![]() If you’ve never heard of this remarkable artist, it’s not surprising. How people dressed, what and how they ate, how they groomed themselves, what music they enjoyed all were influenced by Ziryab. He was also his generation’s arbiter of taste, style and manners, and he exerted enormous influence on Medieval European society. He spread a new musical style around the Mediterranean, influencing troubadours and minstrels and affecting the course of European music. Ibn Hayyan of Córdoba, one of Arab Spain’s greatest historians, says in his monumental Al-Muqtabas or The Citation that Ziryab knew thousands of songs by heart and revolutionized the design of the musical instrument that became the lute. He founded a music school whose fame survived more than 500 years after his death. He was a freed slave who made good, charming the royal court at Córdoba with his songs. He was known as Ziryab, a colloquial Arabic term that translates as “blackbird.” He lived in Medieval Spain more than a thousand years ago.
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