The Shahrud (, from , DMG šāh-rūd or šāh-i-rūd) was a short-necked lute, illustrated in the Surname-i Hümayun, resembling an oud or barbat, but being much larger. The larger size gave the instrument added resonance and a deeper (bass) range, like the modern mandobass, mandolone or Algerian mandole.
The word also referred to a type of zither written about by Al Farabi and illustrated in his book Kitāb al-mūsīqī al kabīr. That illustration has led scholars to speculate the instrument was a box-zither, or a harp combined with a psaltery. The šāh-rūd was introduced to Samarkand in the early 10th century and spread to Middle Eastern Arabic music.
Another writer who referred to the instrument was Abd al-Qadir in his work Maqasid al-Alhan (Persian for: purports of Music)(مقاصد الحان). al-Qadir was interested in the restoration and improvement of stringed musical instruments, and his work provides information about numerous musical instruments, including the shahrud.
Etymology
The Persian word šāh-rūd is made up of šāh , "king" (shah) and rūd, which, like tār, contains the basic meaning "string". Rūd is a historical oriental lute instrument , while the long-necked lute tār is still played in Iranian music today. The Azerbaijani musician Abd al-Qadir (Ibn Ghaybi; † 1435) from Maragha in northwestern Iran mentioned the lute rūd chātī (also rūd chānī) alongside rūdak and rūḍa. Two centuries later, the Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 – after 1683) described the lute rūḍa as similar to the čahārtār, a nominal four-stringed instrument. The Arab historian al-Maqqari (c. 1577–1632) refers to a 13th-century source that the rūḍa was found in Andalusia.
The šāh-rūd, "the king of the lutes", may have given its name to the North Indian shell-necked sarod lute developed in the 1860s from the Afghan rubāb. However, the Persian word sarod in several spelling variants has been used for much longer to describe lute instruments and generally stands for "music". In Balochistan, the bowed sounds surod and sorud, which are similar to the Indian sarinda, are known.
A stringed instrument called şehrud in the Ottoman period, which frequently appears in 15th and 16th century Ottoman miniature paintings and Persian miniatures during the Timurid Empire (1370–1507) as an oversized pot-bellied variant of the short-necked lute Oud, is named with the medieval šāh- rūd-, but obviously not related in form. The extent to which this instrument was widespread in Arabic music is unclear. Miniatures of the 1582 Ottoman manuscript Surname-i Hümayun show court musicians playing alongside the şehrud, which according to its oversized depiction was probably a bass lute, playing the historical angle harp çeng, the plucked lute kopuz, the bowed lute kemânçe, the pan flute mıskal, the long flute ney and the frame drum daf.
Design
A published account of the šāh-rūd comes from a 13th-century manuscript preserved in the National Library in Cairo, the only other from what is believed to be a 12th-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. The Madrid depiction is more closely surrounded by writing, executed less carefully and without compasses; structurally, the two do not differ. The Cairo drawing, on the other hand, is carefully constructed with compass and ruler. It is unclear whether both drawings are based on the same or a different template, or whether the later Cairo drawing was copied from the earlier one in Madrid. From archaeologically excavated clay figures, Sassanid rock-reliefs or Persian book miniatures often give a rough idea of the appearance of historical musical instruments, only the number of strings is usually adapted to artistic requirements and is rarely realistic. This also applies to the generally more reliable representations in musicological works. For example, the ornamental embellishments of an angular harp (čang) in a 13th-century drawing belong more to artistic license than to actual appearance. Harps are often depicted without any strings at all or with strings leading out into the void. Sometimes the musician might not be able to hold his instrument in the manner shown or he might not be able to grip the strings.