The first evidence of the Byzantine lira is in a Persian literary source of the ninth century.

Some instruments comprise types which are found, more or less unchanged, also with various nations and periods (recorder, shawm), whereas others belong to smaller regions (byzantine lira, rectangular harp) or only to the territory of Serbia and Macedonia (drums, larger shawms, especially in the Turkish period).

Being an approximate synonym of cithara, the word lyra is most often applied to the harp, but one also finds it interpreted as the Germanic lyre, Byzantine lira (equated in turn with the Arabic rebab), hurdy-gurdy, citole or gittern, lute, etc.

Lira

Meaning

Noun

Origin

Related

Rhymes