151, 161, 168; entertainment 104,
Drummond, Alexander 163 166; fasıl 92, 140–141, 157, 159; female
dügah 139, 188–189, 195–198, 205, of the harem 157; five-woman
208–212, 214–216, 225–229, 235, 65; instrumental 104, 182, 493;
237–238, 241–243, 245–246, 248, makam 128, 133, 162; mehter 72,
251–252, 254, 258, 261–262, 272–275, 315, 359, 445; mehter, unofficial 77;
298–299, 304, 355, 361, 364, 377, mehter, urban 445; military mehter
426, 428 72, 315, 328; new instrumental 37,
“Dügah-Hüseyni” 331, 355, 458 104; Ottoman 125, 128, 151, 161;
dulcimer 154, 157, 159, 422. See also santür Ottoman, fasıl 177; performance
player 159 32; popular 174; Safavid
dumbelek 82, 103 instrumental 162; Safavid musical
durak 12, 41, 93, 95, 102, 282, 284, 488 143, 292; secular 89
dutar 141–142, 201, 315 entertainment 7, 63, 104, 127, 130, 166
maąom 453; Turkmenian 201 music 7
Erivan 59, 69, 144, 154
East European 131–132 d’Erlanger, Baron 221–222, 224, 279
East Turkestan 112 Ermeni Murad 40, 324, 414
east Mediterranean 279 peşrev in Kürdi, darbeyn by 324
Ebu-Bekir Ağa 19 erotic dance 118
ebyat 287 erotic music 62
eçem 200 Erzurum 45, 471
“echelle generale” 195 Esʿad Eſendi 17, 22–23, 39–45, 47, 59, 62,
ecstasy, musical 279 69–70, 72, 75, 88, 90, 94–95, 145, 151,
ecstaticism 80 233, 248, 310, 400, 468, 472, 485.
eda-i Türkmenani 39 See also “Atrabü’l Asar” yürük saz
education semaisi in Nühüft
musical 12, 35, 48, 70, 92, 163; religious esirpazarı 70
higher 49 eşraf 71
eflak 133 “Essai sur la musique orientate … 24.
Eflatun (Plato) 482 See Fonton, Charles 22, 24, 58, 89, 99n1,
Egypt 7, 11n8, 13, 31, 74, 140, 157, 174–175, 183, 311, 379, 421, 444
197–198, 222, 278–279, 283, 289–290, etba 467
293, 315, 490 ethnomusicology, post-World War II 222
Egyptian eunuch 47
musical practice 267n4 Europe
Emin Dede (Yazıcı) 86 medieval 122; South Eastern 103
teslim of Beyati peşrev 213 European
Emir-i Hac travellers 25; writers 55;
“Hünkar Peşrevi” in makam Irak by 423 Turkicized 61
Index 527

Evliya Çelebi 12, 18n5, 19, 29, 38n10, fiddle

39–40, 43–45, 48, 59–60, 62, 67–70, “Anatolian” 127; “Greek”, “of
73, 76–77, 84, 88, 93–94, 99n1, 101, Constantinople” 127; shaman’s 315;
104, 130–31, 144, 151, 158, 162, 167, 177, skin-faced 112
185, 287–288, 294, 300, 310, 359, 381, fifth
472 perfect 218
See also “Seyahat-name” “Book of Travels” Filibe (Plovdiv) 39, 44, 93
autobiographical anecdote of 60; final cadence 212, 241, 261n1, 383, 394, 396
career of 75, 84 final tones
Eyyüblü Mehmed (Tanburi Mehmed Çelebi) hierarchy of 236
Muhayyer peşrev, “Marġzar,” düyek 381; finalis 186, 195–198, 201, 203, 209, 211n9,
peşrev Evç, devr-i revan, peşrev in 219, 222, 225–226, 228–229, 231–232,
Arazbar, devr-i revan by 323–324, 235, 240, 242, 250, 254–256, 258,
408; peşrev in terkib Nühüft, usul 260–262, 265, 267, 269–271, 273–275,
darbeyn 469n7 301, 304, 322, 336–337, 346–347,
ezan (adhan) 102 350–351, 353–354, 371, 373–374,
Ezgi, Subhi 19, 212, 222 376–377, 382–383, 401–402, 428, 437,
448
Fahreddin Dede, Şeyh 86 Firenk Mustafa 60
al-Farabî 141, 208, 281, 314, 317, 452 firudasht 177, 280
Fars 113 flute 31, 174, 185, 315
fasıl folk lutes 77, 168, 170
concert 179; courtly 12, 78, 92, 95, 158, folk music 208, 227, 249, 409, 471, 487n1
179, 187, 189, 191, 321, 445; in makam folklore, recent 314
Hüseyni 359; instrumental 176, folksong 12, 249
183, 185, 187, 265, 295, 304–305, 309, Fonton, Charles 22, 89, 99, 183, 206n7, 311,
325, 486; lyric collections 237; 379, 421, 444. See also “Essai sur la
of the instrumentalist 184; of musique …”
the vocalist 301; Ottoman 177, transcriptions of 444
179–181, 318; Ottoman, structure of formal structure 321, 333–335, 347, 400, 413,
the 179; Ottoman court 290; 415, 417, 438, 457
performances 21, 40; secular 42; change in the 415
vocal 18, 64, 89, 92, 104, 176, 185, 189, firudasht 177, 280
280, 304, 309–310 fourth 21, 82, 188–189, 195–199, 209, 218,
fasıl meclisi 140, 158 228–230, 241, 244, 328, 336, 338, 344,
“fasıl-i Hüseyni” 177 350–351, 354, 358, 364, 366, 386, 390,
‘fasıl-i Rast” 177 392–393, 402, 404, 406, 444–445, 454,
fasl-i hanende 180, 183, 185–186 457, 464, 467, 474–475
fasl-i hanende vü sazende maan 183 frame-drums 102, 158
fasl-i meclis 179, 190 “Franks” 60, 185n3
fasl-i sazende French solfège terms 199
structure of 186 fretting
Ferruh 334, 387, 434–435 of Iranian setar 207; of modern Turkish
festivals 100 tanbur 207, 209, 212, 278n1; of
festivities Ottoman tanbur 203–20; of tanbur
male 152; of royalty 119; public 76, khorasani 208
88 frets 122, 131, 141–142, 144, 195, 200–201, 203,
fetva 74 208, 211, 219, 314
528 Index

Galata Serneyzen Ali. See under Serneyzen “great meter” 424–425, 469n7
Ali 88 “Great Semai” 455
Galib, Şeyh 90 Great Tradition, medieval 36
“gammes particulières” 195 Greco-Roman antiquity 163
gärdun 316 Greece 6, 7n6, 130, 278
“gayr-i müste‘mele” 232, 234, 241n4, 299 Greek
gazel 82, 143, 158, 162, 181, 281–282, 286 church psaltes, islands 8, 492; lyra 123,
musical 286n10; secular 288 127–128, 130, 174–175; musicians 6;
gazel-han 286 popular culture in Istanbul 128;
Gazi Giray Han (r. 1554–1607) 37, 331, 363. princes, Constantinopolitan 46;
See also Crimea, Crimean, Tatar tavern milieu 128; writings 22
Gaziantep 471. See Ayntab 45, 471 güçlü 258
“gazino” 128 guitar, European 130
geçki 296 Gülcübaşızade Mehmed Eſendi 72
gedikli 63 Gülşeni@
genres ritual 93; sheikh 70; tekke 93
ametrical 93; associated with Gülşeniye 93, 95
military life 103; “classical” 180; güreş 454
composed 178, 282, 305–306, gushe 249, 255, 259, 262, 292, 294, 296, 486
489; composed, instrumental 3; Skahnaz 218
concept of 488; courtly 33; guyende 66, 76, 83
folk dance 409; folkloric 227; Gypsy
instrumental 3; instrumental, fiddler 128; lăutări 166
modern 123, 147; instrumental, gypsy playing
modern nomadic Turkic 315; classical 213; urban 213
Iranian vocal 181, 322, 328; medieval
compositional 178, 401; metrical Habsburg Imperial realm 168
composed 282; “non-classical” 62, Hacı Bektaş Veli 483
176; non-cyclical 177; non-makam Hacı Kasım (Tanburi) 39, 414
folk 276; non-metrical 36, Hafez
102, 279, 281–282, 285, 289–290, divan of 303
295; non-metrical religious 289; hafız 42, 69, 76, 90
non-metrical vocal 281–282; Hafız Kömür 77
non-textual 412; Ottoman Hafız Kumral 95
musical 309; Persian 59n14; Hafız Post 19, 42, 62, 69–70, 73, 95, 182,
popular song 401; rural 278; 237–238, 299, 310, 379
secular 43, 88; Sufi 79n1, 80, “Hafız Post Mecmüası” 42, 237–238
452, 481; Turkish, secular 454; Hafız Tız 71
“Turkish” 283 Hajji Aqa 211
Germiyan 16, 97, 119, 168 Hakkı Dede 86
ghazal 177, 181, 280, 282, 286, 319 halal 119
ghiççäk 31, 33–35, 105, 108 halay melody 409
player 34 half-cycle 333–334, 336–337, 348, 350, 354,
ghulam 34, 47, 36, 44, 47 368, 386–387, 450
Ghulam Şadi (“Gulam the Arabian”) 32, 34, “half notes” 195, 228–229, 402, 450, 453
36, 106 half step 195, 216, 251
gıda-yi ruh 143 Halil Can. See under Can, Halil 85–86, 92
girift 82, 138–139, 174 Halil Dikmen. See under Dikmen, Halil 80,
giriş 258 86
Index 529

halile 102 Hasselquist, Frederick 159

Halveti Hatib, Küçük 414
dervish music 379; order 13; hatip 75
sheikh 51n12, 114; tarikat 95; Hatipzade Osman Eſendi 303
tekke 94; zaakir 38 havayi 318
Halveti Şeyh Abdülahad Nuri. See under Haydar bin Şah Kulu 105
Abdülahad 94 Haydar Can 334
Halveti Şeyh Niyazi-i Misri. See under Hazine 48, 68, 214n11
Niyazi 95 Hasirizade 93
Halvetîye 93–95 haznedar 72
lay members of the 95 heavenly bodies 221, 268, 301
Hamparsum (Baba Hamparsum Limonciyan) Hebrew 40–42
documents 380, 419n3, 444; temple, ancient 83; texts 321
sources 220 hemistich (misra) 281, 304
hane 293, 297, 310n2, 312, 315, 322–324, herald 76, 369
327–330, 334–335, 344, 346–348, Herat 29–31, 36, 39, 105–106, 108, 141
350–351, 353, 355, 357–360, 366, hereditary aristocracies 51
368–369, 375, 377, 388, 392, 394–395, hierarchy, tonal 347
397, 405, 408, 414, 431, 438, 448, 455, Hill, Aaron 172
457, 477, 483 Hindi 58, 333
hanende 39, 45, 68, 76, 135, 281 “Hinduyan” 332–333, 414
hanendebaşı 71, 76–77, 94 hiss-i ünsiyet 284
hanendelik 76, 260, 262–263, 267–268 “History of the Growth and Decay of the
ḥarām 119 Ottoman Empire” 25, 234
hareket 196, 269–271, 277, 442 Hızır Ağa (Kemani)
harem makam classification of 302;
archetypical instrument of terminology of 178
the 117; celebration in the 65; Hızır bin Abdullah 199, 260, 266, 282
entertainments 117; Imperial 118; “Hodja Musicar” 332
Turkish 118; women 118, 155, 157 hükm 242, 260, 262, 267–268, 271, 273, 275,
harmonic singing 454 277, 377, 381
harp 30, 65, 70, 82, 103, 117–119, 122, 131, human body/instrument relationship 100
153–154. See also çeng Hungary 103, 168
ancient near Eastern 117; ancient “hünkar imamı” 75
near Eastern, Persian descendant “Hünkar kulları” 57, 111
of 117; Celtic 122; Persian 82, 117; al-Husayni 198
Turkish 153; wooden 122 Husein Bayqara 29, 31, 45, 105–106
Harutin (Tanburi) 2, 21, 23–24, 40, 85, 89, Husein Udi 32
140, 178, 197, 200, 205, 225, 232–233, Hüseyin Baykara faslı 29
240, 244, 246–251, 255, 266n4, 272–276,
300, 451, 468, 485 Iaşi 4n1, 166
Harutin Mandoli 413, 417 Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyī l-Dīn 79
Has Oda (Privy Chamber) 48, 61, 163 Ibn al-ʿAṭṭār 25
Hasan, Zakir 379 İbrahim Çelebi Santuri 158
Hasan Ağa 57, 70–71, 104, 111, 131 İbrahim (Grand Vizier) (Nevşehirli
Hasan Can Damad) 22
peşrev in makam Hüseyni, usul düyek 359 içoğlan 46–47, 50n12, 59, 73
Haşim Bey 22, 207, 213, 244, 255, 267n4, iconographic depictions 101
276, 300 icra olunmak 294
530 Index

