The Palestinian oud, a symbol of resistance, identity and healing

After her family home was bombed in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp in January this year, Mariam Al Khateeb was able to rescue her oud from the debris and broken walls. She recalled feeling overcome with relief to learn that her prized possession and "companion" had survived the latest airstrike.

Al Khateeb, 20, had fallen in love with the warm notes strummed on the strings of the wooden oud that her maternal uncles Khalo Salman and Khalo Moataz would play when she was a child, vowing to herself that she too would possess her own instrument one day.

As the sound of the chords enveloped her, Al Khateeb would gently sway to the rhythm of Mahmoud Darwish's "Bain Rita wa Ayouni" (Rita and the Rifle), trying to block out the sound of drones punctuating Gaza's night sky.

"Palestinians love music, my family especially did, we would play louder to try and ignore the buzzing sound" of the drones overhead, which has been constant since she was a child, Al Khateeb said.

Al Khateeb's family is not alone in loving the oud.

"Music has been absolutely essential to crafting a collective Palestinian identity," said David Anthony McDonald, associate professor of folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University in Bloomington, who's written a book on the subject.

Music also plays a big part in the resistance against Israel's occupation. In 2022 for example, Canaan Ghoul, an oud player from Sheikh Jarrah in occupied Jerusalem, stood on the roof of the neighbouring Salehiyah family home as Israeli forces prepared to demolish it. Singing "Ana Ibn Al-Quds" (I am the son of Jerusalem) Ghoul's stance through music served as his way to resist, even momentarily, land theft and destruction.

Nine months into Israel's latest and most brutal war on Gaza, Al Khateeb shares her own tale of finding tranquility in the oud, which would become her constant companion in a broken Gaza.

Al Khateeb, who has since been displaced to Kafr Al-Sheikh in Egypt, had been studying to become a dentist at Gaza's destroyed Al Azhar University. Mourning this loss, she tries to reminisce about a part of her life that once offered her moments of joy, such as her oud.

Determined to pay for it herself, Al Khateeb's quiet resolve led her to save Eid and birthday money, and any other loose change that she'd get to keep from the grocery store or other errands. Then came the brightest morning in 2020, when Gaza was in between wars with Israel, and she had saved enough to buy a second-hand oud from a fellow Palestinian in Gaza.

"It's the oud that taught me patience," she said. "I waited a long time, years, and paid a large sum for someone my age."

Holding the pear-shaped instrument consumed Al Khateeb. "The joy of touching the wood of the oud for the first time, the first musical note I played for my parents, I have no words. I remember I played the songs of Syrian singer Sabah Fakhri, Salaam Salaam."

Wanting to play "beautifully" the tunes she grew up listening to, Al Khateeb was directed to her teacher Majid al-Qishawi by her dear friend and fellow oud player Jehad Abu Dieha.

It's here in al-Qishawi's Damascene style home in Gaza's old city, filled with other traditional instruments like the qanun, shabab and the tabla, that she would spend three afternoons a week, strumming the six-strings of her sacred oud.

These moments of music carried Al Khateeb away from the realities of occupation, a blockade and a war that could explode at any time.

Al-Qishawi himself had played the instrument for 40 years. "He would always tell me that he would never leave Gaza and became angry when I told him I wanted to travel. Now all I know is he remains in his destroyed home during this massacre."

Later Al Khateeb would carry the 65cm long and 35cm wide oval-shaped music box strapped across her frame, "as a bodyguard" on her way from her home in Nuseirat refugee camp to her university.

When the family were displaced to Rafah in December last year, Al Khateeb was forced to leave her oud behind in her Nuseirat home, where she used to disappear onto her rooftop to play music "from sunset until the moon sets in the sky."

The family returned after the home was bombed in January to find the oud intact and only slightly damaged. It is now guarded and played by her remaining friends and family.

"My oud witnessed me play amongst friends who have since been killed in the genocide. It holds their souls within it, and it's their voices I hear when I play it. I didn't bring it with me to Egypt as it belongs to my land, it is my land, and I will return to it," Al Khateeb has vowed.

Memories of a companion

The oud served as music therapy for Al Khateeb, who said at times playing it would help overcome depression.

And there may be wisdom in this.

Palestinian composer and oud player Saeid Silbak told TRT World that historically, oud players were healers and the oud used to have four strings, two fewer than Al Khateeb’s. Each string was coloured to represent a different element of life; red for fire, yellow for earth, green for water and blue for air.

"Oud players used to heal people by understanding what the 'patient' was suffering from, then choosing the relevant element-string and playing that string in order to heal the 'patient,' " Silbak said. "This is where the Arabic term ‘udrub A'al Watar Al H'assas' comes from, which means ‘play the delicate string.' "

Of kings and prophets

The oud is said to be one of the oldest known stringed instruments in the world. Some accounts date it back to the Uruk period in Southern Mesopotamia (Iraq), over 5,000 years ago.

Others place it in the hands of a mythical Persian King named Jamshed, who may or may not have lived long before the 500 BCE Achaemenid Empire.

Then there are those who take the oud back to the arms of Lamech (or Lamak), Noah’s father, who is said to have lived in 3130 BCE.

The instrument would eventually be carried, as music and story-telling often are, to other parts of the world, reaching pre-Islamic Arabia and accompanying the poetry of legends such as Imru Al-Qays, a renowned 6th century poet who authored the Mu’allaqat, a collection of seven poems that were once hung inside the Kaabah.

Regardless of its origin, one thing is for sure, today it is regarded as the godfather of Arabic string instruments.

"The oud is considered to be the most idiomatic musical instrument throughout the Arab world. It is the bedrock of Arab music theory and practice," McDonald said.

Its spellbinding soulful sound has long featured in Palestinian music.

"It is one of the most popular instruments in Palestine, and the Middle East, and has played a big role historically by being used by the most famous composers and singers in the Arabic as well as the Palestinian world," musician Silbak said.

Including Silbak, there are other renowned Palestinian oud players and composers like Simon Shaheen, Mohsen Subhi, Issa Boulos, and the late Adel Salameh, while the Joubran family have been handcrafting and preserving the oud in Nazareth since 1897 for over four generations. Dib Joubran's descendants would become the group Le Trio Joubran, known for their hypnotic oud instrumentals.

"Preservation is an important element of cultural survival, especially in instances of cultural genocide, occupation, and dispossession. But development and change is also an important element of musical practice in Palestine," McDonald said.

"There are those who believe Palestinians must preserve their culture and folklore against erasure. And there are those who believe Palestinian culture can only survive through development and change. It's an important conversation that Palestinian artists have had for centuries."

To a certain extent Silbak agreed, highlighting the oud’s evolution in an electric version, fitting the needs of modern times. Yet he added that he believes it is important to protect the oud as well as other indigenous instruments, "in order for us to be able to value history in general, and especially Palestinian history and the way things have evolved in Palestinian culture, enabling us to access information from previous times and eras and link them to current contemporary ones."

"As my grandmother always says in Arabic; ‘Man nisi aslo tah', which means ‘those who forget their origins get lost.' "