ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes that the main points of Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur's account of the music culture of Herat's Timurid court, expatiate on that account and consider the influence of Timurid music on the art music cultures of nearby regions. He explores what continuities of music practice might be extended to the court of the Amirs of Kabul in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where some interesting parallels can be identified. There are some similarities between music at the court of Sultan Husayn Bayqara in fifteenth-century Herat and the courts of the Amirs of Kabul in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are parallels in terms of court patronage by music loving rulers and their nobles, some of whom were amateur musicians, in the presence of an assemblage of master musicians and the value placed on new compositions.
