We do not know very much about the earliest Persian civilization music. Great music scholars like Farabi (tenth century), Ebne-Sina (eleventh century) and Sa- fioddin Armavi have left us very important musical knowledge, but there is not any credible document before Farabi. The Persian Empire of Achamenean dynasty (550-331 B.C.) has revealed almost nothing about their music. But Greek histori- ans have written some about Persian classical music; as Herodotus mentioned the religious rituals of Zoroastrians which involved a chanting of sacred hymns and Xenophon in his Cyropedia speaks about the martial and ceremonial music of the Persian Empire.
The first documents from the Persian music which have come to us are from the Sassanian Period (A.D. 226 642). In the court of Sassanian they hired musicians such as Barbod, Nakisa, Ramtin and… Barbod the most illustrious musician in the court of Chosrous 2. Numerous stories have been told about his skills as a per- former and composer, he organized a musical system containing seven modal structures known as Royal tones (Xosrovani), thirty derivative modes (Lahn) and three hundred and sixty melodies ( Dastan). The numbers correspond with the number of days in a week,amonth and a year. (Farhat 1990, 3)
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