Nafīr

''Nafir'' (Arabic نَفير, DMG ''an-nafīr''), also ''nfīr'', plural ''anfār'', Turkish ''nefir'', is a slender shrill-sounding straight natural trumpet with a cylindrical tube and a conical metal bell, producing one or two notes. It was used as a military signaling instrument and as a ceremonial instrument in countries shaped by Islamic culture in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. In Ottoman, Persian and Mugulin miniatures, the ''nafīr'' is depicted in battle scenes.

Similar straight signal trumpets have been known since ancient Egyptian times and among the Assyrians and Etruscans. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the straight-tubed Roman tuba, continued to flourish in the Middle East among the Sassanids and their Arabic successors. The Saracens, whose long metal trumpets greatly impressed the Christian armies at the time of the Crusades, were ultimately responsible for reintroducing the instrument to Europe after a lapse of six hundred years. The straight trumpet type, called ''añafil'' in Spanish, also entered medieval Europe via medieval al-Andalus.

From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, the ''nafīr'' and the straight or S-curved, conical metal trumpet '' kārna'' belonged to the Persian military bands and representative orchestras ('' naqqāra-khāna''), which were played in Iran, India (called ''naubat'') and were common as far as the Malay Archipelago (''nobat''). In the later Ottoman military bands (''mehterhâne''), the straight ''nafīr'' was distinguished from the twisted trumpet ''boru'' in which the straight tube was bent into a loop, influenced by such European instruments as the clarion.

The instruments retain ceremonial functions today in Morocco (''nafīr'' played in the month of Ramadan), Nigeria ('' kakaki ''played in Ramadan), and Malaysia (as a representative instrument of the sultanates the silver ''nafiri'' in the ''nobat'' orchestra). Its cousin the Karnay is similarly used in Iran, Tajikistan Uzbekistan and Rajistan, and the Karnal in Nepal.

Nafir versus karnay

The nafir has been compared to another another trumpet, the karnay. The two may possibly have been the same instrument. However, today a difference can be stated in terms of the instruments' dimensions. The karnay in Tajikistan which reaches 190-210 cm in length tends to have a larger diameter, about 3.3 centimeters.

The nafir in Morocco averages 150 centimeters in length and a diameter of 1.6 cm on the outside of the tube.Anthony Baines: Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2005, p. 216, sv "Nafīr" According to the Persian music theorist Abd al-Qadir Maraghi (bin Ghaybi, c. 1350–1435), the ''nafīr'' was 168 centimeters (two ''gaz'') long.

The difference is visible in miniatures, with artists depicting some instruments thinner. Also visible in miniatures is the gradually increasing the bore size (conically), which some karnays have in the same way a Tibetan horn does.

The Arabic ''nafīr'' was probably mostly a long, cylindrical metal trumpet with a high-pitched, high-pitched sound better suited to signaling than the deeper, duller sound of the conical trumpets such as the ''karna''. The tonal difference was illustrated in the vocabulary of the Iraqi historian Ibn al-Tiqtaqa (1262–1310), according to which the ''nafīr'' player "shouted out" (''sāha'') the trumpet, while the player of the conical trumpet, here referred to as a ''būq'', "blew" (''nafacha''). A writer in 1606, Nicot, said the trumpet was treble when compared with other trumpets that only played tenor and bass.

Another confused point about karna versus nafirs concerns S-curved trumpets. Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi described the karnā as curved in an S-shape out of two semicircles which are turned towards each other in the middle - like today's ''sringa'' in India. However, unlike the ''sringa'', the S-curve karna could be very long.

The S-curved instrument was identified as a ''karrahnāy'' (or ''karnay'') by ʿAbdalqādir ibn Ġaibī (died 1435). It is often paired with a slender straight trumpet in miniatures. Miniatures that show the ''karrahnāy'' and ''nafir'' together show that the ''karrahnāy'' was also slim, unlike the ''sringa''.

File:Musicians retreat ahead of the army of Moghul Emperor Humayun.jpg, Afghan musicians retreat ahead of the army of Moghul Emperor Humayun. The trumpet may be a karnay, in which the tube is conical rather than cylindrical.

