Machine summary:
( History of Arabian Music, pp.
Abu 'Abdallah al-Khwarizmi, in his Mafatih al-'ul1,m (Keys of the Sciences), of the late tenth century, defines the jass as 'the plucking of the strings [ of the lute] with the first finger and the thumb.
1037), which is, admittedly, too late as evidence of priority, and I only quote him because he gives specimens of this tarkib or conductus in his shifa', which he states to be a single plucking of two strings simultaneously, i.
Whether this jass in the tarkib was the forerunner of the European conductus may or may not be a reasonable assumption from the evidence posited here, it is certainly well evidenced that it existed in Arabian and Moorish music before it was known in Europe, and that fact is worthy of being stressed.