ZIRYAB  (789-857 c.) and

Shahrzad's One Thousand and One Nights

Ziryab (789-857 c. European sources and the Islamic Encyclopedia)

Had the one-of-a-kind maverick Ziryab been an Arab or a Persian or a Turk, there would have been universities, music conservatoires and cultural institutes named after his legendary legacy. But due to the lack of Kurdish cultural media or advanced Kurdish universities of a free, independent Kurdistan, sadly Ziryab remains largely unknown to the majority of Kurds and Iranians, let alone to the world at large. If Ziryab is known at all, he is known erroneously as an Arab, or vaguely as a "Persian from Baghdad", or even an "Iraqi from Baghdad"!

Ziryab was an extraordinary, gifted artist: a multi-talented renaissance man long before the term was invented. Ziryab, or in Kurdish "Zorab", was a Kurdish poet, composer, musician, singer, gourmand, cook, fashion stylist and court manners arbiter at the Abbasid royal courts of Baghdad.  He fell out with the Abbasid royalty. So he fled to the more liberal Islamic courts of Andalusia, which became the home of the highest Islamic splendor that graced Spain with the legacy of the paradisiacal al-Hambra in Granada, the magnificent Seville architecture, the glorious arts and culture of al-Andalus...including the evolvement of the flamenco guitar, song and dance.  

Thirteenth century A.D. Moroccan author Al Tiffasi writes, "With the arrival of Ziryab in Cordoba in Andalusia, the Arab music, which up to that time was the music of Camel riders of barren Arabian desert, was noticeably changed."   Dozy writes, “Not only was Ziryab a distinguished musician but also an outstanding poet and astronomer and what was the source of astonishment was his spirit and understanding of things beautiful.  No one cared about art and other life phenomena as did he.”  These special appreciations were evident in his musical performance.  

Ziryab had an outstanding personality and showed clear good taste and aptitude in his profession. In that period no artist had regarded beauty and art in the same manner as Ziryab. A well-dressed man himself, he was able to influence the fashion of his time and teach people the fine art of dress.  Albeit he spoke Arabic with a Kurdish accent, his command of Arabic made everyone enjoy his company.  

Even in his culinary skills he showed much artistic taste and elegance. But above all, his experience and training was in playing his self-modified Oud. The Oud is a short-necked, plucked, fretless lute with six courses of strings tuned in fourths and traditionally played with an eagle's quill. Nowadays the Oud is referred to as an  Arab instrument. But the Oud antecedent is probably Kurdish and Persian lutes which musicians, especially the Armenians and  Ziryab, adapted and modified. 

Louie Provencal, the renowned historian of Spanish civilization says about Ziryab, "he was a genius and his influence in Spanish society of the time not only encompassed music but also all aspects of Society.”  Titus Burkhart, the German historian of Islam writes, “he was a genius musical scholar and at the same time the one who brought Kurdish and Persian music to Spain and consequently to all of the western world. He was able to replace the primitive ways of Arabs of that time with Kurdish ("Persian") elegance.””

Julien Ribera, the great master of Spanish music, emphasizes the Kurdish and Iranian aspects of Ziryab’s work and personality.  In a speech delivered in Cordoba Academy he asserts, ”the style and method of Ziryab must be seen as a tradition that began in the East which represents the movement this musical genius and innovator brought about. The continuation of this movement was instrumental in the development of the Arab world.  And let us not forget that Ziryab was a Kurdish ("Persian") artist.”

According to historians, the Mooseli family was Kurdish who had settled in Baghdad. Ibrahim son of Mahan, born to a woman named Shahak, was born in the city of Ray. Because he was musically gifted and blessed with high intelligence, he went to Baghdad where he first performed for Khalif Al Mehdi and later served in the Court of Haroon Al Rashid as the head of the singers and musicians.  He was the first musician to construct Arab music on the basis of Kurdish and Persian musical doctrine.  His son, Eshag, who was similarly known as Mooseli, became the most celebrated musician of the Court after the death of his father.  Among his most notable contributions was to arrange Persian and Kurdish music, which at that time was performed widely in Islam courts and gatherings- such mixed nationality courts are often labelled by the ill-informed and by Arabist scholars as exclusively "Arab" courts. He arranged music on the basis of finger placement on the musical instrument Oud.

