Middle Eastern music
music of the Middle Eastern region
The musical traditions of the Middle East include those of the Arabic-speaking countries, the traditional Persian ritual music, the Jewish music of Israel and the diaspora, Kurdish music, Armenian music, Azeri Music, the varied traditions of Cypriot music, the Turkish music of Turkey, traditional Assyrian music, Coptic ritual music in Egypt as well as other genres of Egyptian music in general. It is widely regarded that some Middle-Eastern musical styles have influenced Central Asia, as well as the Balkans, Southern Italy, and Spain.
Throughout the region, religion has been a common factor in uniting peoples of different languages, cultures and nations.
The predominance of Islam allowed a great deal of Arabic, and Byzantine influence to spread through the region rapidly from the 7th century onward. The Arabic scale is strongly melodic, often Phrygian Dominant and based on various maqamat (sing. maqam) or modes (also known as makam in Turkish music). The early Arabs translated and developed Greek texts and works of music and mastered the musical theory of the music of ancient Greece (i.e. Systema ametabolon, enharmonium, chromatikon, diatonon). This is similar to the dastgah of Persian music. While this originates with classical music, the modal system has filtered down into folk, liturgical and even popular music, with influence from the West.
“Middle Eastern music” enters the record as music of the Middle Eastern region. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Middle, Eastern and music can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Middle Eastern music” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Middle, Eastern and music provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1503406. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Middle Eastern music” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.