Kamancheh
Bowed string instrument of Iranian origin used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument
The kamancheh is an Iranian bowed string instrument used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument.
The kamancheh is related to the rebab which is the historical ancestor of the kamancheh and the bowed Byzantine lyra. The strings are played with a variable-tension bow.
In 2017, the art of crafting and playing with Kamantcheh/Kamancha was included into the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists of Iran and Azerbaijan.
Name and etymology
The word "kamancheh" means "little bow" in Persian (kæman, bow, and -cheh, diminutive).
The Turkish word kemençe is borrowed from Persian, with the pronunciation adapted to Turkish phonology. It also denotes a bowed string instrument, but the Turkish version differs significantly in structure and sound from the Persian kamancheh.
There is also an instrument called kabak kemane (literally, "pumpkin-shaped bow instrument"), used in Turkish music, which is only slightly different from the Iranian kamancheh.
Structure
The kamancheh has a long neck including the fingerboard, which the kamancheh maker shapes as a truncated inverse cone for easy bow movement in the down section, pegbox in both sides of which four pegs are placed, and finial.
Traditionally kamanchehs had three silk strings, but modern instruments have four metal strings.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kamancheh” is bowed string instrument of Iranian origin used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kamancheh, Bowed and string, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q290951. The Library of Congress control number is sh90002262. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kamancheh” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.