The question of continuity and connections between past musical periods and the current one in classical Iranian music has been at times passively assumed and at times critically explored, but generally left ambiguous. Specifically, gaps in evidence-based scholarship have left the question of dastgāh (classical Persian music) music’s connection with the systematist music treatises—such as those of Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (d. 1294) and ʿAbd al-Qader Maraghi (d. 1435)—and their legacies for the most part factually obscure. Amir Hosein Pourjavady’s Making Music in Iran from the Fifteenth to the Early Twentieth Century provides a significant scholarly contribution to the study of Persian music in this regard. Offering wide-ranging historical accounts of musical thought and practice that span five centuries, this work comprehensively indexes the modal systems, rhythmic practices, and compositional genres that evolved through Iran’s Timurid, Safavid, and Qajar periods. Through close engagement with musical treatises, song-text collections, archival court documents, and visual and oral sources, the author reconstructs a complex source-based narrative of the development of musical ideas, practices, and traditions over time. Significantly, this book considers both the modal and rhythmic theoretical traditions that have been cultivated over the centuries, while also giving insight into how these traditions were lived and institutionally embedded practices.
The book’s six chapters address this five-century time span in two parts. Part 1, “Historical and Social Context,” traces the musical practices of the urban tradition through their known musical centers, their patrons, and the musicians themselves. Part 2, “Music Theories and Practices,” shifts to theoretical and compositional domains, offering thorough analyses of modal theory, rhythmic systems, and musical genres from the 15th to the early 20th century.
The book’s opening chapter frames Persian music with a meticulous examination of patrons and patronage centers. Through a comprehensive body of treatises, the study directs attention from music theory to the broader task of charting a multigenerational network of patronage institutions that bound together musical life across the Middle East and Central Asia for centuries. In this way, Pourjavady moves beyond simply analyzing texts as autonomous repositories of knowledge to consider the social dynamics and cultural conventions in which these texts were created. He accomplishes this by assembling a collage of sources alongside these treatises, such as memoirs of sovereigns and courtiers, letters, European travelogues, poetry, court payment records, manuals of governance and government structure, miniature paintings, and tombstones. Through a close reading of these sources, a clearer picture of the social dynamics of music, its categories, and its functions within the court and aristocratic milieu emerges. The reader is exposed to countless names of prominent musicians attached to the patrons and centers for each period. This network of patronage centers—large centers such as Tabriz, Herat, Qazvin, Shiraz, and Isfahan; and smaller centers such as Mashhad, Gilan (Lahijan), Sistan, Ray, Kashan, and Natanz—also becomes a productive canvas upon which Pourjavady’s five-century narrative is scaffolded throughout the book. Of equal importance, the connections between these centers, the movement of musicians and ideas, and the transmission of practices through the centuries are presented. The example of ʿAbd al-Qader Maraghi stands out; the author traces his movements from Baghdad to Samarqand, Tabriz, and finally Herat—each relocation prompted by conquest, shifting centers of power, or the arrival of new patrons who drew him into service in other courts.
Of the many subjects discussed in this richly sourced work, the role of women within musical culture is a common thread in the first three chapters. Significant attention is given to the music of courtesans and concubines within the urban and courtly milieu between the 15th and 19th centuries. For each period, courtesan roles and their prevalence, ranks of artistry, performance venues, economies, taxation precedents, and statuses are examined in detail. Pourjavady’s stance on the role of courtesans in the transmission of musical knowledge from each musical period to the next represents a substantial intervention in Persian music historiography. Avoiding Orientalist and sexualized depictions, the author describes upper-class courtesans in the Safavid and Zand periods as “exponents of the fine arts” and “custodians of refined culture” (p. 84). Through this framing, highly sought-after courtesans emerge as soft links that connect the musical legacies of the Safavid courts to the Zand and Qajar courts. As the chronology of Chapter 2 unfolds, the reader is introduced to prominent female artists by name, clarifying these connections—figures like Ghazal during Shah ʿAbbas’s reign (r. 1581–1628), Molla Fatema and Morassaʿ, and Shakha Nabat, during Karim Khan’s reign (r. 1751–79), and Mina and Zohreh during Fath Ali Shah’s reign (r. 1797–1834). Through these figures possible links of continuity between the 18th and 19th centuries are posited. Specifically, Pourjavady highlights how Mina and Zohreh, pillars of courtesan training in the early Qajar court, are said to have come from the former Safavid capital of Isfahan. Furthermore, many of their contemporaries invited to Tehran by Fath-ʿAli Shah were connected to Shiraz’s traditions from the second half of the 18th century—traditions also linked to Safavid court culture. Reading this together forms a continuous thread linking the musical legacies of the Safavid, Zand, and Qajar courts from the 16th to the 19th century.
