Amir Khusrau and the Indo-Muslim Identity in the Art Music Practices of Pakistan Yousuf Saeed Introduction This project’s initial objective was to document Amir Khusrau’s living music heritage in Pakistan in the form of a video documentary. However, the researcher realized that that is not enough. What is more important than a mere documentation is to see how Khusrau and his influence helped in the nurturing of a specific music repertoire (which may or may not have been his innovation) and how this promoted an Indo-Muslim cultural identity among Pakistani musicians and their audience. A study of Khusrau as a music legend is a vast multi-disciplinary quest, probably difficult to fully cover even in this research. But one could at least indicate the directions one needs to take to ascertain Khusrau’s worth in music. Conceptual and Theoretical Framework Many practicing musicians in South Asia believe that Amir Khusrau, a 13 th century poet, contributed tremendously to the development of their music by synergizing Indian and Central Asian styles, by ‘inventing’ several new ragas (modes), genres (such as the khayal, qawwali and tarana), instruments (such as the sitar and tabla), and by composing many songs. Interesting anecdotes illustrating his musical genius and ‘inventions’ are circulated, some of them rather improbable. For instance, it was said that he invented the tablas (a pair of small drums) by slicing a pakhawaj (barrel drum) into two halves! This corpus of myths and the name of Khusrau itself evoke great respect and devotion among practicing musicians; Khusrau is treated like he were their saint-guru. Many of them will not utter his name without touching their earlobe (a gesture of begging pardon for doing better than the guru). For centuries these claims remained unquestioned and even entered many published historical sources without being verified, thus making them more credible. However, 20th century scholars (Waheed Mirza, et al) pointed out that there is no evidence in the writings of Khusrau himself or his contemporaries about any of these ‘inventions.’ Khusrau does express his passion and knowledge of music and describes in detail the cultural and musical scenario of his time, but he said nothing about his own musical inventions. Does it mean that the musicians’ claims about his contributions are part of a myth that developed over centuries? The musicians get upset with the scholars’ revelation, since discrediting Khusrau’s ‘inventions’ would mean snatching away not only their patron-saint but also their livelihood. They cannot part with a large chunk of repertoire attributed to him.