names of the tropes. Instruments within the Byzantine Empire The 9th century Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 911); in his lexicographical discussion of instruments cited the lyra (lūrā) as the typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre) and the salandj (probably a bagpipe). The first of these, the early bowed stringed instrument known as the Byzantine lyra, would come to be called the lira da braccio, in Venice, where it is considered by many to have been the predecessor of the contemporary violin, which later flourished there. The bowed "lyra" is still played in former Byzantine regions, where it is known as the Politiki lyra (lit. "lyra of the City" i.e. Constantinople) in Greece, the Calabrian lira in Southern Italy, and the Lijerica in Dalmatia. The second instrument, the Hydraulis, originated in the Hellenistic world and was used in the Hippodrome in Constantinople during races. A pipe organ with "great leaden pipes" was sent by the emperor Constantine V to Pepin the Short King of the Franks in 757. Pepin's son Charlemagne requested a similar organ for his chapel in Aachen in 812, beginning its establishment in Western church music. Despite this, the Byzantines never used pipe organs and kept the flute-sounding Hydraulis until the Fourth Crusade. The final Byzantine instrument, the aulos, was a double-reeded woodwind like the modern oboe or Armenian duduk. Other forms include the plagiaulos (πλαγίαυλος, from πλάγιος, plagios "sideways"), which resembled the flute, and the askaulos (ἀσκαυλός from ἀσκός askos "wine-skin"), a bagpipe. These bagpipes, also known as Dankiyo (from ancient Greek: To angeion (Τὸ ἀγγεῖον) "the container"), had been played even in Roman times. Dio Chrysostom wrote in the 1st century of a contemporary sovereign (possibly Nero) who could play a pipe (tibia, Roman reedpipes similar to Greek aulos) with his mouth as well as by tucking a bladder beneath his armpit. The bagpipes continued to be played throughout the empire's former realms down to the present. (See Balkan Gaida, Greek Tsampouna, Pontic Tulum, Cretan Askomandoura, Armenian Parkapzuk, Zurna and Romanian Cimpoi.) Other commonly used instruments used in Byzantine Music include the Kanonaki, Oud, Laouto, Santouri, Toubeleki, Tambouras, Defi Tambourine, Çifteli (which was known as Tamburica in Byzantine times), Lyre, Kithara, Psaltery, Saz, Floghera, Pithkiavli, Kavali, Seistron, Epigonion (the ancestor of the Santouri), Varviton (the ancestor of the Oud and a variation of