ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the origins of the viol and focuses on its murky prehistory through exhausting and rarely unequivocal comparisons of iconographic, literary, archival and musical sources. To avoid being overwhelmed by the unbelievable diversity of form of bowed instruments as delineated by mediaeval painters and sculptors, the authors define two major families of instruments. First they have the pear-shaped instruments with rounded, ribless soundboxes which gradually taper towards the neck. Their shape suggests that they were carved out of a single block of wood. There is an obvious relationship with the Arab instrument known as the rubab, robab or rabab. The second major family is characterised by its box-like shape. A further detail of enormous importance both for the musical and technical character of the instrument, and one in which the historical representations are often especially unreliable, is the curvature of the bridge.