ikinci beste 182 local 99; low-class 127; most

ikitelli 77 ancient 114; non-Islamic 123;
ilahi 12, 18–19, 41, 62, 75, 95, 102, 189, 401 non-Mevlevi, secular 89, 139; of art
ʿilm al-mūsīqā 117 music 93; of great antiquity 101; of
ʿilmiyya 47, 52–53, 56, 74, 98. See also Ottoman music 46; popular 103,
ʿulamāʾ 174; prohibiting of 93; sacred 185;
illuminations Turkish urban 173; woman’s 174
album 101; of instruments 104; instrumental 1–4, 11, 14, 17–21, 24–25, 30,
Turkish 116 32–33, 36–41, 43, 60, 62, 64–65, 78, 83,
illustrations 100, 122, 124, 127, 147 89–92, 96–97, 99, 104, 158, 162–163,
musicological 100 170, 172, 174, 176, 178–185, 187, 189–191,
imam 74–75 265, 278, 280, 286–290, 294–295,
Imperial 44, 47, 49–51, 60, 67–70, 75, 103, 298–299, 301–302, 304–305, 309–319,
118, 127, 168, 283 321, 325, 330, 332, 379–380, 397–398,
İmam Kulu 105 401, 411–412, 416, 420–421, 443–444,
İmam Yusuf 75 451–454, 465, 481–482, 485–486,
İmam-i Sultani İbrahim Efendi 75 488–493
imitation 35, 202, 333, 347, 355, 364, 371, genres 2; music 4, 11, 21, 41, 78, 83, 92,
374, 386, 419 96, 184–185, 287, 312, 314, 492; music,
Imperial Chamber 163 high status of 119; music, prohibition
Imperial Palace, description of the 60 of 312; playing 91, 170, 172, 486, 491
improvisation instrumentalist, professional 73, 412, 456n4;
instrumental 180, 278, 490. See also Turkish 490
taksim 1; Iranian form of 292; instrumentarium, Iranian 157
melodic 176; national types instrumentation
of 291; Persian approaches to 292; of courtly maqām music 31, 45, 48; of
Turkish approaches to 292; Turkish Ottoman music 123
conception of 297; vocal 281, 286, intervallic
288 alternation 363; color 265;
improvisatory forms 292 structure 208, 220, 239, 258–259,
income 70, 73 265, 422
“independent” makam 225, 228, 232–233 intervals
India 9, 23, 100, 111–112, 162 augmented 217; four comma
Muslim 100 214; neutral 208, 219–220;
“Indians” 37, 112, 251, 332, 414, 421. See also neutral of 2.5 commas flat 214;
Hindi, Hinduyan 414 Pythagorean 214; single-comma
Indic cultural zone 112 26, 219; theory of 223; Turkish
Ingres 170 standard 2.5 commas 212;
inici 228, 258 un-Western 445
inici makamlar 228 intonation
inici-çıkıcı 258 Iranian 214; microtonal 276; modern
institution, musical Turkish system of 161
religious 74, 96; secular 74 intonational aesthetics of Turkish music 214
instruction, musical 35, 47 intonational system, modern Turkish 210
instrument intoxicant 82
Anatolian 174; bowed 106, īqāʿ 281
185; courtly 162; exotic 99; Iran
folk 172; Gypsy professional 168; late medieval 2, 316; modern 211;
international 99; Iranian 3; western 33n6, 105, 108, 293, 486
Index
Iranian
adaption 162; art music 208, 212; art
music, modern 212; courts 105;
cultural area 177; free musicians
14; genres, medieval 305, 328;
instrumental music 3; masters 122,
154; musical culture 119, 181;
musical culture, earlier 181; musical
past 305; musical sphere 14, 55,
409; practice, modern 189; setar
207; Turks 452; Turks, East 452–453
Iranian music
authorities on 292; current
practice 223; medieval 305;
modern 214
Irano-Turkic area 104
Irano-Turkic tradition 104
Iraq 31–32, 33n6, 34, 44, 105, 198, 265, 278,
282, 313, 398
Iraqi elite, Ottomanized 278
Iraqi maqām 261, 279n5, 471
irha 215, 219
ırlayış 170
irony 486–487
İsak (Tanburi) 41–42, 127, 161, 166, 188,
309–311, 335, 380, 397, 413, 455, 491
Isawiyya 78
Isfandiyar 141
Islam
prior to 108
Islamic
art, medieval 80, 117, 315n3; culture 73,
114; culture, classical 314; holidays
102; law, experts in 49; Middle
Ages 1; musical cultures 99, 141;
musical forms 123; past 277;
period 117; religion 102; states,
earlier 47; World 4, 16, 123; World,
eastern 123
İsmail Ağa 47, 70–71
İsmail Ağa, Kara 75
İsmail Dede Efendi 5, 76, 86, 90, 166, 304,
379, 488
İsmail Hakkı Bey 413
Istanbul
Allied occupation of 5
istihlal 281
istirahat 260, 268–270
531
istirahat kalmak 294
Italian
captive 61; influence 130; patron 65;
traveller 163; Izafi 256
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Celaluddin)
divan of 303
Janissary 47, 163, 285, 489
Corps 5, 51, 111, 162–163
Jew 40, 162
Ottoman 7n6
jewelers’ guild 71
Jewish 13, 41, 83, 161, 322, 471
circles 42; musicians 13–14, 107;
synagogue cantors 8; traditions 83
jins 21, 222–223. See cins 223
judge 74, 414
kadı 49, 74, 106
of Egypt 74
Kadiri 93, 95, 483
tarikat 95
Kadiʿasker (Kazasker) 74–75
Kadiri Sufi orders 93, 483
Kadızade Mehmed b. Mustafa 134
Kadızadeli movement 134
Kadri, Ama 38, 299
Kafa 72, 88. See also Crimea 72, 88
Kaftancı 71
kagıt-eminliği 72
kabya (kethüda) 71
kahyalık (kethüdalık) 72
kalemiye 47, 49, 55, 72, 74, 98
kalfa 61, 63, 64n15
Kanbosu Mehmed 414
Kantemiroğlu 18n5, 20, 187, 335,
379–380, 436, 443. See Cantemir,
Demetrius 422
kanun 53, 82, 88, 105, 122–123, 153–155,
157–159, 174
keys, Turkish 155; Persian type 154;
player 123, 155; player, female 157;
Safavĩd 154; trapezoidal type of 123,
157; Turkish 155
kanun playing, female style of 157
“Kanz al-tuhaf fi’l musiqi” 122
“kapalı neva” 241, 376, 422
Kar in makam Neva 90
532 Index

