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Scan 91
Musical instruments, 1908
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 55. See the scan on archive.org.
1and played upon with two little plectra which the performer had fastened to his fingers. The quanūn is likewise still in use in countries inhabited by Muhammadans. The Persian santir, the prototype of our dulcimer, is mounted with wire strings and played with two slightly curved sticks. The musician depicted in the left-hand corner of Fig. 15c is playing a santir.
3Al-Farabi, one of the earliest Arabian musical theorists known, who lived in the beginning of the tenth century, does not allude to the fiddle-bow. This is noteworthy inasmuch as it seems in some measure to support the opinion maintained by some historians that the bow originated in England or Wales. Unfortunately we possess no exact descriptions of the Persian and Arabian instruments between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, otherwise we should probably have earlier accounts of some instrument of the violin kind in Persia. Ash-shakandi, who lived in Spain about A.D. 1200, mentions the rabôb, which may have been in use for centuries without having been thought worthy of notice on account of its rudeness. Persian writers of the fourteenth century speak of two instruments of the violin class, viz., the rabôb and the kemângeh. As regards the kemângeh, the Arabs themselves assert that they obtained it from Persia, and their statement appears all the more worthy of belief from the fact that both names, rabôb and kemângeh, are originally Persian.
5The nuy, a flute (Fig. 15b), and the surnai, a species of oboe, are still popular in the East.
7The sitâra is a Persian three stringed instrument with a wooden body and a parchment belly (Fig. 15a).
9The Arabs must have been indefatigable constructors of musical instruments. Kiesewetter gives a list of above two hundred names of Arabian instruments, and this does not include many known to us through Spanish historians.
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