Tag: Egypt

Egyptian Ouds from 1800 to the 1930s

By Tarek Abdallah In the period 1800-1895, written and iconographic sources relating to Egyptian musical instruments describe one predominant model of oud, namely the seven-course instrument known appropriately as al-‘ūd as-Sab‘āwī. However, as discussed elsewhere on Oudmigrations, of the two 19th-century ouds that travelled from Alexandria to Brussels, one has only six courses, and a…

Read More

Alexandria to Brussels, 1879

By Rachel Beckles Willson There’s a bit of a mystery surrounding this oud. Victor Mahillon, curator of the Museum of Musical Instruments at the Brussels Conservatoire, acquired it from Alexandria in 1879. Saskia Willaert, curator of African Collections at the museum, has gathered sources relating to the purchase, and from these we learn that Mahillon…

Read More

Cairo to London, 1867

By Rachel Beckles Willson England’s first oud arrived in 1867 thanks to some obscure international diplomacy involving Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt. The French state mounted its second Exposition Universelle in Paris that year, and it involved not only massive displays of French industry, but also exhibits from other nations. Many of these presented…

Read More

Egypt to France c.1800

By Rachel Beckles Willson An oud travelled to Europe as a consequence of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Musician and writer Guillaume André Villoteau (1759-1839) had joined the 159 men Napoleon took along with him as a “Commission of the Sciences and Arts”, and while in Egypt he collected instruments to bring back home…

Read More

Alexandria to Brussels, 1839

By Rachel Beckles Willson The second oud in Europe whose journey we know about arrived thanks to the Belgian musician and scholar François-Joseph Fétis (1784-1871). Thanks to the note he made in his Histoire Generale de la Musique we can trace how it happened. Led by his ambition to understand music from all over the…

Read More