Phenomenally Ziryab is reported to have memorized thousands of songs and compositions. He    introduced the musical instruments,  melodies, tunes, and dances of Kurdistan, Mesopotamia (Baghdad), Persia and the Middle East to the opulent courts of Andalusia.  He established the first Music Conservatoire at the court of the Khalif Abdul Rahman II in the capital of Cordoba. He introduced the tanbour (the Kurdish lute) and the Arabic Oud to Andalusia. 

Hasan Zirak, meaning literally "Hasan, the Smart One"

Even today, the Kurds are famous for being natural poets, singers and musicians. Many of the  top singers and musicians in pre-Saddam Iraq, Iran and Turkey are Kurds or of Kurdish origin or half-Kurdish (Ibrahim, Zara,  Dergus, Shahram, Kalhor, Moradi, The Kamkars,... etc.)  It is said everyone born in Hawraman is born a singer!  Hawraman is the huge mountainous region in Southern Kurdistan, divided artificially between the modern states of Iran and Iraq.  Hasan Zirak, a twentieth century incarnation of Ziryab, at least as singer, is from this region. Zirak freely performed in troubadour style in the major festivals and weddings in Kurdish towns on both sides of the artificial border. Like many Kurdish poets and Sufis, Zirak traveled freely, ignoring the modern political borders, the legacy of  the British designs after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. So the Kurdish cities of Sulaymani (Iraq) and (Senneh-Sanandaq) claim him as "their own".

Zirak which means "the clever" was an amazing singer/composer/poet. Like Ziryab, Zirak, could, too, passionately sing and remember countless songs with different rhythms and melodies, without ever reading from notes.  Such was the natural flow of his romantic and rhythmic poems, it was difficult to tell  if he was occasionally improvising . Singing joyfully was as natural to him as breathing. Seemingly never at a loss for the perfect rhyme and natural rhythm, he never missed a beat.  He lived to sing, getting just enough money to survive and travel.  Due to the lack of an independent Kurdistan, this genius artist, like many unheard of Kurdish poets ( of Khaayam, Saadi and Hafiz standard ) remain as the unsung heroes of Kurdish culture: they remain unstudied, unappreciated and unknown.

Note modern Iran did not exist until the twentieth century. Nor did Iraq- it was concocted by The British conquerors in the 1920's and the first Turk/Mongol had not yet set foot in the Near East. Self-glorifying Arabist, Persianist, and Turkophile music and food writers too frequently allude misleadingly to "Persian, Arabic, Iraqi or even Turkish" influence on Andalusia or on European music and cuisine, instead of referring truthfully to its factual Kurdish, Persian, Jewish, Assyrian, Armenian, etc... roots, that it to its mixed Mesopotamian roots, albeit led by such mavericks as Ziryab the self-declared Kurd.

Modern Persian writers and websites cleverly exploit some European sources of lazily or ignorantly labeling Ziryab globally as a "Persian" - the way some Eastern writers labeled all Europeans as "Farhangi" or "The Franks" - by appropriating Kurdish Ziryab as an Iranian! While an "Iraqi" or an "Iranian" labeling maybe technically correct in that Kurdistan remains divided - between the modern states of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey (all  unnatural legacies of past empires) this self-serving claim of "one of our own" is misleading since it hides its true "Kurdish" provenance:  Iran and Persia are too often used to mean the Persian-speaking peoples of Iran.  Whereas Ziryab spoke first Kurdish  - his mother tongue- then he learnt Arabic. Kurds may speak Persian, Turkish or Arabic, but only as a second language. By and large, Ziryab must have taken with him Kurdish sensibilities and tastes, albeit influenced by the good taste of the cultures he traversed.

Ziryab introduced to Andalusia Kurdish and Middle Eastern instruments which later evolved into the Spanish flamenco guitar, with its distinct Kurdish melancholic tunes of pain and longing as well the festive, passionate melodies that led to the Spanish flamenco singing and dance. For example the tanbur or saz, a 4000 year old instrument from Kurdistan and Persia.