This contribution reframes how we think about transmission and musical continuity in the classical tradition, as not only does courtesan culture appear as an enduring practice throughout history in these patronage centers, but individual courtesans themselves also become keys to understanding how traditions spread between centers through time as a result of migration and summons by patrons. Pourjavady’s emphasis on the presence and centrality of women performers inside and outside the court invites scholars to rethink what the contributions of women were to the totality of the anonymous classical musical repertoire (taṣnifs or vocal songs specifically), musical sensibilities, and compositional forms up until the second half of the 19th century, an area of historical scholarship that undoubtedly warrants more investigation.
Pourjavady’s close reading of sources also challenges long-held characterizations of the Safavid rulers’ antagonistic relationship to music proper. A common narrative in Persian music historiography frames the bans on music during the Safavid period as a turn toward religious dogma, characterizing—sometimes anachronistically—musicians as passive victims of moralistic repression. Pourjavady’s research offers new insights that complicate this view, revealing the social contexts in which music was performed, the economic structures that sustained musicians, and the illicit pursuits that frequently characterized the profession. In reviewing Shah Tahmasb’s often cited repentance (tawba) and his subsequent 1555 decrees limiting public entertainment, Pourjavady highlights the specific social spaces targeted in the decree: the sharāb-khāna (wine tavern), bang-khāna (hashish house), maʿjun-khāna (drug cocktail house), buza-khāna (rice beer house), bayt al-loṭf (brothel), qomār-khāna (gambling house), and qavvāl-khāna (courtesan salon). An illuminating contribution in this work is Pourjavady’s source-based clarification that the qavvāl-khāna was indeed a courtesan salon and not a general venue for music or storytelling, as has been assumed to date. With this new information Pourjavady challenges the prevailing assumption that such bans reflected opposition to music per se, and reveals a larger network of illicit activity within the socioeconomic milieu of musical practice. His interpretation is reinforced by archival materials—appointment letters and correspondence between courtiers—that document Shah Tahmasb’s criticisms of appointing musicians like Ostad Zaytun to official positions, because of their reputations for alcoholism, sexual exploitation, and associations with elite circles that coerced young boys into companionship.
These records further reveal a formalized institutional structure for courtesan salons and sex work complete with taxation systems that generated substantial state revenue. The scale of the institution was significant—by the early 17th century, over 12,000 prostitutes and courtesans were registered in Isfahan, constituting roughly five percent of the city’s female population. Through letters, travel accounts, taxation records, and court chronicles, Pourjavady reframes Safavid rulers like Shah Tahmasb and Shah Sultan Hosayn not simply as religious fanatics opposed to music itself, but as monarchs intent on dismantling the fiscal base and social milieus of courtesan salons, as well as other venues of vice, prostitution, and gambling where music was often present. This recontextualization situates Safavid music bans within a broader moral and economic policy landscape, offering a more complex picture of the intersections between musical life, sex-work economies, and political authority in Safavid Iran.
The scope of this review does not permit discussion of all the theoretical contributions this voluminous work has to offer in Part 2 of the book. However, there are certain contributions I would like to highlight. Like much of the first part of the book, the second part also convincingly reveals connecting fibers that link the current dastgāh tradition to the theoretical treatises of the distant past. A dizzying amount of systematist and nonsystematist treatises are reviewed and put into clarifying tables and lists. Importantly, several of the nonsystematist treatises that had to date been unexamined are analyzed thoroughly. As an example, the author reviews anonymous treatises like Dar Bayān-i ‘Elm-e Musiqi va Danestan-i Shʿoabaat-i U from the final quarter of the 17th century, and Bahjat al-Qulub from the middle of the 18th century. The former includes the first ever mention of the term dastgāh, and the latter provides insights into the development of this system. Further, Pourjavady’s analysis of other texts from the mid-19th century, like Kolliyat-i Yusofi and Resal-iyyih Davazdah Dastgah (A Treatise on Twelve Dastgahs) give insight into how during the early Qajar period the renowned court musician Aqa Baba Makhmur Esfahani (d. 1820) codified the first twelve-dastgāh system by synthesizing modal concepts such as maqāms, shoʿbas, āvāzs, and gushahs of past musical systems into a unified compositional modulatory scheme.
