Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Oud" in English language version.
Smaller version ... often played by those with smaller hands ...
classic number of strings was four pairs ... bamm, maṭlaṭ, maṭnā, zīr ... A fifth pair of strings, above zīr seems to have been introduced as early as the ninth century ...
The long-necked lute in the OED is orthographed as tambura; tambora, tamera, tumboora; tambur(a) and tanpoora. We have an Arabic Õunbur; Persian tanbur; Armenian pandir; Georgian panturi. and a Serbo-Croat tamburitza. The Greeks called it pandura; panduros; phanduros; panduris or pandurion. The Latin is pandura. It is attested as a Nubian instrument in the third century BC. The earliest literary allusion to lutes in Greece comes from Anaxilas in his play The Lyre-maker as 'trichordos' ... According to Pollux, the trichordon [sic] was Assyrian and they gave it the name pandoura ... These instruments survive today in the form of the various Arabian tunbar ...
(oud; pl.: ʿīdān). Short-necked plucked lute of the Arab world, the direct ancestor of the European lute, whose name derives from al-ʿūd ('the lute'). Known both from documentation and through oral tradition, it is considered the king, sultan or emir of musical instruments, 'the most perfect of those invented by the philosophers'. Ikhwān al-Safāʾ: Rasāʾil [Letters] (1957), i, 202). It is the principal instrument of the Arab world, Somalia and Djibouti, and is of secondary importance in Turkey (ut, a spelling used in the past but now superseded by ud), Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan (ud). It plays a lesser role in Greece (outi), where it has given rise to a long-necked model (laouto); the latter is used in rustic and folk contexts, while the ʿūd retains pre-eminently educated and urban associations. In eastern Africa it is known as udi; in recent decades it has also appeared in Mauritania and Tajikistan. [...] The emergence of the ʿūd on the stage of history is an equally complex matter. Two authors of the end of the 14th century (Abū al-Fidā, or Abulfedae, and Abū al-Walīd ibn Shihnāh) place it in the reign of the Sassanid King Sh[ā]pūr I (241–72). Ibn Shihnāh added that the development of the ʿūd was linked to the spread of Manicheism, and its invention to Manes himself, a plausible theory because the disciples of Manes encouraged musical accompaniments to their religious offices. Reaching China, their apostolate left traces of relations between West and East, seen in a short-necked lute similar to the ʿūd (Grünwedel, 1912). But the movement's centre was in southern Iraq, whence the ʿūd was to spread towards the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century. However, the texts mentioning the introduction to Mecca of the short-necked lute as the ʿūd were all written in the 9th and 10th centuries. The ʿūd spread to the West by way of Andalusia
The 'ūd (lute) is believed to be a later development of a pre-Islamic Persian instrument called barbat...[was part of] eastwards diffusion of Middle Eastern and Central Asian chordophones... the pipa, likewise derived from the barbat or from its prototype
We find representations of the nissāri vinas in sculptures, paintings, terracotta figures, and coins in various parts of India […]. The lute type vina [...] is represented in Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Pawaya (Gupta period), Ajanta paintings (300-500 A.D.) [...]. These varieties are plucked by the right hand and played by the left hand
With the evidence as yet available, it is reasonable to place the site of origin of the short lute in Central Asia, perhaps among Iranised Turco-Mongols, within the area of the ancient first-century kingdom of the Kusanas. This conclusion must not be taken to exclude the possibility that short lutes first appeared somewhat earlier and somewhat further to the West-in Parthia, for example; but at present the evidence of the Kusana reliefs is the only evidence of their existence in the first century[...] The lutes of the Kusanas would seem to be the first representations of undoubted short ovoid lutes; and Fu Hsüan's essay, one of the first texts in any language devoted to a short lute, though not to an ovoid lute.
... from a work entitled Kitāb kashf al-humūūm ... 'ūd (lute) is derived from al-'awda ("the return" meaning the days of pleasure may return [in the joy of the music of the lute] ...)
We find representations of the nissāri vinas in sculptures, paintings, terracotta figures, and coins in various parts of India […]. The lute type vina [...] is represented in Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Pawaya (Gupta period), Ajanta paintings (300-500 A.D.) [...]. These varieties are plucked by the right hand and played by the left hand
With the evidence as yet available, it is reasonable to place the site of origin of the short lute in Central Asia, perhaps among Iranised Turco-Mongols, within the area of the ancient first-century kingdom of the Kusanas. This conclusion must not be taken to exclude the possibility that short lutes first appeared somewhat earlier and somewhat further to the West-in Parthia, for example; but at present the evidence of the Kusana reliefs is the only evidence of their existence in the first century[...] The lutes of the Kusanas would seem to be the first representations of undoubted short ovoid lutes; and Fu Hsüan's essay, one of the first texts in any language devoted to a short lute, though not to an ovoid lute.
Because of these efforts the Arabic Oud and the Barbat are now once again part of the Iranian musical landscape.
Because of these efforts the Arabic Oud and the Barbat are now once again part of the Iranian musical landscape.
The long-necked lute would have stemmed from the bow-harp and eventually became the tunbur; and the fat-bodied smaller lute would have evolved into the modern Oud. ... the lute pre-dated the lyre which can therefore be considered as a development of the lute, rather than the contrary, as had been thought until quite recently ... Thus the lute not only dates but also locates the transition from musical protoliteracy to musical literacy ...
