The Qanun (Persian: قانون qānūn; Greek: κανονάκι, plural κανονάκια; Armenian: քանոն k’anon; Arabic: قانون qānūn, plural قوانين qawānīn; Azerbaijani and Turkish: kanun; qanún or kanun) is a string instrument found in the 10th century in Farab, Otrar in Khazakistan. The name derives from the Arabic word "kānun," which means rule, norm, principle. Its traditional music is based on Maqamat. It is essentially a zither with a narrow trapezoidal soundboard. Nylon or PVC strings are stretched over a single bridge poised on fish-skins on one end, attached to tuning pegs at the other end. The kanun, especially in ancient Greek times was known as the psaltery. Kanuns used in Turkey have 26 courses of strings, with three strings per course. It is played on the lap by plucking the strings with two tortoise-shell picks, one in each hand, or by the fingernails, and has a range of three and a half octaves, from A2 to E6. The dimensions of Turkish kanuns are typically 95 to 100 cm (37-39") long, 38 to 40 cm (15-16") wide and 4 to 6 cm (1.5-2.3") high. The instrument also has special latches for each course, called mandals. These small levers, which can be raised or lowered quickly by the performer while the instrument is being played, serve to change the pitch of a particular course slightly by altering the string lengths.
While Armenian kanuns employ half-tones and Arabic kanuns quarter-tones, typical Turkish kanuns divide the equal-tempered semitone of 100 cents into 6 equal parts, yielding 72 equal divisions (or commas) of the octave. Not all pitches of 72-tone equal temperament are available on the Turkish kanun, however, since kanun makers only affix mandals for intervals that are demanded by performers. Some kanun makers choose to divide the semitone of the lower registers into 7 parts instead for microtonal subtlety at the expense of octave equivalences. Hundreds of mandal configurations are at the player's disposal when performing on an ordinary Turkish kanun.
The kanun is a descendant of the old Egyptian harp, and is related to the ancient Greek psaltery, dulcimer and zither. Among others, Ruhi Ayangil (*1953), Erol Deran (*1937), Halil Karaduman (*1959), Göksel Baktagir (*1966), Tahir Aydoğdu (*1959), Julien Jalâl Ed-Dine Weiss (*1953), and Begoña Olavide are present-day exponents of this instrument.
A 79-tone tuning for the kanun was recently proposed and applied to a Turkish kanun by Ozan Yarman and has been acclaimed by Turkish masters of the instrument.
Mandals were invented during the first half of the 20th century. The kanun, prior to that time, remained rather inflexible in the case of modulations. However, the 24- or 72-note tuning of common Arab and Turkish models does not exactly reproduce the traditional interval ratios of maqam scales. Common kanun models may differ to an audible extent from a justly tuned tanbur or an exactly intonating oud, ney, or kemenche. Temperament has little in common with the theoretical tradition of the Middle East for which it can only offer approximated intervals. In Turkey and the Arab world it most probably originates in westernizing tendencies. The French qānūn virtuoso Julien Jalâl Ed-Dine Weiss (* 1953), critical of this deficiency, conceived a number of prototypes that, for the first time, are entirely based on pure Pythagorean and harmonic intervals. Since 1990, nine of such instruments have been built. Their string courses are tuned upon a strict Pythagorean heptatonic scale, whose steps are composed exclusively of justly tuned limmas 256/243 and major whole-tones 9/8. Fifteen different mandal positions (0-14) are contained in twice the Pythagorean apotome 2187/2048 (113.69 cents) on every course. The strictly ordered complexity of this rational tuning system also forms the basis for the intonation practice of Weiss’ Al-Kindi Ensemble. The two most recent instruments contain an additional octave in the bass register, extending their range to 33 string courses or four octaves and a fifth. In combining theoretical and acoustical motivations with his practical experience, Weiss was, thus, enabled to perform together with musicians in many different local contexts throughout the Middle-East.