The Persian translation of Avicenna’s ‘A Comprehensive Account of Music’ will be unveiled at the Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF).
The Avicenna Foundation will unveil the newly-released translation on May 14. The book was written in Arabic about 1000 years ago by Avicenna, and this is the first time that a Persian version is being released, Tavakkol Daraei, foundation’s director of Public Relations and International Affairs, was quoted as saying by ISNA.
The book is an extraction from the encyclopedia ‘The Book of Healing’, translated and written by Seyyed Abdollah Anvaar, contemporary translator and codicologist.
Anvaar has diligently translated accounts from the ‘Book of Healing’ for two decades. Following efforts by the Avicenna Foundation, the new volume is published in 166 pages.
‘The Book of Healing’ comprises 6 articles each containing several chapters. The fifth article, which has 5 chapters, covers music science.
According to Anvaar, although Avicenna was not a musician, he had stunning theories in music “not seen by later musicians and experts.” His remarkable theories and ideas can be broadly used in the industry and science of modern music.
Avicenna defines music as a mathematical science in which the state of melody is attributed “in so far as it is in harmony or it is in discord”; and includes rhythm, both simple and compound.
Avicenna (908-1037) was born near Bukhara in Central Asia. He was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. Of the 450 works he is known to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.
His most famous works are The Book of Healing - a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine - a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650.
Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna’s corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, music and poetry.
Avicenna’s most important Persian work is the ‘Book of Knowledge’ (Danishnamah-ye ‘Ala’yi). Avicenna created new scientific vocabulary that had not previously existed in Persian. The book covers such topics as logic, metaphysics, music theory and other sciences of his time.
The 28th TIBF is under way till May 16 at Tehran Mosalla.
