Silk strings in the Islamic World

Silk strings were used for a long time in the music instruments of the Turkic, Persian and Arab cultures of Central Asia, Western Asia and North Africa. From there they would also have made their way to South Asia, particularly under the Mughals but also under the British, as well as to Europe.⁴ In the case of Central Asia they were still sometimes in use in the late 20th century,⁵ but everywhere they eventually lost out to gut and metal, the latter in particular. As in the West some of this can be explained in commercial terms: the desire to play for larger audiences and in larger ensembles made the the natural intimacy of silk strings problematic. The rich but delicate sounds of silk strings makes it difficult to combine them with the sounds of other instruments.

In sum, this is not intended as a critique of the differing types of strings: each has its own value and variety is laudable for its ability to expand horizons.

An early source of information on silk strings comes from the 10th century philosopher Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (c. 870 - 950).⁶ In his Kitab al-Musiqi al Kabir (Great Book of Music) he wrote that "The seniya" rebab had gut strings whereas the other rebabs had silk strings". He apparently does not go into what the differences in sound might be.

Regarding the use of silk strings in South Asia,⁷ this is mentioned in the following quote (from Allyn Miner, Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries, 1993 and 1997, p.61):

Amir Kusrau during the 13th-century Delhi Sultanate period mentions the rabab frequently. In one passage he says:

In order to display the beauty of the bridal-bed of poetry 12 screens [pardah:modes] have been stretched along the fine and thin silken chords fastened to the wooden pegs of the Rabab (Askari 1972:110).

Silk strings may also have been used later by the famous Mughal court musician Tansen. Unfortunately, there is little discussion of the qualities of various string materials in any of these sources.

From this history it can be seen that importing silk strings into Europe would not have required direct trade with China. In fact, by the time of the earliest surviving Western music, from the medieval period, sericulture itself had reached the West. However, there is little information about the manufacture of silk strings for music, and it might be difficult to find the specific information I am looking for:

Information on silk strings as a trade item.
Comparisons of locally made silk strings with those from China.
Descriptions of the distinctive qualities of silk strings in different places.

Hindering this research is the fact that, even up to the present, books on stringed instruments rarely say anything about the strings. Nevertheless, further details on this topic are planned.

Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. Silk strings in the Islamic world
This includes West, Central and South Asia as well as North Africa and at one time even parts of southern Spain. In particular there seems to be quite a bit of documentation on silk string usage among the Turkic and Persian people of Central and West Asia. Details on this are upcoming.
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2. Source of silk strings in early Western music?
This website largely concerns historically informad performance of guqin music from before the mid 17th century. This naturally requires the use of silk strings, as none other were known to have been available at the time: only during the Cultural Revolution were silk strings introduced as part of a policy of making the guqin into more of a performance instrument. A natural curiosity led to speculation as to whether silk strings could be part of an historically-informed performance of early Western musiic, and this led to an enquiry into where those strings would have come from. The present page is a preliminary search for what could have been the source of such strings. The most obvious likely source would not be China itself, but the Islamic world stretching from the borders of China in Central Asia to across Western Asia, North Africa and into Spain. Did they use strings from China, or did they cevelop their own methods for making them?

Tangentially, why did silk strings gradually disappear from the Islamic world (including India especially under the Mughals) and how did that affect the music in those places. At present it seems possible only to have hints at the answers to those questions.
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3. Ay Mohammad Yousefi
Born in Khorasan he is said to have played with silk strings for over 75 years, until dying in 2018.

Hesamoddin Jafari
This image and information were sent from Iran by Hesamoddin Jafari, who has done considerable work in this area, trying to revive interest in the silk string tradition of early Persian music. He mentions Ay Mohammad Yousefi in the following information documenting the former use of silk strings in Persian music.

