Cigar-box small oud?

Greetings, I posted back here a year or so ago, asking for advice on a oud-ukulele hybrid, partially inspired by Jack Haas' clips of doing taksim on a standard tenor ukulele in oud tuning.

I ended up getting on the waitlist for Tiny Guitars, and should be at the top of the list soon. I'm still interested in getting some kind of smallish fretless instrument that can do some semblance of oud tuning. I mainly anticipate playing Western-based modal music on it, but I might try to learn some basic taqsims, though they' be transposed to a higher pitch than equivalent tunings on the oud, unless I had a decently long neck or heavier than usual strings. I do assume though that, failing a cigar crate vice a cigar box, anything smaller than an oud body just wouldn't have the capacity to get a good low-end, so anticipate an instrument pitched higher than a standard oud.

I'd appreciate any brainstorms that any oudists here have. So far as tuning: should I maybe just get standard oud strings, knowing that they'll be higher pitched due to the shorter scale length (almost like a capo'ed oud)? The cigar box guitars he makes can deal with the stress of six steel strings, so are 9, 10, or 11 oud strings any higher in pressure than that?

Alternately, I thought of using nylon ukulele strings, and ending up with an overall tension more like ukulele than oud, so as to be an instrument a little more accessible to Western players like me, since oud's lower tension takes some getting used to.

Thanks for humoring me on this odd idea, appreciate any input, whether regarding construction, tuning, strings, or even just aesthetics. So far as the last, I was hoping to end up with something looking somewhat like a more-stringed version of this: