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, said.
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, FT reported.
‘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.
Source:
IRNA News Agency