Alfaraby
Oud Junkie
Posts: 796
Registered: 9-18-2009
Location: Holy Land
Member Is Offline
Mood: Cool
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Restored old oud by Hiskel Ibrahim
Neat, tidy plain looking and nice, warm sounding "beast". Thanks Doc.
The label says: "Made by Hiskel Ibrahim, Baghdad".
Very interesting what was there under the scrawling. Might be a date or Other info like for whom was it made or a name of a quarter in Baghdad or some
Hebrew letters !!
The name Hiskel stands for Yehizkel, while Ibrahim for Abraham, both Jewish names ! This might be the first antique oud made by a Jewish maker, I've
seen. My hunch is that it was made before 1950. The Jewish Iraqis were great musician, who migrated from Iraq mostly to Israel in 1950, after the
Jewish state was founded, and established one of the best Arabic orchestras in the second half of the past century, famous as "Firqat Aldar" (The
Orchestra of the Israeli Broadcasting House). They were great educated musicians, but none of those new comers were known as oud makers ! The Iraqi
Jewish oud players brought with them their Fadel's, Nahat's and Usta Ali's ouds to Israel. Had they had a good maker among them, he'd probably have
continued making ouds in his new home.
In general, proffessional oud makers used to have their labels printed since the early 20th century, as we have all seen tens of Nahats, Fadels,
Bedrossians, Khawwam and many others, while occasional makers used handwriting. It's not a rule though, since we've seen some handwritten labels in
very famous makers' ouds, like George Hayek (Aleppo), Hamawy (Damascus), Usta Ali (Baghdad) and even Kamil Mowais (Nazareth) in his very early ouds.
What I'm trying to say (with not much success I guess) is that this maker could be an occasional oud maker, who might have built his own oud or maybe
some couple more, but was not a full-time devoted oud maker.
Well, those were only some thoughts that crossed my mind as I looked at the photos and thought I'd share with you.
What do you think ?
Yours indeed,
Alfaraby
alfarabymusic@gmail.com
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Dr. Oud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1370
Registered: 12-18-2002
Location: Sacramento, CA, USA
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Mood: better than before
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sold
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hussamd
Oud Junkie
Posts: 117
Registered: 12-18-2013
Location: Bartlett, IL
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The pictures are no longer available but I did not see how you came up with Hiskel. The first letter looked like 'HA or "SAD" but the last three
would have sounded like "Fyl". The vague letter could be a "S" but either way I have never heard of any names that come close.
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