The Shahrud (, from , DMG à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d or à ¡ÃÂh-i-rà «d) was a short-necked lute, illustrated in the Surname-i Hümayun, resembling an oud or barbat, but being much larger. The larger size gave the instrument added resonance and a deeper (bass) range, like the modern mandobass, mandolone or Algerian mandole.
The word also referred to a type of zither written about by Al Farabi and illustrated in his book KitÃÂb al-mà «sëqë al kabër. That illustration has led scholars to speculate the instrument was a box-zither, or a harp combined with a psaltery. The à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d was introduced to Samarkand in the early 10th century and spread to Middle Eastern Arabic music.
Another writer who referred to the instrument was Abd al-Qadir in his work Maqasid al-Alhan (Persian for: purports of Music)(àÃÂçõï çÃÂÃÂçÃÂ). al-Qadir was interested in the restoration and improvement of stringed musical instruments, and his work provides information about numerous musical instruments, including the shahrud.
The Persian word à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d is made up of à ¡ÃÂh , "king" (shah) and rà «d, which, like tÃÂr, contains the basic meaning "string". Rà «d is a historical oriental lute instrument , while the long-necked lute tÃÂr is still played in Iranian music today. The Azerbaijani musician Abd al-Qadir (Ibn Ghaybi; â 1435) from Maragha in northwestern Iran mentioned the lute rà «d chÃÂtë (also rà «d chÃÂnë) alongside rà «dak and rà «á¸Âa. Two centuries later, the Ottoman travel writer Evliya ÃÂelebi (1611 â after 1683) described the lute rà «á¸Âa as similar to the ÃÂahÃÂrtÃÂr, a nominal four-stringed instrument. The Arab historian al-Maqqari (c. 1577âÂÂ1632) refers to a 13th-century source that the rà «á¸Âa was found in Andalusia.
The à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d, "the king of the lutes", may have given its name to the North Indian shell-necked sarod lute developed in the 1860s from the Afghan rubÃÂb. However, the Persian word sarod in several spelling variants has been used for much longer to describe lute instruments and generally stands for "music". In Balochistan, the bowed sounds surod and sorud, which are similar to the Indian sarinda, are known.
A stringed instrument called à Âehrud in the Ottoman period, which frequently appears in 15th and 16th century Ottoman miniature paintings and Persian miniatures during the Timurid Empire (1370âÂÂ1507) as an oversized pot-bellied variant of the short-necked lute Oud, is named with the medieval à ¡ÃÂh- rà «d-, but obviously not related in form. The extent to which this instrument was widespread in Arabic music is unclear. Miniatures of the 1582 Ottoman manuscript Surname-i Hümayun show court musicians playing alongside the à Âehrud, which according to its oversized depiction was probably a bass lute, playing the historical angle harp çeng, the plucked lute kopuz, the bowed lute kemânçe, the pan flute mñskal, the long flute ney and the frame drum daf.
A published account of the à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d comes from a 13th-century manuscript preserved in the National Library in Cairo, the only other from what is believed to be a 12th-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. The Madrid depiction is more closely surrounded by writing, executed less carefully and without compasses; structurally, the two do not differ. The Cairo drawing, on the other hand, is carefully constructed with compass and ruler. It is unclear whether both drawings are based on the same or a different template, or whether the later Cairo drawing was copied from the earlier one in Madrid. From archaeologically excavated clay figures, Sassanid rock-reliefs or Persian book miniatures often give a rough idea of the appearance of historical musical instruments, only the number of strings is usually adapted to artistic requirements and is rarely realistic. This also applies to the generally more reliable representations in musicological works. For example, the ornamental embellishments of an angular harp (ÃÂang) in a 13th-century drawing belong more to artistic license than to actual appearance. Harps are often depicted without any strings at all or with strings leading out into the void. Sometimes the musician might not be able to hold his instrument in the manner shown or he might not be able to grip the strings.
In the illustration of the à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d, the parallel strings run across the top like a box zither, but end somewhere outside on the right side. The six shorter (highest) strings are snapped off at their ends. A second bundle of strings leading upwards at right angles to it is enclosed in a curved wooden frame resembling the yokes of a lyre or the frame of a harp. These strings also end outside the construction. One explanation for why both string systems protrude beyond the instrument could be that the draftsman continued to draw the string ends, which hang down after their point of attachment and were often provided with an appendage and left for decoration, as a straight line. The Madrid instrument has 40 strings, 27 of which run across the closed body and 13 perpendicular to the frame; the drawing from Cairo shows a à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d with 48 strings, 29 strings across the body and 19 to the frame.
