Building the Tanbour

by Nasser Shirazi

Originally published in American Lutherie #120, 2014



About a thousand years ago, the great Persian philosopher Abu Nasr Farabi (873ad–950ad) dedicated a large portion of his major work on music Al Mosighi Kabeer (Great Music) to the tanbour. In this day and age, instruments similar to the tanbour are still played in different countries of the Middle East. I have based this article on an instrument that belongs to my friend Amir Nojan, a master setar player. It was made in Kurdistan, west of Iran, where the tanbour is very popular. The plan presented here is based on measurements of this instrument, whose builder is Ostad Assadollah Gahvareh, known to be one of the best in this part of the world.

The sound chamber (kaseh) is most often made of a solid piece of wood. In recent times, some builders use ribs like those used to make an oud to build the sound chamber, but what we see in this article is the traditional way and it works well. I wrote more about the solid-wood method in my article on constructing the tar in AL#10. Also, I wrote about making a sound chamber of ribs in my book about constructing the setar. Both of these are also long-necked plucked Persian instruments and they share many structural features.