Information about Ud...

Author: * Attila Khan - 2 Posts on this thread out of 2 Posts sitewide.
Date: May 9, 2004 - 10:47

I wanted to write an information about Ud... The one in the picture is the arabic instrument (the branch is more long and notes are signed by lines). But the one mentioned (the picture in her post) at "'Ud (shortnecked lute)" by Voluptua Amytas is the Turkish instrument... I don't know what they all get confused by the arabic Ud which i add here as a picture called Lavta in Turkish.

The word “ud” is originally Arabic and it is derived form “al-oud”, meaning aloes-wood tree. The prefix “al” is a proposition which the Turks have discarded and transformed the word “oud” (consisting of the Arabic letters eyn, waw, dal) into “ud”, for the letter “eyn” is not suitable to their throat structure. The Western world has met the oud in-between the 11th-13th centuries, during the Crusades and has taken the oud along with them to Europe. Afterwards, they have named this instrument as luth (Fr.), lute (Eng.), laute (German), liuto (Italian), Alaud (Spanish), Luit (Dutch), all beginning with the letter “L”. The word “luthier” meaning instrument maker is also derived form the word “luth”.

It is indeed a very quick and a wrong decision to claim that ud is an Arabic instrument, due to to origin of its name. Actually, the Arabs have seen this instrument for the first time in the hands of Turkish workers who have came to Baghdad from Khorasan in the 7th century. Although the Arabs named it “el-oud” due to its soundboard made from aloe wood (aloexyion agallocum), the instrument is no other than the thousand-year old Turkish Kopuz where the Turks have adopted this shorter name instead of the original one. As a matter of fact, beginning with the Huns, there was no Turkish army that did not have kopuz players (In the illiterate period, the Arabs did not know any instrument other than the ‘def’ and the single-stringed instrument ‘rababe’). The two most prominent musicologists of this century and the biggest Turkish literature historian have put this fact forward[1]. Ud is called as ‘kobza’ in Hungarian, a slightly changed version of the ud. Furthermore, in Dede Korkut epics, ‘kobza’ is used as a verb derived from kopuz, meaning ‘playing an instrument mutually’.

The ud, with its resemblers such as the Chinese ‘Pi-Pa’ and the Iranian ‘Barbud’, has traveled from Asia to Anatolia, and further to Rumeli under the name ‘kopuz’. It has even been mentioned as a sacred instrument in the poems of Yunus Emre, a well-known poet as well as a musician[2]. The ud and the şehrud, being different sized ‘kopuz’s, are seen in the foremost plan in the miniatures seen in the ‘surname’s, which are texts written for the occasion of Ottoman celebrations such as weddings. The number of ud players among the musicians of the Ottoman court in-between the 15th and the 19th century has been mentioned in the research of Uzunçarşılı, along with their names and salaries[3].