La musica d’arte (maqom) tra Herat, Bukhara e Kashgar

Central Asian Art music (maqom) transcends nowadays national borders and belongs to a larger musical area where Art music was (and still is) called maqām. After a discussion on the many meanings of such a term and on the theoretical works of the so called first Arab-Islamic musicology, the present paper moves to the key figure of systematist musicologist and composer ‘Abd ul-Qādir ibn Ghaybi Marāghī (1360?- 1435), who lived part of his life in Herat: from there, through disciples and sons his work, he influenced maqām concept and practice both in the West, in the Ottoman lands, and in the East. In particular, from the 16th century, a musical tradition called Shash Maqom – which arrived to Uyghur’s six town oasis (altıshahr), where the musical tradition called On Ikki Muqam grew – flourished in the Uzbek/Tajik region once called by Greeks Transoxiana, between the cultural centres of Bukhara and Samarkand.