Music of the 16th-century Khurasan in the 17th-century Ottoman Sources: Evidences from Darwish ʿAli Changi’s Treatise on Music

Abstract

The compositions attributed to the early 15th-century music theorist and composer of Jalayirid and Timurid courts, Khwāja ʿAbd al-Qādir, in the Turkish musical repertoire, are usually considered to be a later pseudographic repertoire created with the intention of forging a link between medieval practice and the Ottoman tradition. Taking the music treatise of the late 16th-century musician from Khurāsān, Darwīsh ʿAlī Changī, into consideration, the present study sheds light on the Central Asian, Khurāsāni origins of eight such musical compositions from the 17thcentury Ottoman repertoire. The results of this study show that some of the pieces mentioned by Darwīsh ʿAlī as creations of composers such as Shah Pīladūz, Ri ā Samarqandī, Darwīsh Shādī, ʿAlī Kārmāl, Khwāja ʿAbd al-Qādir, and Sayf al-Mi r, reappear in the late 17th-century Ottoman sources, when the names of all but two of the composers (Khwāja ʿAbd al-Qādir and Sayf alMi r) had been forgotten. Thus, the survival of a 16th-century central Asian musical repertoire in 17th-century Ottoman repertoire is demonstrated.