File:Musicians advance behind Emperor Humayun defeating the Afghans.jpg, Musicians advance behind Emperor Humayun defeating the Afghans. One straight-tubed nafir trumpet, one S-curved karnay.

Origin

In Arabic, ''būq'' is a term used for conical horns, whether curved or straight and regardless of the construction material, including shell, bone, ivory, wood and metal. This is important because in Islamic areas, ''būq'' could mean a number of different instruments, including the ''būq al-nafir'' (horn of battle).

Conical horns have been common across many unassociated cultures, but the straight cylindrical tubed instruments had a narrow range of users who had ties to one another; the Greeks, Egyptians and Romans interacted, as did the Egyptians and Assyrians and the Arabs, Persians, Turkmen and Indians all of whom had the cylindrical straight tubed trumpet, before it was further developed by medieval and early Renaissance Europeans.

Earliest trumpets and horns

Trumpet instruments originally consisted either of relatively short animal horns, bones and snail horns or of long, rather cylindrical tubes of wood and bamboo.

The former and their later replicas made of wood or metal (such as the Northern European Bronze Age lur) are attributed to the natural horns, while Curt Sachs (1930) suspected the origin of today's trumpets and trombones to be the straight natural trumpets made of bamboo or wood.

Egypt, Assyria, Rome, Greece, Israel

The simple straight trumpets are called tuba-shaped, derived from the tuba used in the Roman Empire. Other straight trumpets in antiquity were the Etruscan-Roman lituus and the Greek salpinx.

Tuba-shaped trumpets have been around since the mid-3rd millennium BC. known from illustrations from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. According to written records, they were blown as signaling instruments in a military context or as ritual instruments in religious cults. As has been demonstrated with the ancient Egyptian sheneb, of which two specimens survive in good condition from the tomb of Tutankhamen (ruled c. 1332–1323), the long trumpets produced only one or two notes and were not built to sustain the pressure that a very high third note would produce.

Among the early ritual instruments mentioned in the Old Testament is the curved ram's horn, the ''shofar'', and the straight metal trumpet ''chazozra'' (''hasosrah'') made of hammered silver sheet. In the Hebrew Bible, ''qeren'' also stands for an animal horn, which is used in different ways, but only in one place (Josh 6:5 EU) for a horn blown to produce sound. ''Queren'' is rendered in the Aramaic translations of the Bible (''Targumim'') with the etymologically derived ''qarnā'', which later appears in the Book of Daniel (written 167–164 BC) as a musical instrument (trumpet made of clay or metal). In the (Septuagint) Greek Bible, the original animal horn ''qarnā'' is rendered ''salpinx'' and in the Latin Vulgate ''tuba'', thus reinterpreting it as a straight metal trumpet. The word ''qarnā'' becomes ''karnā'' in the medieval Arabic texts for a straight or curved trumpet with a conical tube (for the exact origin of the ancient trumpets see there).

In ancient times, war and ritual trumpets were widespread throughout the Mediterranean region and from Mesopotamia to South Asia. Like the ''chazozra'' of the Hebrews, these trumpets could only be blown by priests or by a select group of people. The Romans knew from the Etruscans the circularly curved horn '' cornu'' with a cup-shaped mouthpiece made of cast bronze and a stabilizing rod running across the middle. In the Roman Empire (27 BC – 284 AD), the Romans introduced a variant of the ''cornu'' with a narrower tube in the shape of a G in the military bands. This is pictured as a relief on Trajan's Column. The length of the tube could be up to 330 centimeters. The straight cylindrical tuba, which is around 120 centimeters long in the depictions, had a greater influence on posterity than this curved wind instrument. In the Loire Valley, which belonged to Roman Gaul, two celtic long trumpets with cylindrical bronze tubes that could be dismantled into several parts were excavated.

In late Roman times, a trumpet bent in a circle like the ''cornu'' was called a ''bucina''. The difference between the straight and curved trumpets was presumably less in form than in use. While ''cornu'' and ''tuba'' were blown on the battlefield, the ''bucina'' presumably served as a signal trumpet in the camp, for example at the changing of the guard.

Curved trumpets and horns and hornpipes may fit into a horn tradition, with the instruments curving as animal horns, much as the Roman ''bucina''. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the tubular trumpet (made from sheet metal) was lost to Europe. The technology to bend metal tubes was also lost until the problem was re-addressed by Europeans in about the early 15th century, when illustrations began to appear of trumpets with curves.

