[1] Each maqam is built on a scale, and carries a tradition that defines its habitual phrases, important notes, melodic development and modulation.
[2] The designation maqam appeared for the first time in the treatises written in the fourteenth century by al-Sheikh al-Safadi and Abdulqadir al-Maraghi, and has since been used as a technical term in Arabic music.
The maqam is a modal structure that characterizes the art of music of countries in North Africa, the Near East and Central Asia.
Three main musical cultures belong to the maqam modal family: Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.
The notes of a maqam are not always tuned in equal temperament, meaning that the frequency ratios of successive pitches are not necessarily identical.
For this reason maqam scales are mostly taught orally, and by extensive listening to the traditional Arabic music repertoire.
When transcribed with this notation system some maqam scales happen to include quarter tones, while others don't.
In practice, maqamat are not performed in all chromatic keys, and are more rigid to transpose than scales in Western music, primarily because of the technical limitations of Arabic instruments.
The 24-tone system is entirely a notational convention and does not affect the actual precise intonation of the notes performed.
Practicing Arab musicians, while using the nomenclature of the 24-tone system (half-flats and half-sharps), often still perform the finer microtonal details which have been passed down through oral tradition to this day.
The exact intonation of every maqam changes with the historical period, as well as the geographical region (as is the case with linguistic accents, for example).
For this reason, and because it is not common to notate precisely and accurately microtonal variations from a twelve-tone equal tempered scale, maqamat are mostly learned auditorally in practice.
Each passage consists of one or more phases that are sections "played on one tone or within one tonal area," and may take from seven to forty seconds to articulate.
The tonal levels, or axial pitches, begin in the lower register and gradually rise to the highest at the climax before descending again, for example (in European-influenced notation):[5] "When all possibilities of the musical structuring of such a tone level have been fully explored, the phase is complete.
Bayati is shown in the example above, while 'ushshaq turki is:[6] Maqamat are made up of smaller sets of consecutive notes that have a very recognizable melody and convey a distinctive mood.
The following is the list of the basic 9 ajnas notated with Western standard notation (all notes are rounded to the nearest quarter tone): (for more detail see Arabic Maqam Ajnas) It is sometimes said that each maqam evokes a specific emotion or set of emotions determined by the tone row and the nucleus, with different maqams sharing the same tone row but differing in nucleus and thus emotion.
However, there has not been any serious research using scientific methodology on a diverse sample of listeners (whether Arab or non-Arab) proving that they feel the same emotion when hearing the same maqam.
Attempting the same exercise in more recent tonal classical music would mean relating a mood to the major and minor modes.
Modulations that are pleasing to the ear are created by adhering to compatible combinations of ajnas and maqamat long established in traditional Arabic music.