"La musica dell'Herat timuride e i suoi echi"

With the accession to the throne of Šāhruḫ (1377-1447), who succeeded his father Tīmūr (1336-1405), the capital of the Timurid empire was moved from Samarkand to Herat - nowadays western Afghanistan - which thus became the new pole of attraction for artists and intellectuals from the vast area. Over time, the city became the fulcrum of an exceptional season of cultural flowering that scholars collectively refer to as the 'Timurid Renaissance', whose apogee occurred between 1470 and 1506, when Herat was ruled by Sultan Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (1438-1506). The article examine the music of this “Renaissance”; we begin by looking at musicological treatises composed by authors who were often also poets and men of letters. We then focus on the work and influence of ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Ġaybī Marāġī (Marāġa, 1360? - Herat, 1435), who lived at the court of Herat for about twenty years. He was at the same time a multi-instrumentalist, a cantor, a composer and a great musicologist of the Arab-Islamic tradition, representative of the so-called Systematist school. After this section dedicated to to the genius of Marāġī, I I move, then, to the cultural milieu of Herat and its great exponents, who were often also musicologists. Among them Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Rahmān Ǧāmī (1414-1492), considered the last great exponent of medieval classical poetry; the younger ʿAlī Šīr Navāʾī (1441-1501), a minister (vizīr), fellow student and personal friend of Bāyqarā, author of many works composed mainly in čagatay Turkish but also in Persian under the pseudonym Fani. Together with them, the lesser-known Kamāl al-Dīn Šīr-Alī Banā'ī (also Bannā'ī or Binā'ī, 1453-1512), also a poet, musician and musicologist. After this, I leave the floor to the remarks on the poets, miniaturists and musicians and composers of Herat made by Emperor Bābur (1483-1530), who visited the city on his way down to conquer India. As in a musical suite, at this point I make a modulation and dwell on the evidence found in the manuscripts that allow us to reconstruct the status of musicians at the Timurid court. In the following section, entitled 'Listening to the Miniatures' I take into exam many miniatures of the epoch depicting musicians: from which it is possible to reconstruct adopted musical instruments, as well as forms and modes of performance. I move toward the conclusion by taking into exam the 'echoes' of Timurid Herat school: the first is the influence on Ottoman art music (maqām), Uzbek-Tajik art music (shash maqom) and on the Mughal world. From this I move to a series of recordings dedicated to Marāġī and to the ambient of Herat that should be intended as an 'echo'.