15 – Maqam (Tarz) Hu Hu Yar (“He Is the Friend”)

Range: G, A♭, B (B♭), C, D♭.

Variable notes: B.

Time signatures in the metric sections: 2/4.

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

This is one of the kalam maqams – sacred maqams (melodic-modal pieces of the tanbur repertoire) sung to the sacred verse of the Yarsan (Ahl-e Haqq) – in a simple two-beat metre, and its sarband (refrain) is the first couplet:

Hu hu hu hu hu hu yar

Rahbar Davu zamen-dar

Holy Davud is the guide and refuge of the companions.

The reference to “European jewels” in the text of the maqam makes it clear that the poem of this maqam is of late origin, just as Nowruz Sourani is a late poet. Nowruz Ali, known as Nowruz Sourani, was born in 1220 AH (1805 CE) in the village of Souran-e Sanjabi, east of Gahvareh, the centre of the Guran rural district. He was an accomplished poet and a mystic philosopher in theology, and in this field he passed through stages such that, in the Yarsan view, few in that region have ever reached his rank. According to Ali Akbar Moradi, the poem of this maqam is one of the Yarsan zekrs (devotional invocations). Note that Nowruz Sourani, like Darvish Faregh, was one of the Chehel Tan (the Forty) of Aseyed Barakeh, and Aseyed Barakeh called Nowruz Sourani “the Darvish of Darvishes”.