kar-i natık 299, 301–305, 322 Kınalızade 105

by Hatipzade Osman Efendi 303; by Kiphchak Turks 453
İsmail Dede Efendi 303 Kirghiz 315
karadüzen 77, 167–168, 170 “Kitāb al-Aghānī” (al-Isbahānī) 30
Karakalpak 315 “Kitabu İlmu’l Musiki ala Vechi’l-Hurufat”
Karakalpakia 112 20–21, 297
Karaman 16, 80–81, 87, 143 kitare 130
Karamanid aristocracy 79 Köçek Mustafa Dede 41, 88, 187–188, 299
Karamanid dynasty 87 köçekçe 173
karar 195–196, 198, 258–260, 262, köle 47, 162
267–272, 274, 337–338, 344, 347, 351, kolliyat 302–305, 322, 328
355, 361, 406, 408, 448, 460–461, koma 223
465–466, 475 Konya 16, 79, 81, 87, 91, 96, 233
karargah 268–270 kopuz
Kase-Baz-i Mısri 66, 283n9 Balkan 168; Ottoman 111, 114;
Kashmir 19, 78, 112, 141 player 105; plucked 112
kaside 286–287, 290 kopuz-i ozan 113
katip 75 kopuz-i rumi 113–114, 131–132
“Kavaid ül-Mevaid”. See Mustafa Ali 116 Korkut (Şehzade) 379
Kaukabi, Najm al-Din 319, 453 koron
kavl-i kadim 244, 249 neutral 208, 219
Kazakh 112, 184, 200–201, 315 “Küçük İmam” 95
qobyz 112 küçük mecenneb diyezi 220
Kazakhstan 112, 200 küçük mücenneb 220
Kazan 32, 106 Küçük Oda (“Small Chamber”) 48
kazzaz 71 kudema-i müteahirin 250, 256
keman 18, 82, 103, 106, 124–125, 127, 445 küdum 82, 89, 102, 104, 184–185, 445
kemanche (medieval) 107–108, 128 küdumzen 39, 88
kemançe (Ottoman) küi 184, 200, 315
coconut 174; gourd 174; Istanbul kul 47, 55–58, 66, 68
school of 124; player 108, 287 Kul, Küçük 414
kemençe (modern) kull al-naghm 303
Greek (kemançe-i Rumi) 127, 128, 130, küll-i külliyat-i fahte 301
174–175, 184, 185. See also lyra küll-ı külliyat peşrev (“Index Peşrev,” Fihrist
kettledrums 65, 102. See also nakkare 103 Peşrevi)
Kevseri, Mustafa 22, 24, 37, 183 in Küçek 252; in Şiraz 250;
Kevseri Collection (“Kevseri Mecmuası”) melodies 303
309, 444 küll külliyat taksim 296
keyf 82 külliyat genre 302
Khivan Khanate 453 külliyat poems 303
Khorasan 32, 34, 45, 108, 141, 143, 208, 293 Kurdish
Iranian 162 free-rhythm singing 276; religious
Khwarezm 79n1, 452–453, 482 tradition 185
Khwarezmian 64, 452n2, 453, 453n3 Kurdistan 44–45, 84, 471
musical genres 453; pattern 454; Kurds 168, 208, 227
people 453 Kutbay, Aka Gündüz 91–92
Kilar (Kiler) 68 kutb 225, 260, 268–270
Kilis 45, 71 kutb-i daire 267
Kiltsanides of Brusa 22 Kuyumcubaşı 69
Index
Ladiki (Mu. bin al-Ḥāmid al-Lādhiqī) 16,
84, 189, 266, 282
lakab (sobriquet) 42, 66
“large meter” 342, 447
large scale form 2, 339, 344–345, 347
Latif Çelebi 20
lauta 128, 130
lăutăr orchestra 166
lăutări 161, 166
lauto 130
layali 279, 289
lazima 317, 319–320, 330
Lebanon 44, 197, 279n5
legato instruments 103, 213
letter-writer, official 72
Levant 154–155, 278–279, 455
Arab 452
“levels” 49, 52, 97, 198
levend 79, 103, 158, 167–168, 170, 173n16
lutes of the 168, 170
levendane 168
Levni 88, 100n2, 147, 154, 158, 163
“light” music 62, 489
liturgical music 92
liturgy 83, 85, 93
du Loir, Jean Antoine 25, 144, 152
lute
Anatolian 151; Anatolian,
long-necked 147; fretted 130;
Hungarian peasant 168;
long-necked 1, 111n3, 140–142,
168, 184, 185n3, 315. See also
tanbur, long-necked, fretted 1;
makam 170; musics, professional,
Kazakh 200; musics, professional,
Turkmen 200; of the fasıl 167; of
the folk 167–168; of the levend 167,
170; pear-shaped 112; player 140;
plucked 112; short-necked 30, 111n3,
112, 140, 168; see also ud 17; short
necked, Iranian 108; short-necked,
unfretted 112; skin-covered 133;
tradition of Central Asian
Turks 200; Turkish 167; Turkish,
long-necked 168; Turkish, social
context of 1; ud-shaped 142; lute
neck, sections of the 201
533
lyra 127–128, 130. See also kemençe 128
bowed 127
lyrics 19, 235, 302
Macedonia 4n1, 278
Maghreb 45, 281, 290, 484
Maghribi/Andalusian musical culture 419
mahatt 198, 260–261
“Mahbub al-Qulub” 79
mahlas 94, 163
Mahmud I (r. 1730–1754) 23, 24n10, 40, 97,
238, 254, 335
Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) 52, 155, 257
Mahmud Çelebi 45, 71
mahraç 260–261
makam (Ottoman)
art musics 7, 200; centers 30, 96;
classification by Hızır Ağa 253;
compound 228, 231–232, 235, 239,
241, 244, 254, 280, 296, 298. See under
compound makam; conception
of 276; concepts of 233; definition
of 238; description of a 267;
“independent” 225, 228, 232;
music 12, 66, 96, 119, 132, 167–168, 172,
175, 191; music, modern Turkish 161,
217, 261; music, Ottoman 153;
music, Turkish 184; names 260;
of the “lower notes” 225, 229, 256,
262; of the “upper notes” 225;
Ottoman form of 54; system 197;
terminology 228; tizden nerme
varınca 228; tradition 174;
tradition, older Anatolian 174;
Turkish 161; Turkish, conception
269; Turkish, modern 161; using
basic scale degrees 225, 262,
298; using secondary scale degrees
196
makams
Acem 197, 304; Acem-Aşirani 242;
Araban 467; Arazbar 255; Aşiran
209; Aşiran Buselik 237; Bayati 210;
Bestenigar 379, 448; Beyati 197, 242;
Beyati-Araban 255; Bozorg 303;
Buselik 212, 215; Buselik-Aşirani
237; Çargah 197, 216; Dügah 197,
534
makams (cont.)
209; Evç 254, 262–263; Eviç 270;
Evçara 256; Ferahfeza 86;
Gerdaniye 197, 251, 406; Gülizar
362; Hicaz 213–214; Hicazkar 239;
Hisar 205; Hüseyni 197, 210, 212;
Huzi-Aşiran 389; Hüzzam 251;
Irak 197; Isfahan 237; Karciğar
210; Kuchek 303; Kürdi 214;
Kürdili Hicazkar 239; Mahur 212;
Müberk’a 198, 241; Muhayyer 212,
242; Neva 197, 212; Neva-Aşiran 241;
Nevruz-i Hara 198; Nihavend 242;
Nikriz 232; Nişabur 249, 251,
369; Nuhuft 303; Nühüft 400n2;
Pençgah 188; Rast 197; Rehavi
238, 399; Rekb 233; Saba 197, 216;
Sazkar 241; Şed-i Araban 255;
Segah 197, 209, 213–214; Şehnaz
209; Sultani-Irak 257; Sultani-Yegah
255; Sünbüle 209; Şuri 456;
Suzidilara 89; Suzinak 239;
Uşşak 210, 212, 216; Uşşak-Dügah
256; Uzzal 197, 210, 213; Yegah 197;
Zengüle 209; Zirgüle 253; Zirgüleli
Hicaz 251
mamluk 47, 71
Mandoli Harutin 413
Manisa 44, 48, 65, 105
Manuchehri, dìvan of 303
maqām (non-Ottoman)
centers 30; concept of 347;
cycles 316; Huseyni 226; Khivan
316; music 7, 45; music, delights of
119; region 99; system 21; traditions
45, modern 295; Uzzal 318
“Maqāṣid al-Alḥān” 122, 142.
See Marāghī 142
“Maqāṣid al-Advār” 65. See Marāghī 142
maqom 4, 176n1, 453
Marāghī, ʿAbd al-Qādir 16, 29, 31, 33–34,
36–37, 198, 206n7, 208, 318, 332, 421
Mardin 30, 44–45
al-Mardini, Abdallah 198
master-student relations 7
mawwal 279
measurement 201, 211
system of 201
Index
mecmua 2, 42, 177, 252, 310, 332, 412
Turkish 280
“Mecmua” 18–20, 60, 83, 177, 255, 257, 335
“Mecmua-i Saz ü Söz” 60, 83, 177, 154, 158,
237–238, 251, 327, 354–355, 359, 364,
413–414, 448. See Bobowski Collection
medieval elite cultures 79
medieval period 314
medrese school 49, 55, 74
Mehmed II (1444, 1451–1481) 49, 65, 87
Mehmed IV (r, 1648–1687) 17, 54, 71–72, 79,
94, 97
Mehmed Ağa 43, 68, 70, 140, 166, 285, 335
Mehmed Çelebi 42, 163, 246–248, 264n2,
299, 383, 414. See Hafız Post 42
Mehmed Çelebi, Divane 80, 85, 87
mehter 12, 20, 37, 57, 66, 69, 84, 103, 313,
315, 328, 333, 346n9, 361n4. See also
Janissary
ensemble 72, 77, 359, 445; musician 71;
musician, Egyptian popular 283n9,
421; nevbet 90; official 321–322;
peşrev 322; popular 321
mehterbaşı 57, 77
mehter-i birun ensembles 55, 158
mehter-i tabl ü alem 173
mehterhane 18n4, 57, 102, 176, 322, 412
mektupçu 72
melodic
conception 346, 371–374; conception,
contrast in the 345; contrast,
concept of 261, 264; density 2, 14,
219, 335–336, 339–342, 392, 396, 415,
423–425, 429, 448–449, 464, 477, 483;
direction 244, 258, 262, 270, 274,
337, 405, 408, 442; idea, core 337;
line 197, 242, 249–250, 262, 273, 282,
299, 324, 326, 346, 392, 407, 410, 465;
movement 21, 222–223; movement,
conception of 266; movement,
principles of 21; nucleus 366, 377,
386, 388–389, 465, 478, 486; path 347;
periods 355, 358; progression 2–3,
14, 21, 23–24, 197, 251, 258–267, 272–275,
277, 283, 297–298, 334–335, 337–339,
344, 346–347, 350–351, 355, 358, 361,
363–364, 369–370, 372–374, 376,
378, 383, 386, 388–389, 391–392, 394,
Index 535

melodic (cont.) Mevleviye 38, 89–90, 93, 95–96, 134, 481,

404–405, 415, 417, 429, 431, 434, 437, 488
442, 448, 456. See also seyir 339; Mevlid-i Şerif 102
progression, Cantemir’s terminology mevlidat 235
of 266; progression, codified 2, mevlidhan 94
14, 23, 273, 281, 283, 355, 383, 389, mevlut 289
442; progression, concept of 261; Mezci 256
segments 345; sequence 358, 361, microtonal intonation 276
434; structure 345; units 224, 293, Middle Ages 1, 9, 78, 421
334, 361, 363, 366, 377 Middle East, medieval 223; Muslim 79
melody Middle Period
composed 293; conception of 355; Ottoman state 51
contemporary concept of 329; military music
micro-level 417; musical 82; Ottoman 5
non-dance 184; strings 108 military organization 168
mersîye 95, 282 military-bureaucratization 48
meşaih 134 minerals 24, 221
Meshed 162 mini-cycle 33, 179, 181
mesnevi 22, 80, 119 miniature
meşk-hane 48 Baghdad school of Ottoman 100;
Mesut Cemil 290, 491 Ottoman 108, 132; painter 35;
meter painting 66, 105, 111; Persian 158;
duple 411; musical 294; poetic 290, Safavid 108, 141; Transoxanian 162;
294; poetic, Persian 294; triple 411 Turkish 504
metrical songs 103 Ministry of Finance 72
metricity 102, 278n2, 284 Ministry of War
Mevlevi minorities, religious/ethnic 38
ayin. See under ayin, Mevlevi 78; mir alay 161
ceremony 78; conception of music Mir Mehemmed 59, 144–145
83; costume 134, 136; dervishes 5; mir-i alem 57, 111
dervishes, lodges of 6; dervishes, Mirac 89
mutrip of the 104; earlier Ottoman “Miraciye” 41, 89
87, 91; ensemble 82; felt hat 134, Miron (Kemani) 40, 166
184; impact on Ottoman music 89; miskal 40, 65, 88–89, 103, 162n14, 163,
instrument 89; literature 190; 165–167, 174–175, 184, 445. See also
liturgy 93; medieval 85; music musikar 161, 163
80; musician 76, 87; musician, demise of the 166; player 166
contemporary 80; neyzen 89; miskali 135, 163
order 6; order, central tekke 87; Miskali Ahmed Bey 334
order, lay members of 89; order, mısra 304
spiritual leaders of 89; philosophy mıtrıb 81
of music 85; practice 91; miyan (meyan)
tradition 189; tradition, “multiple” 297, 335
modern 189; urban 184 miyanhane (Ottoman) 299, 328, 337, 343,
“Mevlev Ayinleri” 510 348, 398n1, 466, 477
Mevlevihane miyanxana 319–320, 343
Beşiktaş 17, 43, 133, 151; Galata 17, 43; modal
provincial 93; ambiguity 244; combination 176,
Yenikapı 88 222–223; complexes 239, 298;
536 Index

modal (cont.) Mosul 93

composition 232; compounds 239; mouthpiece 116, 133, 135
contrast, concept of 343; cycle 201; mubah 119
formulae 293; function 372, mücellid 71
397; hierarchy 26; nucleus 225; müderris 49, 74, 80
progressions 205; relationship 2; müehhir 330
species 223, 302, 305, 330–331; müezzin
structures 37, 227; structures, Chief 39; Imperial 70; palace 71;
modern 252 ulema 134; Turkish 13
modal entities Müezzin, Küçük 39, 77
compound 14, 231; frequency in the müezzinbaşı 39, 94
use of 236; hierarchical division müfred makam 232, 269
of 221; primary 221; principal 2; mufti 49, 74
secondary 233, 235; subsidiary 2 Mughal India 162
244, 248, 262. See also terkib, “Mughal rabab” 112
şube 280 mugham 4
modal system muhammes genre 415
closed 221; open 14; muhtelif el-tabaka 256
“open-ended” 234; Persian 259 mükerrer 401, 438, 474
modality 222–223, 227, 265, 332, 351, 394 mukkadam 330
folk 227; Iranian 405 mülazime 244, 248, 312, 322–324, 327–330,
mode 333–335, 337, 339, 344–345, 346n10,
Persian 258–259; primary 14; 347–348, 350–341, 353–355, 357,
secondary 14; theory of 223 359–362, 364, 366, 368, 371, 373,
models, tune-like 486 375–378, 383, 386–389, 391–396,
Modern Era 398–399, 401, 404, 407, 411, 419,
Early 176 422–423, 425, 428, 430, 437–438,
modernism 87 441–442, 447, 455, 457, 459–460,
“modernity” 53, 55, 369, 396, 434, 467, 462–466, 475, 477, 483
468n6, 489, 492 “multiple miyans” 298
modernization 55, 210, 310n2, 331–332, 413, munacat 102
418, 420 “Müneccimbası Mecmuası” 42
modulation muqam 4, 176n1, 200–201, 315, 411, 488n1
cadential 254; rhythmic 457, 474–475, murabba 181, 313
483; Turkish Conception of 297; murabba beste 177, 180, 182
types of 298 Murad II (r. 1421–1451) 199
Mokhtari Rokneddin Khan 410 Murad III (r. 1574–1595) 16, 94, 334
Moldavian 18, 20, 40, 54, 127–128, 166, 379. Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) 59, 68, 94, 97, 334,
See also Cantemír 18 368
Prince 54; violinist 127; voyvod Murad Ağa 59–60, 144–145, 294
18n5, 20 murakkab-khani 305
Mongol era 132 mürekkeb makam 225, 232–233, 241n4, 296,
Montagu, Lady 55 298, 351, 456
Moroccan 282 murşid 82
Morocco musahib 23, 57, 67–69, 72, 90, 140, 144–145,
practice, modern 282 161, 163, 166
mosque Musahib Mustafa Paşa 72
chanting 102; singer 76; singer, Musali Efendi 71
professional 76, 310; music 12; Musännif 32, 35
service, orthodox 95 muşävräk 200
Index
Musi, Haham (Moshe Faro) 40, 140, 311, 413,
417, 422
music of the spheres 133
musical
expression, mystical 9; expression,
religious 492; form 90–91, 102;
form, popular Sufi 90; form,
transformation of 8; genre 10,
14, 187, 278, 286, 288, 451, 482; genre,
Sufi 12, 80 life, Ottoman 176;
terms 21; Arabic 222; terms,
Persian 21
musician
Abbasid 30, 314; Abbasid, period 30;
amateur 35; Arab 293;
aristocratic 70; Armenian 21, 199;
Bukharan 317; captive foreign 59;
captured Christian 56; captured
foreign Muslim professional 56;
court 23, 162, 189, 291, 368; court,
lineage of 23; Egyptian 267, 278;
female 64; foreign 58; free 14,
62, 65–66; Greek 6; in the scribal
service 74; “Indian” 333n5, 455;
Iranian 58–60, 291–294, 333,
399, 485; Iranian, captive 66;
Iranian, professional 48;
Janissary 285; Jewish 14,
107; Jewish, nightclub 161;
Lebanese 278; master 277, 292,
301; mehter 283n9; Mevlevi 76,
80; Mevlevi, contemporary 80;
Middle Eastern 208; Mongol
period 30; movements of 44;
Muslim 66; Muslim, art 39, 176n1;
non-Muslim 13–14, 40, 44, 63, 88,
96; of European origin 60, 412; of
Hercegovinian origin 132; of Iranian
heritage 29; of Italian origin 69;
of the chamber 61–63; of the
chamber, male 63; of the city 48,
62–63; of Turkish Muslim origin 60;
Ottoman 46; Persian 17, 152, 252,
285, 327–328, 333, 398–399. See also
Acemler 414; post-Mongol 31;
practicing 244, 277; professional 1,
23, 30, 34–35, 38, 48, 56–57, 59,
62, 63, 73, 91n2, 132n8, 359n3;
professional court 23; professional
537
free 40; radio 297; royal 97;
slave 492; Sufi 13, 23; Syrian 278;
Turkish 278; Turkish, classical 219,
487; Turkish, contemporary 490;
ulema 134; unfree 56, 63;
unfree Persian 66; Uzbek 319;
women 170
musician-composer, free professional 39
musician/theorist 43
musicians’ gallery 93, 190
musicianship, high-level amateur 97
musicological literature 278
musicologist
Ottoman 7n6; Persian 220;
Turkish 19, 210, 220, 279, 345;
Western 277
musicology 10, 52, 469
Western 277
musikar 82, 161–163, 166–167
player 162
musikar-i acem 161–162
musikar-i çin 162
musiki (mūsīqā) 55
conception of 12
musikişinaslar 68
Muslim
art tradition, medieval 57, 281; arts 13;
civilization 96; civilization,
medieval 97; languages 280,
452; musical cultures 99, 141;
musical cultures, medieval 66, 141;
musical practice, medieval 282;
societies 11, 55–56; societies,
contemporaneous 11, 56; states 55,
96–97, 101; world 44, 78–79, 281,
285–286, 288; world, earlier 43;
world, eastern 78
Muslim art music
earlier 290; eastern 78; history of
336, 482; instrumentarium of 108;
modern 282; older centers of 96
Muslims, Orthodox Sunni 190
Mustafa II (r. 1695–1703) 70
Mustafa III (r. 1757–1774) 255
Mustafa Ağa 39, 68, 71, 76, 128, 170
Mustafa Ağa (Kemani) 124
Mustafa Ali (Gelibolulu) 49, 116
Mustafa Beg 154
Mustafa Çelebi 144–145
538 Index

