Barbet (musical instrument)

Saudi Arabia is considered the birthplace of the instrument. Many ancient sources report that there once existed three-, eight-, and ten-stringed barbet varieties.

Barbet consists of three parts - the body, neck and head. The hull is assembled from 15 wooden pieces. Its upper deck is made of pine and spruce and has a thickness of 4 mm. On the fingerboard of the instrument, 9–12 gangue strands are imposed. The neck and head is made of walnut , the body is made of plane tree , mahogany and walnut. The strings of the instrument are made of silk and animal intestines.

• Length - 665 mm
• Tool neck length - 205 mm
• Width - 465 mm
• Height - 250 mm
• The range covers sounds from the " mi " of the large octave to the "mi" of the second octave.

The word "barbet" consists of two words: "bar" - "chest" and bet - "duck". However, some sources note that the word translates from Arabic as "excitement on the water, swell." The poet Nizami Ganjavi often mentions barbet in his works. From the works of Nizami, we can conclude that the creator of this instrument was a famous musician, a skilled instrumentalist, a singer, and also a composer named Barbed. In particular, in the poem " Khosrov and Shirin " the poet writes:

When, like a drunken nightingale, Barbed entered,
Spun out like water, in his hands barbet.
Out of a hundred songs that he knew
Favorite thirty picked up,
The tunes so Barbed played,
What gave life to the heart, or took away the soul.

Barbet, like ud, is tuned to clean quarters. Initially, it was played with fingers, but at present the sound from the instrument is extracted using a plectrum made from soft materials. Barbet is often just used in palaces, during feasts.

• Oud (musical instrument)

• Azerbaijani music
• Majnun Karimov about Barbat
• Encyclopædia Iranica | BARBAṬ