After the reinvention of a metal-tube-bending technology, European trumpets began to use it, and instruments were able to have longer and thinner tubes (bent compactly), creating a huge line of brass instruments, including the clarion trumpet. The bent tube instruments moved into Persian and Turkish countries and to India, becoming the ''boru'' in Turkish, showing up in artwork in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Latin ''bucina'' has been connected to the names used for a variety of unrelated horns and trumpets, including the ''albogue'' (a " horn pipe" in Spain), '' buki'' in Georgia and ''bankia'' in India (a regional name of the S-shaped curved trumpet, which includes '' shringa'', ransingha, narsinga and kombu).

Persians, Arabs, Islam

The history of mounted military musicians begins with the Persian Sassanids (224–651), who banged kettledrums on elephants imported from India. Apart from little reliable evidence for the use of war elephants in the 3rd century, the sources indicate that the Sassanids used elephants in the fight against the Roman army and against the Armenians from the 4th century under Shapur II (ruled 309-379). The Sassanids also used trumpets to call the start of battle and the troops to order. In the Persian national epic Shahnameh, trumpet players and drummers are mentioned who acted in the battles against the Arabs at the beginning of the 7th century on the backs of elephants. Possibly Firdausi took over the situation in his time, for which mounted war musicians are otherwise documented, in the historical account.

The Fatimids maintained huge representative orchestras with trumpet players and drummers. The Fatimid Caliph al-ʿAzīz (r. 975–996) invaded Syria from Egypt in 978 with 500 musicians blowing bugles (''abwāq'' or ''būqāt'', singular ''būq'').Henry George Farmer, 1929, p. 208 In 1171 Saladin resigned the successor of the last Fatimid caliph. During his time as Sultan of Egypt (until 1193), the historian Ibn at-Tuwair († 1120) wrote about the parade of a representative Fatimid orchestra at the end of the 11th century, which included trumpeters and 20 drummers on mules. Each drummer played three double-headed cylinder drums ('' t'ubūl'' ) mounted on the animals' backs, while the musicians marched in pairs. The musical instruments of these orchestras are listed by the Persian poet Nāsir-i Chusrau (1004 – after 1072): trumpet ''būq'' (according to Henry George Farmer, a twisted trumpet, '' clairon''), double - piped ball instrument '' surnā'', drum ''tabl'', tubular drum ''duhul'' (in India ''dhol'' ), kettledrum '' kūs'', and cymbals ''kāsa''. According to the Arab historian Ibn Chaldūn (1332–1406), the musical instruments mentioned were still unknown in early Islamic times. Instead, the square frame drum ''duff'' and the reed instrument '' mizmar'' ('' zamr'') were used in military. During the rule of the Abbasids (750–1258) larger military orchestras were introduced, which also had ceremonial functions and performed alongside surna and tabl contained the long metal trumpet būq an-nafīr, the kettle drum dabdāb, the flat kettle drum qas'a and the cymbals sunūj (singular sindsch). Arabic authors in the late Abbasid period distinguished brass instruments between the coiled trumpet būq and the straight nafīr. The woodwind instruments of the time included the reed instrument mizmar, the doubled reed instrument zummara, the cone oboe surnā, the longitudinal flutes made of reed nay and shabbaba as well as the fission flute ''qasaba''.

A miniature illustrated by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti for the Maqāmāt by the Arabic poet al-Hariri (1054–1122) in a manuscript from 1237 shows an Arabic military band with flags and standards in the depiction of the 7th Maqāma. Typical of similar paintings from the 13th century are the paired, largely cylindrical long trumpets ''nafīr'' and the pair of kettledrums ''naqqāra''. The size of the military orchestra subordinate to them was measured according to the ruler's power. A typical large orchestra consisted of about 40 musicians, who, in addition to kettle drums (small ''naqqārat'', medium-sized ''kūsāt'' and large ''kūrgāt''), cylinder drums (''tabl''), cylindrical trumpets (''nafīr'') and conical trumpets (''būq''), cymbals (''sunūj''), gongs (''tusūt'') and bells (''jalajil'').

