Leather is tanned and elastic and thus unsuitable for use as a membrane. The *rwd* theory is not my pet but borrowed from E. Neubauer who is well versed in Middle Persian (we are not talking Farsi here) and historic Arabic; there are plenty of examples of the 'ain sound being hardly distinguishable from the ghain in Arabic dialects and it seems that the Middle Persian could have had an indifference towards the articulation of the "r", as in German, where the rolled "r" was replaced by the French laryngal. The word rwd is used in the sense of string even in Farsi, cf. Tarab-rwd. Anyhow, I am not myself qualified to discuss linguistics, just as you are not qualified to discuss organology: you cannot even tell apart a lute from a skin-covered gourd with a stick up its ****. The old Arabic-writing theorists, however, DID distinguish sharply between the true lute, carvel built, short necked, thin wooden, assembled belly, gut or silk strung; and the Tanbūr family (long necks etc), the rubāb (parchment belly, carved body) and several other types. Only the former was called 'ūd and this instrument might have been based upon Sassanian instruments (probably called rwd or barbūt), but the crucial lute features, notably the light weight bent-rib construction, the proportions and the glued-on bridge are first described in Arabic sources and appear to have evolved, whether it fits your belated chauvinist/imperialist concepts or not, during the 'ummayad period. Didn't we go through all this before? BTW: needless to say, ch'in in Chinese means a cither. The pipa and ruan are designated foreign instruments in historic Chinese sources and were introduced from Central Asia during the Han dynasty. Ancient China didn't know even remotely lute-like instruments. Even the pipa (as seen in the 6-8th c. c.e. specimen kept in the Shosoin in Nara) was built extremely sturdy and quite unlike real lutes. Regards, danyel
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mathias Rösel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lutelist" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 3:00 PM Subject: Re: LUTE-etymology > > "FYI", there are no references to leather soundboards. Parchment, yes; > > well, there are. Take a look into good old Oswald Koerte's thesis. He > cites related Arabic authors. And, okay, parchment does not qualify as > leather to you, obviously. To me, it does. > > > The word al-'ūd (applied to the lute) has probably nothing to do with wood but is borrowed from M. Persian *rwd* (String, stringed instrument). > > that seems to be your pet-hypothesis which you have proposed earlier. > However, Arabic 'oud starts with an emphatic laryngal (specialty of > semitic languages), whereas in Farsi (Indo-European language) rwd starts > with a rolled R. I know of no precedences that the initial consonant R > of a Farsi loan word in Arabic (!) was changed into a laryngal. Do you? > > What's more, in Farsi rūd is stream or river (and rūdeh is where it all > flow along: intestines), isn't it, not string. A string is zeh, which is > quite another word. > -- > Regards, > > Mathias > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
