tanbur

Musical instrument called a tanbur (or tambur) carved from a single piece of mulberry wood, with a thin wooden soundboard. The neck is separate, and also hollowed out, and a thin piece of wood is glued on top of it flush with the soundboard. The frets are several windings of tied-on gut. There are small holes in the sounding board in a pattern on the front. The instrument is varnished with a dark stain. It has three courses of metal strings of the same gauche, which run over a bone bridge to a bone peg at the end of the body shaped as a bird's head. At the left side of the neck are 13 pegs and three at the front. The tanbur is played with a plectrum (missing). The instrument is embellished with a string of colourful glass beads with a pink tassel and another tassel with red woolen pompoms attached through a hole on the top of the tanbur's neck.