Another type of trumpet, with a short cylindrical tube, is shown in a Persian miniature in a late fourteenth-century manuscript. The manuscript contains the cosmography ja'ib al-machlūqāt ("Wonders of Creation") written by Zakariya al-Qazwini (1203-1283). The Muslim angel Isrāfīl, who appears as a herald of the Day of Resurrection similar to the Christian archangel Gabriel, blows his trumpet for the Last Judgment. The two spherical ridges on the trumpet are the junctions of the mouthpiece, tube and funnel-shaped bell. They resemble the thickenings on the pipe in Germany and France introduced in the military trumpet ''busine'' (French ''buisine'') in the 13th century. As a possible early precursor of this ''nafīr'' type, Joachim Braun (2002) mentions the depiction of two short wind instruments with funnel-shaped bells on an Israelite bar kokhba coin minted between 132 and 135 AD. According to Braun, the unclearly designed thickenings at the upper end of these instruments could also refer to reed instruments.

Name

The Arabic instrument name ''nafīr'' was first mentioned in the 11th century.

It stands for "‘trumpet’, ‘pipe’, ‘flute’, ‘sound’ or ‘noise’, and also as ‘men in flight’ or ‘an assembly of men for warlike or political action.’".

The original meaning of ''nafīr'' was the "call to war" Hence the military trumpet was called ''būq al-nafīr''.

''Nafir'' was also part of a military term in 19th century Persia for all troop members to assemble (''nafīr-nāma'').

''Nafīr'' goes back to the Semitic root ''np-Ḥ'' with the context of meaning "to breathe" and this is via the common Proto-Indo-European root ''sn-uā-'' (derived from this also "snort, snort") connected to the ancient Egyptian ''šnb'' (sheneb).

The word ''nafīr'' and the long trumpet so referred to spread with Islamic culture in Asia, North Africa and Europe. Even before the First Crusade (1096-1099), the Seljuk Turks brought the ''nafīr'' along with other military musical instruments westward as far as Anatolia and the Arab countries in the course of their conquests. In the Arabic version of the tale ''One Thousand and One Nights'', the ''nafīr'' occurs only in one passage as a single trumpet, played together with horns (''būqāt''), cymbals (''kāsāt''), reed instruments (''zumūr'') and drums (''tubūl'') at the head of the army going to war.

In the Ottoman Empire, the ''nefīr'' was part of the instruments of military bands (mehterhâne) and its player was called ''nefīri''. Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III (reigned 1757–1774) had volunteers assembled before the war against Russia (1768–1774) in a general call to arms called ''nefīr-i ʿāmm'', so as not to be exclusively dependent on the professional army of the janissaries. This was distinguished from the ''nefīr-i chāss'', the military mobilization of a selected group of people.

In today's Turkish, ''nefir'' means "trumpet/horn" and "war signal". In military music, the straight natural trumpet ''nefir'' is distinguished from the general Turkic word for "tube" and "trumpet," ''boru''. ''Boru'' refers to the looped military trumpet (see '' Clairon''), which is due to European influence, while the derived ''borazan'' (“trumpeter”) is understood today in Turkish folk music as a spirally wound bark oboe.

In the 17th century, when the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 – after 1683) wrote his travelogue ''Seyahatnâme'', the ''nafīr'' was a straight trumpet that was played in Constantinople by only 10 musicians and had fallen behind the European ''boru'' (also ''tūrumpata būrūsī''), for which Çelebi states 77 musicians.Henry George Farmer: Turkish Instruments of Music in the Seventeenth Century. In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1, January 1936, pp. 1-43, here p. 28 Nefir, or nüfür in religious folk music, was a simple buffalo horn without a mouthpiece, blown by Bektashi in ceremonies and by itinerant dervishes for begging until the early 20th century.

