Learn More About Islam

The Music Composer

Posted by Rendy Adam Fitriadi on Saturday, April 3, 2010 , under Art In Islam, Music In Islam, Science In Islam | comments (0)

All this time, we only know that the reliable composer is like Mozart, Bach, or any other composers. Besides, before that Islam has given a genius musicians: Al-Farabi, the real name is Abu Nasr Muhammad Ibnu Muhammad Ibnu Tarkhan Ibnu Uzlaq Al Farabi. He was born in 874 A.D (260H) in Transoxia Wasij located in the Region of Turkey. His father was poor army, but all that did not prevent him to study in Baghdad. Why in Baghdad, this is because in those days all the sciences are gathered in Syria or Iraq.

After living in Iraq, Al Farabi decided to move to Damascus, before continuing his trip to Halab. While there, he was humble in the palace of Saif al-Daulah with four dirhams a day's salary. This led him to live in a state that completely lacked. Although Al-Farabi was an ascetic, but he was not an expert of Sufism. He is a scientist who was quite famous in that day. He is capable of the various languages.

If we talk about his expertise in music, his songs leave an impression so directly to the listener, Besides having the ability to play music, he also has created an art that later became the identity of the Arabs, that is a lute music.

But the ability of Al-Farabi's not just that. He also have a deep knowledge in medicine, science, mathematics, and history. And he is a scientist of philosophy. Moreover, his prowess in Islamic philosophy can overcome other experts such as Al-Kindi and Ibn Rushd.

In the field of music, his largest donation in history is a book containing the teaching and Islamic music theory : Al-Musiqa. Just so you know, this book is still considered to be the most important music books in the field of music worldwide. You see, Al-Farabi is said that first put the basics of musical notes and everything which associated with modern music today.

As a bona fide scientist, Al-Farabi also shows the trend resulted in several studies in the medical field. Although he is studies in this field does not make it famous, but his views had a substantial contribution to the development of medical science in his day.

Al-Farabi have a very Qanaah (simply) character, not greedy of wealth and the world. He is prefer to concentrating in knowledge than worldly wealth. That is why Al-Farabi living in poverty, and he was died in 950 A.D (339H).

Islamic Calligraphy

Posted by Rendy Adam Fitriadi on Friday, April 2, 2010 , under Art In Islam | comments (0)

CALLIGRAPHY

Muslims have always deemed calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, the noblest of the arts. The first chapters of the Qur_an revealed to the prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century (suras 96 and 68) mention the pen and writing. Writing in Arabic script soon became a hallmark of Islamic civilization, found on everything from buildings and coins to textiles and ceramics, and scribes and calligraphers became the most honored type of artist. We know the names, and even the biographies, of more calligraphers than any other type of artist. Probably because of the intrinsic link between writing and the revelation, Islamic calligraphy is meant to convey an aura of effortlessness and immutability,and the individual hand and personality are sublimated to the overall impression of stateliness and grandeur. In this way Islamic calligraphy differs markedly from other great calligraphic traditions, notably the Chinese, in which the written text is meant to impart the personality of the calligrapher and recall the moment of its creation. Islamic calligraphy, by contrast, is timeless.

The reed pen (qalam) was the writing implement par excellence in Islamic civilization. The brush, used for calligraphy in China and Japan, was reserved for painting in the Islamic lands. In earliest times Muslim calligraphers penned their works on parchment, generally made from the skins of sheep and goats, but from the eighth century parchment was gradually replaced by the cheaper and more flexible support of paper. From the fourteenth century virtually all calligraphy in the Muslim lands was written on paper. Papermakers developed elaborately decorated papers to complement the fine calligraphy, and the colored, marbled, and gold-sprinkled papers used by calligraphers in later periods are some of the finest ever made.

The Arabic alphabet. Arabic calligraphy is done with a qalam, a type of reed pen, rather than with a brush as in East Asia. Islam’s reverence for the written word contributes to calligraphy’s status as the religion’s most honorable art form. © HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE/CORBIS

Almost all Islamic calligraphy is written in Arabic script. The Qur_an was revealed in that language, and the sanctity of the revelation meant that the script was adopted for many other languages, such as new Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu. Unlike many other scripts that have at least twodistinct forms of writing—a monumental or printed form in which the letters are written separately and a cursive or handwritten form in which they are connected—Arabic has only the cursive form, in which some, but not all, letters are connected and assume different forms depending on their position in the word (initial, medial, final, and independent).

The cursive nature of Arabic script allowed calligraphers to develop many different styles of writing, which are usually grouped under two main headings: rectilinear and rounded. Since the eighteenth century, scholars have often called the rectilinear styles “Kufic,” after the city of Kufa in southern Iraq, which was an intellectual center in early Islamic times. This name is something of a misnomer, for as yet we have no idea which particular rectilinear style this name denoted. Scholars have proposed various other names to replace kufic, including Old or Early Abbasid style, but these names are not universally accepted, in part because they carry implicit political meanings, and many scholars continue to use the term kufic.

