خلاصه ماشینی:
- The art of song was for long simply an accompaniment of the nomad life of the Arab nation in the desert, restrict• ed to the singing of the camel-drivers and to children's lullabies.
From this time on we find among the Arabs musicians who won great distinction by the part they played in the development of music, as, for example, Ibn Suraikh, Mukhariq, Tuwais, Ibrahim al-MO.
1 Another story, illustrating Ibn 'Aisha's position and his pride, concerns an occasion when he had sung before the Caliph Al-WaUdibn 'Abd al-Malik,2 " \Vhat palace or what fortress can compare with thee ; "Away with fortresses and palace!" · To express his pleasure, Al-Walid ordered him to be given · thirty thousand dirhams- and many valuable robes of honour.
On the other hand, the Prophet is said to have heard a singing-girl :P,erforming as he passed by the house of the poet Hassan ibn Tha. bit and, having been asked by the latter whether singing was unlawful, to have replied, "Certainly not.
He is reckoned one of the four greatest singers of Islam; " after the Prophet David," it was said, "God created no better musician than Ibn Suraij nor gave any man a better voice.
Ibn Suraij, who had helped Ma'abad from the beginning, had himself said that if the Qur'an had been revealed in song it could have been in no other style of singing than that of Ma'abad ..
This story shows how songs and methods of singing were spread at a period when musical notation was little used by the Arabs.