Machine summary:
It is true that some musicographers have endeavoured to prove that the early music of the Christian Church is of Jewish origin and that source of the neume is to be sought in the Hebrew ne'imali, but, however shadowy these claims may be, which primarily concern the art of music, it is quite certain that, in the science of music, the Christians owe nothing to the Jews of the Middle Ages.
In his Tabb al-nufus, Ibn 'Aqnin deals with arithmetic, geometry, optics, astronomy, music and statics.
The Tabb al-nufus of Ibn 'Aqnin demonstrates very obviously how great was the debt of the Jews to Arabic literature in the disciplince, and in the theory of music as much as in any other sphere for, as Steinschneider remarks, 1 " the theory and expression of music ...
" Indeed, it was in Arabic translation that the Jews could read the works of the great Greek writers on music, uiz.
It was the section on music in this work which Ibn -,-\qnin had " borrowed " in his Tabb 1.
The physical and metaphysical portions are still extant under this translator' s name and it is highly probable that the work on music among the Hebrew manuscripts at the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (2482), is based on the section on music from the treatise of Ibn Sina.
3 The professor acknowledged that, although the work was written in the Hebrew script, the language was Arabic and that there was nothing Jewish in it.