Alfarabi devotes a voluminous treatise to music, in which he argues that it, too, is perfected gradually over time. The relatively few details included in these brief passages suggest some intriguing parallels with the development of language. Most notably, both emerge spontaneously from natural human qualities, crystallizing into conventional arts only through the collective efforts of many generations (BM 71, 74–75).23 Music and poetry also strengthen one another: music becomes more moving when accompanied by words (72–73), while poetic speech becomes more vivid when accompanied by music (67). However, while Alfarabi’s account of the development of poetry ignores the parallel development of music, his account of the development of music pays homage to the power of poetry. It seems that music is more dependent on poetry than poetry is on music. This impression is confirmed by a passage in the Selected Aphorisms where Alfarabi concludes a longer discussion of the kinds of poetry by presenting the kinds of music as derivative from them: “The sorts of melodies and songs following from these sorts of poems and divisions are equivalent to their divisions” (SA 37, #56, Ar. 65.7–8).
Alfarabi speaks less frequently about painting and sculpture: rather than devote entire treatises to the visual arts, he intersperses brief remarks about them in works ostensibly devoted to other topics. There are evident historical grounds for his reticence: unlike poetry and music, painting and sculpture were frowned upon by many Muslims, because of their association with idolatry.24 Nonetheless, Alfarabi manages to draw strong parallels between the visual and auditory arts. While acknowledging that the visual arts have historically been linked to idolatrous worship, as took place among the ancient Greeks and still endures in distant India, Alfarabi suggests that they are in fact quite similar to music and poetry, at least with regard to their capacity to evoke passions and implant images in minds (BM 62–63). In the Epistle on the Canons of Poetry, Alfarabi explains that painting resembles poetry in every respect except its matter, for it imitates in color the same kinds of activities, forms, and aims that poetry imitates in words (EP 278, Ar. 272, cf. SP 183). A similar statement might apply to music, whose matter is not words, but tones (BM 85–86). Even if the matter and technique of each of the imitative arts vary, their form and purpose do not: all move human minds by providing imitations of sensible things.
With these observations in mind, we may understand why the perfection of pre-philosophic language and the stories told by it constitute the foundation of the civilization of the Umma. Since the other arts imitate the same subjects as poetry and even pursue the same goals, they adopt the material that they encounter in the Umma’s poetic stories. A brief survey of the world’s major civilizations should confirm this point. How could we conceive of Greek or Indian sculpture without the inspiration of Greek or Indian mythology? How could we imagine art and music in the Christian world, into the Renaissance and even beyond, without the gospel stories? Painters and musicians render in color and melody the same gods, saints, and heroes whom poets render in verse.
One might object that Alfarabi fails to grapple with the obvious differences between the various art forms and their effects. For example, music and poetry excel at stirring up passions, while painting and sculpture tend to be more meditative and serene.25 I am not sure if Alfarabi attempts to answer such objections.26 His purpose seems to lie more in encouraging all the imitative arts than in distinguishing between them, as I will make clear in Chapter 5.
Alfarabi’s description of the Umma helps account for a phenomenon that should be familiar to visitors to any major world art museum. As we pass from one section to another, we seem to be entering an entirely different world. In the set of rooms devoted to Greece, the sculpted women are beautiful but chaste, while the male figures are muscular and handsome, with noble expressions suggestive of martial valor. The elegant, rectangular temples are mounted on evenly spaced columns. In an adjoining set of rooms devoted to India, the female figures are buxom and erotic, while their male counterparts are graceful, supple, and meditative. The sinuous temples are topped by spires that reach toward the heavens. The splendor of both exhibits resonates across space and time, yet remains entirely characteristic of its respective civilization. No half-trained eye could mistake the art or architecture of one major classical civilization for that of another. Even the very greatest art is decisively shaped by the Umma to which it belongs; this observation reveals, on the highest level, the authority of the Umma as described by Alfarabi.
Debates About the Ummas in Alfarabi’s Era
Alfarabi’s treatment of the Umma offers only a few scattered hints about its historical context, but this context would have been quite familiar to his readers. The ethnic Umma had become a contentious topic in the Islamic world from the eighth century onward. The Islamic empire under which Alfarabi lived ruled over subjects from a vast number of such Ummas, and it was common among Alfarabi’s contemporaries to argue about the relative merits of one or another of them. I make no claim to originality here, but a brief summary of these debates, as known through primary and secondary sources, can shed some light on the distinctiveness and historical significance of Alfarabi’s approach to the Umma.
The vast seventh-century conquests that brought the Islamic world into being entailed not only the triumph of Muslims over infidels, but also the victory of Arabs over non-Arabs. This inevitably gave rise to ethnic pride among the conquering Arabs, and ethnic resentment among the conquered peoples (Norris, 34). A band of desert nomads whom Persians, Romans, and Byzantines had once despised as not even worth conquering suddenly emerged as the master of vast territories that those empires had once ruled. However, the decline of the Arabs was almost as rapid as their rise. While the Umayyad dynasty (661–750) was indeed dominated by Arabs, the Abbasid dynasty that overthrew it drew its core support from the Persian region of Khorasan. By the middle of the ninth century, the Abbasid Caliphs had gradually begun to cede control over the army and the treasury to Turkish and Daylami soldiers.27 This lengthy process culminated in the seizure of power by the Daylamis in 951, a year after Alfarabi’s death, thus establishing the Buyid dynasty.
It is not difficult to imagine, on the basis of these well-known historical facts, that the early centuries of Islam were rife with ethnic tensions, as rival Ummas competed for cultural and social status within the empire as well as for royal power and patronage. The Shu‘ūbiyya movement, powerful during the eighth and ninth centuries, represented the reaction of the non-Arabs against the Arabs. The movement’s name is derived from Qur’ān 49.13, the only verse containing the root sh-‘-b.28 It advanced numerous arguments for Persian equality and, in some cases, Arab inferiority. Scholars have arrived at various opinions about the scope and aims of this movement, which seems to have found some expression in the political, literary, and religious spheres.29 Unfortunately, none of the original Shu‘ūbiyya tracts survive, so the nature of the movement can be reconstructed only through the works of authors who opposed it (Enderwitz, 515). These texts present many of the disputes as serious and others as charmingly frivolous.30 Common themes included rhetorical skill, dexterity with arms, ancient lineage, the antiquity of their civilization, and prophecy, with each group, and especially Persians and Arabs, proclaiming its superiority to its neighbors. These debates did not always take place on a high intellectual level: it does not behoove us, let alone Alfarabi, to discuss whether ancient Arabs ate lizards, or Persians invented the game of chess.31 Yet even the most comical charges and countercharges are indicative of genuine tension and jealousy.32 The charged atmosphere of ethnic quarrels under which Alfarabi wrote is surely relevant to understanding his work.
The acrimony of these debates finds forceful expression in the pages of al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869), one of the founders of classical Arabic prose and a leading opponent of the Shu‘ūbiyya movement. Al-Jāḥiẓ wrote an interesting work titled “On the Virtues of the Turks.”33 Addressed to a Turkish general who held a high position in the Abbasid court, it attempts to defend the Abbasid policy of employing Turkish soldiers. The addressee has just been exposed to a long and unpleasant harangue by an Abbasid partisan who boasts about the military virtues of the Khorasanis and other founders of the Abbasid dynasty while ignoring