Ziryab made a radical change to the Lute or Oud: he added a fifth (G) bass string. He rearranged musical theory completely, setting free the metrical and rhythmical parameters and creating new ways of expression, for example: mwashah, zajal, and nawbah suites.

Moreover, Ziryab taught etiquette,  elegant style and graceful manners to the royal court and the nobility.   Ziryab even introduced new fashion and hair styles to Andalusia!

Thanks to liberal, gifted, colorful artists like Ziryab, the Islamic reign of some 700 years in al-Andalus (Andalusia) was the most magnificent period of tolerance and multi-cultural developments:  sophistication in the arts, culture and sciences, with Muslim (Persians, Kurds, Arabs & the Moors) and Jewish artists, writers, scientists and philosophers working together in peace. 

Maimonides, the brilliant Jewish philosopher/physician/writer lived during this period. Maimonides was the personal physician of the Salah al-Din Ayoubi (Saladin), another famous self-confessed, Kurd, who finally defeated the Crusaders. Saladin (1138-1193) and his Kurdish family then ruled the other Islamic empire from Cairo for about 200 years. His empire extended from Egypt to Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Kurdistan, Arzarom & Anatolia (appropriated as "Turkey" by General Ataturk in 1920's who also brutally annexed Western Armenia and Northern Kurdistan, mislabeling it to this date as "South East Turkey") and to Mesopotamia (reshaped and renamed "Iraq" by the British in the 1920's.)

No doubt there were unique contributions from other nationalities such as the Persians. But many of these, like al-Khorasami - the Persian who invented al-Jabr (Algebra) - were lost or glossed over as "Arabs" due to their Islamic/Arabic names.  Most European historians and sources were content to refer to their enemy - the whole diverse cultural Muslim melting pot - as merely "The Moors" or  "The Arabs".  

This latter global Arab mislabeling has proved to be quite convenient to the self-serving Arab nationalists and intellectuals wishing to celebrate the entire Islamic culture and civilization as only Arabic. Today "le Monde Arabe" ("The Arab World") in Paris is a museum - funded mostly by Arab oil money - that unashamedly also houses the arts and crafts of Kurds, Persians, Jews, Assyrians, Indians, etc. Even "le Monde Islam" would have been inappropriate since many of the arts and crafts come from pre-Islam era or are of  non-Muslim provenance such as Zoroastrian, Jewish, Armenian, etc.

"Ziryab: Authentic Arabic Cuisine"  by Farouk Mardam-Bey.  

The above is the title of a book you can buy on the Internet. It states: "Ziryab offers a fascinating introduction to Arab gastronomy, its many facets and manifestations, from ancient Persia to present-day Morocco -- and it leaves the reader intrigued and inspired to taste the magic of authentic Arab cuisine." 

Do we need to say more about Arabists' shameless appropriation of ancient  Kurdish, Persian and Moroccan cultures? Yes!  Below is a seemingly 'scholarly' article on Ziryab accessible on the Internet:

“If you eat asparagus, or if you start your meal with soup and end with dessert, or if you use toothpaste, or if you wear your hair in bangs, you owe a lot to one of the greatest musicians in history.

He was known as Ziryab, a colloquial Arabic term that translates as "blackbird." He lived in medieval Spain more than a thousand years ago. He was a freed slave who made good, charming the royal court at Córdoba with his songs. He founded a music school whose fame survived more than 500 years after his death. Ibn Hayyan of Córdoba, one of Arab Spain's greatest historians, says in his monumental Al-Muqtabas (The Citation) that Ziryab knew thousands of songs by heart and revolutionized the design of the musical instrument that became the lute. He spread a new musical style around the Mediterranean, influencing troubadours and minstrels and affecting the course of European music.

He was also his generation's arbiter of taste and style and manners, and he exerted enormous influence on medieval European society. How people dressed, what and how they ate, how they groomed themselves, what music they enjoyed—all were influenced by Ziryab.

If you've never heard of this remarkable artist, it's not surprising. With the twists and turns of history, his name has dropped from public memory in the western world. But the changes he brought to Europe are very much a part of the reality we know today.

