The santur (also santūr, santour, santoor) (Persian: سنتور), is a hammered dulcimer of Iranian origins.

Musicians modified the original design over the centuries, yielding a wide array of musical scales and tunings.

According to Habib Hasan Touma, the Babylonian santur was the ancestor of the harp, the yangqin, the harpsichord, the qanun, the cimbalom, and the hammered dulcimers.

There are three sections of nine pitches: each for the bass, middle, and higher octave called behind the left bridges comprising 27 tones altogether.

[5] Similar musical instruments have been present since medieval times all over the world, including Armenia, China, Greece, India, etc.

It is native to Iraq, Syria, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Greece (the Aegean coasts) and Azerbaijan.

[7] The instrument was brought to Europe by the Arabs through North Africa and Spain during the Middle Ages and also to China where it was referred to as the "foreign qin".

In Eastern Europe, a larger descendant of the hammered dulcimer called the cimbalom is played and has been used by a number of classical composers, including Zoltán Kodály, Igor Stravinsky, and Pierre Boulez, and more recently, in a different musical context, by Blue Man Group.