Andalusi classical music (Arabic: طرب أندلسي, romanized: ṭarab ʾandalusī; Spanish: música andalusí), also called Andalusi music or Arab-Andalusian music, is a genre of music originally developed in al-Andalus by the Muslim population of the region and the Moors. It then spread and influenced many different styles across the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia) mainly after the Expulsion of the Moriscos. It originated in the music of al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) between the 8th and 15th centuries. Some of its poems derive from famous authors such as al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad, Ibn Khafaja, al-Shushtari, and Ibn al-Khatib.

Andalusi music was allegedly born in the Emirate of Córdoba (Al-Andalus) in the 9th century. Born and raised in Iraq, Ziryâb (d. 857), who later became court musician of Abd al-Rahman II in Córdoba, is sometimes credited with its invention. Later, the poet, composer, and philosopher Ibn Bajjah (d. 1139) of Saragossa is said to have combined christian music with muslim music to produce a wholly new style that spread across Iberia and North Africa.

By the 10th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of musical instruments. These spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, guitar, and naker derive from the Arabic oud, rabab, qithara and naqareh, although some Arabic terms (qithara, for example) had been derived in their turn from Vulgar Latin, Greek and other languages like Persian.

Aḥmad al-Tifāshī (d. 1253) in his encyclopedic work Faṣl al-khiṭāb fī madārik al-ḥ awāss al-khams li-ʾūlī l-albāb (فصل الخطاب في مدارك الحواس الخمس لاولي الالباب) divided the Andalusi musical tradition into four types: nashīd, ṣawt, muwashshaḥ, and zajal. A nashīd was classical monorhyme poem consisting of istihlal (استهلال – a precomposed vocal prelude, probably with instrumental response) and ʿamal (عمل – a composition combining vocal and instrumental elements). A ṣawt was also a classical monorhyme poem with ʿamal, but it did not include istihlal. Works of nashīd and ṣawt, in the classical tradition, circulated first as shiʿr (poetry) and were later set to music, whereas the strophic muwashshaḥ and zajal works were apparently composed directly as songs, at least early on. In a cryptic passage, al-Tifāshī attributes the emergence of a new style to Ibn Bajja, one that combined "the songs of the Christians with those of the East, thereby inventing a style found only in Andalus, toward which the temperament of its people inclined, so that they rejected all others", but the nature and details of this new tradition are unclear.

Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk (d. 1211), author of Dār aṭ-ṭirāz fī ʿamal al-muwashshaḥāt (دار الطراز في عمل الموشحات), wrote the most detailed surviving musical description of the muwashshaḥ. Some of the muwashshaḥāt had lyrics that fit their melodies (sometimes through melisma), while others had improvised nonsense syllables to fill out the melodic line—a practice that survives to the present with relevant sections labeled as shughl (شُغل 'work') in songbooks.

Mass resettlements of Muslims and Sephardi Jews from Córdoba, Seville, Valencia, and Granada, fleeing the Reconquista, further expanded the reach of Andalusi music, though not without changes. In North Africa, the Andalusi music traditions all feature a suite known as a nūba (colloquial Arabic from the formal Arabic nawba: a "turn" or opportunity to perform), a musical form which may have originated in Islamic Iberia, but took on many different forms in the new environments. Moreover, these migrants from the 13th century on encountered ethnic Andalusi communities that had migrated earlier to North Africa, which helped this refined music to take root and spread among wider audiences.

In his book Jews of Andalusia and the Maghreb on the musical traditions in Jewish societies of North Africa, Haim Zafrani writes: "In the Maghreb, the Muslims and Jews have piously preserved the Spanish-Arabic music .... In Spain and Maghreb, Jews were ardent maintainers of Andalusi music and the zealous guardians of its old traditions ...." Indeed, as in so many other areas of Andalusi culture and society, Jews have played an important role in the evolution and preservation of the musical heritage of al-Andalus throughout its history. From the very beginning, one of Ziryāb's colleagues at the court of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II was a fine musician Manṣūr al-Yahūdī ("Mansur the Jew"). The scholars Avraham Eilam-Amzallag and Edwin Seroussi further highlight the important role played by Jews in the history of Andalusi music, pointing out that not only have many important North African Andalusi musicians been Jews, but also Moroccan Jewish communities today in Israel preserve Andalusi melodies and even song texts in their religious music.

A number of old manuscripts preserve song texts and elements of Andalusi musical philosophy. The oldest surviving collection of these texts is found in two chapters from Aḥmad al-Tīfāshī's Mutʿat al-ʾismāʿ fī ʿilm al-samāʿ (متعة الإسماع في علم السماع) (ca. 1253). More recent is a document entitled, al-ʿAdharā al-māyisāt fī-l-ʾazjāl wa-l-muwashshaḥāt (العذارى المايسات في الأزجال والموشحات, "The Virgins Swaying for Zajals and Muwashshaḥs"), which probably dates to the middle of the 15th century and seems to be linked to the Andalusi music of Tlemcen in Algeria. By far the best-documented Andalusi tradition is that of Morocco, with the first surviving anthology having been produced by Muḥammad al-Būʿiṣāmī (d. ca. 1738). But the most important collection was Kunnāsh al-Ḥāʾik (the first of several versions is dated 1202/1788), which was revised by the wazīr Muhammad Ibn al-'Arabi al-Jāmi'i [ar] in 1886 (numerous copies are found in libraries in Morocco, Madrid, London and Paris).