Mustafa Dede 78, 187–188, 190 naubat al-murattaba 181

Mustafa “Karaoğlan” 94 Navāʾī, Mīr ʿAlī Shīr 29, 36, 79, 319
career of 94 nävbät 33
Mustafa Paşa 23, 72 nay (Iranian) 31, 35, 84, 105, 116
mustazad 177, 319 nay-i Irakiye 116
mütefik el-tabaka 256 Nayini 33, 181
mutlakat 161 Nazim, divan of 72
müvakkit 94 Nazim Çelebi 72–73, 95
müvakkitli kalış 258 nazire 3, 418–419, 434–438, 442–443
muwashshah kulli 302 -i “Gamzekar” 435; -i Isfahan remel
muxämmäs 316, 318–320 by 435; Kantemiroğlu 436
muxämmäs-i rast 320 Nazirizade Mehmed Emin Efendi 72
Muzaffer 38, 264, 311, 366, 368, 378n8, 414, Nazmi, Mehmed 94
417, 422, 434–435 Near Eastern art music 296
mystical Necip Paşa 413
expression 7, 87; music 80; philosophy nedm. See also musahib 23, 57, 67–69, 72,
of music 93; syllable 91; view of 140, 144–145, 161, 163, 166
the value of music 93 Nedim (Ahmed) 71, 75, 286, 359n3,
mysticism 80, 86, 313 nefes 103, 288, 451–454
myth Segah, “Şol cennetin ırmakları” 454
earlier Near Eastern 82; Persian nefir 102
Sufi 82 Nefiri Behram
peşrev Neva, devr-i kebir, serhane 334n5
na-tamam perde 195n1, 196, 465 nerm perdeler 225
naat 12, 41, 90, 92–93, 95, 282, 284, 488 Neşati (Ahmed Dede) 282, 286–287, 300
naathan 71, 76, 95 divan of 286
naghma 221 “neva’da Uşşak” 214
nağme 223, 233, 251, 268, 280n7, 288 nevbet 176
“nağme-i külliyat-i makamat” 296, 300, 305 Nevres 303
nai (Romanian) 166 ney (Ottoman)
Nakhchivanian 59 association with the Mevleviye 96,
nakkare 103 134; construction of the 138;
see also kettledrums 103 Iranian 116, 133; Mevlevi 89, 91,
nakkaş 163 133; newer form of the 91; older form
nakş (Ottoman) 177 of 175; Ottoman 135; performance
nakş-semai 182 of the 133; Persian 116; player 73,
Nalçe Efendi, Mehmed 72 88; sets of 116; Turkish 116, 135
namud 319 ney playing
naqqāshkhāna 35 solo 91; style of Mevlevi 91
näqş (Herat) 31–34, 36 ney taksim 91, 190
naqsh (Iranian) 178, 180–181, 189, 292, 319, neys of differing ranges
488 modern 89
naqshband 181 neyzens
nashid 281 biographies of 134; dervish 116;
nashid al-ajam great 86; Mevlevi 88–89, 91, 133,
nas̲h̲īd al-ʿArab 281 140, 189; Mevlevi, performing style
nathr an-naghamat 281 of 140; secular 88
nauba Neyzen Emin Ağa 68
modern Moroccan 282 Neyzen Said Ağa 68
Index
neyzenbaşt 86
Niebuhr 25, 90
nightclubs 127–128
Nihani Çelebi 100–101
nim perde 195, 197, 272
Niyazi-i Misri, Halveti Şeyh 94–95
Nizip 45
nomenclature
Arab 197; Persian 197; Turkish 197
non-cyclical formats 178
non-metrical genre 36, 102, 280–281, 285,
301
non-Muslim
musicians 13; origin 44, 63
North Africa 4, 9, 278
North African 39
notation
alphabetic 21–22, 211, 422; Cantemir’s
system of 24, 226, 239, 285;
cipher 122; creator of a 88, 443;
Hamparsum 64, 389, 416; inventor of
a system of 43; scientific staff 207;
staff 17–18, 207, 272; standard
modern Turkish 220; system for
the tanbur 273; Western 61, 335;
Western staff 422
notational concepts, older Muslim 89
notational system 20, 22–23, 26, 89
note
names 25; neutral 448; temporal
extension of a 268; variants of the
same 168, 211
notes
acem 209, 247, 271; acem aşirani
202, 209; aşiran 202, 229; bansar
208; beyati 202; buselik 202;
çargah 202, 229–230; chahargah
200; dik acem 209; dik hicaz 216,
272n5; dik hisar 272n5; dik kürdi
209, 220; dik sünbüle 209; Do 208;
dügah 200, 229; evç 202;
gerdaniye 202, 230; geveşt 220;
haftgah 200; hashtgah 200;
heftgah 206; hicaz 216; hisar 213;
hüseyni 202, 229–230; hüzzam
251; irak 202, 229; isfahan 242;
kapalı neva 376; kürdi 209,
248; mahur 202; maye 237; Mi,
539
muhayyer 202; nerm çargah
203–204; neva 229; nihavend 202;
nim hisar 272n5; nişabur 215n12;
pençgah 198, 205, 275, 232, 239,
275; pes beyati 218; pes hisar 218;
rast 229; rehavi 202, 220; saba
202; segah 202, 209, 220, 230, 243;
şehnaz 202, 209, 230; şeşgah
206, 227; shashgāh 200; Si 209;
sikah 197; sünbüle 202; suri 186;
tiz beyati 202; tiz buselik 202;
tiz çargah 202; tiz hicaz 217; tiz
hisar 217; tiz hüseyni 202; tiz neva
202; tiz saba 202; tiz segah 202;
uzzal 230; yegah 202, 229–230;
zengüle 202; zirgüle 230
Numan Ağa 335, 380
peşrev Bestenigar, teslim 376
occult/astrological ideas 84
occupational categories 70
octave
basic 267, 272; fundamental 195;
principal 198; scale 224–225, 231,
258–259, 266; species 228, 241–242,
249
Oghuz musical culture 452
Oghuz Turkic music 453
Oghuz Turks 112, 452
Oghuzic figure, legendary 315
oğlans 63
d’Ohsson, Mouradgea 63
Old Testament 83
Ömer Gülşeni (Derviş) 93
oral tradition
current Turkish 303; of Mevlevi
musicians 87; Turkish 36, 40, 303,
310, 336
oral transmission 20, 264n2, 309–310, 331,
333, 371, 379–380, 398, 412, 416, 426,
443, 445
Oransay, Gültekin 95
oratorio 89
orchestra
classical 445; indoor 445;
Ottoman 17; Ottoman Imperial 17
örf 74
organological history 100
540
ornamentation 147, 283, 490
Orpheus 36
orthodox religion 98
Osman, Koca 38, 70, 181
Osman III (r. 1754–1757) 68, 75
Osman Bey 68, 335
Osman Dede 21–22, 41, 43, 85, 88–89, 91,
187, 190, 299, 310–311, 322, 334, 341, 379,
416n1, 434
Osman Efendi 36, 77
Osman Efendi, Galatalı 72
Osman Efendi, Hatipzade 303
Osman Paşa al-Atik
düyek peşrev 355; Hüseyni peşrev 437;
peşrev “Dügah-Hüseyni düyek by 331,
458
Ottoman
carpets 100; elite 1, 83, 93; elite,
philosophy of the 93; Empire 5,
7, 13, 20, 25, 29, 56, 163, 200, 234, 278,
290, 481, 484; Empire, European part
of the 278; Empire, expansion of
the 484; Empire, history of the 29,
163; high culture, secularization
of 54; imperial culture 50; music,
connoisseurs of 167, 487; music,
secular 6, 24, 55, 135, 477; music,
social grounding of 8; music,
vitality of 7–8; musical culture 4,
10, 26, 176, 420; period 20, 44, 49;
political system 52; secular musical
tradition 188; society 3, 11n8, 13, 50,
54, 185, 489; state 11, 46–48, 51–53,
55–56, 74, 79, 85, 98, 102, 290, 481, 493;
state, “classical” 46; Turkish music,
emergence of 102
Ottomans, demographic situation of the
96
overblowing 165
overtone system, vocal 91
overtones, emphasis on 91
ozan 113
ozanlama 103
pages 18, 24–25, 46–50, 57–58, 61, 63, 73, 87,
186, 255, 457
painter
court 88
Index
paintings
album 100; European 63, 100;
foreign 132; Ottoman 100; Safavid
114; Timurid 108; Turkish 172
Palace ensemble, four-piece female 64
Palace School 47, 57, 63, 67, 69, 122
palace service 44, 46–51, 53, 55–57, 65,
68–71, 73, 75, 85, 96–97
Palestine 197, 278
pan-Islamic tradition 185
pan-pipes 65, 103, 162. See also miskal,
musikar 65, 103, 162
Pantry 48, 67–73, 75. See also Kiler 48,
67–68
Chief of the 67; Imperial 67, 69–71, 73;
Privy 67, 69
Paradise, delights of 119, 101
“parallels” 39, 99, 434
parallelism 387–388, 396
parda
Hoseyni 198; Huseyni-Mukhayyer 265;
Iraq 198; Nava 198; Rast 198
pasha 13, 88
patrimonial household 49, 57, 67
patronage
courtly 35, 335; royal 97
pedagogic model 305
pedagogical method 292
pedagogy, musical 222
pegs 106–108, 122–123, 141, 145, 155, 159
pension 73
pentachord
Buselik 396; Zengüle 396
Pera district 128
percussion 90, 102–104, 159, 315, 416
perde 84, 195–197, 201, 209, 232, 236, 260,
268, 322
performance
classical 282; context 177;
cyclical 177; cyclical, arrangement
for 191; cyclical, concept of 181;
group 410; intimate 157, 179; of
the taksim, non-cyclical 190; on the
ney 135; order of 181; Ottoman
courtly 96; outdoor 102; public 6,
84, 103; purely rural 103; rhythmic
aspect of 158; rural 103; rural,
semi-professional 103; secular 173;
Index
performance (cont.)
solo 184, 491; standards of 4;
Sufi 78, 287; technique 401;
virtuoso 323; vocal 312
performance practice
current Turkish 24; dervish 287;
earlier Iranian 181; Iranian 181;
modern 14, 490; Persian 294, 399;
Turkish 216, 398
performance-generation 281–282, 285, 289,
294–295, 305
performer
female 116, 157; free professional 30;
instrumental 33; Iranian 124;
male 157
performer-theorist 36
performing troups, public 118
periodization, stylistic 2
Persian
art music 4, 259, 487–488; court 23;
language 16; literature 435;
modern 141, 211, 251, 261, 292;
music 45, 112, 154, 200, 259,
294; music, later 25; music,
medieval 223; music, modern 260;
musical influence 227, 332; musical
models 291; musical zone 178;
names 198; poetic tradition 80,
303, 434; speaking areas 317;
text 90
Persianate cultural area 141
Persianate musical culture 162
Persianate world 1, 11n8, 16, 30
“Persians” 37, 58, 66, 108, 119, 144, 198–200,
264n2, 291, 294, 303n18, 312, 327,
332–334, 338, 361, 398–399, 414, 421,
484–485
Perso-Arabic music 331
Perso-Arabic system 198, 208
Perso/Islamic musical tradition 123
Perso-Turkic music 318
Perso-Turkic zone 174
peşräv 32–34, 36, 316, 320
modern Bukharan 320
peşrev
Acem, “Gül-i Rana,” düyek 366;
Acemi 346n10, 368, 437, 462, 464;
Acemi, Beyati devr-i revan 406;
Acemi, Beyati düyek 409; Acemi,
541
Beyati sofyan 327; Acemi, Neva,
devr-i kebir 460; Acemi, Neva, fer-i
muhammes 411; Acemi, Pençgah,
“Gülistan,” düyek 275; Acemi,
Uzzal “Bustan” düyek, serhane
and mülazime 353; Arazbar,
devr-i revan by Eyyubi Mehmed
Çelebi 407; Bestenigar, teslim,
by Numan Ağa 376; Beyati,
usul sofyan 400–401, 405, 444;
“Bülbül-i Aşık” 426; “Bülbül-i
Irak” 376; “Bülbül-i Uşşak” 312;
Buselik-Aşirani düyek, anonymous
(Derviş Süleyman?) 389–390;
“Bustan” 353–354, 369;
“Büyük Neva” 384; “Büyük
Muhammes” 327, 341, 384, 430; by
Osman Dede 22; courtly 315; devr-i
kebir by Ferruh 321; Evç, devr-i revan
by Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi 408;
“Dügah-Hüseyni” by Osman Paşa 331;
earlier vocal form of 178; earliest
documented Ottoman 318; earliest
Islamic predecessor of 330;
early Ottoman 317, 346n9;
four-hane 298, 327–328, 344; “Gül-i
Rana” 366, 430; “Gülistan” 275,
353; Hindi 333; Hüseyni düyek by
Hasan Can 363; Hüseyni, düyek,
“Gamzekar” 435; in darb-i feth 323;
in darbeyn and zincir 324; in
Evçara 64; in Geveşt 187; in
Nühüft 186; in terkib Acem-Yegahi,
Bestenigar, Hicaz, Kuçek, Maye,
Nühüft, Sipihr, Zirefken, Zirgüle 237,
298; in usul devr-i kebir 332; in
usul muzaaf devr-i kebir 90, 187;
“Indian” 422; instrumental 189,
316; instrumental, current forms 283;
Irak devr-i kebir by Ali Hoca 383;
Irak by Seyf el-Misri 283n9, 318;
Iranian 178; isfahan remel 381;
“Kız düyeki” 423; Kürdi berefşan by
Angeli 444; Kürdi by Korkut 318;
Kürdi, darbeyn by Ermeni Murad 40,
324; melodies, evolution of 91;
“Mevlevi” 426; Muhayyer, “Margzar,”
düyek by Eyyubi Mehmed Çelebi 381;
naming individual 312; “Nazire-i
542
peşrev (cont.)
Sakil-i Acemi” 389, 437; Neva, devr-i
kebir 334n5; Neva devr-i kebir by
Ali Hoca 346n10, 374; Neva, devr-i
kebîr, serhane A, B by Behram 334n5;
Neva, usul fer-i muhammes 408;
Nihavend by Seyyit Ahmet Ağa 91;
Nihavend devr-i kebir 321; Nühüft
darbeyn by Mehmed Çelebi 247;
Nühüft darbeyn by Tanburi Mehmed
Çelebi 383; Nühüft düyek 247; of
Cantemir 264n2. See Cantemir 24;
Ottoman 2–3; Persian 323, 332,
334, 353–355, 358, 364, 366, 368–369,
371, 378, 384, 398–401, 410, 415, 437,
455; Persian-style 322; Perso-Turkish,
early 408; Rehavi of Isak 380;
Rehavi çenber by Angeli 415; Rehavi
devr-i kebir by Angeli 323; Saba
hafîf by Ahmed Çelebi 415, 444;
Saba şarkı, sofyan 444; secular 89,
321, 325; three-hane 298, 438;
Turkish 178, 331; Turkish,
modern 332n3, 345; Turkish,
periodization of the 331; Uzzal, devr-i
kebir by Şah Murad 367; vocal 316,
318n4; Zengüle devr-i kebir 381
peyk (footman) 130
peyrevlik 135, 288
Phanariots 46, 97
philosophy of music, traditional mystical
86
photographs 63
pipes of Pan 163
pishdaramad 316, 411
pishrow
Bukharan 330; Central Asian 315; in
Huseyni, usul ramal 319; Iranian
345; medieval Perso-Turkic 316;
melodies 411; Persian, earlier 317;
Transoxanian 319; Turkic element in
the 315; vocal 317
pitch
undefined 268
“plagiarism” 311, 419
planets 23
plectrum (mızrap)
feather 151; tortoise shell 151
plucking the strings, method of 108
Index
poem
nazire 418, 435
poet
amateur 418; courtly 80; Mevlevi 80;
Ottoman 119, 168, 286
poetic tradition 80, 303, 434
poetry
classical 178; in Ottoman Turkish
language 181; medieval Persian 82,
223, 485; murabba 181; mystical,
singing of 78; Persian 82, 112, 162;
Persian Sufi 83; religious 102;
Turkish 117
polyphonic playing, Turkic tradition of
184
polyphony 102
popular
genres 18; music 387n11, 489; songs,
urban 173; traditions 168
post-Mongol era 44
Postel, Guillaume 117
“postlude” 295
Poullet, Sieur 170
“practice-room” 48
pre-Islamic musical cultures 141, 289
pre-Ottoman
Anatolian Turkish society 11, 56;
period 44
preacher 94
prelude
instrumental 181, 319
“preludes,” non-measured vocal 295
prince Cem, Ottoman (See under Cem) 87
princes, Ottoman 48, 104
procession, outdoor 359
professional musician, male 30
professional musicianship 48, 57, 59, 73
professionalism, free
late medieval tradition of 65
professionalism in singing 77
professor 80
Prophet Davud 83
Prophet Mohammed’s Ascent 89
provincial city 93
pseudographia 188, 418–420
pulse
beat 343; fundamental 340
Pythagoras
Pythagorean comma intervall 214
Index 543