These findings reposition the emergence of the dastgāh tradition not as rupture from the maqām tradition, but rather as an innovative continuation deeply embedded in musical concepts, terms, treatments, and modal elements dating back to the Timurid and Safavid periods. This connection is not made recklessly: Pourjavady first meticulously combs through an extensive list of treatises from the 16th through the 19th century outlining the content, term usages, and definitions within them. He carefully examines the terminology of each period, distinguishes shifts in usage across eras and centers, and accounts for newly introduced terms used interchangeably with older ones. Through this careful review, the multiple meanings of varying modal concepts such as maqāmāt, shudūd, pardas, shʿobas, and āvāzs are presented, adding foundational context to the emergence of terms like gushah (in the 16th century) and dastgāh (in the 17th century). These contributions not only change how we factually associate dastgāh music with past musical periods, but also reshape how scholars relate past treatises to current practices.
The fifth chapter examines rhythmic systems, introducing previously unknown musical sources—the Hajj Hosayn Zohri treatise (17th century) and Resal-iyyih Karamiya (18th century)—alongside two 17th-century taṣnif song collections of Aqā Moʾmen Mosannef and Amir Khan Gorji. The chapter offers a comparative review of these sources, deepening our understanding of rhythmic cycles in the Safavid period, clarifying how rhythmic systems changed by the 19th century and highlighting the elements that endured. Part of this endeavor explores shared characteristics and differences between Ottoman and Safavid rhythmic cycles in the same period. The charts and tables in this chapter neatly index the continuities, shared concepts, and distinctions across sources and periods. The continuation of certain rhythmic patterns into the 19th century stands out as especially illuminating. This is argued in the author’s discussion of the six-beat awfar pattern. By comparatively reviewing similar naming conventions in Central Asian rhythmic cycles, and comparing drum stroke patterns of awfar in 17th- and 18th-century treatises, Pourjavady convincingly deduces that this cycle could be the same 6/8 meter associated with the dance tunes of 19th-century courtesans in Iran—a core rhythmic pattern still practiced today. In his rereading of the 18th-century Behjat al-Qulub treatise we further learn that the early practitioners of dastgāh music named pieces in a manner that shows an awareness of oṣūls (Safavid and Ottoman rhythmic cycles). In a quite welcome pursuit, the book also analyzes Qajar music rhythmic structures as patterns rather than reducing them to Western time signatures. By simultaneously reviewing recorded taṣnīf compendiums of the early 20th century and historical accounts by Hassan Mashun, and drawing on interviews with prominent senior musicians, Pourjavady compiles a list of six rhythmic patterns common in Qajar musical practices. To date lists aimed at bringing a coherence to Qajar rhythmic practices as distinct patterns have been largely lacking. The depth and nuance of this engagement is displayed in the author’s transcriptions, which analyze the interplay of quantitative poetic meter with the rhythmic cycles in this period.
In sum, Making Music in Iran is a landmark text in Persian music historiography. It offers a staggering volume of documentary evidence while reshaping common understandings of Safavid-era bans, the significance of courtesans in the shaping of Iranian court music, and the developmental trajectory of modal systems and rhythmic conventions. Not discussed here, the book also provides an extensive study of genre in the sixth chapter, which merits close reading. Some readers may observe that Pourjavady’s tone opts for an evidentiary, almost archival, voice over one that ventures broader social critique. Although more critically reserved than some readers might prefer, this approach reflects the author’s careful and measured reading of sources. The groundwork done in such a monumental study provides evidentiary foundations that open the door for future work to engage more deeply with questions of gender, violence, power, and ethics within Persian musical life. This book is most appropriate for advanced scholars and graduate students with prior exposure to Persian and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Its charts, source listings, and terminological clarifications make it an indispensable reference. I recommend it without hesitation to ethnomusicologists, musicologists, scholars of Iranian and MENA studies, and music practitioners as an essential book, meriting careful and repeated reading.
