Musical Instruments of the Safavid Period according to Kaempfer and Chardin

In the Safavid period, as opposed to previous periods such as the Timurid era, there is not any discussion of organology in musical treatises and authors had just referred to the name of some instruments. Thus, in order to investigate in this field, it is necessary to study other worthwhile historical sources. In the discussed historical period, there are lots of travel accounts which contain important information of Iranian history and culture. In these travel accounts, Chardin’s and Kaempfer’s descriptions are remarkable. In Chardin’s travel account, there is a part specifically discussing the Iranian musical instruments. Also, in Kaempfer’s travel account, there is a picture illustrating several Iranian instruments, in addition to explanations on them; however, because of the Latin text of the original book, this part has not been translated and surveyed up to now. In this research, considerable information has been got as a result of comparative studies between the very two travel accounts. Although both of them are written in the same period, the style of description, classification of instruments and the types of instruments are different. In some approaches they are complementary, similar or contradictory. In Chardin’s travel account, the instruments have been classified in four groups. While, Kaempfer doesn’t follow this pattern exactly. As a whole, unfortunately, Kaempfer descriptions of Iranian musical instruments have not been considered so far though they are much more accurate and comprehensive than Chardin’s descriptions and he describes this part with more details. There were many nominal differences between two travel accounts based on membranophones, but it could not be possible to compare chordophones because the Chardin’s mean is not clear whereas Kaempfer describes them perfectly. About aerophones at both travel accounts just only minor points have been presented. Both travel accounts bear considerable and complementary explanations, despite some contradictions. Both travel accounts addressed exotic instruments but there was not any common ground in the name of instruments and each one pointed to a specific set as exotic instruments. Western and maybe authoritative point of view about instrument and Iranian music has been seen at both accounts. On the one hand if both accounts viewed etically, it should be stated that at old treaties membranophones has not been considered normally but both at Kaempfer and Chardin’s travel accounts all instrument families described visually and theoretically. With regard to that at first they start to introduce and describe this kind of instruments, one can obtain history and nature of some undescribed instruments. It could be inferred that they select the most applicable Safavid period instruments and explained them, because Kaempfer told that there was some other instruments besides selected ones that because of boring description were not dealt with. It is probable that they describe some instruments that seem stranger and interesting than others. However, at this very period that such information could not be only obtainable from treaties, visual or historical texts this kind of information included in travel accounts could be very valuable and it could be explanatory of small part of music history.