Western musicians meeting samai thaqil in 10/8 tend to reach for a calculator. Arabic musicians do not count it at all.

Dum, tak, and the space between

Every iqaa is described by low strokes (dum), high strokes (tak) and rests. Masmoudi, maqsoum, baladi and ciftetelli share notes and differ entirely in feel, because the character lives in which beats are heavy and which are left empty. Learn to say the pattern aloud before you play it — the mouth learns a rhythm faster than the hands, and once you can speak it, playing it stops being arithmetic.

The long cycles

Cycles of 10, 14 or 32 beats are not intended to be counted in performance. They are learned as phrases, the way you learn a sentence rather than a list of words. A 32-beat cycle has an internal shape with recognisable landmarks, and a musician tracks position by where they are in the shape, not by a running total.

This is why asking "what beat are we on?" often gets a shrug and a demonstration. The answer is not a number.