Oud, العود , Kaban, Barbat,بربط, ud, ուդ, עוד

[sismis_bajro]

The oud (Arabic: عود‎ ʿūd; Somali: Kaban; Persian: بربط barbat; Turkish: ud or ut; Greek: ούτι; Armenian: ուդ, Azeri: ud; Hebrew: עוד ud) is a pear-shaped, stringed instrument, which is often seen as the predecessor of the western lute, distinguished primarily by being without frets, commonly used in Middle Eastern music.



According to Farabi, the oud was invented by Lamech, the sixth grandson of Adam. The legend tells that the grieving Lamech hung the body of his dead son from a tree. The first oud was inspired by the shape of his son's bleached skeleton.[2] The oldest pictorial record of a lute dates back to the Uruk period in Southern Mesopotamia - Iraq - Nasria city nowadays, over 5000 years ago on a cylinder seal acquired by Dr. Dominique Collon and currently housed at the British Museum. The image depicts a female crouching with her instruments upon a boat, playing right-handed. This instrument appears many times throughout Mesopotamian history and again in ancient Egypt from the 18th dynasty onwards in long and short-neck varieties. One may see such examples at the Metropolitan Museums of New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and the British Museum on clay tablets and papyrus paper. This instrument and its close relatives have been a part of the music of each of the ancient civilizations that have existed in the Mediterranean and the Middle East regions, including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans.

The ancient Turkic peoples had a similar instrument called the kopuz. This instrument was thought to have magical powers and was brought to wars and used in military bands. This is noted in the Göktürk monument inscriptions, the military band was later used by other Turkic state's armies and later by Europeans.[3] According to Musicolog Çinuçen Tanrıkorur today's oud was derived from the kopuz by Turks near Central Asia and additional strings were added by them.[4] Today's oud is totally different from the old prototypes and the Turkish oud is different from Arabic oud in playing style and shape. The Turkish is derived from modifying the Arabic oud, whose development has been attributed to Manolis Venios, a well known Greek luthier who lived Constantinople (Istanbul) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[citation needed] In Greece and Armenia musicians especially use the Turkish ouds and tunings.[citation needed]


Aleppo musician with an oud, 1915.The oud has a particularly long tradition in Iraq,[5] where a saying goes that in its music lies the country’s soul.[5] A ninth-century Baghdad jurist praised the healing powers of the instrument, and the 19th century writer Muhammad Shihab al-Din related that it "places the temperament in equilibrium" and "calms and revives hearts."[5] Following the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the secular Hussein regime in 2003, however, the increasing fervor of Islamic militants who consider secular music to be haraam (forbidden) forced many Oud players or teachers into hiding or exile