Lost to Time

by Martin W. Sandler

  The lute before Ziryab represented these four humors. The first pair of strings was yellow, symbolizing yellow bile; the second pair was red, representing blood; the third was white for phlegm; and the fourth, the bass pair, was black for black bile. Ziryab placed his new strings, another red pair, between the second and third pairs. Not only did this addition revolutionize the sound of the instrument, but it also represented another human element as well. Ziryab had given the lute a soul.

  Always seeking to further improve the quality of his lute, Ziryab also heightened the instrument’s sensitivity by abandoning the traditional wooden pick with which it was played, using instead a flexible eagle’s talon. Their hands guided, as historian Chris Lowney wrote, “by the soft down which covers the claw of that bird,” Ziryab and the generations of musical students he taught found that this type of pick enabled them to maintain a lighter touch on the instrument than had previously been possible.

  Under Ziryab’s enormous influence, instrument making in Moorish Spain reached an unprecedented height of development. Some of these new instruments included the carrizo (reed), the kanun (harp), the quinera (a type of zither), the zolami (oboe), as well as the tambourine, brass rattles, castanets, the lutelike rabal (rebec), the shokra (baritone flute), and the mura (soprano flute). Other wind instruments included the pastoral flute and the Moorish pipes.

  Along with his achievement in instrumentation, Ziryab introduced first Moorish Spain, then North Africa, and then much of Europe to whole new forms of musical composition, in the process rearranging musical theory completely. Based on his conviction that musical composition should be based on the three fundamental elements of rhythm (the marriage between music and words), melody (the fabric of beauty and emotion), and understanding (the marriage of melody and rhythm), Ziryab and those he influenced created the rules governing the performance of what became the most important form of Andalusian music, known as the nuba (or nubah or newbah).

  WOMEN PLAY TRADITIONAL Persian musical instruments, including the lute, in this seventeenth-century mural from the Hasht Behesht palace in Esfahān, Iran.

  As Spanish cultural historian Fernando Valderrama Martinez has defined it, the nuba (or suite) is

  a complete musical work, composed of various airs and melodies. It also appears like an assembly of independent songs though all relate to a single theme. They are songs gathered by the thread of time to give us an anonymous composition, like the great cathedrals which required the efforts of generations, a heritage bequeathed to our times by unknown great geniuses.

  As first developed by Ziryab and his followers, each nuba is divided into five separate movements. At times these movements are exclusively music; at other times they are a combination of music and singing. The verses of the songs vary considerably, focusing on such subjects as love, nature, and other common topics. In its time one of the most popular of all these compositions was Ziryab’s twenty-four-section creation titled Nobeh.

  As important as all these far-reaching accomplishments were, Ziryab’s greatest contributions to music, according to the ancient historians who were aware of him, were in the field of instruction. One of his first projects in Córdoba was the founding of Spain’s first music conservatory. Established at a time when music had always been taught one-on-one, Ziryab opened the school’s doors not only to the sons and daughters of the upper classes but also to pupils from families of much lesser means.

  Groundbreaking also was the way in which Ziryab’s conservatory provided instruction in a methodical and systematic fashion. Among other subjects, students were taught rhythm, meter, singing to the accompaniment of musical instruments, and the mastery of melody, all while being prodded to pay the closest possible attention to syllables and the clear and correct pronunciation of lyrics. It was an approach that was eventually emulated by music education institutions throughout Europe.

  The master musician’s approach to teaching students was as innovative as his curriculum. As Ivan Van Sertima recounts, when teaching singing, Ziryab always began by testing a new pupil’s voice. The student was required to sit as straight as possible and to shout at the top of his lungs. This enabled Ziryab to determine the power of the student’s voice, and to discover whether or not there was a breathing problem. If the voice was acceptable to Ziryab, the student was allowed to commence his studies. If it was found wanting, Ziryab ordered the pupil to tie a turban around his stomach in order to compress the middle of his body and help him attain proper voice projection. For those students who had difficulty opening their mouths enough, Ziryab had a special remedy. They were advised to clench a three-inch-wide piece of wood between their jaws and to keep it there continually until their jaws were properly loosened.

  Ziryab’s conservatory would endure for more than five hundred years, and along with introducing the world to the new science of musicology, it introduced many innovations in instrumentation and composition. He created an orchestra that revolutionized orchestral organization, including the first wedding of orchestra to chorus. Ziryab unequivocally established his reputation as “the founder of the musical traditions of Muslim Spain.”

  It was a tradition that would have widespread effect. G. Talebzadeh writes, “Ziryab’s music influenced all neighboring countries. In Morocco it was called Gornati and in Tunisia, Aulof, but regardless of the names, all these musical traditions found their roots in Ziryab’s methods.” The famous fourteenth-century historian, scholar, and theologian Ibn Khaldoon, as quoted in Talebzadeh’s essay, wrote that “Andalusian music was advanced by Ziryab and passed onto generation after generation. His influence was an ocean that swept over all of Africa and left us an eternal legacy.” And as Van Sertima noted, “Even when the Moors had been defeated and Christians had reconquered the territory once occupied by these people the music was imitated by a great number of Christian Europeans and the Christian kings still kept Moorish musicians in their employ even as had the Moorish kings before them.”

