Oud
Oud
The oud is very similar to other types of lute, and to Western lutes which developed out of the Medieval Islamic Oud. Similar instruments have been used in the Middle East, North Africa (specifically the Maghreb, Egypt and Sudan), and Central Asia for thousands of years, including Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, the Levant, Anatolia, Albania and Bulgaria; there may even be prehistoric antecedents of the lute.The oud, as a fundamental difference with the western lute, has no frets and a smaller neck. It is the direct successor of the Persian Barbat lute.
Historical sources indicate that Ziryab (789–857) added a fifth string to his oud. He was well known for founding a school of music in Andalusia, one of the places where the oud or lute entered Europe.
archaeomusicologists have worked to piece together a lute family history. The highly influential organologist Curt Sachs distinguished between the “long-necked lute” and the short-necked variety. Douglas Alton Smith argues the long-necked variety should not be called lute at all because it existed for at least a millennium before the appearance of the short-necked instrument that eventually evolved into what is now known the lute.
