Playing the Oud

Arab musician in Aleppo, Syria with an oud circa 1915

According to Farabi, the oud was invented by Lamech, the sixth grandson of Adam. You'd like to hear the legend, only it sounds kind of morbid for modern tastes, so I'll rather pass over.

Anyway, even if it wasn't invented exactly in those times, the oud is very old, for sure. Arabs and Kurds call it ūd, Turks call it ud or ut, Greeks call it ούτι, in Somalia it's called cuud, in Iran barbat. This pear-shaped instrument is used across the whole Middle East. It is the ancestor of the lute.

بربط
(video by Oshagh)

An ancient Turkish ud inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl
(Mevlâna mausoleum, Konya, Turkey)

(Iranian Film and Poetry)