Abstract
This article comparatively examines Najmiddin Kavkabiy’s Dar bayān-i duvāzdah maqām, Darvish Ali Changi’s Tuḥfat us-surūr, and Daya Ram Kachru Hushdil’s Tarāna-yi Surūr within a shared historical and theoretical framework and identifies their relationships. The argument is that these sources are not repetitive versions of the Twelve-Maqam system, but three models of knowledge in which a common theoretical heritage was reinterpreted according to the musical requirements of different periods and regions. Whereas Kavkabiy emphasizes the classification of maqams, avazas, and shu‘bas, with the principles governing derivative modal units, Changi expands this system through information about musical practice, rhythmic usuls, instruments, compositional forms, and musicians; Hushdil, meanwhile, combines Persian maqamat categories with Indo-Kashmiri concepts of raga, ragini, tala, Ragamala, temperament, performance time, and the spiritual effects of music. The categories of maqam, avaza, shu‘ba, gusha, usul, and performance time are examined through intertextual, comparative-typological, historical-contextual, and source-critical methods, demonstrating that identical terms do not always carry identical musical meanings. The studies of Dilorom Karomat, Alexander Djumaev, Asliddin Nizomov, Ishaq Rajabov, Józef Pacholczyk, and Haruo Inoue are critically synthesized. Consequently, the Twelve-Maqam system is interpreted as an open system of knowledge that circulated between Transoxiana, Khurasan, India, and Kashmir through manuscripts, musicians’ migration, inter-court relations, and Persian as a scholarly language, while acquiring new meanings through local performance. Its relationship to Shashmaqom and Sufiyana Musiqi is therefore understood not as direct linear succession, but as a unity of terminological memory, compositional principles, and performance transformations.