A Question of Oud Bridge Design.

The Brussels #0164 oud may be one of the oldest surviving ouds.
It has several interesting features one being the bridge design. There are no string holes drilled in the bridge. Instead slots are cut in the bridge to accommodate each pair of strings and additional material is added to the bridge to increase the glued 'footprint' area.

Interestingly this design of bridge is also found on some 'Baroque' guitars of the 17th C - as well as bridges that are slotted (but without the added footprint area) found on both 16th C Spanish vihuelas and 17th C guitars.
The attached images show this style of bridge used on a French style ' Baroque' guitar that I made in 1973 (rebuilt in 1996).

This feature may imply a connection of the Brussels oud with earlier Moorish 'Spain' oud making traditions.

Has anyone come across other examples of this style of bridge on ouds?

The bridge is indeed on the old Egyptian oud #0164 in the Brussels MIM as in the attached image.
The other images show a similar bridge design - just for comparison and clarity - on a baroque guitar that I made some years ago.

This style of bridge very conveniently dispenses with the need for drilling string holes in a bridge and allows for some adjustment in the spacing of the courses at the bridge.The cut outs - made with a chisel or cut with a saw - reduce the footprint or gluing area of the bridge - compensated for in this design by adding extra material behind the bridge. Many surviving 17th/18th C five course guitar and bridges even dispense with this extra bit making the bridge narrower and lighter. In other examples the notches are made like an inverted 'V' to increase the 'footprint' area.

These bridges do not appear to suffer from any structural weakness due to the cut outs perhaps because some are made from harder woods like ebony.

As far as I know this type of bridge is not found on any of the surviving lutes - just early guitars and vihuelas.

The attached rough sketch illustrates four possible styles of 'notched' bridge found on early guitars/vihuelas. The notches may be cut either straight across the bridge (as in Type 3 and 4) or at a slope (as shown in Types 1 and 2).
The Brussels oud is in the style of Type 1.

For interest the attached image shows traces left by the original bridge on the so called 'Paris Vihuela' one of the very few surviving 16th C vihuelas.
It can be seen from the footprint that the bridge was a 'cut out' design - probably either Type 2 ,Type 3 or Type 4.

Quote: Originally posted by jdowning

The Brussels #0164 oud may be one of the oldest surviving ouds. It has several interesting features one being the bridge design... ...This feature may imply a connection of the Brussels oud with earlier Moorish 'Spain' oud making traditions.

Thanks for your comments Sazi.

As far as I can tell the bridge appears to be original and is almost identical to the bridge on the oud in Napoleon's 'Description de l'Egypte' - see attached image.
The date of the Brussels oud may be late 18th C/ early 19th C so it is unlikely that the maker ever saw a Spanish vihuela - an instrument that had become obsolete before the end of the
16th C. Three instruments that survive - considered to be vihuelas - have the narrow bridge style Type 2 or 3 (possibly 4) - not Type 1 with the extra material added to increase the gluing area of the bridge. Type 1 however can be found on some of the 17th C guitars. The 16th Spanish guitar was a 'cut down' version of the vihuela (4 courses instead of 5 or 6) from which the guitars of later periods were developed. No early 4 course guitars survive so it is not possible to confirm their style of bridge.
Spanish luthiers were also making lutes in the 16th C but none survive - lutes that likely may have had their design based upon earlier oud design?
Hard to know for sure without surviving artifacts.

My guess is that some of the Moorish oud makers settled in areas along the North African coast after being expelled from Christian Spain between the 13th and 16th C and so perpetuated their oud making traditions that may have differed in some details from those of the Middle East. The bridge design on the Brussels oud, therefore, may have originated in that design tradition. Perhaps this type of bridge can still be found on some of the old surviving ouds from that region - the 'oud arbi' for example?