After the Muslim conquest of al-Andalus, the Spanish adopted the trumpet under the Spanish name ''añafil'', derived from ''an-nafīr''. Other Arabic instruments introduced via the Iberian Peninsula or brought with them by the Crusaders have also entered Spanish with their names, including from ''tabl'' (via Late Latin ''tabornum'') the cylindrical drum ''tabor'', from ''naqqāra'' the small kettle drum ''naker'' (Old French ''nacaire'') and from ''sunūdsch'' (cymbals) the Spanish bells ''sonajas''. Henry George Farmer, who emphasized the influence of Arabic on European music in the early 20th century, repeated the 20 instrument names listed by the Andalusian poet aš-Šaqundī († 1231) from Seville, in the Spanish song collection Cantigas de Santa Maria from the second half of the 13th century and the names mentioned in the verses of the poet Juan Ruiz (around 1283 – around 1350), all of Arabic origin. These include laúd (from '' al-ʿūd'', ''guitarra morisca'' (“ Moorish guitar”), ''tamborete'', ''panderete'' (with Arabic ''tanbūr'' related, cf. ''panduri''), ''gaita'' (from ''al-ghaita''), ''exabeba'' (''axabeba'', ''ajabeba'', small flute, from ''shabbaba''), ''rebec'' (from ''rabāb''), ''atanbor'' (drum, from ''at-tunbūr''), '' albogon'' (trumpet, from ''al-būq'') and ''añafil''. The word fanfare is probably based on anfār, the plural form of ''nafīr''.

After the disappearance of the large '' naubat'' orchestras in Persia and northern India at the beginning of the 20th century, ''nafīr'' refers to a long trumpet that still exists in Morocco today. The trumpet was known as ''nafiri'' in northern India and as '' nempiri'' in China. In Malaysia, the ''nafiri'' is still used. In India today, ''nafiri'' is one name among many for a short conical oboe.

Distribution

Europe

After the end of the Western Roman Empire, curved horns of various sizes and shapes existed, as shown by illustrations, from about the 5th to the 10th century, but hardly any straight trumpets. The mosaic from the apse of the Basilica of San Michele in Africisco in Ravenna, consecrated in 545, depicts seven ''tuba'' angels blowing long, slightly curved horns, the shape of which is reminiscent of Byzantine military horns. Similar curved trumpets, light enough for the musician to hold with one hand but considerably longer than animal horns, are depicted in the Utrecht Psalter around 820. The numerous representations of conical curved horns follow from the 10th/11th century again conical straight trumpets after Roman model, which are blown by angels. In the epic heroic poem Beowulf, written in the late 10th or early 11th century, Hygelac, the uncle of the eponymous hero, calls the soldiers to battle with 'horn and bieme'. The Old English ''bieme'', standing for ''tuba'', may have originally denoted a wooden trumpet.

The straight long trumpet with a bell-shaped bell is depicted along with other wind instruments in a manuscript of the ''Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville'' from this period. A little later, at the beginning of the 12th century, the wall painting with an Apocalypse cycle was created in the Baptistery of the Cathedral of Novara. The seven tuba angels announce the plagues for the sins committed by humans with long slender trumpets. In the course of the 12th century, further frescoes were created in Italian churches, on which long trumpets with bells are depicted. The frescoes in the abbey church of Sant'Angelo in Formis in Capua are particularly important for the history of musical instruments, because the tuba angels depicted hold straight trumpets with both hands for a very long time, which refers to the influence of Arabic culture after the Norman conquest of Sicily from the Arabs. Under Arabic influence, a trumpet corresponding to the Roman tuba was revived in Europe, which first appeared around 1100 in the Old French Song of Roland under the name ''buisine''. In the Song of Roland, only the ''nafīr'' straight trumpet type is referred to as ''buisine'', while the Franks themselves used trumpets shaped as animal horns (''corn''), the elephant ivory ( olifant) and a smaller horn (''graisle'').

A visible feature of the oriental trumpets were several spherical thickenings (knobs) on the cylindrical tube. A short trumpet with such bulges is depicted on a 12th-century relief on one of the Hindu temples of Khajuraho in northern India. In Europe, this type of trumpet with one to three thickenings and a mouthpiece first appeared in a 13th-century sculpture in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela as well as in the Cantigas de Santa Maria from the second half of the 13th century and in other manuscripts. According to Anthony Baines (1976), this is primarily an Indo-Persian and less an Arabic type of trumpet, which was probably distributed with the Seljuks before the First Crusade (from 1095). In the illustration for the Lincoln College Apocalypse (MS 16, in Oxford) from the beginning of the 14th century, the angels blow a very long, narrow-bore trumpet with three thickenings, held horizontally in one hand, such an oversized trumpet plays Man in the Gorleston Psalter (fol. 43v). Jeremy Montagu (1981) highlights the influence of Moorish armies in the Iberian Peninsula, from where the long trumpet, with its Spanish name ''añafil'', spread.

