08 – Maqam (Tarz) Harva Buwa-u Harva Dabi (“So It Has Been, So It Shall Be”)

Range: C, E♭, F, G, A, B♭.

Time signatures in the metric sections: 3/8.

Tuning: Haft Dastan or Barz (C, C, G)

It is one of the kalam maqams (the sacred melodic-modal pieces of the tanbur repertoire), and its refrain is its first couplet:

Harva buwa-u harva dabi

Ila hal-gert kelaway chawi

So it has been, and so it shall be. Il Beygi lifted the veil from his eyes.

According to Heydar Kaki, “This maqam has a fixed meter, a kind of simple triple meter, and is performed in the Barz tuning; each hemistich has 12 beats in triple measures. The range of this maqam extends from the open-string C up to A♭. The note B♭ is also briefly touched upon, as a kind of ornament (tahrir).”

Il Beygi Jaf, from whose book the poem of the maqam comes, lived in the tenth century AH (16th century CE), in the Safavid era; he was a mystic and poet whose poems have been translated into Persian. His verses are in an eight-syllable meter, the same meter in which Zoroaster composed his Gathas. The book Saranjam (“The Conclusion”) has a considerable connection with the Avesta, and the four principles of the Yari faith (the religion of the Yarsan, or Ahl-e Haqq) are even very similar to the three principles of Zoroaster’s religion. The four principles of the Yari faith are: purity, truthfulness, self-effacement and rada (chivalry), which are influenced by the three principles of good thought, good word and good deed.

Il Beygi Jaf used to foretell events in his poems, and the prophetic character of the lines is evident in the text of the maqam as well. He foretold the rise to power of Nader Shah, the Qajars and the Pahlavis, the outbreak of a world war, the discovery of the telegraph, the invention of the airplane and even travel into space. Each of these prophecies comes with details and the mention of names. It should be pointed out, however, that in his rendition of the poems Ali Akbar Moradi seems to have sung the couplets out of order; for according to Yarsan belief, the manifestation of Ali relates to the final event of the world, and the prophecy of the invention of machines and of the world war should come before the event of the manifestation. In fact, the order of events should be preserved.

As for Soran, it should be noted that it is one of the towns of Erbil in Iraq, and Sorani is one of the Central Kurdish dialects, widespread in Iraqi Kurdistan, whose origins are traced back to the Median language. The people of Soran are, in a sense, among the genuine Kurds.