A truly ancient art form, classical Iranian music is one of the earliest known musical traditions. Because of the ancient Persian Empire's expansive geographic and sociopolitical power, Iranian culture and music influenced a variety of musical traditions in central Asia, China, and North India.

The golden age of Iranian classical music is considered to be the Qajar period (1785—1925). The Qajar kings were very fond of music, and it was during this time that the radif—the central repertoire of classical Iranian music—was developed.

Although the musical traditions of central Asia and the northern Mediterranean share some common melodic elements and performance styles, Iran's dastgah system, which has been preserved over the centuries through the memorization and performance of master musicians and their students, is unique and complex. Each dastgah is a collection or suite of melodies known as gushehs—the building blocks of the dastgah. As the musical form developed, certain masters established accepted sequences for gushehs within particular dastgahs. These individual arrangements of gushehs are known as radifs. Traditionally, the repertoire is organized into thirteen dastgah suites—Segah, Chahargah, Rast Panjgah, Nava, Shour, Homayoun, Mahour, Dashti, Afshari, Bayat-E-Tork, Abu-Ata, Bayat-E-Isfahan, and Bayat-E-Kurd—which are named after the mode of the daramad, the dastgah's introductory passages.

Within the dastgah system there is a great deal of room for improvisation. All dastgahs are composed of more than four hundred gushehs. A musician will typically play some six to ten gushehs in a single performance, which will be strongly marked by the musician's decisions regarding the mode, rhythmic pattern, and style of performance.