The Sitar

The sitar is a plucked string instrument from the Indian subcontinent, central to Hindustani classical music. It was invented in the 18th century and took its modern shape during the 19th century. Modern scholarship credits Khusrau Khan, an 18th-century figure of the Mughal Empire, as its inventor, who most historians believe developed it from the setar, an Iranian instrument from the Abbasid or Safavid periods.

The instrument became widely known outside the subcontinent through the work of Ravi Shankar, starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid-to-late 1960s, psychedelic culture popularized the sitar in Western pop music, with tracks by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Metallica, and many others.

The word "sitar" comes from the Persian "sehtar," meaning "three-stringed." According to Curt Sachs, Persians named their lutes around the word "tar" (string), combined with a number: dutār (two strings), setār (three strings), čartār (four strings), and pančtār (five strings).

The instrument was once thought to have been invented by the 13th-century Sufi poet Amir Khusrow, but scholars now discredit this tradition. No record from his era uses the name "sitar," and a vague statement in a 19th-century work by Captain N. Augustus Willard may have confused him with the later Khusrau Khan. The earliest mention of the sitar dates to 1739 AD, in the "Muraqqa-i-Dehli" by Dargah Quli Khan, written during the reign of Muhammad Shah Rangila. Oral and textual evidence points to Khusrau Khan originating the sitar from the Persian three-stringed setar. During the late Mughal Empire, the instrument evolved: the neck widened, the bowl shifted from glued wood lathes to gourd, and metal frets and a bone nut were added. Masid Khan added two more strings, Allauddin Khan created the modern seven-string sitar, and Imdad Khan first added sympathetic strings. The earliest compositional style for the sitar emerged in the mid-18th century, attributed to Firoz Khan, son or nephew of Khusrau Khan.

A discredited hypothesis suggests the sitar derives from Indian instruments like the veena, prior to Islam. Proponents point to 9th- and 10th-century temple sculptures, but researcher Samidha Vedabala notes none precisely resemble the sitar, and no texts from that period use the word. According to Allyn Miner, evidence for this hypothesis is too weak, and it reflects an obsolete late 19th-century idea that modern Indian innovations stem from pre-Muslim Sanskritic traditions. Alastair Dick states that the modern view of Muslims simply renaming an existing Hindu instrument has no historical or musical foundation. Other scholars note that proponents focus on string count and try to trace the sitar to a Sanskrit-named instrument, despite no evidence for long-necked lutes in the subcontinent before Muslim expansion.

A sitar typically has 18 to 21 strings. Six or seven run over curved, raised frets (called pardā or thaat) and are played; the rest are sympathetic strings (tarb, taarif, or tarafdaar) that run under the frets and resonate with the played strings. The frets are movable for fine tuning. Played strings connect to tuning pegs near the head, while sympathetic strings pass through small holes in the fretboard to smaller pegs along the neck. The instrument has two bridges: the large bridge (badaa goraa) for playing and drone strings, and the small bridge (chota goraa) for sympathetic strings. Its timbre comes from how strings interact with the wide, rounded bridge; as a string vibrates, its length shifts slightly along the curve, creating overtones and a distinctive tone. Shaping the bridge to maintain this tone is called jawari. Many musicians rely on instrument makers for this adjustment. Construction materials include teak or tun wood (Cedrela toona, a mahogany variant) for the neck and faceplate (tabli), calabash gourds for resonating chambers, and bridges made of deer horn, ebony, or occasionally camel bone.