One reason Ziryab is unknown to us is that he spoke Arabic, and was part of the royal court of the Arab empire in Spain. Muslims from Arabia and North Africa ruled part of Spain from AD 711 until 1492.”gu

Guess who paid for this article by Robert W. Lebling Jr. ?  Saudi Aramco. Yes, once again oil money funds Arab "intellectuals"  and Western Arabist "scholars" to appropriate other nations' arts and cultures to be the exclusive legacy of Arabs only, as in the "Le Monde Arabe" museum in Paris, also largely funded by Arab oil money.

Note how cleverly this article automatically associates the word Arab with the past glories of Islam or Muslims or the Moors as if Arabs are the only nation who contributed to Islamic cultures and arts, spreading from China to Spain.  Suppose a European nation such as the Italians or the Germans (especially if they had won WW2) appropriated the great and diverse cultures of Christian Europe as the exclusive legacy of the Italians or the Germans!

Hazar O Yak Shew or One Thousand and One Nights 

The Persian and Kurdish  "Hazar o Yak Shew - One Thousand and One Nights -  the amazing tales told by the beautiful Shahrzad, has been described as the best story ever told. This story later evolved into the Arabic "Alf Layla wa Layla" - One Thousand and One Nights.  

Dr. Robert Irwin's research spanning some twenty years traced Shahrzad's stories to the pre-Islam Zoroastrian roots with some elements and story telling style (the famous 'story within story') to Indian Panchatantra.  Actually, the "story within story" was first used in the Gilgamesh epic poem found on mud clay and composed about 5000 years, well before Panchatantra. Indian Panchatantra and Kurdish and Persian Hazar O Yak Shaw increased the framing within the framing of stories within stories to delicious hypnotizing spheres. 

Scholars believe that Shahrzad's marvelous oral stories first entered Europe possibly simultaneously around the 9th century through both Sicily (another Muslim glorious reign, though short), and especially via Andalusia, probably through such artists as Ziryab,  his collaborators, and fellow artists, who carried and spread these oral traditions, often through their songs and music.

Hazar O Yak Shaw has been correctly translated into every language as "One Thousand And One Nights."  It influenced almost every writer of fame in Europe from  Boccaccio's (Decameron) to Cervantes, Hans Christian Anderson, Tolstoy, Wordsworth....to Borges. Indeed the list of European writers directly inspired by One Thousand One Nights is so long that Dr. Robert Irwin finds it is much easier and shorter to list those who don't appear to have been influenced.  ["The Arabian Nights- A Companion" by Robert Irwin, London 1994.]

In the 18th c., Galland translated Alf Layla wa Layla into French faithfully as " Mille et Une Nuit". Voltaire said he read it twelve times. About one hundred years later, in the 19th c., it was expressly mistranslated into English as the "Arabian Nights Entertainment" to capture the attention of puritanical Victorian readers, especially frustrated rich women, in need of erotic fantasies! 

For about 1000 years the original Kurdish/Persian original title of "One Thousand and One Nights" is used in all other languages. But self-serving Arab translators, claiming "well, we are stuck with Arabian Nights", continue this misappropriation by using the incorrect "Arabian Nights"- a title concocted by Sir Richard Burton for dubious sensational reasons only about a hundred years ago. See for example the recent superb translations "The Arabian Nights" in two volumes -1992 and 1995 -  by the Iraqi ex-Baghdadi  Husain Haddawy, an English Professor in the USA. 

Moreover, with typical Iraqi prejudice or ignorance, Haddawy skims over all the original references to Kurds and Kurdistan aspects of the stories even when Kurdish names and princesses are mentioned, or when the characters traverse such Kurdish cities as old Dyarbakir in Northern Kurdistan (Turkey). It seems easier or safer for the Arab and Turkish intellectuals, like their European cronies, to substitute the politically correct "Persian" for things to do with Kurds and Kurdistan.

For pure marketing reasons, let alone respect for the authenticity of literature, it would have been wise to resort to the original, much more universal title of "One Thousand One Nights" But such as the obsession of Arabs and their Arabist intellectuals with self-glorification that they insist to be stuck to the old sensational British mistranslation "Arabian Nights"  In America and in the West, clearly the enticingly romantic and mysterious "Mille et Une Nuit"  or "One Thousand and One Nights" title is far more likely to attract new readers than the narrow Arabist "Arabian Nights."

