The Çifteli is an Albania

Albania

Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

n wooden, largely acoustic string instrument

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

, with only two strings (in Albanian, çifteli means "paired").

The çifteli is commonly used by Albanian

Albanians

Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...

 folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

ians as well as other modern musicians and is played by Albanians at weddings, concerts, national events, and other occasions. Especially important is its role in the accompanying of the Albanian epic ballads, such as the Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors

Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors

Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors are part of the traditional cycle of the Albanian epic songs. They took their definite form in 17th and 18th century and were orally transmitted by the Albanian bards. The songs were first time recorded in written form in the first decades of the 20th...

  of Gjergj Elez Alia

Gjergj Elez Alia

Gjergj Elez Alia is popular legendary hero of poetry and literature in Bosnia and Albania. Muslims from Bosnian Krajina modeled the poetic image of Djerzelez Alija after the image of Christian Prince Marko, based on the historic person Ali Bey Mihaloğlu...

 or Muji e Halili: in this regard the instrument may replace the lahuta.

The size and scale length of various Çiftelias may differ from one another. The Çiftelia is often tuned to that of the same pitch as the two highest strings on the guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, strings E and B. Usually the lower string is played as a drone, with the melody played on the higher string. The Çiftelia is a fretted instrument, but unlike most it does not have one fret per semitone, but rather one fret per note in a seven note diatonic scale. Seven frets up is the octave of the open string.
Çitfeli, the word, taken from Turkish. Çifteli=çifte+li; çifte means double. Anadolu has the dance melody "Çiftetelli" means "Double Stringed" although it lost the meaning in the dance context. The same instrument "çifteli" is not in use nowadays in Central Asia and Anadolu but in ancient forms we came across with the word "ıklığ" which used by ancestors of Turks. By some authors ıklığ mentioned as "ikilik=iki+lik" iki means two and in context the whole word means "two string". That seems Albanian culture borrows this instrument directly from Turks because of word itself, usage of instrument and musical hearings in form, tempo and modes. Think that it would be dutar, in which du means two and tar means string. (Serdar Erkan)