Music in medieval Central Asia was inextricably bound to literature, as so many works of poetry were intended to be sung. Courtly entertainment often featured small orchestras playing a wide variety of regional stringed, woodwind and percussive instruments. Poet-singers known as bakshy or aqyn would lend their voices and perhaps also their own words, sometimes even improvising. In some courts, a tradition of female musicianship long held sway. Outside of the courts, music also played an important spiritual role, particularly in Sufism, which inspired some of the great ghazal song-poems and other musical works on spiritual and mystical themes.

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