Ancient Azerbaijan musical instrument - Kamancha

Ancient Azerbaijan musical instrument - Kamancha. The kamancha is played with a bow. It is widespread amongst Eastern and Central Asian peoples under a variety of names. In Azerbaijan, the kamancha reached a high level of development starting from the second half of the 19th century. This is closely connected with the development of the khanande art. Earlier kamanchas were made of pumpkin and the wood of nutmeg and decorated with ivory.32 The one-stringed and two-stringed versions of the kamancha are thought to be descendents of the gopuz played with a bow. The kamancha is described in the works of medieval classical poets. Mir Seyid Ali, representative of the 16th-century school of painting, depicted the barbat, daf and kamancha in his work called "A Musical Gathering". Abdulgadir Maraghayi mentioned the kamancha in his works. E. Kaempfer, a German traveler who visited Azerbaijan in the 17th century, noted that the kamancha had three or four strings and a fine timbre. Nizami Ganjavi described the kamancha in his "Khosrov and Shirin": The Kaman is moaning like Moses And is listening to the singer while he is singing. The singer started a beautiful gazal And praised this feast. In the 20th century, there were three-stringed, four-stringed and even five-stringed kamanchas. There is a 1 9th-century five-stringed kamancha preserved in the ethnography fund of the Azerbaijan History Museum. The kamancha that belonged to Zulfugar Hajibeyov, a well-known Azerbaijani composer...