The barbat () or "barbud" was a lute of Central Asian or Greater Iranian or Persian origin. The barbat was an important instrument of the Ghassanids in pre-Islamic times and of the Syrians in early Islamic times. It was characterized as carved from a single piece of wood, including the neck and a wooden sound board. Possibly a skin-topped instrument for part of its history, it would be ancestral to the wood-topped oud, pipa and biwa and the skin-topped Yemeni qanbus.