Oud

What it is

An oud has a pear-shaped body, a rounded back and a short neck, and the front is flat wood rather than stretched skin. No frets run along the neck, so the player finds each note by finger position alone. Most ouds carry eleven strings grouped into six courses, though instruments with five or seven courses exist, with ten or thirteen strings. Sound comes from plucking, never from bowing. Strings were once made of gut; today makers use nylon, silk, copper or wire wound with silver. Because the neck is short and the strings run in pairs, the oud sounds lower and more resonant than a long-necked lute.

Early history

Long-necked lutes with small sound boxes were played in Mesopotamia, Persia and Arabia long before the oud appeared, and those older instruments had three strings and no tuning pegs. In the Islamic era the body grew larger, a fourth string was added and a pegbox was fitted. One line of thought traces the oud to the barbat, a Persian lute said to have come west from Central Asia. Near the end of the sixth century an instrument with a wooden face was built by al Nadr and taken from Iraq to Mecca. Curt Sachs listed four old course names, bamm, maṭlaṭ, maṭnā and zīr, and noted tuning in fourths. Al-Kindī left the first full description of the oud.

The name

The Arabic word ʿūd describes a thin piece of wood, like a straw, and it may have named the wooden plectrum, the slim wooden ribs of the back, or the wooden soundboard that sets the oud apart from skin-faced instruments. The scholar Henry George Farmer linked the word to al-ʿawda, meaning a return. Other writers have suggested that Arabic took it from a Persian word for string, and one traced that further back to a Sanskrit term for a string instrument. Semitic language scholars propose instead a Syriac root for a wooden or burning stick, related to a Biblical Hebrew word for a stick used to stir a fire. The question remains open.

Spread westward

Musicians carried the oud with them as courts and armies moved. When the Umayyads took Hispania in 711, the instrument went too, and a seated player is shown with one at Qasr Amra. In the eighth and ninth centuries performers travelled to al-Andalus, among them Ziryab, who had studied in Baghdad under Ishaq al-Mawsili and was exiled before 833. He is credited with adding a fifth string and with founding one of the first music schools in Córdoba. By the eleventh century Muslim Iberia was a centre of instrument making. Its goods reached Provence, influenced the troubadours and trouvères, and helped the lute spread through Europe.

Making and playing today

In 2022 an international heritage list accepted the crafting and playing of the oud from Iran and Syria, which put the makers and players of both countries on record alongside the instrument itself. Strings are no longer gut: nylon, silk and metal wound wire are usual. The risha, the plectrum whose name means feather in Arabic, was cut from an eagle's feather; now it is normally plastic, sometimes tortoise shell or shaped bone. Ouds are still made with a rounded back of thin wooden ribs and a flat wooden face. The oldest surviving oud is thought to be kept in Brussels, at the Museum of Musical Instruments.

How Oud is kept

Playing an oud is a seated, unamplified affair. The player rests the pear-shaped body against the chest or knee, holds the short neck with one hand and plucks the paired strings with the other, using a risha of plastic, bone or shell. Because there are no frets, the fingers stop the strings by feel, and the melody is ornamented with slides. Learners study with a teacher, as Ziryab's pupils did in Córdoba, and play alone or with other instruments. Makers shape a back from thin wooden ribs and fit a wooden soundboard, a slower craft than building an instrument with a skin face. Strings are tuned in fourths, with small differences by region and by taste.

When and where

The oud belongs to the Arab Middle East and beyond: versions of it are played in Arabia, Turkey and the Balkans, and Armenian, Greek, Syriac and Hebrew speakers each have a name for it. Egypt and Iraq are counted as its countries of origin. In Europe it took a different path, becoming the lute, a separate instrument with frets and a longer neck.

What Oud means

For those who keep it, the oud is the sound of Arabic classical music and of Ottoman song, the instrument that carries a melody and a mood. Some communities tell stories about its first maker, naming Lamech, or Mani, or philosophers, though such claims belong to legend rather than history, and one ninth-century writer dismissed a tale about the Devil as unbelievable. Its value today is also practical: the 2022 listing treats the craft skills of makers, and the playing skills of musicians, as a living inheritance worth passing on.

Questions people ask about Oud

See also

GhazalA short rhyming poem of love and parting, recited and sung from Arabia to South AsiaHalayA traditional line and circle folk dance kept across Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, and Syria.ZajalHalf-sung Arabic poetry in colloquial speech, traded as a duel between improvising poetsHoronLine dances of Turkey's eastern Black Sea coast, danced with shaking shoulders

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle
• Crafting and playing the OudUNESCO, Heritage listing
• Crafting and playing the OudUNESCO, Article

• Oud on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.