Similarly, scholars often called the rounded styles naskh, from the verb nasakha (to copy). The naskh script is indeed the most common hand used for transcription and the one upon which modern styles of typography are based, but the name is also something of a misnomer, for it refers to only one of a group of six rounded hands that became prominent in later Islamic times. As with kufic, scholars have proposed several other names to replace naskh, such as new style (often abbreviated N.S.), or new Abbasid style, but these names, too, are

not universally accepted. Medieval sources mention the names of many other calligraphic hands, but so far it has been difficult, even impossible, to match many of these names with distinct styles of script. Very few sources describe the characteristics of a particular style or give illustrations of particular scripts.

Furthermore, the same names may have been applied to different styles in different places and at different times. Hence it may never be possible to link the names of specific scripts given in the sources with the many, often fragmentary, manuscripts at hand, especially from the early period. Both the rectilinear and the rounded styles were used for writing from early Islamic times, but in the early period the rounded style seems to have been a book hand used for ordinary correspondence, while the rectilinear style was reserved for calligraphy. Although no examples of early calligraphy on parchment can be definitively dated before the late ninth century, the importance of the rectilinear style in early Islamic times is clear from other media with inscriptions, such as coins, architecture, and monumental epigraphy. The Fihrist by Ibn al-Nadim (d. 995) records the names of calligraphers who worked in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, and both coins and the inscriptions on the first example of Islamic architecture, the Dome of the Rock erected in Jerusalem by the Umayyad caliph _Abd al-Malik in 692, show that from earliest times Umayyad calligraphers applied such aesthetic principles as balance, symmetry, elongation, and stylization to transform ordinary writing into calligraphy.

Calligraphers in early Islamic times regularly used the rectilinear styles to transcribe manuscripts of the Qur_an. Indeed, the rectilinear styles might be deemed Qur_anic hands, for we know only one other manuscript—an unidentified genealogical text in Berlin (Staatsbibliotheque no. 379)— written in a rectilinear script. None of these early manuscripts of the Qur_an is signed or dated, and most survive only in fragmentary form, and so scholars are still refining other methods, both paleographic and codicological, to group and localize the scripts used in these early parchment manuscripts of the Qur_an. The major change in later Islamic times was the gradual adoption and adaptation of round hands for calligraphy. From the ninth century calligraphers transformed the round hands into artistic scripts suitable for transcribing the Qur_an and other prestigious texts. The earliest surviving copy of the Qur_an written in a rounded hand is a small manuscript, nowdispersed but with the largest section preserved in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (ms. 1417). It bears a note in Persian saying that the manuscript was corrected by a certain Ahmad ibn _Ali ibn Abu ’l-Qasm al-Khayqani in June 905,and it is tacitly accepted that the rounded hand was developed in Iran or nearby Iraq, heartland of the Abbasid caliphate. In the ensuing centuries calligraphers continued to develop and elaborate the rounded style, and from the fourteenth century virtually all manuscripts of the Qur_an were written in one of the six round scripts known as the Six Pens (Arabic, al-aqlam al-sitta; Persian, shish qalam). These comprise three pairs of majuscule-miniscule hands, thuluth-naskh, muhaqqaq-rayhan, and tawqi_-riqa_, and calligraphers delighted in juxtaposing the different scripts, particularly the larger and smaller variants of the same pair.

Various explanations have been proposed for this transformation of rounded book hands into proportioned scripts suitable for calligraphing fine manuscripts. These explanations range from the political (e.g., the spread of orthodox Sunni Islam) to the sociohistorical (e.g., the new role of the chancery scribe as copyist and calligrapher), but perhaps the most convincing are the practical. The change from rectilinear to rounded script coincided with the change from parchment to paper, and the new style of writing might well be connected with a new type of reed pen, a new method of sharpening the nib, or a new way that the pen was held, placed on the page, or moved across it. In the same way, the adoption of paper engendered the adoption of a new type of black soot ink (midad) that replaced the dark brown, tannin-based ink (hibr) used on parchment.

From the fourteenth century calligraphers, especially thosein the eastern Islamic lands, developed more stylized forms of rounded script. The most distinctive is the hanging script known as nasta_liq, which was particularly suitable for transcribing Persian, in which many words end in letters with large bowls, such as ya_ or ta_. Persian calligraphers commonly used nasta_liq to pen poetic texts, in which the rounded bowls at the end of each hemistich form a visual chain down the right side of the columns on a page. They also used nasta_liq to pen poetic specimens (qit_a). These elaborately planned calligraphic compositions typically contain a Persian quatrain written in colored and gold-dusted inks on fine, brightly colored and highly polished paper and set in elaborately decorated borders. The swooping strokes of the letters and bowls provide internal rhythm and give structure to the composition. In contrast to the anonymous works of the early period, these calligraphic specimens are frequently signed and dated, and connoisseurs vied to assemble fine collections, which were often mounted in splendid albums.

