Guest Stim says:
You have to play oud music on it, which means that you have to be familiar with one or more of the different kinds of oud music. If you're not, it's not going to work.

Huh? I use it for medieval music, French and Breton music, original folk tunes, Bulgarian music, and just noodling around on. Some tunes are good oud tunes and some sound better on cittern or guitar. I hadn't tried blues as mentioned above, but I will now.

As for learning it, it's not really that frightening. Just keep telling yourself not to fret . . .