Newroz New Year Celebration

Ziryab, the Kurd, was he first  to introduce the New Year celebration, based on Newroz,  in the 9th century to the courts of Andalusia and thence to Europe. To this date the Kurds celebrate Newroz, the triumph of spring’s warm light over winter’s cold darkness, on March 21st for seven days with picnic, gift, song, music, dance and night fires atop the roofs and the mountains of their beloved Kurdistan. 

The fire is a Divine Symbol of life energy:  it beckons the Sun. The fire also symbolizes the legendary Kurdish blacksmith, KAWA. Thousands of years ago, on Newroz’s day,  hero Kawa freed the people of Kurdistan by killing the tyrant King Zuhak with his fiery hammer.

To repeat: Had the one-of-a-kind maverick Ziryab been an Arab or a Persian or a Turk, there would have been universities, music conservatoires and cultural institutes named after his wonderful legacy. But due to the lack of Kurdish media, Kurdish universities and Kurdish consulates of a free, independent Kurdistan, sadly Ziryab remains largely unknown even to the majority of the Kurds, let alone to the world at large. If he is known at all, he is known erroneously (or appropriated) as an Arab, or as an Iranian, or "a Persian from Baghdad", or "an Iraqi from Baghdad"!

More about Newroz at The Legend of  NEWROZ.

Additional References:

1.  The Arabian Nights- A Companion.  Dr. Robert Irwin, London, 1994

2   Scheherazade ou L'Education d'un Roi.   Marie Lahy-Hollebecque,   Paris 1927 and 1987

3.  Moorish Architecture.  Marianne Barrucand & Achim Bednorz. Taschen 1992

4.   The Book of Jewish Food.  Claudia Roden.  A. A. Knopf 1996

5.   "The Arabian Nights" in two volumes -1992 and 1995. Husain Haddawy.  Everyman's Library,- A. A. Knopf.  ( Haddawy, an English professor in the USA, is a Iraqi Arab from Baghdad.   In his respected modern translations, Haddawy had a chance to restore the title to its original Persian & Kurdish "Hazar O Yak Shaw", or even to its original Arabic "Alf Layla wa Layla", that is to "One Thousand One Night." But, like most Arab writers, he tends to ignore or gloss over the Persian and Kurdish title, origins, names and elements of One Thousand Nights. So he chose to stick with 19th British corruption of the title of the narrow nationalistic  "Arabian Nights." Yet another glorification of Arabs at the expense of other non-Arab Islamic but distinct nations and cultures-  like the Arab oil- financed "le Monde Arabe" museum in Paris which features other nations' arts and crafts.

6.  The Culinary Cultures of the Middle East.  Sami Zubaida & Richard Tapper, 1994- Tauris Publishers. (Note the "Arabist" bias of this otherwise original collection of informative essays is betrayed in several places. For example: page 210 Ziryab is referred to as the "Iraqi Musician"!  In fact 'Iraq' did not exist u- Mesopotamia (including Baghdad's melting pot of Persians, Kurds, Armenian, Jews, Christians and Muslim Arabs), and Southern Kurdistan were forcefully combined and re-named "Iraq" by the British conquerors in early 1900. From Loristan to Mount Ararat, the Kurds have existed for about 4000 years: the Kurds are expressly mentioned in Xenophobe's account of The Great Alexander passing through Kurdish mountains. Also, on page 39 it claims: " Kurds claim Saladin as their own."  Kurds did not know nor claim Saladin as a Kurd. Evidently even in those religious, non-nationalistic predominant Islam only times, Saladin, like Ziryab,  had proudly declared himself to the European historians as a Kurd. Had it not been for European sources, Kurds would have never learned from biased-Arab and Turkish sources - dominating Kurdish education and media systems for nearly one hundred years - that either Ziryab or Saladin was a Kurd. Typically, Arab and Islam sources written by Arabist intellectuals or Islamists, or their Western friends and cronies, automatically bunch everything good as "theirs", that is Arabic, Muslim/Arab or Moorish, or even Iraqi as in the Ziryab description above! If other cultures claim and prove a different, non-Arab  provenance, they are belittled as narrow "nationalists"!]

Jalal Jonroy, New York, 2003.