Kazakhstan · Musical Instrument Making
Қобыз (Kobyz) — Qyl-Qobyz
The making of the kobyz (qyl-qobyz) — an ancient two-stringed, horsehair-strung bowed instrument considered one of the oldest bowed instruments in Central Asia, with archaeological finds from the Kazakh Altai dated to the 6th–7th centuries CE among the earliest known examples of a bowed instrument in the region. This record closes a gap distinct from the archive's existing Kazakh instrument-making record (Dombra, CRAFT-0736): where the dombra is a plucked, narrative-and-epic-accompaniment lute, the kobyz is a bowed, traditionally sacred instrument specifically associated with baqsy (shaman-healers), used historically in rituals for healing, divination, and banishing evil spirits, and believed capable of communicating with the spirits of nature and ancestors. The instrument's construction is technically distinctive within the archive's broader hollow-instrument-making family: carved from a single piece of wood (typically juniper, maple, pine, or birch) without any front soundboard or deck, the kobyz's open, bowl-shaped resonating body is instead covered on its lower portion by stretched goat or camel leather, and its two horsehair strings are not fingered against the neck in the conventional manner but rather squeezed between the player's fingers to achieve tonal modulation, a distinctive technique reflecting the instrument's structural absence of a pressable fingerboard surface. Kazakh oral tradition credits the instrument's creation to the legendary 8th–9th century figure Qorqyt-Ata, who is said to have stretched the hide and hair of his sacrificed camel across a piece of wood after a lifelong, ultimately unsuccessful search for immortality, playing mournful melodies that echoed the sounds of wind, animals, and grief.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Listed
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