  Perhaps the greatest testimony to the enduring musical legacy of Ziryab and those he taught and influenced was written by Spanish musicologist Julian Ribera:

  The artistic Spain of olden times thus becomes the central bond which ties ancient art to modern. The great musicians of Andalusia knew not only how to preserve their inherited art but also how to transform and renovate it by creating a popular form through which their compositions were broadcast, thus spreading it all over Europe. There it still lives because the people have loved it and adopted it. Europe therefore owes a debt of gratitude to the Andalusian Moors, who maintained and passed on a rich fund of music, a perennial spring to which all European composers have come to renew their inspiration, but without seeking its unknown sources.

  IF ZIRYAB’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS HAD BEEN confined solely to music, his would have been a remarkable life. But his contributions far transcended music alone. By becoming the Cordoban court’s arbiter of food, fashion, grooming, and more, he accomplished nothing less than changing lifestyle customs that endure today.

  Before Ziryab, for example, people wore the same type of clothing year-round, adjusting to the changing seasons by either adding or subtracting layers of garments. A well-dressed man himself, it was Ziryab who submitted fashion to the changing seasons. As al-Makkari chronicled, “The tradition of changing clothes according to seasons of the year was another of [Ziryab’s] improvements. He suggested wearing certain garments in the season intervening between summer and winter and likewise other garments to be worn toward the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.”

  It was also Ziryab who persuaded those of his time to replace the traditional dark, drab Moorish clothing with vibrantly colored garments. As Jan Read wrote, “A vogue for brightly colored clothes began with the arrival from Baghdad of the musician and singer Ziryab, sometimes described as an Arab Beau Brummel, during the reign of Abdu’r-Rahman II. He started fashions for the different seasons: light silk robes and vivid colors for the spring . . . and quilted gowns and furs for
winter.”

  Having profoundly changed the nature of the clothing that the people of Moorish Spain wore, Ziryab also taught them how to keep their garments clean. Before Ziryab, those who could afford it had their clothing rinsed in rose water and garden flowers, the result of which was that their garments never looked truly clean. Ziryab invented a process in which salts were added to the traditional mixture of water and flowers, which improved the cleaning process.

  Ziryab’s innovations in fashion extended to changes in the way that women wore their hair. As al-Makkari described, before Ziryab, “both men and women wore the hair over the upper part of the forehead, and hanging down between the temples and the eye.” But, according to al-Makkari, “when people of fashion saw Ziryab, his wives, and sons wearing their foreheads uncovered, with the hair trimmed level over the eyebrows and slanting toward the ears, they imitated him.” Historian Chris Lowney put it precisely: “Bangs,” he wrote, “were out; the sweptback look was in.” Impressed with the way in which his new hairstyle had been adopted, the entrepreneurial Ziryab opened a beauty parlor and cosmetology school. There, along with introducing even more daring hairstyles, he taught women how to shape their eyebrows and how, through the use of depilatories, to remove unwanted hair from their bodies. It was in this facility also that Ziryab introduced women to new perfumes and new cosmetics.

  It was not surprising that the elegant Ziryab also turned his attention to reforms in hygiene. Before his time, the most common form of deodorant was composed of powdered rose, basil, and myrtle. It was highly ineffective at removing body odor, and it also left stains on the user’s clothing. Ziryab remedied the situation by introducing a new type of deodorant whose main ingredient was a lead extract that, according to al-Makkari, removed “the fetid smell of the armpits.”

  Care of the teeth did not escape Ziryab’s attention either. The earliest mention of toothpaste is found in a fourth-century Egyptian manuscript, which prescribes a mixture of powered salt, pepper, mint leaves, and iris flowers. It is also known that the Romans used a type of toothpaste based on human urine (because of its ammonia content). Although the exact ingredients of the toothpaste that Ziryab created have remained unknown, it was, according to Van Sertima, a vast improvement over anything that had been previously introduced, and it became popular throughout Islamic Spain.

  Al-Makkari and others tell us that Ziryab loved well-prepared food almost as much as he did music, and it was he who brought about enduring changes in the types of food that were eaten and the way it was served. Ziryab was the first to gather the wild weed called asfaraj and to elevate it to the status of a dinner vegetable that we now call asparagus. He invented a dish called al-Tafaya, made of meatballs and pieces of dough fried in oil, a delicacy that under the name takalliyah Ziryab (“the fried dish of Ziryab”) is still popular in Andalusia and other parts of Spain today. He was obviously a man with a sweet tooth, and among the various other dishes he created were a variety of desserts including zalabia, fried dough soaked in orange syrup, and various combinations of walnuts and honey that are still served today throughout North Africa and the Mediterranean world.

