Like Music To Your Ears

Sound Therapy in Turkey

- Minji Lee

Music and sound have been used for centuries to enhance well-being and cure ailments, and Turkey and the surrounding region has been central to the development of these treatments. In the Golden Age of Islam, which spanned from the 8th to 13th century, scholars such as Al Farabi and Abu Bakr-Razi studied the healing effects of music and medicine. They combined knowledge from astrology, chemistry, biology, and other disciplines that influence people’s emotional and physical health, to diagnose and treat patients. Ibn Sina’s infamous The Canon of Medicine, published in 1025, explored how listening to music can increase a patient’s capacity to cope with disease.

Centuries later, makamlar, or specific melodies of varying tones and patterns, were used in medical treatment. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, interactions between dervishes, mosque cantors, non-Muslims, and the Ottoman high class created a diversity of instruments, sounds, and makam. The classical Ottoman music from these times were sources of not only entertainment but also healing, featuring instruments such as the ney, or reed flute, and kildum, or kettledrum.

Music therapy in Ottoman Turkey

Selçuk and Ottoman doctors applied music healing treatments in institutions known as sifahane, or health houses. Health houses were established in present-day Mardin, Kayseri, Manisa, Bursa, Istanbul, and Edirne, with the most prominent located in Edirne. The Sultan Beyazid II Health Complex was established in 1494 and became well-known through historian and writer Evliya Çelebi’s