Isfahan (Persian: دستگاه اصفهان, romanized:dastgāh-e esfahān), also called Sepahan (سپاهان) or Safahan (صفاهان), was one of the twelve principal maqams of the music of medieval Iran. The earliest known reference to it is found in the Kitāb al-Shifāʾ of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), and it was already a popular mode in his time, the 11th century. In the theoretical treatises of the "Systematist" school (13th–15th centuries), Isfahan was one of the seven recognized species of the fourth and one of the twelve adwār mashhūra ("famous cycles").
In the modern dastgah system the name survives in the āvāz of Bayat-e Esfahan, which is classified as a branch of the dastgah of Homayun. This reverses the historical relationship: in the medieval treatises Homayun was only a minor branch, while Isfahan was a principal maqam.
History
Medieval sources
The 14th-century Persian treatise Kanz al-Tuhaf advises that Isfahan is best played at a gathering where the beloved is present. Avicenna considered sunset the best time to play it, while the music theorist Muhammad ibn Mahmud Nishaburi wrote that it was performed at night. The author of Kanz al-Tuhaf, citing Safi al-Din al-Urmawi, calls Isfahan the "maqam of generosity" (شدّ الجود, shadd al-jūd).
Structure according to the Systematists
In his Kitāb al-Adwār, Safi al-Din al-Urmawi lists seven consonant tetrachords, the seventh of which is named Isfahan. It is unusual in containing five notes (four intervals) within the span of a perfect fourth: three neutral steps (mujannab, roughly three-quarter tones) followed by a semitone (baqiyya), which can be notated as G–A–B–B–C. It was the only recognized species of the fourth with five notes. In his Risāla al-Sharafiyya, Urmawi explains that masters of his day used this "singular" genus at the top of the scale, and that melodies built on it were called Isfahan.
Later theorists, including Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, Abd al-Qadir Maraghi, Jami, al-Ladhiqi and Banayi, repeated or slightly modified Urmawi's scale for Isfahan. All of their versions share the five-note Isfahan tetrachord in the upper register, which Urmawi considered the defining species of the maqam. Shirazi also described a related tetrachord, ḥijāz, which uses the same notes as the Isfahan tetrachord except its third note. Musicologist Kioumars Poorhaydari has proposed that the omission of that note turned the Isfahan tetrachord into ḥijāz, which made the octave scale heptatonic and links Isfahan to the later modes Homayun and Hijaz.
Isfahan as a branch
Placing Isfahan as a branch of another maqam also has historical precedent. Ala Monajjem, in his treatise Ashjar va Asmar, regarded Isfahan as a branch derived from maqam ʿIraq, and Kanz al-Tuhaf states that when Isfahan is played within ʿIraq the combination is called "Mokhalef".
In the 15th-century Maqasid al-Alhan of Abd al-Qadir Maraghi, by contrast, Homayun appears only as one of the 24 shuʿab (branches). In mid-16th-century Iran, Isfahan was still one of the twelve maqams while Homayun remained a branch. It is not known exactly when Homayun became a principal mode; an undated treatise, Bihjat al-Qulub, thought to date from around the 18th century, already counts it among the four main dastgahs. The Iranian musicologist Farhad Fakhreddini notes that such distortions of the older system are common in the modern dastgah repertoire.
According to the late 19th-century author Forsat-od-Dowleh Shirazi, Esfahan was a gusheh (piece) within the dastgah of Homayun. During the 20th century it grew into a nearly independent dastgah, and theorists disagree over whether it is a sub-dastgah of Homayun, an independent dastgah, or a derivative of Shur. In the modern repertoire Esfahan is very popular: one survey of 354 contemporary Iranian songs found about 30% of them in Esfahan, against 11% in Homayun.
The modern scale is close to the Western harmonic minor scale, and it can be built on the fourth degree of Homayun. Its shāhed (dominant note) is the first degree. Melodies close either on the first degree, or on the sixth degree (a third below the shāhed), which gives a sense of suspension. The main modulation is to Shur through the gusheh ʿOshshaq, which serves as the climax (owj) of both Esfahan and Homayun.
Poorhaydari argues that the modern scale is not far from the medieval one. Two small changes turn the Systematist cycle into the modern Esfahan: a third degree lowered by a quarter tone, and the omission of one note of the Isfahan tetrachord. A neutral third, still heard in some gushehs of the modern Esfahan, preserves the older form.
Its closest counterparts in neighbouring traditions are maqam Nahawand in Arabic music and makam Buselik (Puselik) in Turkish music. The Turkish makam named Isfahan has a different structure and contains no ḥijāz tetrachord.
In Persian poetry
The maqam is mentioned frequently in classical Persian poetry, often under the name Sepahan:
ای چنگ پرده‌های سپاهانم آرزوست / وی نای نالهٔ خوش سوزانم آرزوست
O harp, I long for the modes of Sepahan;
O reed, I long for your sweet, burning lament.
ای آشنای شاهان در پردهٔ سپاهان / بنواز جان ما را از راه آشنایی
O intimate of kings, in the mode of Sepahan
play upon our soul, by way of friendship.
—Rumi
به یاد مجلس خسرو چو برکشد مطرب / گهی عراق زند گاهی اصفهان گیرد
When the minstrel strikes up in memory of the king's banquet,
now he plays ʿIraq, now he takes up Isfahan.
راستی را در سپاهان خوش بود آواز رود / در کنار باغ‌کاران یا کنار زنده‌رود
Truly, in Sepahan the sound of the lute is sweet,
beside the Bagh-e Karan or beside the Zayandeh Rud.
Fakhreddini, Farhad (2013). Tajziyeh va tahlil va sharh-e radif-e musiqi-ye Iran[Analysis and Commentary on the Radif of Iranian Music] (in Persian). Tehran: Moin. ISBN978-964-165-098-0.
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