The European rebec/rebeck, Arabic rebab/rebeb, and Cretan lyra, are old instruments played with?
Cretan lyra Cretan lyra The Cretan lyra () is a Greek pear-shaped, three-stringed bowed musical instrument, central to the traditional music of Crete and other islands in the Dodecanese and the Aegean Archipelago, in Greece. The Cretan lyra is considered to be the most popular surviving form of the medieval Byzantine lyra, an ancestor of most European bowed instruments. The lyra is held vertically on the player's lap, in the same way as a small viol, rather than being placed under the chin of the player like a violin. For normal right-handed playing, the player's right hand holds the bow. The strings
Rebab the "robab" or "rubab") also exist. Besides the spike fiddle variant, there also exists a variant with a pear-shaped body, quite similar to the Byzantine lyra and the Cretan lyra. This latter variant travelled to western Europe in the 11th century, and became the rebec. This article will only concentrate on the spike-fiddle "rebab", which usually consists of a small, usually rounded body, the front of which is covered in a membrane such as parchment or sheepskin and has a long neck attached. There is a long thin neck with a pegbox at the end and there are one, two