praiseworthy shaykhs, they abandoned it toward the end of their lives. Leading shaykhs censured its practitioners, as did 'Abd al-Qādir, Shaykh Abū al-Bayān, and others. Al-Shāfi'ī’s statement—may Allah be pleased with him—that it was introduced by heretics is the judgment of an imam well versed in the foundations of Islam. For those who originally desired and promoted this listening were none other than men suspected of heresy, such as Ibn al-Rāwandī, al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and their like.

As Abū 'Abd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī related from Ibn al-Rāwandī in his discussion of listening, he said: “The jurists differed over listening: some permitted it and others disapproved of it. I, however, deem it obligatory”—or he said, “I command it.” Thus, by commanding it, he opposed the consensus of the scholars.

Al-Fārābī was highly accomplished in singing, which they call “music,” and had a method recognized among practitioners of the art of singing. His story with Ibn Hamdān is well known: he played and made them weep, then made them laugh, then put them to sleep, and then left.

In his al-Ishārāt (Pointers), in the section “The Stations of the Gnostics,” Ibn Sīnā encouraged this listening and passionate love of beautiful forms in terms consistent with the way of his predecessors: the philosophers and the polytheistic Sabians who worshipped the stars and idols, such as Aristotle and his Greek adherents, and those who followed him, including Proclus, Themistius, and Alexander of Aphrodisias. Aristotle was the minister of Alexander son of Philip of Macedon