Baglamas particularly popular with musicians who needed an instrument transportable enough to carry around easily or small enough to shelter under a coat. During parts of the 20th century, players of the bouzouki and baglamas were persecuted by the government, and the instruments were smashed by the police. The name comes from Turkish , a similar instrument. Baglamas The baglamas () (plural "baglamades") or baglamadaki (), a long necked bowl-lute, is a plucked string instrument used in Greek music; it is a version of the bouzouki pitched an octave higher (nominally D-A-D), with unison pairs on the four highest strings and
Irish bouzouki is closer to the D3A3D4 tuning of the Greek trichordo bouzouki than is the guitar-like tuning C3F3A3D4 used on the modern Greek tetrachordo, and is particularly well suited to a modal harmonic approach to accompaniment as used in Irish traditional music. Alec Finn, playing a Greek trichordo bouzouki, uses the traditional D3A3D4 tuning with the octave pair on the low D course changed to unison. Amongst many luthiers and musicians the Irish bouzouki is considered to be part of the mandolin family, but for others this new family of instruments is a separate development. In actuality, the mandolin and lute