Books › The story of the violin, 1904 › scan 66
Scan 66
The story of the violin, 1904
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1First Bowed Instruments in Europe
3What was the first European rebab like? We do not know exactly; but the Arabs to this day use an instrument played with a bow which they call rebab1 (see Figs. 3, 4). It is pear-shaped, has two and three strings sometimes Arabian and European Rebabs tuned in and is often carved and with two half-moon shaped sound-holes in the belly. A similar instrument probably served as the pattern for the instrument or instruments which all through the Middle Ages figured in Europe under the names of—rubèbe, rabel, rebec, and gigue in French; robel, robis, and arrabis in Portuguese; rubeba, rebeba, rebecca in fourths, elaborately ornamented
5FIG. 3. FIG. 4.
6REBAB AND KEMANGEN (ALSO SOMETIMES CALLED A REBAB).
7From the descriptive catalogue, South Kensington Museum.
91 A name probably derived from the Persian revahva—that is, emitting melancholy sounds; see Carl Engel's Researches into the Early History of the Violin Family. This author is of the opinion that the Arabs received the instrument from the Persians at the time or the conquest of Persia, because music there was then in a higher state of cultivation than with the Arabs; but this fact alone would hardly warrant the assumption that the rebab became only then known to the Arabs.
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