Scholars credit Khusrau Khan, not Amir Khusrow, for the sitar
The sitar is a plucked Hindustani classical instrument that took shape in eighteenth-century Mughal India from the Persian setar. Modern research names court figure Khusrau Khan as inventor, while the popular tale linking thirteenth-century Amir Khusrow is treated as discredited. Ravi Shankar later carried its sound worldwide.
The word traces Persian sehtar, three-stringed; Curt Sachs noted Persian lute names built on tar for string plus a number. The Muraqqa-i-Dehli of 1739 offers the earliest clear mention under Muhammad Shah Rangila. Necks widened, gourd bowls replaced wooden lathe bowls, metal frets and a bone nut arrived. Masid Khan added strings; Allauddin Khan set the modern seven-string layout; Imdad Khan introduced sympathetic strings. Firoz Khan, kin to Khusrau Khan, shaped mid-eighteenth-century sitar composition. Claims of pre-Islamic veena ancestry via temple sculpture lack matching names or forms, Allyn Miner and Alastair Dick argue.
Instruments carry eighteen to twenty-one strings: six or seven played over movable frets, the rest sympathetic under the board. Dual bridges—badaa and chota goraa—and jawari shaping of the rounded bridge brew the buzzing overtone bloom. Teak or toon wood necks meet calabash resonators; bridges may be deer horn, ebony, camel bone, or synthetics. Instrumental Ravi Shankar models often add a second tumba and thirteen sympathetics; Vilayat Khan's gayaki style stays leaner. Collectors prize old Rikhi Ram and Hiren Roy builds.
Players balance the body on left foot and right knee, pluck with a mizraab, and pull meend across curved frets for up to seven semitones—Vilayat Khan's vocal gayaki ang. Retuning per raga is normal. From the late 1950s Shankar and Alla Rakha toured west; George Harrison used sitar on Norwegian Wood, Love You To, and Within You Without You (1965–67), while Brian Jones put one on Paint It Black. Shankar dubbed the fad the great sitar explosion, warning many pop tracks actually used electric sitars instead.
Source: Sitar
