History of the violin
The violin, viola and cello were first built in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. The Académie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today. Violins are likely to have been developed from a number of other string instruments of the 15th and 16th centuries, including the vielle, rebec, and lira da braccio. The history of bowed string instruments in Europe goes back to the 9th century with the Byzantine lira (or lūrā, Greek: λύρα). Since their invention, instruments in the violin family have seen a number of changes. The overall pattern for the instrument was set in the 17th century by luthiers like the prolific Amati family, Jakob Stainer of the Tyrol, and Antonio Stradivari, with many makers at the time and since following their templates. Early history The origin of the violin family is obscure some say that the bow was introduced to Europe from the Middle East while others say the bow was not introduced from the Middle East but the other way round and that that the bow may have had its origin from a more frequent intercourse with North Europe and Western Europe The origin of bowing is obscure. The two earliest bowed instruments are the ravanastron and the omerti found in India and made of a hollowed cylinder of sycamore wood. They were played in the manner of a cello. Also in China, another two-stringed bowed instrument was the erhu. Rühlmann, J said that the Indian instrument was not proved in question to be either old or original or primitive and that he believed that the bow originated independently in different places The Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 911) of the 9th century was the first to cite the bowed Byzantine lyra as a typical instrument of the Byzantines and equivalent to the rabāb used in the Islamic Empires of that time. The Byzantine lyra spread through Europe westward and in the 11th and 12th centuries European writers use the terms fiddle and lira interchangeably when referring to bowed instruments (Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009). In the meantime rabāb was introduced to the Western Europe possibly through the Iberian Peninsula and both bowed instruments spread widely throughout Europe giving birth to various European bowed instruments. During the Renaissance, the rebec came in different sizes and pitches: soprano, tenor, and bass. The smaller versions of the instrument were known in Italy as ribecchino and in France as rubechette. Over the centuries that followed, Europe continued to have two distinct types of bowed instruments: one, relatively square-shaped, held in the arms, known with the Italian term lira da braccio (meaning 'viol for the arm') family; the other, with sloping shoulders and held between the knees, known with the Italian term lira da gamba (or viola da gamba, meaning 'viol