Iraqi santur: Iraq musical instrument

The santur is a hammered dulcimer of the Mesopotamian origin. The musical instrument is a trapezoidal box zither that has a walnut body and 92 steel strings. The strings of the musical instrument are tuned to the same pitching groups of four and are struck with the use of two wooden mallets. The tuning of these 23 sets of strings extends from the lower yakah to the upper jawab jawab husayni. The bridges of the musical instrument are called because they look like pawns. The name of the instrument is derived from the Greek psalterion that, itself, is the result of musical experiments done by Phythagorus based on the 6000 years old bull-headed lyre that was discovered from the excavation found in the ancient city of Ur. The musical instrument is thought to have gotten its name from the ‘Sant’ – ‘Ur’, which means sound of Ur in Sumerian. The musical instrument is mainly used in Iraq, as well as Azerbaijan Pakistan, turkey, India and Iran.

source of picture: culturalinfusion.org.au

The musical instrument was taken to Europe by the arabs via North African and Spain during the Middle Ages and also to china, where the instrument is called yangqin. The santur is the main musical instrument that is used in the classical Maqam Al-Iraqi tradition together with the Iraqi spike fiddle called joza. The musical instrument has been gaining popularity in Lebanon in the recent years through the help of Mr. Hayaf Yassine.

The Iraqi santur, since its origin, has been fully chromatic permitting for full maqam modulations. The musical instrument uses 12 bridges of steel strings on both sides, and the instrument is made up f three movable bridges: B half flat qaraar, E half flat and B half flat jawaab. The non-standard version of the musical instrument excludes extra bridges so that there will be no need to move the three bridges of the instrument. Meanwhile, playing the musical instrument is a bit more difficult than plying the standard 12 bridge version of the musical instrument.

The musical instrument was invented in Mesopotamia in the ancient Babylonian and neo-Assyrian eras. The musical instrument was traded and transported to various parts of the Middle East and each country customized and designed the musical instrument to their own taste to adapt to their musical scales and tunings. The original version of the musical instrument was manufactured with tree bark, stones and stringed with the use of goat intestines. The Mesopotamia version of the musical instrument is also the father of harp, the Chinese version of the musical instrument, the harpsichord and quanum, the cimbalom and the American and the European hammered dulcimer.  This musical instrument became popular in Iran after Khomeini banned all other kinds of music except the classical Iranian music that led to the revival of the semi forgotten musical instrument in Iran.