''Añafil'' was the name of a trumpet in Spanish from the 13th to the 15th century, which was considered "trompeta de los moros" (''trumpet of the Moores'') because of its origin. The ballad ''La pérdida de Alhama'', which has survived in several versions from the 16th century, is about the conquest of the Muslim city of Alhama by the Catholic Monarchs in 1482, told like a lament from the perspective of the Muslim Emir of Granada. This event marks the beginning of the last military actions against al-Andalus during the Reconquista that ended in 1492 with the capture of the city of Granada. In the ballad, when the Emir reaches the conquered city, he sounds his silver-made ceremonial trumpets (''añafiles''). The mentioned expensive metal from which the trumpets are made is said to refer to the luxurious life of the Muslim rulers in al-Andalus and to identify the trumpets as royal instruments. Silver ''añafiles'' are also a symbol of the luxurious life of the Muslims in other poems about the Spanish reconquest of Granada (genre: romances fronterizos). A ballad entitled ''La Conquista de Antequera'' states: "añafiles, trompetas de plata fina" ("Trumpets of Fine Silver").

Some military musical instruments, including trumpets, mentioned by common Latin names, were taken by Crusaders to the Middle East, where they encountered the military bands there. The eyewitness Fulcher of Chartres was impressed when he reported how the Egyptians jumped ashore from their ships in 1123 with loud shouts and the blowing of brass trumpets (''aereae tubae''). In 1250, the Christian army attempted the Sixth Crusade under the leadership of the French King Louis IX to conquer Egypt. As the Christians from the Mamluks were successfully repulsed, the Sultan's military band played a major part in the victory. At that time it consisted of 20 trumpets, 4 cone oboes, 40 kettle drums and 4 cylinder drums.

Curt Sachs (1930) is of the opinion that the oriental trumpet, adopted by the Muslims, was understood by the Christians as a "ceremonial weapon, equal to the standard" and as a "precious trophy in the religious struggle in hard strife... snatched from the enemy" and as due to its princely origins, it remained a “noble instrument” in Europe as part of the booty. Alfons M. Dauer (1985) contradicts this when he suspects that the combination of trumpets and drums was adopted as a whole and served in Europe with the same purposes of representing and deterring the war enemy. Apocalypse depictions of the trumpet calling down the end of the world before the Last Judgment were terrifying images that continued to be associated with this instrument. Alfons Michael Dauer, 1985, p. 58

Up until the 14th century, except for hunting horns (Latin ''bucullus'', "little ox"), there were only straight trumpets in Europe, no twisted ones. Two sizes of straight trumpets were distinguished: ''trompe'' and the smaller ''trompette'' in France, ''trompa'' and ''añafil'' in Spain. The oriental ''nafīr'' was often tonally different shrill, high-pitched instrument in contrast to the other trumpets, which sound low and dull. An orchestra often consisted of several large and only one or a few small trumpets. This emerges from the written sources in Spain, France and England; trumpets of different sizes in an ensemble can hardly be seen in illustrations. The French musicologist Guillaume André Villoteau (1759–1839), who belonged to the group of scholars who took part in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign (1798–1801), observed that the ''nafīr'' was the only trumpet used by the Egyptians to rise above the noisy wild overall sound of the conical oboes, drums and cymbals, emitting single, piercingly high bursts of sound.

The tradition of the long trumpet ''añafil'' is still cultivated in Andalusia today in Holy Week processions during religious prayers ('' saetas''). Short trumpet blasts are produced at a very fast tempo at a height of up to d³, above the vocal parts. The ''saeta'' singing is stylistically linked to the medieval Portuguese cantiga ("song") and the singing forms ''abūdhiyya'' in Iraq and ''nubah'' in Arabic-Andalusian music in the Maghreb, which is a result of the eight centuries of cultural encounters (until 1492) between al Andalus and Christian Spain.