At present, as far as I know, only a few people — maybe just a handful — still use silk strings. In the northeast of Khorasan, a few dotar players. However, until decades ago, the use of silk strings was more common. Here is a list of several regions:

Dotar of eastern Khorasan: Torbat Jam, Taybad, Khaf, Kashmar.
For some time the strings were made of twisted silk, but today steel wires strings (gauge 0.18) are common, and some musicians even combine gut and metal strings.
p.145

Dotar of northern Khorasan:
Traditionally, the strings were made of twisted silk. Older musicians preferred spring silk and the outer filaments of the cocoon to the inner ones, believing they produced a better sound. Twisting silk was a very delicate and difficult process with its own customs.
Haj Ghorban Soleimani, the great dotar player, said: “The lower (treble) string was usually made of ten silk threads (5+5), and the upper (bass) string was made of twelve (6+6). Twisting was done until the finished silk could stand upright like a 25-centimeter rod.”

Traditionally, the strings were made of twisted silk. Older musicians preferred spring silk and the outer filaments of the cocoon to the inner ones, believing they produced a better sound. Twisting silk was a very delicate and difficult process with its own customs.

Haj Ghorban Soleimani, the great dotar player, said:
“The lower (treble) string was usually made of ten silk threads (5+5), and the upper (bass) string was made of twelve (6+6). Twisting was done until the finished silk could stand upright like a 25-centimeter rod.”

Today, white metal strings (0.18 gauge) are used, producing a stronger and louder tone.

Sohrab Mohammadi recalls from his childhood:
“Silk strings broke easily. When I went to weddings with my father, my mother would always give him twelve treble and twelve bass silk threads to take with him, in case he needed to replace any broken ones.” (p.163)

Dotar of Turkmen region:
In the past, the strings were made of twisted silk of equal thickness. Before playing, musicians used to wipe a wet cloth over the silk strings to keep their tension during performance. Today, steel wire of gauge 0.18 is used.

Dotar of Katul, Golestan:
In the past, the strings were made of twisted silk, now replaced with white steel wire of gauge 0.18.

Dotar of eastern Mazandaran:
In the past, the strings were made of twisted silk with equal thickness; each string consisted of three twisted silk strands. Today, they use white steel wires of gauge 0.20–0.22.

Talishi Tanbura:
In the past, its strings were made of twisted silk, but now they are metallic.

Qopuz:
In the past, instead of today’s 0.18 steel wires, silk strings were used. One master said that because it was hard to obtain silk, they sometimes used telegraph or electric wires instead.

Kermanshah Tanbur (Tamira, Tamura, Tamur):
In the past, the strings were made of twisted silk, apparently with the same thickness. Today, they are made of steel or copper/brass alloy wires of about 0.18 gauge.

Chur-gir (bird-caller) of southern Khorasan, Sistan, and Ardabil:
This is a kind of sound-imitating instrument, usually made of bird bones, wood, and brass. Its strings were made of gut, twisted intestines, or silk.

Sarud (Saroz, Baluchi qichak):
In the past, twisted silk and gut were used; now, metal strings are used.

Kamancheh:
In the book The History of Music by the late Rouhollah Khaleghi, it is written that before the violin came to Iran, kamancheh used silk strings. Unfortunately, after the violin was introduced, its metal strings were also used for kamancheh.

In very ancient times, according to music books written over the past thousand years, all Iranian instruments used either silk, twisted gut, or sometimes horsehair (like a certain kind of kamancheh, if I’m not mistaken). Sometimes it was said that an instrument used a combination of these, and occasionally metal wire (probably for bass strings) was also mentioned.

About preparing silk strings, I have found short descriptions in old books and also notes from contemporary folk musicians. In the 14th-century book Kanz al-Tohaf, there is a paragraph that I translate as follows:

“Since the steadiness of the sound depends on the quality of the strings, and the strings are either of silk or twisted sheep gut, the silk string is more suitable. The silk should be white, soft, even, cylindrical, and well-ripened. It should be well boiled in a solution of water and alkali, then taken out, washed with water two or three times, and hung in the shade to dry. Twisting should be done under sunlight. The thickness of the strings is as follows: the bass string from sixty-four silk threads, the third from forty-eight, the second from thirty-two, the first from twenty-four, and the top string from sixteen twisted threads. After twisting, it should be coated with warm glue solution mixed with a bit of saffron using a clean cotton cloth and left to dry completely.”