qaflah 293 “refrain” 345

qalun (Uighur) 123 regional folklore 227
qanun (medieval) 35, 105 regional styles 10, 213, 470
qānūn, Egyptian 155. See also kanun 53, register 103, 319
82, 88, 105, 122–124, 153–159, 174 reisülkutub 163
qassim 280 religious 9, 12–13, 22, 38, 41, 43, 49, 50,
qawl (qävl) 53, 68, 75, 78, 80, 86–87, 102, 119,
in parda Huseyni-Mukhayyer 265 134, 184–185, 190, 289–291, 293, 316,
qobyz 112, 185n3, 315 481–482, 485, 488, 492–493
Qorqyt 315 bureaucracy 22, 51, 53, 56, 74,
quarter-tones 25 98, chant 12, 55; classes 13,
Qul Muhammad 31–33, 319 35; classic 78; culture 13,
Qurʾān 12, 60, 76, 78, 289 48, 56, 96, 290; education 74;
Qurʾānic chant 12–13, 102, 282, 287, establishment 41, 53, 56, 71, 72;
289–290, 485. See also tajwīd 282, institution 74, 96; law 52, 74; law,
289–290 interpreter of 74
Qurʾānic reciter 69 “renegades” 40, 60–61
Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī 208, 265, 296, 316 repeat sign 329–330
repertoire
rabab (medieval) 111–114, 132–133, 168, 174 “ancient” 420; art 30, 33, 78, 486;
Anatolian 113, 113, 132; Indian 112; authentic instrumental 163;
Kashmiri 159; Pamiri 141; classical 38, 46, 62, 77, 93, 172, 465;
pear-shaped 112; Persian 112–114; composed of the makams 244;
plucked 113, 112; Safavid 114, 132; courtly 10, 12, 30, 33, 36, 38,
Turkic 112–113; typology of the 112; 46, 61, 92; current 351, 417, 470;
unfretted 112, 114 dervish 95; fasıl 64; fasıl
“Rabt-i Tabirat-i Musiki” 22, 85. See also vocal 42; female 103; Greek 166;
Osman Dede “Indian” 331; instrumental 3,
radif 292–293, 305 11, 17, 19, 37–38, 41, 89, 91, 163, 176,
proto- 292 310, 315, 332, 379, 412, 420–421, 444,
radio 6, 297 485; instrumental, Mevlevi 92;
rah 314, 317 instrumental, of the “Persians” 398;
rang 319, 343 lists of 226; makam 140;
range 20, 100, 267, 271, 274, 297–299, 301, manuscript, Ottoman 177;
314, 319, 324, 343–344, 361–362, 372, 381, maqām 319; Mevlevi 90–92, 191,
386–388, 391, 395, 434, 437–438, 448, 463–4644; Mevlevi, modern 91, 463;
466, 471, 475 military 315; military mehter 328;
ra’s al-hanak 198 modern 298, 351, 365, 419, 430, 467;
ravza 167 modern Azerbaijanian 409; modern
rebab (Ottoman) 65, 82, 88–90, 125, 128 dastgah 411; modern Iranian 409;
player 88 Moldavian 166; notated 245,
Receb Çelebi (Abrizi) 76 412; of art music 492; of modern
recordings 219, 340, 364 Turkish music 239, 297; of the
earliest commercial 286; first unmarried men 103; of Turkish
sound 213, 278; 78 rpm 128, 288 music 400; Ottoman 10, 92, 177,
records of payment 101 289, 339, 349, 379, 400, 412, 411, 421,
reed-flute 1, 4, 78, 92, 114, 184. See also ney 485, 487, 490; Ottoman courtly 10,
reed-oboe 102. See also zurna 90; Ottoman instrumental 420;
reeds 161–163, 165 Ottoman peşrev 412; Ottoman
544 Index

repertoire (cont.) rosary-maker 71

secular 332; Ottoman vocal 176, rosette 114
332; Persian 399, 420; “Persian” 331; rubai 281
“Persian” peşrev 332; peşrev 264, rubato form, pre-composed 187, 488
333, 338; peşrev modern 448; rud-i hani
recorded 298; religious 102; secular Azeri 114
classical 77; semai 455, 476; Rufai Sufi orders 483
Sufi 84, 103, 119, 454; Turkish 14, 42, ruh-efza
166, 187; Turkish instrumental 412; in Anatolianized form 145
Turkish modern 450; Turkish Ruhperver 199, 260, 266
peşrev 408; Turkish vocal 43, 332; ruhsat 271
Turkmenian dutar 201; vocal 19, “Rukovodstvo po Vostochnoi Muzyke” 23
38, 42–43, 58, 62, 176–177, 297, 299, Rum 40, 96, 134, 484
310–311, 332, 398, 422, 489, 492; vocal, Rumeli 75
modern 444; vocal, secular 379 Rumelia 74
repetition rural
large-scale 464 folk 128; forms 279; music 276, 272
Reşid Efendi 72
retuning 123 Sadullah Ağa 76, 379
revza 168 Saſavid
rhythm Dynasty 401; governor 69;
additive asymmetrical 469; flowing iconographic evidence 145;
279–282, 388 Iran 14, 79; musical culture 143;
rhythmic prototype 145
chanting 287; cycle 2, 14, 282–282, Ṣafī al-Dīn Urmawī 30, 208, 260, 296, 317
285, 304, 339–340, 343, 410, 441, 445, şagird 63–64, 66
449, 470, 490–491. See also usul; Şah Kulu 105–106, 108, 399
cycle, Anatolian 470; density 340; Şah Murad (Murad IV)
expansion 219, 336, 410; formula peşrev Uzzal, devr-i kebir 367
355, 388, 454; idioms 290, 411, 423, şahrüd 108
427, 450; idioms, specific 281, 289; saj 180
pattern 404, 450–454, 471; pattern, sakil 84, 251, 275, 322, 345, 339, 343, 437
Anatolian/Azerbaijanian 404; Şakir Ağa 76
pattern, folkloric 400; phrasing salaries
323, 362, 394, 405, 414, 465; quotation of musicians 48, 62, 104
396; retardation 340–342, 456; Salonika 1, 44
structures 396; variants 404 Seljuk times 112, 484
rhythmical assymetry 368 samāʿ 78–80, 85, 87, 90, 114, 119, 190, 452
rhythmical structures 284, 292 Samarqand 34
rhythmically free 281, 486 santur
rikhta 180–181 “ala Franca” 161; construction 158–159;
rind 81–82 decline of the 168; Iraqi 159;
“Risale-i Mimariye” 512, 285 Kashmiri 159; medieval 157;
ritornello 312, 315, 319–320, 322, 327, 330, modern Persian 159; Ottoman 159;
335, 338–339, 344–345, 411, 429, 455, 457 Persian 159; player 20, 69, 158,
Romania 127, 138, 220, 278. See also 161; Romanian 161; Turkish 161;
Danubian Principalities, Wallachia, virtuoso 161; Western 161
Moldavia Santuri Edhem Efendi 161
Romanian 13, 28, 97, 138, 161, 210, 296 Santuri Hilmi Bey 161
Index
Santuri Hüseyin Ağa, Musahib 161
Santuri İbrahim Ağa 158
säqil 316, 320
Sarajevo (Saray-i Bosna) 44
“Saray-i Enderun” 154
šargija
modern 168
şarkı
in Saba, sofyan 444
sarxana 317, 319–320, 330
Sassanian era 117
savt (seventeenth c.) 287
sävt (fıfteenth c.) 32–34, 36
sawt (medieval) 180–181, 314–315, 317–319,
330, 452, 482
Şayxi Nayi 31, 33
saz (Anatolian) 184–185
saz semai (saz semaisi)
in Evçara 64; Pençgah 276, 380
periodization of the 457, 468
sazende 39, 82, 184
sazende-başılar 61
sazendelik 39, 170
“Sazname” 100–101, 122, 130, 159
scalar variation 266
scale
ancient 269; basic 165, 195–200,
202–203, 207, 207, 215–216, 220,
225–228, 231–233, 235, 239, 244,
246, 250, 258, 262–263, 265, 269,
273–275, 298, 347, 363, 422; basic,
Turkish 198; concepts of 195,
298; fundamental 24, 139, 165,
225, 228, 233, 235–236, 239, 249, 256,
258, 265–266; fundamental, change
in the 166; general 24, 82, 161,
165–166, 195, 197–198, 201–202, 205,
207, 219–220, 222–224, 231, 258,
265, 268–269, 271, 296; general,
Abdülbaki Nasır Dede’s 224; general,
Cantemir’s 224; general, Seydi’s
205; Irano-Arabian 17-note 219;
makam 225; modal 2, 260; modern
setar 208; Ottoman tanbur 208
particular 195, 197–198, 222–224, 228,
231, 235, 268, 276; Turkish 25, 198;
Turkish, modern 161, 219
Science of Music 21, 43, 67, 88,117, 135
545
scribal service
musicians in the 72
scribe
“el-Seba Seyyar fi Ahval-i Muluk-i
Tatar” 72
second, augmented 210, 217, 238–239, 255,
344, 467, 492
secondary scale degrees
Iranian names 200
section 1, 19, 23, 34, 40, 56, 76, 101, 105–106,
135, 177, 186, 205, 238, 243, 252, 255,
259, 262, 267, 271, 274–275, 280–281,
283, 285, 289, 292–293, 296, 300, 304,
313, 316, 318, 320, 325, 327, 329–331,
334, 337–338, 343–347, 350, 353, 355,
358, 371–373, 380, 383, 388, 390–392,
396, 399, 404, 407, 419, 426, 437–438,
441, 444–445, 452, 453, 460, 466, 478,
483, 491
secular
art music 13, 55–56, 74–75, 88, 93, 282,
491–492; art music, Ottoman 6,
46, 92; culture 13, 96; elite 55;
singer 12, 289; secularism 53, 55,
489, 492
secularization 13, 54–55, 492
şedd 255, 296
Seferli Oda (Campaign Chamber) 48, 68
selam 188–189, 451
Selim I (r. 1512–1520) 16, 29, 37, 50, 57–58,
97, 332–333, 348, 353, 484
Selim II (r. 1566–1574) 16, 63, 334
Selim III (r. 1789–1808) 13, 15, 26, 52, 64, 68,
76, 89–90, 97, 135, 155, 166, 179, 203,
255, 257, 335, 488
Selim Giray 73, 88
Seljuk
musical culture 452
sema 78, 90, 93, 114, 313, 451–452, 454,
481–482, 489, 492
semahane 492
semai
ağır 179, 182, 363; Beyati, semai by
Ahmed Çelebi 405; Büyük 455;
Geveşt 467; in Neva 459–460,
463, 475; in Pençgah 187; in the
mürekkeb makam Pençgah 456; in
the terkib Geveşt 186; in Uşşak 380;
546 Index

