Song of the Mad Lark

Moments before he breathed his last and released his soul into the great unknown, Amin plucked out the melody of “The Lark’s Song.” When he was gone, his mother hung his dutar on the mud wall facing her son’s deathbed.

Amin had earned his early exit from this world just a few days prior, in a dusty collision with a half-dozen rough Kandaharis armed with sticks. Amin fought back with his favorite weapon—his own fearless skull, a tool he had mastered in the alleys of Herat’s southern bazaar. This time, however, the headbutts failed him. Left with severe internal injuries, his belly swelled until he finally gave way in his mother’s house, ending his life exactly where it had begun.

At the time, many considered Amin the finest dutar player in Afghanistan. His nickname, “Diwana” (Persian for “madman”), was a tribute to his eccentric, wild character as much as his virtuosity. It was said he could make the dutar sing or scream with such intensity that other musicians, struck by a kind of holy dread, refused to play in his presence.

Amin’s skill was forged in his youth. A fatherless orphan, he spent his days cleaning pistachios and his rest hours retreating to the teahouses of the Kandahar Gate. These were the haunts of musicians, laborers, and thugs—and those who were a bit of all three. Amin started on a rural dutar which, true to its name, bore a pair of goat-gut strings. In time, he graduated to an improved model that kept the name but featured three metal strings.

A deserter, an idler, a truck-swabber, a smuggler, and a professional heavy, Amin was a creature of Herat’s periphery. He was entirely at home among the charas-smoking gangs of the “payluch”—the barefoot ones—the outcasts of Afghan society.

Amin seemed to relish the freedom of his dubious social status and the prestige his playing afforded him. He spent long days lounging in teahouses or wandering the streets like a visionary, his chest bare and draped in cheap jewelry. Such behavior was extraordinary by traditional Afghan standards, yet it fit the archetype of the marginal musician and the reputation of the “Diwana.”

Islam has maintained a complex relationship with music since its inception. On one hand, musical practice is viewed as a tool for refining the soul and drawing it toward the divine; on the other, it is seen as a satanic temptation. This debate has long occupied scholars, jurists, and mystics, with the legalistic arguments for and against music anchored firmly in the Quran and the Hadith.

The theologian Ibn al-Jawzi, for instance, argued that music was a devilish instrument used to enslave the soul to earthly desires, leading inevitably to vice. Yet many jurists took a more nuanced view, distinguishing between music intended to strengthen faith and the frivolous, idle sounds that corrupt the believer.

Among the greatest proponents of music were the Sufi orders. Many incorporated frame drums, flutes, and stringed instruments into the rituals of dhikr and sama, seeking a mystical union with the Absolute.

Even when music was deemed positive—or mandatory—in Sufi ritual, the disciple’s approach to it was never considered direct or self-evident. It required rigorous spiritual preparation.

A passage from the Sufi manual by Suhrawardi (d. 1234) captures this beautifully:

“Music does not awaken anything in the heart that is not already there. Therefore, he whose heart clings to anything other than God will be infected by earthly desires. But he whose inner self clings to the love of God will, upon hearing the sounds, act according to His word. The common folk hear music as a matter of nature, the junior disciples hear it with passion and wonder, but the listening of the saints grants them a vision of heavenly graces... finally, there is the perfect listening, through which God reveals Himself without a veil.”

Music also held a special place in the Islamic world’s treatment of the mentally ill—a tradition rooted in Greek texts and preserved through the Ottoman hospitals of Istanbul. Music was regarded as a primary tool for balancing the psyche and reconciling the soul with both God and man.

Toward the end of his twenties, Amin grew increasingly reclusive, eventually moving into the “ziyarat”—the shrines of saints that dot the Herat valley. Fellow musicians began calling him a “malang,” the Afghan term for the dervishes and Sufi hermits who lived in these sacred spots, smoking charas and seeking solitude. It is said that one day, as he played beside a sacred mud structure, songbirds flew down and perched on the neck of his dutar.

Whether Amin found in music a balm for his stormy soul, a bridge to the divine, or mere distraction in a fleeting world, we will never truly know.

Amin’s retreat from the jealous eyes of rival players in the markets of Herat was never total. He lived on the dark seam between the city and the graveyard, between the bazaar and the back alleys. It was this shadow world of social legitimacy that eventually claimed him in a brawl with men as marginal as himself.

Nevertheless, Amin’s choice to live in total freedom—sensual, wild, and suspended like a string between heaven and earth—strikes a familiar chord. It resonates with our own capacity to walk the very edge of existence, should we choose to do so.

But that is only if we are willing to pay the price. In the photos:

• The only known photograph of Amin-i Diwana, 1960s.
• The tomb (mazar) of Abdullah Ansari outside Herat, where Amin would isolate himself to play and smoke charas.
• A traditional Herati dutar.
• A post-1960s Herati dutar, featuring the frets and sympathetic strings added under Indian and Kabuli influence (Aziz Herawi).