Arabia

In the 7th/8th century, ''būq'' was not yet a war trumpet for the Arabs, but used for the snail horn blown on the Arabian Peninsula. According to the historian Ibn Hischām in the 9th century, ''būq'' in previous centuries referred only to the war trumpet of the Christians and the wind instrument for the call to prayer among the Jews (the '' shofur'').

Instead, the early Islamic Arabs used the reed instrument mizmar and the rectangular frame drum duff in battles.Henry George Farmer: A History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century. Luzac & Co., London 1929, p. 154

In the 10th century, the military orchestra, composed of the trumpet ''būq an-nafīr'', the conical oboe '' surnā'', the differently sized kettle drums ''dabdab'' and ''qasa'', and the cymbals '' sunūj'' (singular sinj); this orchestra represented an important symbol of representation for the Arab rulers. As the Fatimid Caliph al-ʿAzīz(r. 975–996) invaded Syria from Egypt in 978, he had 500 musicians with bugles (''clairon'', ''būq'') with him; the sources also report large Fatimid military orchestras on other occasions. Arab authors around this time distinguished the metal trumpets būq'' and ''nafīr''. Between the 11th and 14th ''centuries, the range of instruments used in military bands became significantly more diverse and the musical possibilities may have expanded as a result.

In 1260 A.D. the Egyptian Mamluk army fought and defeated the European Army led by the French King Louis IX in the Sixth Crusade. The Sultan's military band had a certain share in the victory. During the reign of the Mamluk Bahri Dynasty in the 13th century, the Sultan's military orchestras included 20 trumpets, 4 conical oboes, 40 kettle drums and 4 other drums. The Mamluk army was commanded by 30 emirs, each with their own musicians playing 4 trumpets, 2 conical oboes and 10 drums. The military bands were called ''tabl-chāna'' ("Drum House") because they were kept in a room in the main gate of the palace.

Arabic sources provide information about the names and approximate shape of the oriental trumpets in the late Middle Ages. The Arabic name ''nafīr'' was first mentioned by the Seljuks in the 11th century. The original meaning of ''nafīr'' was "call to war", which is why the corresponding trumpet used was called ''būq an-nafīr''. In today's Turkish, ''nefir'' means "trumpet/horn" and "war signal". A distinction must be made between the straight trumpet ''nafīr'' of the early Ottoman military bands (''mehterhâne'') and the twisted trumpet ''boru'', which derives from European influence in later time. Spanish ''añafil'' is traced back to ''nafīr'' for a medieval Spanish long trumpet, and the German word ''fanfare'' is thought to derive from ''anfār'', the Arabic plural form of ''nafīr''.

Persia

In Persia, the Arab military orchestra ''tabl-chāna'', consisting of kettle drums, cylinder drums, cymbals, straight and curved trumpets, and cone oboes, which initially belonged to the privileges of the caliphs and emirs, was soon also permitted under the Buyid dynasty (ruled 930–1062). Military commanders and ministers are maintained with their own army. The size of the orchestra was graduated according to the rank of those in power. The orchestras named after the kettle drum ''naqqāra'' as ''naqqāra-khāna'' or as ''naubat'' were given representative functions in addition to the military ones.Alastair Dick: Nagāṙā. In: Grove Music Online, 2001

The historical work '' Tuzūkāt-i Tīmūrī'' became known in Persian in the Mughal Empire in the time of Shah Jahan (r. 1627-1658). It deals with the rule of Timur over the Iranian highlands in the second half of the 14th century and was apparently originally written in a Turkic language. The ''tuzūkāt'' gives details of the insignia of the military leaders, consisting of banners (''ʿalam''), drums and trumpets, according to their rank. Each of the twelve emirs accordingly received a banner and a cauldron drum (''naqqāra''). The Commander-in-Chief (''amīr al-umarāʾ'') also received the exclusive banner ''tümentug'' (''tümen'' stands for a military unit of 10,000 men) and the banner ''tschartug''. The colonel (''minbaschi'') received the banner tug (with a ponytail) and a trumpet ''nafīr'', the four provincial governors (''beglerbegi'', ''beylerbey'' in the Ottoman Empire) received two banners (''ʿalam'' and ''tschartug''), a ''naqqāra'' and the trumpet ''burghu'' (horn).

