Greetings all. Happy to be part of this esteemed forum.
To start, I still have much to cover before calling myself an Oud novice, but I've been fortunate enough to leap above several needless Oud stepping stones and directly onto Ensar's creations. To cut a long story short the old man noticed my newly-developed obsession, and bemusingly remarked that we 'once' had an antique coffer made of Oud wood that has been passed down the family for generations. I come from a family with a long lineage in the Rifai' Tariqa of Sufism, and this coffer was passed down -as far as we can confirm- to my great grandfather -passed away in 1910- from his grandfather, the Sheikh of the tariqa. We don't know whether that ancestor acquired it himself or whether it's older still. I naturally could barely contain my excitement and tried to verify whether it's really Oud, and the response was that everyone in the family knew it was Oud, and they're no strangers to Oud, and that my father saw one of my mischievous uncles as a kid break a small piece off to burn it and that it indeed smelled of Oud.
There was only one problem. We weren't sure where that box ended up and my father hadn't seen it since his youth -He's 70- but he assumes it stayed with the family estate somewhere in one of our ancestral villages in Northern Syria. We finally narrowed it down to a village in Northern Syria, Idlib province, where we had a small house that the displaced Syrians have been using temporarily since the beginning of the war. That village happens to be at the fault line between ISIS, Jabhat Nusra, and the Syrian/Russian military, and has been air-bombed several times, not to mention that we were told the contents of the house were probably all stolen.
After the Turkish military entered Idlib earlier this month and pacified the area, we immediately sent one of our relatives to the house, and lo and behold, the box was found intact whereas everything else of value was gone. They sent me the pictures and a video last night via Whatsapp, so apologies for the quality, and it's being kept safe until we can fetch it.
I can't be sure how much of it is actually solid Oud, how saturated it is, or how it's been kept all these years. For all we know it could've been left in the yard under the rain. It has no nails except the ones used for the original lock and hinges, and is pieced together like a puzzle. He used flash when taking pictures, so it looks lighter than it is, but the video conveys a more faithful rendition of the color even though he's still using that awful LED lighting. It also hasn't been cleaned or wiped in half a century most likely.
Let me know what you think.
The video is at
To start, I still have much to cover before calling myself an Oud novice, but I've been fortunate enough to leap above several needless Oud stepping stones and directly onto Ensar's creations. To cut a long story short the old man noticed my newly-developed obsession, and bemusingly remarked that we 'once' had an antique coffer made of Oud wood that has been passed down the family for generations. I come from a family with a long lineage in the Rifai' Tariqa of Sufism, and this coffer was passed down -as far as we can confirm- to my great grandfather -passed away in 1910- from his grandfather, the Sheikh of the tariqa. We don't know whether that ancestor acquired it himself or whether it's older still. I naturally could barely contain my excitement and tried to verify whether it's really Oud, and the response was that everyone in the family knew it was Oud, and they're no strangers to Oud, and that my father saw one of my mischievous uncles as a kid break a small piece off to burn it and that it indeed smelled of Oud.
There was only one problem. We weren't sure where that box ended up and my father hadn't seen it since his youth -He's 70- but he assumes it stayed with the family estate somewhere in one of our ancestral villages in Northern Syria. We finally narrowed it down to a village in Northern Syria, Idlib province, where we had a small house that the displaced Syrians have been using temporarily since the beginning of the war. That village happens to be at the fault line between ISIS, Jabhat Nusra, and the Syrian/Russian military, and has been air-bombed several times, not to mention that we were told the contents of the house were probably all stolen.
After the Turkish military entered Idlib earlier this month and pacified the area, we immediately sent one of our relatives to the house, and lo and behold, the box was found intact whereas everything else of value was gone. They sent me the pictures and a video last night via Whatsapp, so apologies for the quality, and it's being kept safe until we can fetch it.
I can't be sure how much of it is actually solid Oud, how saturated it is, or how it's been kept all these years. For all we know it could've been left in the yard under the rain. It has no nails except the ones used for the original lock and hinges, and is pieced together like a puzzle. He used flash when taking pictures, so it looks lighter than it is, but the video conveys a more faithful rendition of the color even though he's still using that awful LED lighting. It also hasn't been cleaned or wiped in half a century most likely.
Let me know what you think.
The video is at
Last edited:
