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Practicality and Qur'ānic Hierarchy in Warfare and Welcome Yale Journal of Music & Religion Volume 6 Number 1 Article 2 Warfare and Welcome: Practicality and Qur’ānic Hierarchy in Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings on Music Bradford J. Garvey Amherst College Follow this and additional works at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr Part of the Arabic Studies Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, Islamic Studies Commons, Musicology Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Garvey, Bradford J. () "Warfare and Welcome: Practicality and Qur’ānic Hierarchy in Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings on Music," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1167 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Warfare and Welcome: Practicality and Qur’ānic Hierarchy in Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings on Music Cover Page Footnote My thanks go to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for funding this project, as well as to my consultants and friends in Oman who so graciously shared their time. I want to thank Brian Bond for thoughtfully reading an early version of this article. I appreciate the continued support of my dissertation committee as well: Peter Manuel, Steven Blum, Virginia Danielson, and Jane Sugarman. This article is available in Yale Journal of Music & Religion: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol6/iss1/2 Warfare and Welcome Practicality and Qur’ānic Hierarchy in Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings on Music Bradford J. Garvey And the instruments of entertainment that have no use Outside of themselves are to be broken whenever they are found, In all of their types that exist, Because in this there is no benefit. —‘Abdullah bin Ḥumayd “Nūr al-Dīn” al-Sālimī (1286–1332/1869–1914) in the Jawhār al-Niẓām Omani Orientations to the Ibādism, the third major branch of Islam. Charge of “Music” Though no official population count exists, A few days before Ramadan began in the Interior province of the modern sultanate, 2016, I was sitting in my friend Ḥamad’s along with adjacent regions, was until the majlis, a large sitting room adjacent to his 1950s part of one of the longest-lasting home, enjoying a ḥilba, a milky, fenugreek- theocratic regimes in the world, called the flavored drink. Over the course of the last Ibāḍī Imamate. Overthrown by the current year or so, I had interviewed Ḥamad dozens sultan’s father in the late 1950s (despite of times in his role as the manager of a local himself and all his line being nominally men’s performance group that specialized Ibāḍī), the Imamate has cast a long shadow in the performance of a choral ode called over Oman’s historiography. I found myself al-‘āzī and a war dance, al-razḥa. Though darting in and out of that long shadow my research was focused on the highly in interviews, poetry discussions, and charged exchange of praise poetry and conversations with performers throughout governmentally directed dispensation, I had my year of researching men’s performance. slowly come to realize the delicacy of the The tension around engaging in a religious toleration of these public praise variety of performance genres—drumming, genres in Oman. The ‘āzī and the razḥa were, dancing, singing—was palpable during my in the eyes of most, expressions of Omani research in many ways. Early on, I realized pride, masculine solidarity, and communal that a direct approach to the music question obligation. But that did not mean they were got me nowhere. In fact, framing my not Islamically suspect, even here, in the research as studying “music” was met only small, rural town of Manah in the Interior by furtive glances and unsure responses. Yes, region of the Sultanate of Oman. I was assured, there was “music” in Oman, Nestled in the southeast corner of the surely; Bedouins or “mountain folks” (‘and Arabian Peninsula and boasting some three al-jabāl) play “music,” that’s probably what million citizen-residents, the sultanate and I meant. I quickly found out that the key its various historical polities have remained term was not music, or mūsīqā, but funūn— one of the few bastions of ’Ibādiyya, or the “arts.” The performance genres I studied Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 1 (2020) 19 were properly “arts,” not music. The reason the hundreds of smaller mosques and the for this tentative response was, of course, dozens of huge jāmi‘ (one in each town, that Ibāḍīs had quite a dim view of “music.” all confusingly named the “Sultan Qaboos And yet, there I was, months into research Grand Mosque”) was very obvious to me on a practice that was but was not