In Iranian classical Dastgahi music, silk has not been used for at least the last 150 years, and even discussion of it has disappeared. It is shameful that researchers have ignored this subject. A few years ago, by chance I saw a newspaper interview with the dotar player Ay Mohammad Yousefi from northern Khorasan (he was 95 years old at the time) as a musician who still used silk strings. That discovery was a real shock to me—I wanted to hear what such a sound might be on the setar, because in the past our instruments were all strung with silk, and the true cultural sound of our music must have come from silk.

I found a short one- or two-minute video of that old musician, though of poor quality. I wanted to visit him, but my trip was delayed and he passed away.

After that, I began experimenting with any kind of silk I could find—fine carpet silk, hemp threads, even artificial silk—to make strings and test their sound on my setar. So far, I haven’t succeeded in using raw cocoons directly. I have done all these experiments on a three-string setar. The modern four-string setar is not suitable for this purpose. (As far as I know, nobody in Iran plays a three-string setar except me. About twenty years ago, for three years, I played only a three-string setar in complete solitude.)

Regarding the thickness of the silk strings, gauges 0.4, 0.6, 1.0 or 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 mm seem appropriate.

Sometimes on the internet I found recordings of silk or silk-like instruments from East and Central Asia and compared them with the sound of my own instrument. Through recording and digital processing, I approached the sound I had always wished for but didn’t have. They were very satisfying.

The sound I seek and continue to pursue arises from my philosophical exploration and inquiry into the glorious and flourishing era of ancient Iran—a time when we gave great thinkers, architects, scientists, and poets to the world. I am especially drawn to Iranian mysticism and have studied and practiced Rumi’s works for years. All these together have shaped my ideal of music—something that I might call archaeology of music (not archaeology of musical theory).

As an example, I recently uploaded a performance on YouTube, where I play and edit the oldest repertoire of Persian classical music. This performance differs greatly from modern ones, both in sound and technique, and also in atmosphere and interpretation. It is, in fact, the audio example of my book Si Pare: On Setar Learning and the Metamusic of Iranian Music, which is the first and most detailed instructional and philosophical book on Persian music and the setar.

The YouTube video is here.
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4. Shipping silk strings to Europe
In 2013 Alexander Raykov told me he had recently heard about silk strings being shipped from India to Europe in 1615. He then sent me the following:

William Keeling, captain on a ship in a fleet sailing from England to the East in 1615, mentioned in his journal that he sent to Sir Thomas Roe, first British Ambassador in India and a passenger aboard one of the other ships in the fleet, a sheep, 100 Weymouth oysters and some silk strings for his viol.

Keeling's 1615 journal was later published and annotated by Michael Strachan and Boies Penrose in their "The East India Company Journals of Captain William Keeling and Master Thomas Bonner, 1615-1617" (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1971).

Alexander added a comment that the way silk strings were mentioned here suggests that this was quite a common occurence not requiring special mention.
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5. Silk on Uighur instruments
In the 1980s I would see silk strings for Central Asian instruments sold in Chinese music shops in Hong Kong.
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6. Al-Farabi on silk strings
Little is known of the life of Al-Farabi (Wikipedia) other than that he spent a long time in Baghdad and Damascus; some say he was originally from Central Asia. The primary source for his writing on music is his Kitab al-Musiqi al Kabir.
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7. Silk strings within the Hindustani and Carnatic tradition
Such usage in the early years of the Hindustani music tradition would have been natural, given Mughal influence. Here one might speculate that it was the introduction of metal strings that led to Hindustani (and Carnatic) music giving the prominence therein to long resonances.
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