Calligraphy continues to be an important art form in modern times, despite the adoption of the Latin alphabet in some countries such as Turkey. Some calligraphers are trying to revive the traditional styles, notably the Six Pens, and investigate and rediscover traditional techniques and materials.Societies teaching calligraphy flourish. The Anjuman-e Khushnvisan-e Iran (Society of Iranian Calligraphers), for example, has branches in all the main cities of the country, with thousands of students. Other artists are extending the calligraphic tradition to new media, adopting calligraphy in new forms, ranging from three-dimensional sculpture to oil painting on canvas. More than any other civilization, Islam values the written word.

Art In Islam

Posted by Rendy Adam Fitriadi on Thursday, March 25, 2010 , under Art In Islam | comments (0)

In phase of history, we can say that the people always ask about what a meaning of art form. The philosophers, since Greece age until now has provided various definition of what is an art, in this time we try to explain one of many definition that we can take.

Van Hoeve in Encyclopedia page 3080 and 3081 explain about the definition of arts, an arts it's a beautiful sense in a human soul to communicate what their feelings that can be catch by sense of hearing (sing), vision (painting), and motion (dancing or drama)

Music is a form of arts which related with instruments and rhythm. This arts form can't be seperated with a methods how to create some note. Besides that, music arts divided into a two kind such as vocals music (singing) and instrumentalia.

Music can be combined between an arts of instrumentalia and vocal musics (read:singing). Instrumentalia is sound arts that can be played with instruments, but the vocals music is an toning the rhyme only with voice/vocals without music instruments.

Music In Islam History

Generally, Arabian are music talented especially vocals (sing) music. In Hijaaz we can see people played music with flute, tambourine, lute, drum and others, thats called IQA Musics

After arabs embracing Islam, their music talent is more growing with new soul and spirit. When the Prophet (PBUH) alive and Hijaaz became a political center, the music development not to be reduce.

In many Hadeeth book we can find a source about music in an early of Islam ages, for examples, in hadeeth Imam Ahmad narrator by 'A'isha ra (See Sahih Bukhari Hadith No. 5162, TARTĪB Musnad Imam Ahmad, Volume XVI, pp. 213. See also: Ash-Syaukani, Nail-UL-AUTHĀR Volume VI, pp. 187):

(أَنَّهَا زَفَّتِ امْرَأَةً إِلى رَجُلٍ مِنَ الأَنْصَارِ فَقَالَ النَّبِيُّ (ص): يَا عَائِشَةُ مَا كَانَ مَعَكُمْ مِنْ لَهْوٍ فَإِنَّ الأَنْصَارَ يُعْجِبُهُمُ اللَّهْوُ

mean:

“he (the prophet) ever marry off between a women and a man from anshar, the prophet (PBUH) said: 'O A'isyah is there no show (singing perfomance)? Actually anshar people love the show'”

Music Theory Author

1.Ibn Misjah (d. 705 AD).
2.Yunus ibn Sulaiman al-Khatib (d. 785 AD). He is the first author of music in Islam. His musical books have very high value, so that many authors from European refer to him.
3.Khalil ibn Ahmad (d. 791 AD). He is a writer of notes and rhythms theory.
4.Ishak bin Ibrahim al-Mausully (d. 850 AD). He is a writer of music book titled “Kitab-ul-ALHAN WAL-ANGHĀM (Not Books and Rhythm)”. He is well known as IMAM-UL-MUGHANNIYĪN (King Singer).

Music Education In Islamic States

Besides the creation many music books at the end of the Umayyad Daula. At the time, Caliphs and other officials give a big concern in the development of music education. (See Prof.. Hasmy A., History of Islamic culture, pp. 320-321).

Many music schools founded in Islamic countries in various cities and regions, there is intermediate and high level schools. Sa'id 'Abd-ul-Mu'min (d. 1294 AD) is the one who success established a music school. One of the reason why in the Daula 'Abbasids founded many music school that is because requirements to be able to work in the palace and tycoon was able to sing and play music

This is a list name of male and female singers:

Male singers:

1. Ma'bad.

2. Al-Kharīd.

3. Two brothers Hakam and 'Umar al-Wady.

4. Fulaih ibn Abi 'Aura,

5. Siyāth.

6. Nasyīth.

7. Ibrahim al-Mausully and his son Isaac al-Mausully.

Female singers:

1. Neam (Caliph Ma'mun palace singer).

2. Bazel and substance-ul-Khal (Caliph Harun al-Rashid palace singer).

3. Basbas (Caliph al-Mahdi palace singer).

4. Habhabah (Caliph Yazid I favourite singer), and

5. Sallamah (Khlīfah Yazid II palace singer).