Categories
Museum Object

31. Lute

Gallery:

Islam

Room / Case / #

43 / 22 / 5

Merchants, Mendicants and Minstrels

The Silk Roads were travelled not just by merchants but also, pious people offering salvation for sustenance, and minstrels bringing West End musicals, actually Central Asian musicals. The Sogdian traders were well known for their love of music and dance (as well as wine, ref object 6) and introduced instruments and their songs to China.  Many depictions of their famous Sogdian Whirl exist from the 4th to the 8th C.

Long necked lutes go back at least to ancient Egypt – 1350 BCE  but the short necked lute, the Barbat seems to have originated in Bactria and Gandhara  in Central Asia before start of CE, becoming the oud of Arabia, the pipa of China and the lute of Europe. (see lute on Object 26) This item: a stringed musical instrument called a tar (lit. “string”) or long-necked Iranian lute. The body is a double-bowl carved from a single piece of mulberry wood. A thin membrane of skin  covers the sound box. The long neck and pegbox, made of wood with bone or ivory, are glued to the body. There are six pegs with rounded knobs. The instrument is played with a small brass plectrum. This lute is about 80 cms long and made in the late 19th or early 20th C.