Instruments: The extended family of long-necked lutes (tambouras/saz)

Here are performances of two songs by Christos Konstantinou:

i) a rendition of a καρjιλαμας (καρσιλαμάς/karşılama) on the saz.
This is the first part of a 5-part suite of dances (4 αντικρυστοι (karşılama) followed by the Μπάλλος) which are commonly danced in Cyprus by both Greek-speaking (see e.g. this, this&this, this) and Turkish-speaking Cypriots (see e.g. this&this).
Konstantinou, not uncommonly, combines it with the melody of this song:



ii) a few minutes later, a performance on a kiteli (a name related to the Yoruk Üçtelli (see also E. Petropoulos' take on this), and the Albanian qifteli), which the presenter says is from Cyprus and is 'commonly used' there.

The tambouras is currently relatively rare in Greek and Turkish Cypriot music, with few exceptional attempts at reviving it (e.g. this group includes a saz player). Maronites however often use the saz (see e.g. this fonē by the Solomou family, another version of which is here performed in honour of the pope), sometimes even the bouzouki (which, as its name suggests, is not unrelated to the buzuq widely used in Lebanon, by Maronites and non-Maronites alike).

[Note: I've heard that there is evidence that the 'tambouritsa' had long been played on the island of Cyprus (thank you bangungot).]

In Greek, the word tambouras (ταμπουράς) may refer to the whole family of instruments which in Turkey go under the name of saz. Under the tambouras family one may find the Cretan seven-string saz called boulgari, various forms of two-stringed instruments (often going under the name kiteli), and other similar instruments of varying sizes and names. Confusingly, the standardised tambouras that is currently in use in educational institutions in Greece is what in Turkish is called the 'Çöğür saz', i.e. a tambouras (a saz) that is slightly smaller than the baglama saz. What in Turkish is called baglama saz is what is typically referred to in Greek by the word saz or σάζι (sazi). Even more confusingly, 'baglama' in Greek refers to a kind of small tambouras (i.e. saz) that evolved into a small bouzouki (the bouzouki itself being an evolution of tambouras which at some point, either in the late 19th or the early 20th century, acquired Western-style unmovable frets). What is called in Turkish tanbur is a very long necked six-string tambouras played in Ottoman music (either plucked, or since Tamburi Cemil Bey's invention, bowed, in which case it is called yaylı tanbur), though it is also the name of this three-stringed (one single and one double) Kurdish instrument (also called Tembûr). Thus, in designating the entire family of long-necked lutes, the words tambouras and saz are interchangable; nevertheless, in designating particular standardised types of tamboura/saz, the nationalisation of these words can be stupefying.

The tambouras/saz family is not limited to the Eastern Meditteranean; its use ranges from China to Ireland and beyond. The Egyptian tomb of Nakht from around the 15th century BC contains this depiction of women playing music (thanks to P. & R. for this):

with the one in the middle playing a two-string tambouras/saz. The ancient Greeks seem to have had a similar instrument, which they called pandura/pandouris (see LSJ entry), and thought to be oriental in origin. Atheneus (Ath. 4. 183f) claims that Pythagoras considered it to have come from the red sea. There is an instrument called panduri played in eastern Georgia (see e.g. this).
Instruments of the tambouras family include:

-the dutar and tambur, used in the Uyghur Muqam of the Turkmens in the Xinjiang province of China.

-the sitar, though of course it is much more complex than the two/three-stringed instruments which are more closely related to the tambouras. Nevertheless, the sitar's complexity gradually fades out as one moves westward, for example with the Afghani tanbur or do taar, the chitrali and pashto sitar (notice that the pashto song sounds a bit like 'χρυσοπράσινο φύλλο'). I am not sure whether the Balochi saaz should be placed in this group - Balochi culture and music has a unique mixture of Persian, Arabic and Indian/Pakistani characteristics, and the saaz I think is more of an accompanying instrument, while the tambouras family instruments are often played solo.

-the Afghani (e.g. this, this), Pakistani, Taj, Uzbeki, Bashkir, Tatar, Mongol, Kazakh and Uyghur dombura/dombra/danbura/dombor/dombyra (see relevant wikipedia article). See also the slightly more distant relative, the komuz, whose name (misleadingly) sounds like the koboz, which is in turn is like an oud/laouto/lauta.

-the setar, and its neighbours: the dotar of Khorasan, the Iranian-Armenian and Azerbaijani tar, the Kurdish tanbur already mentioned, the saz of the travelling ashiqs (which UNESCO now considers to be the intangible heritage of Azerbaijan).

- the baglama saz, the baglamas, the bouzouki (see e.g. this and this microtonal bouzoukia), the bozuq (here used for playing rembetika), the tzouras, the cura saz, the tambour, the Bulgarian tambura, the Albanian kiteli, and others.

As the tambouras family moves westward, it becomes slightly more difficult to recognise. However, the laouto could be said to be a relative of the tambouras (see for example this micro-tonal Cretan laouto).