The ''nafīr'' in Persia had a long cylindrical tube and a conical bell. A drawing with Turkmen and Chinese influences, probably made in Herat in the 15th century, shows houris playing music in paradise, playing a round frame drum with a tambourine ring, a bent-necked lute ( barbat) and a long cylindrical trumpet. What is unusual about this ''nafīr'' is the large bell-shaped bell.

After the detailed description of Persian musical instruments in Abd al-Qadir Maraghi's (circa 1350-1435) music-theoretical works '' Jame' al-Alhān'' (“Collection of Melodies”) and ''Maqasid al-Alhān'' (“Sense of Melodies”) was written at the beginning of the 15th century the straight trumpet ''nafīr'' was distinguished from the S-curved trumpet ''karnā'' and the wider trumpet ''burgwāʾ'' (''burghu'', cognate with ''boru'' for the twisted Turkish trumpet). The Arabic name ''būq'' for "(brass) wind instrument" apparently did not denote a trumpet, but in the combination ''būq zamrīa'' indicated a reed instrument made of metal. A single-reed instrument was called ''zamr siyāh nāy'' (Arabic '' mizmar''), a double-reed instrument was called ''surnāy'' or '' surnā'', and another ''nāʾiha balabān''. In the first place with Abd al-Qadir is the flute nāy, of which there were different sizes.

A regulation of privileges as in Persia also existed in the Ottoman Empire. There, in the second half of the 18th century, the sultan's representative orchestra had around 60 members, 12 of whom were ''nefīr'' players (''nefīrī''). Such orchestras, which belonged to the high dignitaries, traveled with them and otherwise played every day before the three times of prayer ('' salāt'') and on the occasion of special secular events.

File:Military band, from manuscript, Bahram Recovers the Crown of Rivniz , Folio 245r from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of of Abu'l Qasim Firdausi MET DP107153 (1).jpg, alt=Military band, from Persian manuscript, Persian ''naqqāra-khāna'' or ''naubat''.
File:Musicians, in fight where Bahram Recovers the Crown of Rivniz, MET DP107153.jpg, Musicians pursuing, in fight where Bahram Recovers the Crown of Rivniz

File:IRAN Miniatur by UNESCO 1957 (8).jpg, Kay Khusrau kills Aila. Baysungur's Shahnama. Painted 1430. The Gulistan Palace Museum, Tehran
File:Israfel blowing nafir.jpg, Israfel blowing nafir, early 15th century miniature.
File:Archangel Israfel blowing nafir from Al-Qazwinis The Wonders of Creation.jpg, Archangel Israfel blows nafir, from Al-Qazwinis The Wonders of Creation, Or 4701 fol38v

File:"Faridun Embraces Manuchihr", Folio 59v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp MET DP107121.jpg, Faridun Embraces Manuchihr. Painted circa 1525. (Upper left, right middle)
File:Nafir trumpets, from the Tarikh-i 'alam-ara-yi Abbasi of Iskander Bayg Munshi.jpg, Nafir trumpets, from the Tarikh-i 'alam-ara-yi Abbasi of Iskander Bayg Munshi, circa 1650.
File:Nafir or karna trumpets, from the Tarikh-i 'alam-ara-yi Abbasi of Iskander Bayg Munshi.jpg, Nafir or karna trumpets, from the Tarikh-i 'alam-ara-yi Abbasi of Iskander Bayg Munshi, circa 1650.

India

From the 8th century onwards, Arab-Persian military music came to northern India with the Muslim conquerors. The name ''naqqāra'' for kettle drums (as ''nagārā'' and similar variations) became common with the coming to power of the Delhi Sultanate from 1206 A.D. In addition to their military duties, the ''naqqāra-khāna'' or ''naubat'' developed into splendid representative orchestras at the ruling houses. The ''naqqāra-khāna'' of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) existed according to the court chronicle '' Āʾīn-i Akbarī'' written by Abu 'l-Fazl around 1590

It included 63 instruments, two thirds of which were different drums. Wind instruments were added: 4 straight long trumpets ''karnā'' made of "gold, silver, brass or other metal", 3 smaller straight metal trumpets ''nafīr'', 2 curved brass horns ''sings'' (or sringas) in the shape of cow horns and 9 cone oboes ''surnā'' (now known as shehnai

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