A Study in Organology; Structure of Oud (Barbat) in Sassanid, Ilkani-Teymoorid and Safavid era, Iran

Of all Persian musical instruments, Oud is probably most famous. The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic study of evolution of oud’s structure over centuries, starting from pre-Islamic Art, Sassanid era (6th century AD), till the Safavid era (18th century AD). Since the recognition and reconstruction of Ancient musical instruments is an important area of musicology, this research introduces paintings and metal works along with historical descriptions of old musical treatises, for the purpose of understanding the continuous morphology of oud throughout its developing period. The main theme of this paper is to approach the proportion of oud and oud player from the old scales patterns of the instrument. Comparing that with contemporary oud help us discern the changing process of the instrument’s form and shape, if any.
By examining the samples of painted illustrations and metal works during this period, along with old treatises of Persian music, we would be able to understand the developing structure of Oud by the end of this era. Kanz Al-tuhaf by Hasan Kashani (11th century AD), is considered as the only reference which presents information on making various musical instruments in Persian.
To explore the gradual evolution of Oud, this paper adopts the Qualitative Comparative Analysis where the proportions of Oud are studied based on: (1) the‫ scale range of the instrument; (2) the illustrations of musicians in earlier samples; and (3) the comparison of those with the contemporary Oud structure. Since this paper follows oud throughout pictures during its Golden age, Trend Analysis is also noted as an approach to represent the gradual evolution of the form of the instrument. ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
We examined 32 pictures of oud and oud player in four groups from Sassanid to Safavid era; group 1: Sassanid, group 2: Timurid, group 3: Safavid (Tabriz), group 4: Safavid (Isfahan).To study the structure of oud, we measured specified lengths of the instrument and the oud player’s body. So making comparison would be possible by measuring and describing the ratio of the lengths in the instrument and musician’s body. According to the two dimensional images, the AutoCAD 2D-format software has applied to measure the different parts of oud player and instruments in the pictures.
In group1, all the instruments approximately have the same proportion and follow the ratios mentioned in Kanz-Al-Tuhaf. The size of bowl in group 2 increases gradually. Group 3 includes more cases and the most biggest size of oud; width of bowl to height of face is twice bigger than the group 2. We see different ratios in group 4. They don’t follow a stable ratio and include smaller instrument, in comparison to the previous groups. Although the variety of shape or proportion of the structure is not mentioned in any of the treatises, the results of the measurements show gradual increase of the width of the bowl, from Sassanid to Safavid era; the proportion in the Sassanid oud is more similar to the contemporary one