ABSTRACT
Since the birth of Islam, Arab scholars have had the idea of comparing the native empirical musical practices with the musical theories to which they have access, i.e. more precisely to the theoretical systems in use among the Greeks, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids of the Kingdom of Hīrā, the Sasanids of Iran, and more essentially to the Greek theories. But if the observation led them from musical practices to theoretical systems, the works that they compiled have proceeded rather in the opposite sense, from theory to practice.
