The Shahrud (Turkish: Şehrud, from Persian: شاهرود, DMG šāh-rūd or šāh-i-rūd) was a short-necked lute, illustrated in the Surname-i Hümayun, resembling an oud or barbat, but being much larger.

[1] The larger size gave the instrument added resonance and a deeper (bass) range, like the modern mandobass, mandolone or Algerian mandole.

Another writer who referred to the instrument was Abd al-Qadir in his work Maqasid al-Alhan (Persian for: purports of Music)(مقاصد الحان).

[2] The Persian word šāh-rūd is made up of šāh , "king" (shah) and rūd, which, like tār, contains the basic meaning "string".

Two centuries later, the Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 – after 1683) described the lute rūḍa as similar to the čahārtār, a nominal four-stringed instrument.

However, the Persian word sarod in several spelling variants has been used for much longer to describe lute instruments and generally stands for "music".

From archaeologically excavated clay figures, Sassanid rock-reliefs or Persian book miniatures often give a rough idea of the appearance of historical musical instruments, only the number of strings is usually adapted to artistic requirements and is rarely realistic.

[9] The musicologist and orientalist Rodolphe d'Erlanger (1872-1932), whose six-volume work edition La musique arabe contains a translation of al-Fārābī's Kitāb al-Mūsīqā al-kabīr in the first two volumes, classified the šāh-rūd as a zither in 1935.

Henry George Farmer (1882–1965) previously called it an 'archlute or zither' in A History of Arabian Music (1929), adding that it was "certainly an archlute by the early 15th century," twice the length of a lute.

The stringed instrument, depicted as a colored pen drawing in a decorative border between plant ornaments, is held in the hand of a standing musician.

This instrument with a different body shape, but also with inwardly curved edges and without sound holes, as in the Arabic manuscripts, is shown in perspective in the playing position and thus allows an estimation of its size.

In addition, there were the rarer plucked-stringed instruments, of which the lyre (miʿzafa) was used more frequently than the harp (ǧank), and the trapezoid box-zither (qānūn).

This exceptional, unique piece, made no later than 1590, had a pitch range of 6.5 octaves and could be a successor to the šāh-rūd, which the lute maker Tiefenbrucker may have known.