What musical instruments were popular during the reign of Amir Temur?

It is of particular interest that there are instruments of Turkic and Turkic-Mongolian origin in the musical culture of Samarkand. Among them are the yatughan and shadughu (shidirghu), which were mainly used for court music making and played by famous musicians of the late 15th and first half of the 16th centuries. 

The historical chronicles of that time (Zafar-nama Book of Victory by Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi) recorded the appearance of the Chinese lute, or pipa. ‘Abd al-Qadir Maraghi describes this, as well as other instruments of the epoch (shadyrgu, yatughan) in his work Maqasid al-alkhan (“The purpose of melodies”). 

Maraghi, in his own words, cited data on the instruments “that were known at that time and were used by musicians in practice (ahl-i ‘amal)”. Maraghi divides all instruments into four types: human throat, horn, string and percussion instruments. He considers the human throat to be the most perfect among them, and as for other types preferred the ‘ud. Maraghi distinguishes the “ancient ‘ud” (‘ud-i qadim) with four strings, from the “perfect ‘ud” (‘ud-i kamil), which had ten pairs of strings. 

You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "The Musical Legacy of Uzbekistan in Collections of the Russian Federation" (Volume VI) from the series "Cultural legacy of Uzbekistan in the world collections". 

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