musical. but brooked no comment from performers. And so we return to that day in Hamad’s “Oh, lord spread blessings and mercy like majlis, seated with our backs to the short, rain. That is a good question for the Islamic threadbare couch that lined all four walls; scholars. I do not know.” the beige, satiny gloss of the new paint Months earlier, I was discussing some glinting in the strong fluorescent lighting; of the local arts that were less well known the walls boasting hand-painted sūra-s of than the razḥa and the ‘āzī with Khamīs, the Qur’ān hanging amid floating palm trees the leader of a new troupe in the town of painted in permanent bloom. I was setting ’Izkī. We were meeting in his ‘azba, a kind of out my notebook and recorder when Ḥamad semipermanent camp and corral for grazing noticed a book on the status of music in stock, eating dates by the goat pen that he Islam sticking out of my bag. affectionately referred to as the “UN” (“I’ve “Oh, father,” he moaned, “what is this?” got every type of goat in there,” he boasted, “This?” I picked up the book. “This is a “Indian, Pakistani, Sindhi, Afghan, Somali, book about Islamic jurisprudence . .” Kenyan, Nubian, Egyptian, Georgian, “Well, I can see that, doctor. What do Bosnian, Iraqi, Persian, Balochi, Roman, and you want with it [shtibā bih]?” Chinese—it’s the UN of goats [al-’umum al- “I just wanted to know the opinions of mutaḥḥida māl al-hūsh]”). After a half-hour Ibāḍī scholars on music . .” of chatting, a pickup full of Khamīs’s male “That’s fine,”Ḥ amad said, leaning back kin pulled up. We exchanged pleasantries and pulling his long white dishdāsha robe and they joined us in eating dates. over his feet, “but you’re not studying “We’re talking about music [mūsīqā] ,” ‘music’ [mūsīqā]. If you want to know about Khamīs said casually, flicking his eyes over that, it’s not in razḥa. There’s no melody, to his younger brother. there’s no singing, there’s no instruments “The arts?” his brother replied. [mā shay al-naghmāt, mā shay al-ghinā’, mā “No, music,” he insisted., “This shay al-ma‘āzif]. But I’m no scholar, don’t Englishman wants to study music here.” ask me. I don’t know. Listen, I don’t want “Well, not music, God lengthen your to enter into that issue, I don’t even want lives,” I jumped in. “I want to study the to enter into it [mū bāghī adakhkhalu]. The arts. But we were chatting a bit about music razḥa is for warfare and welcome [al-ḥarb around here. Khamīs said that you all wa-l-tarḥīb], that’s what I say to any imam.” perform al-rūgh in the early dusk?” Al-rūgh “That reminds me, why isn’t the razḥa is a genre of instrumental reed-pipe music ever performed if a new mosque is opened?” accompanied by drumming and some sung I asked facetiously, trying to corner him. I poetry. The word rūgh refers to both the had been studying the role of razḥa and genre and the reed-pipe, which is shaped and ‘āzī in civil celebrations of governmental played like the more common mijwiz. I have generosity, and so the conspicuous absence never encountered any source that discusses of praise poetry to celebrate the opening of al-rūgh and so it may be a genre that is 20 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 1 (2020) mostly performed by shawāwī (seminomadic his Music in the World of Islam.4 “The debate herders) performers, whose music is largely elicited views that varied from complete undocumented in Western scholarship. negation to full admittance of all musical The area around ’Izkī is, however, home to forms and means, even dance,” Shiloah many rare and undocumented instruments, writes, adding that “between these two including a kind of gourd resonator extremes we can find all possible nuances.”5 monochord, a large family of African-derived Oman, as we’ve seen, is no exception. Early idiophones, and so on. in my research, when I was not pursuing “Al-rūgh,” his brother chuckled, “that’s Omanis’ perceptions of the Islamic status the horn-pipe of Satan [mizmār al-shayṭān],1 of musical sounds, I nevertheless recorded a that al-rūgh. The only thing worse is the zār. wide range of beliefs. These often correlated Did you hear about the zār?” The zār is a with the social and economic position of the common name for a genre of healing music speaker: an official in the Omani Center for mostly performed by and for women: as it Traditional Music told me that “that debate deals with metahumans like jinn, among is over, from the Middle Ages the scholars other supernatural beings, it is roundly agree that music is permitted”; a performer condemned by Islamic scholars.2 of the Sufi-inflected6 mālid genre told me “Zār? You want to see a zār, doctor?” that “rhythm [al-‘īqā‘] is a powerful tool Khamīs perked up.
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