The musicologist and orientalist Rodolphe d'Erlanger (1872-1932), whose six-volume work edition La musique arabe contains a translation of al-FÃÂrÃÂbë's KitÃÂb al-Mà «sëqàal-kabër in the first two volumes, classified the à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d as a zither in 1935. Henry George Farmer (1882âÂÂ1965) previously called it an 'archlute or zither' in A History of Arabian Music (1929), adding that it was "certainly an archlute by the early 15th century," twice the length of a lute. Influenced by d'Erlanger, others wanted to see a harp or psaltery, which is why Farmer in The Sources of Arabian Music (1940) turned it into a "Harp Psaltery". In the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (1934), Farmer had mentioned the à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d in the article Ã¿à ªd, i.e. with the oriental lute instruments. This Farmers section was included unchanged in the 2000 reissue, as Farmer later reverted to his original view. Accordingly, one set of strings should be thought of as melody strings over a fretboard and the other set of strings as drone strings leading to separate pegs. This view is reinforced by al-FÃÂrÃÂbë, who distinguished this particular instrument from the angular harps (Persian ÃÂang, Arabic çank) and from the lyres (Arabic miÿzafa). Pavel Kurfürst agreed with Farmer's interpretation as a âÂÂHarp PsalteryâÂÂ. The kanun player and music historian George Dimitri Sawa, on the other hand, speaks of a zither. Al-FÃÂrÃÂbë gave a pitch range of four octaves in the 10th century. According to Abd al-Qadir, the à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d had ten double strings in the 15th century and was twice as long as the oud .
In addition to the two depictions of the KitÃÂb al-Mà «sëqÃÂ, a differently drawn à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d is depicted in the incunabula from 1474 of the work Quaestiones in librum II sententiarum written by Johannes Duns Scotus. The incunable is in the Ethnographic Museum in Brno kept in the Czech Republic and probably originated in Brno. The stringed instrument, depicted as a colored pen drawing in a decorative border between plant ornaments, is held in the hand of a standing musician. This instrument with a different body shape, but also with inwardly curved edges and without sound holes, as in the Arabic manuscripts, is shown in perspective in the playing position and thus allows an estimation of its size. On the other hand, the number of strings remains unclear here, since only as many strings were drawn in parallel as was possible in the 25 millimeter long illustration. In the Arabic drawings, the corpus has six edges, in the Brno depiction there is one more, which may be due to inaccuracy. Judging by the coloring, parchment would have been possible as a soundboard.
The à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d goes back to a musician named Ḫulaiá¹£ ibn al-Aḥwaá¹£ (also called Ḥakëm ibn Aḥwaá¹£ al-Suádë), who introduced this instrument to Samarkand in 918/19 A.D. and traveled with it in Central Asian Sogdia. It later spread to Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
Arabic instrumental music seems to have changed considerably around this time, according to the KitÃÂb al-Mà «sëqàal-kabër. In the 19th century the slender, solid form of the barbaá¹ developed into the form of the short-necked lute known today with a round body made of glued lathes of wood, which since then has been the most popular Arabic stringed instrument under the name oud. Also developed was the Tuhfat al-'Oudwas, a lute half the size of the oud. The âÂÂperfect luteâ (Ã¿à «d kÃÂmil) with five double strings was the benchmark. During the rule of the Abbasids , as stated by al-FÃÂrÃÂbë, there were two distinct long-necked lutes, the older á¹Âunbà «r al-mëzanë (also á¹Âunbà «r al-baghdÃÂdë) and the á¹Âunbà «r al-churasÃÂnë, both named after their areas of distribution, Baghdad and Khorasan, respectively. In addition, there were the rarer plucked-stringed instruments, of which the lyre (miÿzafa) was used more frequently than the harp (çank), and the trapezoid box-zither (qÃÂnà «n). Singers accompanied themselves on lute instruments, and no account is known of a singer playing a lyre or harp himself.
The à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d is documented up to the 15th century. For the 16th century its existence is no longer verifiable. A similarly complicated stringed instrument is an archlute built by Wendelin Tieffenbrucker (German luthier, active 1570âÂÂ1610) with parallel strings attached to the side of a harp-like frame (a harp lute). This exceptional, unique piece, made no later than 1590, had a pitch range of 6.5 octaves and could be a successor to the à ¡ÃÂh-rà «d, which the lute maker Tiefenbrucker may have known.