Oud is an short-necked, half pear-shaped, plucked lute of the Arab world, the direct ancestor of the European lute and hereby also of the guitar.
Oud's name derives from al-oud (branch of wood). There are five to six pairs of strings on an oud, each pair tuned to the same pitch, and a single string which is also the thickest and known as the bamteli in Turkish. The most common way to tune the oud is to tune each string a fourth apart.
Oud plays also an important role in music of north African countries, such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Sudan. My way of playing on this instrument is inspired by such a masters as Munir Bashir, Hamza El Din, Anouar Brahem and Maciej Cierlikowski (YerbaMater).

My Oud (picture) comes from Egypt and I'm using following tuning: Eb,Ab,Bb,Eb,Ab,Db.