7 to 15 Centuries (AH) Iranian Muslim Scholars’ System of Thought in Viewing Iqa’

Iqa’, one of the components of Islamic auditory arts, is a part of the writings of Muslim scholars. This study, with a cross-disciplinary approach, seeks to identify the thinking system of Iranian Muslim scholars from the seventh century AH to the contemporary period in looking at iqa’; it is based on a qualitative methodology with an interpretive paradigm and qualitative content analysis. The research population is those scientific works of the mentioned scholars which deal with the topic of iqa’ science and the sample group has been selected from this population with the reputational case sampling approach - which is one of the types of purposive sampling. The primary concepts that were extracted during open coding, when concentrated, resulted in three main categories: 1- Qualitative attitude to the time of the iqa’at; 2- symbolistic attitude towards iqa’i strokes, feet, cycles, times and meters; 3- attitude of believing in the similarity of the principles of traditional art and divine art, to cyclic and non-cyclic iqa’at. The convergence of these three categories resulted in the core category of this interpretive study: “wisdom attitude to iqa’”. The conclusion obtained from this research is that the intellectual system of Iranian Muslim scholars from the seventh century AH to the contemporary period, in their attitude towards Iqa’ (along with its related concepts), is based on “wisdom” which is realized in turn, in the shadow of “religion” and “tradition”.