_chang_; for the Turks derived their music principally from Persia. Here we have an introduction into Europe of the oriental frame without a front pillar. [Illustration] The Persians appear to have adopted, at an early period, smaller musical intervals than semitones. When the Arabs conquered Persia (A.D. 641) the Persians had already attained a higher degree of civilisation than their conquerors. The latter found in Persia the cultivation of music considerably in advance of their own, and the musical instruments superior also. They soon adopted the Persian instruments, and there can be no doubt that the musical system exhibited by the earliest Arab writers whose works on the theory of music have been preserved was based upon an older system of the Persians. In these works the octave is divided in seventeen _one-third-tones_--intervals which are still made use of in the east. Some of the Arabian instruments are constructed so as to enable the performer to produce the intervals with exactness. The frets on the lute and tamboura, for instance, are regulated with a view to this object. [Illustration] The Arabs had to some extent become acquainted with many of the Persian instruments before the time of their conquest of Persia. An Arab musician of the name of Nadr Ben el-Hares Ben Kelde is recorded as having been sent to the Persian king Khosroo Purviz, in the sixth century, for the purpose of learning Persian singing and performing on the lute. Through him, it is said, the lute was brought to Mekka. Saib Chatir, the son of a Persian, is spoken of as the first performer on the lute in Medina, A.D. 682; and of an Arab lutist, Ebn Soreidsch from Mekka, A.D. 683, it is especially mentioned that he played in the Persian style; evidently the superior one. The lute, _el-oud_, had before the tenth century only four strings, or four pairs producing four tones, each tone having two strings tuned in unison. About the tenth century a string for a fifth tone was added. The strings were made of silk neatly twisted. The neck of the instrument was provided with frets of string, which were carefully regulated according to the system of seventeen intervals in the compass of an octave before mentioned. Other favourite stringed instruments were the _tamboura_, a kind of lute with a long neck, and the _kanoon_, a kind of dulcimer strung with lamb’s gut strings (generally three in unison for each tone) and played upon with two little plectra which the performer had fastened to his fingers. The _kanoon_ is likewise still in use in countries inhabited by Mahomedans. The engraving, taken from a Persian painting at Teheran, represents an old Persian _santir_, the prototype of our dulcimer, mounted with wire strings and played upon with two slightly curved sticks. [Illustration]