The paucity of reliable English-language accounts of the histories of the major traditions of the Near and Middle East is an indication less of scholarly inadequacy than of the sheer difficulty of the task. The present work is therefore to be applauded not merely for bravely venturing into inhospitable terrain but also, and perhaps more importantly, for its resolute attempt to discern and explicate overarching patterns of relationship between music and society, rather than trying once more to weave a narrative tapestry stretching from the Achaemenids to the present, one inevitably characterized more by the holes in the fabric than its substance. The result is a welcome clarity of presentation, as we are taken through two discrete historical blocks, one covering the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, the other the Qajar and post-Qajar periods. Each is deemed to have a structural correlative, termed the “twelve-maqam” and the “radif-dastgah” systems respectively, viewed not, as the names might be thought to imply, as referring only to characteristic aspects of pitch organization but as global terms embracing also rhythmic, formal and procedural parameters. The terminological contrast implies, further, a conceptual cleavage between the ways in which each is integrated into an ideological framework corresponding to the different social structures of their respective periods.

The twelve-maqam system is aligned with the succession of dynastic states, viewed, despite recognition of growing centralization as we move into the period of the gunpowder empires, as repeating a fundamentally unchanging model of patronage. Having the same time frame, as it emerges alongside the imposition of Mongol power in the thirteenth century and subsides with the collapse of the Safavid state, it is understood as in some way homologous, although the case for a relationship between the two that transcends the contingent is made primarily through a rhetoric of repeated assertion, and when attention is turned to reviewing the related ethical domain, the wide-ranging survey inevitably stretches chronologically to include crucial earlier authorities such as al-Hujviri and al-Ghazāli, and the arguments adduced could, at least in part, have been referenced as constants of equal relevance to the modern period.

The account of the structural basics of the twelve-maqam model is refreshingly free of tediously detailed accounts of intervallic complexities, but still leaves the reader wanting greater clarity of exposition. The term maqam had previously been defined, helpfully, as “melodic mode,” but here we begin with the notion of twelve primary “pitch modalities” that are, inexplicably, considered to be abstract entities, although later allowed to be “aspects of practice.” Termed shadd, they are scales “located at various placed [sic.] in the adwar,” which is defined as “a theoretical schema for scale creation.” This is somewhat confusing—and also a little misleading: the adwār constitute more accurately the total octave-scale output of a generative grammar of possible pitch combinations: the twelve shadd, in other words, are some among the possible total of octave scales. Representations of them in notation are helpful but employ a reversed flat sign without explaining its function (to indicate intermediate pitches).

The following account of the remaining mode groups sensibly tries a broad-brush approach, but could with advantage have been expanded when covering the major discursive shift from the earlier (Systematist) literature, with its specific information on pitch constituents and, at least with Quṭb al-Din Shirāzi, lucid accounts of how certain modes grew organically from others, to the descriptively void later, largely Safavid, literature with its stress on lists and derivational schema. It is helpful to have the diagrammatic mode of taxonomic representation these later texts sometimes employ illustrated, and their circular visual frame is understood to represent a closed system (to be contrasted with an Ottoman open system). However, setting aside the question of what “system” might imply here, there are grounds for thinking that this fails to capture the constantly changing nature of the mode stock as it expands over time and varies over place, with new entities being added, others relinquished, and further subdivisions recognized. The early sets of twelve (shadd/parda) and six (āvāz) are supplemented at an early stage by a further one of nine, later expanded to twenty-four, and later still by another that symmetry demanded should be of forty-eight (usually according to the derivational scheme 6 ← 12 → 24 → 48, although the more rigorous 6 → 12 → … also occurs), even if not all the slots could be filled. To account for this variability, however, would mean setting aside what are, despite later protestations, the fundamentally static implications of the model in favor of something more fluid, dynamic and, in parts, perishable.

The rhythmic cycles (oṣul), too, are far from being static, as restless change swirls around an area of stability: indeed, Safavid perceptions are of various discrete stages of accretion before an eventual arrival at a shaky orthodoxy of seventeen cycles (with others the province of the military band). The fact of change is, indeed, recognized, and illustrations are given of contrasting definitions from two periods, the early fifteenth century (Marāghi) and the late seventeenth (Gorji), although not of the same cycle. However, the Marāghi example, khafīf-i saqil, is portrayed as a cycle of fourteen (quaver) time units, as against Marāghi’s own sixteen, and those taken from Gorji depend upon the unfounded assumption that the mnemonic syllables dik and dak (or daka) were equally spaced around the cycle, with no gaps: more likely than the resulting nine time-unit pattern for ramal-i ṣaghir is one of twelve (as it had been for Marāghi), and for ramal-i kabir a cycle of twenty-eight time units corresponding to its Ottoman cognate is more likely than the proposed one of twenty.

