The Musical Modes of al-Andalus

The 13th-century Tunisian author Aḥmad at-Tīfāšī describes in his work Mutʿat al-asmāʿ fī ʿilm as-samāʿ a system of melodic modes used in al-Andalus. This essay represents a preliminary attempt to situate at-Tīfāšī’s Andalusi modes within the broader historical development of medieval Arab modal systems and to explore their relationship to the modern modes of North Africa commonly referred to as Andalusi. This is, however, primarily an exploration of terminology or nomenclature rather than of the melodic characteristics of the modes themselves, since the sources examined here give little to no information about the internal features of the individual modes.