Egypt sits at the center of this site’s two oldest instruments. The riq — a small, jingled frame drum with five double rows of cymbals — is the backbone of the classical Arabic ensemble, occupying a role in the takht roughly equivalent to the violin’s place in a Western orchestra: not the loudest voice, but the most technically demanding and the most responsible for shaping the music’s feel in real time. Its larger, deeper-voiced cousin, the mazhar, trades the riq’s speed for weight and sustain, and is most associated with Sufi devotional contexts and large public celebrations. Both instruments descend from frame drums depicted in Egyptian temple reliefs as far back as the Old Kingdom, roughly 2686–2181 BCE. See The Riq and The Mazhar pages, already live on this site.