An exploration of differences between earlier (Timurid) and later (Safavid) norms takes place, rather, within an interesting survey of song-texts that again contrasts Marāghi with Gorji (and, alongside him, Āqā Moʾmen) and argues persuasively for a significant change of expression in one central theme, that of panegyric, where the emphasis moves from the generic ruler to the specifics of the individual. The case for change, which ironically undercuts the argument for monolithic correspondences, could have been strengthened further by referring to the drastic loss and replacement of repertoire: the extensive “Timurid” material in early song-text collections simply disappears from what is recorded of the late seventeenth-century Ottoman and Safavid repertoires. Whether it is more or less appropriate to stress change over continuity may sometimes be a matter of the setting of the lens, and hence arbitrary, but there are areas where a sharper focus could have been used to advantage. It is insightful to say that, in lieu of functional notation, “Written words were the specialized system of description,” but even if it is true that notation was not functional in the sense of being used to record and transmit repertoire, it was not unknown. Albeit very few, the examples that do exist (provided by Banāʾi, Marāghi, al-Urmawi and, especially, Shirāzi) are variously, and sometimes exceedingly, informative about compositional processes and also about aesthetics: they do not deserve to be ignored.

The modern period is held to begin with the slightly varied late nineteenth century codifications attributed to Mirzā ʿAbdullāh and Mirzā Ḥosayn Qoli and derived from the practice of their father ʿAli-Akbar Farahāni (whose 1821 death date needs to be changed to birth). It is handled securely: the principal technical features are well presented, and equally satisfactory is the teasing out of the main ideological debates that emerge as the modernizing state had to deal with the conflicting pulls of westernization and the need to affirm and sustain an independent cultural authenticity. They are delineated with particular clarity in the detailed consideration given to the key reforming figure, influential but inevitably also contested, of Vaziri, and to the counter-arguments of his main ideological critic, the taṣnif composer ʿĀref Qazvini.

In general, the intricacies of dastgāh structure as defined by major authorities are explained lucidly, although the layout of the related figures leaves something to be desired: it would surely have been better to have figures 12 and 13 on facing pages (with a repositioning of the associated legend in figure 11), and likewise figures 14, 15 and 16. It would also have been advantageous to add one or two notated examples to demonstrate, beyond the abstract representations of dastgāh modality and the one compressed radif outline (of bidād), the realization of the melodic/modal potential of a gusheh in performance.

What one might, to oversimplify, refer to as the authenticity vs. reform debate has, inevitably, rumbled on long after Vaziri. It would have been useful to have had an account of its prolongations (via e.g. Kiāni as contrasted with ʿAlizādeh), and some reference to current concerns about innovation that involve, by a pleasing irony, an interest in revisiting the maqam system as a creative resource, whether for its structural potential or as recorded in the Ottoman precipitate of presumed Safavid compositions. Indeed, considerable attention has been paid of late to the quest for links across the gap between Safavids and Qajars that is here regarded as an existential break. That there is a radical difference between the processes they each employ is incontestable, particularly striking being the total loss of the lengthy and complex rhythmic cycles still characteristic of late seventeenth century Safavid compositional practice. But it is equally the case that the new norms of Qajar court music must have been constructed, with whatever sundry regional and folk additions, out of the debris of what had gone before, and it would have been of value to have had an assessment of recent scholarly efforts to probe the implications of early occurrences of the term dastgāh and to explore possible links between the dastgāh as first documented in the nineteenth century and earlier elaborations of shadd as large-scale codifications of modulatory consanguinity. Even if adjudged not to undermine the case for radical discontinuity they are still worth considering as integral to the current ideological landscape.

Although not relevant to an assessment of intellectual merit, it has to be said that the state of the text is less than impeccable. Transliteration is erratic, with macrons and diacritic dots over-provided (nūfūs), missing (samaʿ), or both provided and missing (ʿaruż/ʿarūz), and on occasion bizarre (mulaḥn, al-ʿilm i-nnaẓarī). Proof-reading negligence extends to the English too, where we encounter infelicities such as “Mulsim,” “relevanncy,” “the Caucases,” “disperate cities,” and a “key tenant,” while the retreat of effect before affect continues, going as far as the delightful “they were in affect lying.” Translation may also be wayward, offering e.g. “the great sciences of Iran” for ʿulamāʾ-i bozorg-i īrān, and particularly odd is the mangled rendering of the basic prosodic quantities: “Words such as poetic foot (vatad), syllable (ṣabāb) [sic] and interval (fāsilah) [sic],” which apart from being incorrect can only confuse the reader.

The final summary is lucid and enlightening, representative of the best qualities of a work that, even if not always sure-footed and wholly convincing, has the considerable merit of being a thought-provoking and refreshing attempt at a new synthesis that rightly seeks to integrate musicological specifics within larger frameworks of social function and cultural meaning.