Daff [daf, dap, def, defi, diaff, duff].

Round single-headed frame drum connected with Muslim cultures. In varying forms it is found in West Asia, the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia and south-eastern Europe. The drum is used in a wide variety of settings: folk music, art music, entertainment and dance music and Sufi religious rituals.

This type of frame drum is historically related to the pre-Islamic Arabian duff and Hebrew tof. Their various onomatopoeic names derive from the sound of the beaten drum. Terms related to duff spread to parts of Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Variant examples appear in Armenia (dap); in Azerbaijan (diaff, deff); among the Uighurs of Central Asia (dap); in Kurdish areas, Turkey, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia (def); in Greece, particularly the north (defi); and in East Africa (duff), where it is used by the Swahili and Swahili/Nguja people of Dar es Salaam and Tabora, Tanzania. The instrument probably travelled to South Asia in the 12th century (daph), and to Iberia and Latin America (adufe).

The daff is closely linked with frame drums known by other terms. In Iran, Turkey and Kurdish areas the terms daff/def and daire/dayre are both used without clear distinctions, although daire is generally associated with women and folk music (see Dāira). In Macedonia and Thrace the defi is commonly called daires or daire. In Azerbaijan and Armenia, the terms dahira and ghaval are also used. In Turkey and Syria the term Mazhar distinguishes religious use of a large drum similar to the daff. The Riqq, used in art music, is a virtuoso instrument related to the daff.

Typically, the daff’s frame is wooden. The large daff played by Qādirī Sufis in Kurdistan is particularly heavy (of nut, plane or chestnut wood). Sometimes the frame is richly ornamented with inlay, as in Azerbaijan and Armenia. The membrane glued to the frame is usually of goatskin; in the Caucasus catfish skin or plastic is used and the Uighur dap uses ass hide. Metallic jingles are often attached inside the frame, e.g. pellet bells, rings, chains of rings, coins, or pairs of small cymbals or discs inserted into slits in the frame. Some drums have a hole, notch or groove for the thumb to act as a support.

Sizes vary between 20 and 60 cm in diameter and 5–7 cm in depth. In Iraq the daff is usually 40–50 cm; a variant used in entertainment music, daff zinjārī (‘Gypsy daff’), is generally smaller (about 25 cm; fig.1). In Iraq and Iran, daffs used in Kurdish Sufi ceremonies may be up to 60 cm in diameter and metallic rings or chains are intrinsic to the performative effect. In Syria the daff is relatively small (25–30 cm); some are copies of the small frame drum called riqq. The dap of Chinese Turkestan is about 25 cm, but in Badakhshān (a region overlapping Afghanistan and Tajikistan) the daf is usually large (fig.2). The def of south-eastern Europe and Turkey is about 25 cm in diameter and 5 cm deep; four or five pairs of slightly convex or flat brass discs are inserted into the frame. A Turkish term, zilli def, is applied to the def with metal rings. (For an illustration of defs used in connection with köçek dancers during the early 18th-century Ottoman period see Ottoman music, fig.2.)

Playing techniques vary. Usually the player holds the drum in one hand and beats the skin with the fingers, thumb and palm of the other hand. Occasionally the drum is held with both hands and played with the free fingers. Metallic percussive effects are obtained by tilting or shaking the drum, or hitting the frame. The player may kneel, sit, stand or move about while playing the drum. In art traditions onomatopoeic words are sometimes used to describe the sounds: dum/düm for the heavy, low sound and tak/taka/tek for the light, high sound.

The historical Arabian duff is among the instruments most frequently cited in the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (hadīth). During the Prophet’s lifetime (7th century) it was used in connection with entertainments, celebrations, religious festivities, battles and poetry. For instance, it accompanied poetry sung to welcome travellers home, and a hadith attests that a slave said to the Prophet Muhammad: ‘I have vowed if Allah makes you safe and sound to beat the duff above your head’ (as a form of blessing). Female slave musicians known as Qayna used it both in ensemble music and to scan poetic metres, so the drum was considered as pedagogic and mnemonic in that capacity.

After the Prophet Muhammad’s death, the duff was frequently cited in the controversy about the legitimacy of musical instruments. It evaded the official condemnation applied to other musical instruments, since some scriptural traditions upheld the Prophet’s approval of its use. However, according to one hadith the Prophet warned that the end of the world would come when a devastating wind destroys the ungodly who drink wine, play duffs and frequent taverns with qayna entertainers. The drum’s links with dancing and illicit sex are an aspect of its history.

The historical Arabian duff was probably square, rectangular or octagonal. This angular shape, mentioned in several 10th-century writings (notably the anonymous Egyptian treatise Kashf al-ghumūm) survives in Morocco, Algeria (Ghardaia) and in Saudi Arabia under the name ‘ulba (‘the box’). However, frame drums from the rich excavations of Phoenicia, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia attest to a small circular instrument (25–30 cm). A text by Majd al-Dīn Ahmad al-Ghazālī (d 1126) suggests that the early duff (duff al ‘arab) carried no accessory jingles. Small cymbals, pellet-bells and rings appeared around the 9th and 10th centuries. Some Islamic scholars regard the five pairs of small cymbals as mystical, relating to the five members of the Prophet’s family (Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn).

This type of frame drum has been consistently used in traditional art music in most parts of the Muslim Middle East and beyond. The daff (or modern riqq) is used in the takht ensemble of Arab art music. Until the 19th century it was used in Persian classical music, when it was replaced by the tombak (goblet drum), but since the early 1980s the daff has gradually been revived.

The drum had been widely used in folk and entertainment music. In Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere it has historical and contemporary associations with Sufi rituals (see Islamic religious music, §II). In the Arab world the daff is notable as an instrument played by all classes of people: male and female, professional and amateur, adult and child, secular and religious. The drum has historical connections with Gypsies: in Turkey Gypsy men play it, especially to accompany performances by dancing bears, and Greek Gypsies use it with the street organ (laterna). In south-western Turkey, semi-professional Gypsy women (delbekçi kadınlar) play the delbek (a variant term) at rural weddings. In Turkey during the 1920s it was used by the female dancers and singers of the café-aman (a kind of ‘oriental’ café-chantant), but is now mostly played by women in private settings. In the small Muslim towns of south-eastern Europe it has been regarded as a domestic instrument.

See also Drum, §I, 2(vi).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EI1 (‘Duff’; H.G. Farmer)

L. Picken: Folk Music Instruments of Turkey (London, 1975)

J. During: ‘Daf/dayera’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. E. Yarshater (London and Costa Mesa, CA, 1982–)

V. Doubleday: ‘The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Women, Musical Instruments and Power’, EthM, xliii/1 (1999), 101–34

R. CONWAY MORRIS, CVJETKO RIHTMAN, CHRISTIAN POCHÉ/VERONICA DOUBLEDAY