semai (cont.) Şeyhi 199, 260, 266

instrumental 3, 90, 180, 182, 189, 191, Şeyhülislam 22, 71, 74, 353
309, 451, 453, 468, 476, 481–482, 492; seyir
Iranian 452; Kürdi 456, 468, 476; conception of 263–264, 347, 355, 461
melodies, secular 191; Neva 187, Seyyid Nuh 45–46
459–463, 475–476; Neva Semai-i “Shahnamah” 141–142
Solakzade 460–461; Persian 455, shaman 112, 183, 315
469; urban 452; vocal 18, 191, 312, shedd 199, 221
453; yürük 25, 179, 182, 187, 451, 454, Sheikh Safi 144–145
463, 471, 476, 482 sheikhs, musical 85
semai-i sazende Sheybani Khan 106
periodization of the 457 Shia 481
semi-tones 165 shuba medieval and modern Persian
Şems-i Tebrizi 80 302–303
sensual pleasures 119 sikke 134, 184
separation of genres 41 “simple” makams 221, 244
Sephardic Jews 97 “simulated” makams 230
Seraglio Simurgh 82
Imperial 157 sine keman 125, 127
serbend 325, 325, 334, 415 sine-bend 455
Serbia 1, 56, 103, 127, 168 sinecures 55
“serhad” 168 singer
serhane 244, 247–248, 321–323, 328, 334, church 42; professional 12, 76–77, 310,
337, 344, 346, 348, 350–351, 353–355, 485; secular courtly 289
357, 360–361, 363–364, 366, 371, 373–374, singer/composer 39, 77
376–378, 383, 386–389, 391–392, 394, singing
396, 391, 399, 401, 415, 419, 423, 425, 427, antiphonal 102; improvised 12, 294
431, 437–438, 441–442, 450, 455, 459, singing-girls 76–77
460, 463–466, 474–475, 477 sipahi 47, 71, 88, 97
şeriat 53, 74 Şirvan 96, 113, 132
Şerif 38, 262, 311, 321, 334, 414, 417, 443 şirvani halay 472
sermehteran 57 slave-girls
serneyzen 39 Circassian 62
Serneyzen Ali 88 singing 30
şeşde 167–168 slave-market 63, 72–73
şeşhane 131–133, 140, 146, 167–168 slave-musician
şeşta 43 female 62; of European origin 17
şeştar slave women of the palace 56, 65
Iranian 145; Persian 145; virtuosi 144 slaves
Şeştari Murad 43, 514, 333 male 60, 62; military 44, 47, 96; of
şeştay 142, 145 Turkish origin 47; personal 47
setar “small meter” 341–342, 392, 425, 448, 467
Iranian 207, 209; modern 143, 208; social
Pamiri 141; player 411 condition 11, 51, 55–56;
“Seyahatname” 19, 310, 59, 69, 76, 84, 101, environment 39, 71; function 8,
185, 287 18, 168; organization 50–51, 493;
Seydi organization of art music 55, 493;
general scale according to 205 organization of music 11, 13–14, 74,
Seyf el-Misri 289, 318, 414, 420, 434–435 99, 118, 492
Index 547

Socrates 23 student
Solak group 163 music 69; non-Muslim 93
Solakzade, Miskali şube (Ottoman)
Neva Semai-i 460–461 Hicaz 249; Hüzzam 249, 255;
son hane 328, 348 Hüzzam-i Kadim 249, 255; Hüzzam-i
son peşrev Rumi 249, 255; Karcığar 255;
“Bülbül-i Uşşak” 312, 430; in usul Küçek 255; Şiraz 255; Suzidil 252;
düyek 187 Suzidilara 252; Yegah 254
son semai 451, 464 subordination, concept of 235
son yüriik semai sudur 31
Mevlevi 25 Sufi
songs, Persian language 484 allegory 119; ceremonies 282,
sori 220 488–489; conceptions of music 23;
sorud 112 elite, medieval 79, 85; image
sound 5, 63, 81, 92, 102, 106, 117, 119, 125, of gnosis 82; lodge 173;
127–128, 131, 139, 134–135, 138, 140, 163, medieval 78–79, 190, 452; models
165–166, 197, 202, 213, 234, 240, 268, for music 291; movements, early
276–278, 431 Anatolian 481; music 12, 80, 93, 174,
sound-box 112, 122, 132 191, 482, 485, 487; music, earlier 414;
sound-hole 155 musical tradition 420; mystical
sources interpretation of makam 199;
Arabic 280; Bukharan 320; orders 79, 96, 98, 483; orders, lay
foreign 11, 133, 190; Iranian 178; members of the 98; origin of the
literary 310, 99–100; literary, term semai 189; practices 134;
European 101; literary, native practices, controversies about 134;
100; musicological xiv; repertoire 84, 103, 119, 454, 488;
musicological, Arabic 453; sema, medieval 452; sema 114,
musicological, Persian 453; 313, 482, 489; tarikat 79, 84;
non-Mevlevi 188; notated 417, 422, teacher 82; tradition 79; tradition,
424; Ottoman 287, 329–330, 355; medieval elite 85; traditional
Persian 280; secular foreign 190; ritual practices 134; treatise 313;
secular Ottoman 190; Turkish 130, Turkish 184
207, 208, 232, 258, 289, 453; visual 91, Sufism
104, 143; South Caucasus 514, 182, 399 classical 133; philosophical 79
state, post-classical Ottoman 51 Sufiyana Kalam, Kashmiri 282
state bureaucracies 46 suite
steps, microtonal 201 cyclical rhythmic composed 93
steward Şükufezar 84, 312, 322, 435
guild 74 Süleyman I The Magnificent (Kanuni) 37,
stone-mason 77 57, 74, 168, 333–334, 353
string ratios 201 Süleymanname” 108, 116
stringed instrument 82, 103, 131 Sultan Ahmed 57, 66, 111
strings Sultan Korkut 37, 318
brass 114, 123, 132, 147, 154–155; Sultan Veled 16, 190, 481, 483
division of 314; double 108, 114, “Sultan Veled Devri” 90–91
132; gut 154–155, 157; in groups sünder (sündir) 167
of three 123; metal 155, 157; Sunni
sets of double 108; silk 114; dervish orders 102
sympathetic 108, 203–204 puritanism 79
548 Index

tarikat 79, 90–91, 93–94, 492 tamam perde 195–196, 209, 269, 272
zikr 489 ţambal mic 161
sureta makam 230 tambura 65, 170
sur-i Humayun 66 tän-i maqām 316
“Surname-i Humayun 124 tanbourah 168
“Surname-i Vehbi” 88, 158 tanbur
Sütcüzade İsa 38, 181 drawing of the 25; fretted 141, 203;
Swedish traveler 159 fretting of the Ottoman 203–204;
syllables, non-textual 178 Herati 143; Khorasani 141;
symbols, musical 220 Khorasanian 151, 208; Kurdish 185;
synagogue modern 147; modern, of Central
Ottoman 316 Asia 141; modern Turkish 207,
service 312 212; of Necdet Yaşar 203, 212, 290;
Syria 7, 31, 44, 138, 140, 157, 174–175, 197–198, Ottoman 141–143, 145–146, 151, 208;
222, 278, 275, 283, 289–290, 482, 490 Ottoman, Persian input in 145;
Syrian 144, 278, 484–485 Pamiri 141; player 23, 40, 64,
Systematist 134, 140, 212; player, Mevievi 88,;
practice 201; tradition 198; player, Turkish 212; round-faced,
writings 233 round-backed 143; teacher 63;
Systematists 21, 208, 260, 266, 277 Transoxianian; “Turkmen style” 141;
Uighur 200; virtuoso of today 45
tabakat 205, 313 tanbur-i şirvaniyan 142
ṭabaqāt 198 tanbur-playing, style of 41
Tabi Mustafa Efendi tanbura 167–168, 172
career of 75 tanbura of Hungary 168
Tabriz 16, 34, 57–59, 66, 105–106, 111, tanbure-i türki 142
144–145, 303, 353 tanburi 39, 135, 158, 179
tabrir section, 278 Tanburi Ali 251
“Tabririye” 26 Tanburi Osman 380
taife 76–77 Tanburi Tahir Ağa 68
Tajik tanburica 168
form of peşrev 408; musician 200 tanini 223
tajwīd. See tecvid, Qurʾānic chant Tanzimat xi, 52
takım 179, 182 tarab 279
taksim tarana 177, 181, 280, 319
Arab 283; “compendium” 300–301; tarçi 316
development of the, figure of the tarīqah
306; etymological meaning 280; in maqām Uzzal, usul muxammas 318
for the ney 91, 187, 190; generic tarkib 221, 223, 232, 317, 319–320, 330
relatives 289; instrumental 179, tartil 289
182, 185, 191, 287, 289, 305; tarz-i Horasan 45, 485
local sub-styles 278; major Taşçızade 71
characteristics 284; metricity Taşköprüzade, Ahmed 80
of 284; model 227, 231, 270, taslim 317
304; Neva by Necdet Yaşar 458; täsnif 316
performance, art of 284; Persian tavşan 77
291, 294; Turkish 293–294; vocal Tavukçuzade 71
179–182, 185, 189, 271, 286–288, 290, 295 teacher
taksim-i külli 227, 300, 302–303 anti-tarikat orthodox 94
Index
Mevlevi 91
music 512, 62–64, 67, 84, 399
Teberdar 70
technique
bowing 111; compositional 231, 264,
293, 322, 333, 358, 360–361, 363,
368, 370–371, 373, 378, 383, 388, 407,
460–461, 464–467, 476; “Eastern” 159;
hammering 157; “mirroring” 402;
modern 155; on the Anatolian
lutes 146; on the kanun 155,
157–158; on the kanun, modern 155;
pedaling 394; playing 134, 151, 174,
490; plucking 111, 157; rubato 490;
west 111
tecvid 67, 102. See tajwīd, Qurʾānic chant
“Tefhimü’l Makamat fi Tevlid-in Neğamat”
203. See also Hızır Ağa
tehallus 234
tel-tanburası 104
temcid 41, 93, 95, 102, 282
tempo
performance 340; retardation 335,
342, 347, 415, 429, 447–450, 489–490
terennüm 285, 311, 316, 314, 488
terkib (Ottoman)
catalogue of 256–257;
“connected” 267, 466; system 255,
265, 299
terkib-i intikal 329
terkib-i sani 329
terkibs
Acem-Aşirani 211, 237, 242;
Acem-Buselik 256; Acem-Yegahi
237, 242, 298; Araban 255; Arazbar
237, 239, 255, 273, 406; Arazbar-
Zemzeme 256; Aşiran 428;
Aşiran-Buselik 237; Aşiran-
Zemzeme 256; Baba Tahir 237–238,
242, 273; Beste-Isfahan 241–242,
254; Bestenigar 254–255, 298;
Buselik 239, 242; Buselik-Aşirani
154, 237, 239, 246; Büzürk 242, 299;
Çargah 239; Dügah 237, 298;
Evç-Buselik 256; Evçara 256;
Gerdaniye-Buselik 256;
Geveşt 186, 252; Hicaz 191,
237, 239; Hicaz- Zemzeme 256;
549
Hisar 239, 298; Hisar-Buselik 256;
Humayun 241; Huzi-Buselik 242;
Hüzzam 249, 254–255, 299;
Hüzzam-i Cedid 249; Hüzzam-i
Kadim 255; Hüzzam-i Rumi 255;
Isfahan 237–239, 241–243, 254,
299; Isfahãn-Zemzeme 256;
Karcığar 241; Küçek 241, 298;
Küçek-Sünbüle 237; Küçek-
Zemzeme 256; Kürdi 239, 256;
Mahur 235; Maye 238, 298;
Muhalef 238; Muhayyer-Buselik
238; Müstear 255, 257; Neva-
Aşirani 246; Nevruz 238; Nevruz-i
Acem 238; Nihavend 237, 239–240;
Nikriz 235, 239; Nişabur 239,
249, 254; Nişaburek 254;
Nuhüft 238, 245, 256, 298, 371;
Nühüft-i Kadim 256; Pençgah 235;
Rekb 233, 252; Ruy-i Irak 242;
Saba 467; Saba Zemzeme 467;
Sazkar 214, 235–236; Segah 298;
Şehnaz 233; Şehnaz-Buselik 256;
Selmek 252, 255; Sipihr 298;
Şiraz 363; Sultani Irak 257;
Sünbüle 237–238; Suzidil 256;
Suzinak 256; Uşşak- Aşirani 242;
Uzzal 237; Zavıl 254;
Zavli 252; Zemzeme 256, 467;
Zîrefken 298–299; Zirgüle 363
terminology
current 224; for melodic progression,
Cantemir’s 266; indigenous 195;
modal 233; modern 228; modern
Turkish musical 224; Ottoman
literary 418; Turkish 224
tesbih ilahi hymns 75
teslim
of Beyati peşrev by Emin Dede 213
teşrih
“Tetkik ü Tahkik” 26, 85, 135, 215, 255, 257,
260, 268, 270, 306. See also Abdülbaki
Dede tetrachord 85
augmented second 210, 217, 238–239,
255, 344, 467; Hicaz 210; Shur 210;
Uşşak 210; Uzzaļ 210
Tevfik Kolaylı (Neyzen) 85
tevşih ilahi hymns 95
550 Index