  Even more important was the way in which Ziryab revolutionized the manner in which meals were organized. Before he appeared in Córdoba, Moorish dining, like that of the Romans, Vandals, and Visigoths, was a crude affair. Every type of food, from savories to sweets, from fruits to meats, was piled together on bare wooden tables. There was no such thing as table manners. Ziryab changed that.

  With his ruler’s approval, Ziryab decreed that palace dinners would be served in sequential courses, starting with soups; followed by fish, fowl, or meats; and ending with sweet desserts, fruits, and nuts. It was a manner of eating unknown even in Baghdad, and it quickly gained popularity, first with the upper and middle classes and then with the peasantry. Eventually the three-course meal became standard practice throughout Europe, giving rise to the expression “soup to nuts,” the origins of which can be traced directly back to Ziryab’s major innovations.

  Always seeking elegance, Ziryab looked to reform the accoutrements of dining as well. He enhanced the plain wooden dinner table by teaching local craftsmen how to fashion tooled and fitted leather table coverings. He did away with the heavy gold and silver drinking goblets that had been used by the upper class since Roman times and replaced them with fine crystal. He even redesigned the heavy wooden soupspoon and created a trimmer model that was lighter in weight.

  IT IS BELIEVED THAT ZIRYAB introduced the game of chess to Europe by asking Indians at the royal court to teach the game to the courtiers. This illustration is The Game and Playe of the Chesse (1474) by the English printer William Caxton.

  He did away with the heavy gold and silver drinking goblets that had been used by the upper class since Roman times and replaced them with fine crystal. He even redesigned the heavy wooden soupspoon and created a trimmer model that was lighter in weight.

  The innovations of this one man seemed endless. It was he who taught those in Moorish Spain who could afford it to sleep on a soft leather couch instead of cotton blankets. It was he who introduced to Al-Andalus the New Year celebration based on the Iranian holiday Nowruz, establishing a tradition that spread across Europe. And it was Ziryab who brought in astrologers from India and Jewish doctors from North Africa and Iraq, which led to the diffusion of their knowledge throughout Spain. He even taught his countrymen how to play chess.

  ZIRYAB DIED IN 857, FIVE YEARS after the passing of Abd ar-Rahman II, the man who had encouraged and applauded his remarkable innovations for thirty years. Although Arabian historians disagree as to the number of children he left behind (some claim there were as many as twelve sons and three daughters), what has been documented is that all of his offspring were musicians and singers. What we also know is that his second daughter, Hamdouneh, with the help of her brother-in-law collected and published her father’s compositions and songs in a book titled Al-Aghåni Ziryâb. Tragically, the book was lost during the Moroccan siege of Córdoba in 1100.

  What was never lost were Ziryab’s pivotal contributions in helping make the seven-hundred-year Islamic reign in Spain one of the most magnificent periods of tolerance and multicultural development in history. What should also be remembered is that well after this unique reign ended, students from France, England, and all of Europe as late as the year 1000 continued to gather in Córdoba to study in its immense library. When they returned to their native countries, they took back with them not only the book knowledge they had gained, but also a newly acquired sense of music, cuisine, fashion, and manners, much of which had been initiated centuries earlier by a man born a slave named Ziryab.

  His greatest tribute came from al-Makkari, the seventeenth-century historian who uncovered most of what we know about him. Al-Makkari wrote:

  [Ziryab] was fitted with so much penetration and wit; he had so deep an acquaintance with the various branches of polite literature; he possessed in so eminent a degree the charms of conversation, and the talents requisite to entertain an audience, he could repeat such a number of entertaining stories; he was so acute and ingenious in guessing of the wants of his royal master, that there never was either before or after him a man of his profession who was more generally beloved and admired. Kings and great people took him for a pattern of manners and education, and his name became forever celebrated among the inhabitants of Andalus.

  How remarkable it is that his name remains virtually unknown and that his extraordinary achievements have, in such great measure, been lost to time.

  TWO

  CAHOKIA

  The Forgotten Rome of the Americas (Twelfth Century)

  The history of every nation is filled with myths, some more serious than others. Generations of schoolchildren, for example, have been taught that at the time Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, those people to whom he gave the name “Indians” lived mostly in small nomadic tribes and that the Americas were mostly a vast wilderness. It is a seri
ous misconception, fostered and perpetuated for generations by some of the nation’s most respected historians, anthropologists, and scholars.

  For example, Alfred L. Kroeber, one of the pioneers of American anthropology, argued that the Indians in North America spent so much of their time in “warfare that was insane, unending, continuously attritional” that there was no time for substantial communities to be developed or for a sophisticated agricultural system to take hold. The result, Kroeber concluded, was that “ninety-nine per cent or more of what [land] might have been developed remained virgin.”

  And as late as 1995, American History: A Survey, one of the most widely used high school textbooks in the nation, presented its view of Indian history by declaring, “For thousands of centuries—centuries in which human races were evolving, forming communities, and building the beginnings of national civilizations in Africa, Asia, and Europe—the continents we know as the Americas stood empty of mankind and its works.”