text Transoxiana 9, 19, 31, 48, 99–100, 108, 112,

devotional Arabic 302; Persian 90;
poetic 280, 303; sacred 12; Safavid
musical 292; syllabic 178, 285
tezkire (tadhkira)
Ottoman 22
theoretical knowledge of music 35, 65
theories of music, medieval 221
theorist
Arab 222; Iranian 208;
Transoxanian 198; Turkish 277;
Turkish, pre-modern 130
theory
Arab musical 222; classical
Muslim musicological 199;
current 258; earlier 11;
Greek-derived 208; Iranian 212;
modern Arab music 222; modern
Arab music, periods 222;
modern Turkish 206–207,
209; of government, “classical”
Otoman 48; of Turkish music 222;
Systematist 223; tetrachordal 225;
Turkish 212; Turkish musical 221
thematic development 298
third
major 216; minor 249; neutral 262
timar 97
timbral
arenas 102; register 103
timbre 133, 135, 140
times of the day 221
Timur 34, 317–319
Timurid
courts 36; era 99
tiz perdeler 225
Toderini, Giambatista 25
“Tomtom İmamı” 74
Tonal center
hierarchy of 347; of Neva 373
tone, neutral 219
tonic 259
Topkapı Palace
Archives 63
Trabzon 58–59, 66
Transitional Era 26
transmission
literate manuscript 412
174–175, 177, 180–181, 281, 290, 315–316
Transoxanian
theorist 198
“transporting terkib” 329, 357
transposed makams 229
transposition 22–23, 219, 224, 229–231, 250,
254–256, 263, 270, 296, 300, 305–306,
322, 346, 350, 353, 364, 366, 396, 407,
466
traveller, foreign 101
travelogue
European 69
Treasurer 72
Treasury 20, 68, 72, 75, 297
treatise-writing 16
treatises
Arabic 265; Bukharan 420; in
Arabic 282; in Persian 315;
Indo-Persian 122; Ottoman 199;
Persian 122; theoretical 288;
Turkish 84; Turkish language 198
trichord 240, 458–459
Tripoli 44, 93
trumpet 102. See also nefir
tüdük 315
“Tulip Period” (Lale Devri) 22
tuning
board 114; frets, horsehair 122;
key 122; pegs 122; pegs,
wooden 122; yegah/çargah 203;
yegah/dügah 203; yegah/rast 203
Tunisia 13, 78, 278, 482
Turco-Arabian
makam 261; music 223; music,
modern 281; musical zone 346;
system 206; tradition, modern phase
of 221; zone, modern and early
modern music 279
Turco-Iranian cultural zone 99
Turco-Mongol musical influence 315
Turfan basin 314
Turkestan, Chinese 200
Turkey
Anatolian 485; contemporary 212;
modern 29; Ottoman 293n15;
Persian musical influence in 332
Turkhan 23
Index
Turkic
cultures, nomadic 315; genre 315;
languages 280; musical aesthetics
101, 314; musical heritage 482;
peoples 201; qobyz 112
Turkish
art music 6, 54; art music, Ottoman 7;
art music, Persian 4, 486; art
tradition 173; classical music 4,
6; classical music, modern 219;
culture 81; folk music 6; folk music,
Anatolian 452, 470, 482; form of
peşrev 408; language 17; language
texts 182; literature 143; musical
life 89; musical practice 247;
musical structures 420; musical
style 376; oral tradition 36, 40,
303, 310, 336; practice 338; practice,
modern 206; Republic 6; Republic,
establishment of the 6; scholars,
modern 260; television 62;
tradition 59; tradition, later 17;
writers, earlier 266
Turkish music
Anatolian 404; Azerbaijanian 484;
instrumental x; modern 297;
modern, frequency of makams
in 238; modern era of 26; mystical
“founder” of 29; notating 89;
older practice of 135; Ottoman 118;
Persian 62; repertoire 14; secular
39; theory of 212; urban 401
“Turkishness” 7
Turkmen 39, 170, 201, 315, 471
Turkmenian Republic 453
Türkmenani, eda-i 39
“Turkmen style” 170
Turks
Anatolian 481; Central Asian 200;
nomadic 315; Ottoman 116;
upper-class 55
türkü
from Konya 249
ud
decline of the 130–131; fretted 108;
player (avvad) 39; un-fretted 108
ud al-kāmil 108
551
ud al-qadīm 108
ufor 453
Uftade, Şeyh 95
Uighur
musical culture 162; musical tradition
315; qalun 123; tanbur 200;
Turkic 314
ulamāʾ
elite 79; higher Ottoman 79;
musicians 75
ünsiyyet 285, 296–297
urban
genres 286; musics 9; musics,
studies on 9; population 55;
professionalism 103
Urfa 45, 472
usage, modern 252
Usküb (Skopje) 163
Usküdar 94
usta 63, 64n15
ustad 73
ustad-i kamil 70
usul
catalogue of patterns 285; conception
of 347; cycle 343, 348, 400, 437;
system 312, 314, 321, 335, 341–343, 401,
415, 417
usul-i musiki 12
usuls
ağır aksak 343; ağır aksak semai 343;
ağır berefşan 450; ağır düyek 429;
aksak 343; aksak fahte 449; aksak
semai 343, 457, 470; berefşan xxx,
324, 326, 392, 448–449–450; çenber
324, 339, 363n5, 399; 324 curcuna 471;
darb-i fethi 183, 323, 327–328;
darbeyn 183; devr-i kebir 183,
343; devr-i revan 400; duyak 319;
düyek 183; evfer 187, 189; evsat
183, 314; fahte 449; fer-i muhammes
408; hafif 343; hajaž 319; lenk
berefşan 449; lenk fahte 449;
muhammes 343, 320; muxammas
316; muxämmäs 319; muzaaf devr-i
kebir 90, 187, 339; nim hafif 343;
nim sakil 343; ramal 319; rawan
189; remel 243; sakil 334n5; säqil
316; segin semai 304; semai 465,
552 Index

semai (cont.) vocal music

482–483; semai-i harbi 469; semai-i courtly 62
lenk 469–470; semai-i raks 469; vocal trills 283
sengin semai 304, 457, 468, 470, 474; vocalist
sofyan 176, 400–401, 444; turki-zarb secular 56
319; ufar 189; ufor 453; yürük volume 19–20, 25, 76, 100, 151, 184, 391–392
semai 182, 187, 482; zincir 183
Uzbek Wallachia 56
conquest 106; form of peşrev 452; waṣlah 290
musician 200 wax-balls 165
Uzbekistan wedding ceremony 316
former Soviet 453 Western
uzun hava 278n2, 283, 295 art music 6; Asia 4, 9, 176, 184; Asia, art
uzzal (muqam) 217, 220, 240, 318, 354, 358 musics of 184; cultural features 53;
music 5, 207; music, genres of 5;
vaiz 75, 94 sharp sign 422
vakf 75 Westernization 85
Van Mour 155, 157 “whole notes” 195, 434
variation whole step 195, 207
intervallic 354; musical 283; wind group 161
rhythmic 283 wind orchestra, unofficial 103
varsaği 12, 94, 179, 184 women
Vasilaki 128 participation in the samāʿ 79
vassal rulers 97 wood 106–107, 114, 117, 122, 146–147, 153, 155
Vaziri, Ali Naqi 220 worship, music in 83
Vecihe Daryal (See under Daryal) 157 wrestling 454
Vehbi Osman Çelebi 71 Wright, Owen 90, 317, 416
“velehu” 329 wusta (vosta) 314
velvele 81, 340
velveleli strokes 416 xana (Transoxanian) 317–318, 320, 327, 330,
Venus 81–82, 117 343
vezn 323 xanändä 32, 34
vezn-i kebir 424, 447, 469n7
vezn-i sağır 448, 469n7 Yahudi Kara Kaş 40
viola d’amore Yahudi Yako 40
virtuoso 40 Yahya Çelebi 46
violin 41, 106–107, 125, 127–128, 175 Yakub (Sultan, Akkoyunlu; r. 1479–1490) 97
violin-playing 41 Yaşar, Necdet
violinist 127, 161 taksim Neva 458
visual depictions Yavaşça, Allaettin xxiii, 45
indigenous 100; Turkish 100 yeden 258, 350, 402, 406, 458, 461, 465, 475
vizier 13, 132 yeka 198
vocal art tradition, secular 94 Yekta, Rauf 5, 9, 19, 22, 25, 91, 127, 201, 207,
vocal genres 212, 222, 227, 332, 365, 411
composed modulating 302; dervish 41, yeltme 167–168
62; Iranian 181; light urban 286; Yemen 278
non-makam 179; secular 89; yonkar 167–168
Sufi 284 Young Turks 5
Index 553

yürük semai 25, 179, 182, 187, 454, 482 Zekai Dede 5, 332, 411, 487
Yusuf Çelebi 47, 71 Zeki Mehmed Ağa 140, 166, 335
Yusuf Köle 163 zemin 299
Yusuf Paşa 335 zemin-miyan 297
zeyl 317, 325, 323, 327–328, 334–335, 415, 455
Zaharya Efendi 42 Zeyn al-Abidin 143
zakir 94–95 Zeyni 66, 104
Zakir Hasan 379 Zeynülabidin, Avvad 65
zakirbaşı 94 zikr 19, 78, 84, 87, 90–91, 93–94, 103–103,
Zalzal 314 287, 488–489, 492
zarbi 411 zither 123, 155
zaxma 318 Zuhra 82, 117
zeamet 70, 73 zurna
zecel 287 player 445
 i near and middle east

Edited by
HdO
maribel fierro . m. şükrü han�oğlu
d. fairchild ruggles . florian schwarz

Volume 177

works of lasting value, under the editorship of major scholars in the field
Handbook of Oriental Studies, a careful selection of scholarly reference
handbuch der orientalistik
handbook of oriental studies
Between 1600 and 1750 Ottoman Turkish music differentiated
itself from an older Persianate art music and developed the
genres antecedent to modern Turkish art music. Based on a
translation of Prince Cantemir’s seminal Book of the Science
of Music from the early eighteenth century, this work is the
first to bring together contemporaneous notations, musical
treatises, literary sources, travellers’ accounts and iconography.
These present a synthetic picture of the emergence of
Ottoman composed and improvised instrumental music.
A detailed comparison of items in the notated Collection
of Cantemir and of Bobowski – from fifty years earlier –
together with relevant treatises, reveal key aspects of
modality, melodic progression and rhythmic structures.

Walter Feldman, PhD (1980, Columbia University), is a

leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music.
He is author of the books Klezmer: Music, History, & Memory
(Oxford 2016) and From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes: Music,
Poetry, and Mysticism in the Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh 2022).

isbn 978-90-04-53125-3

brill.com/ho1
*hIJ0A4|VTRSVt issn 0169-9423