Wrestling: Whose Sport Is It?

Vasif Namazov on the origins of wrestling: born of the way of life of the ancient Turkic nomadic clans as training for battle, it later became a sporting culture.

Vasif Namazov, researcher of Turkic and nomadic martial culture, First Vice-President of the International Turan Games Committee

It is no secret that wrestling is widespread across the Turkic world. The Turkic peoples have seen many wars in the course of their history; the states and empires they founded bear witness to that. One of the most important parts of the Turkic military system was hand-to-hand combat, and wrestling was the training for it. Unlike real battle, punches and kicks were forbidden in training, standing or on the ground, so that nobody was injured. That is why wrestling has come down to us as a sport without punches and kicks.

Because the clans of the Turkic world lived apart from one another and each had its own outlook, different tactics grew up in the training of their fighters. That is the reason every Turkic people today has its own wrestling tactics and its own competition rules.

Geography and dialect have given different names both to the word itself and to the kinds of wrestling. The word changes from people to people: güləş (Azerbaijanis), güreş (Turks of Türkiye, Gagauz), göreş (Turkmens), kurash (Uzbeks), qurash (Karakalpaks), küres (Kazakhs, Khakas), kurosh (Kyrgyz), köräş (Tatars, Bashkirs), köreş (Crimean Tatars), kereshü (Chuvash), küresh (Altaians), khüresh (Tuvans). The names differ, but the meaning and the substance are the same.

In the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, written by Mahmud al-Kashgari in the eleventh century, the word «kür» is given the meaning brave, unshakeable, stout-hearted, bold («kür er»). In the same work the verb «küreshmek» is used in the sense of wrestling: «Do not wrestle with a maiden, do not race against a mare». In Azerbaijani «kür» still means spirited and hot-blooded; our elders used to tell children «bir kürrəşin görək» — «go on, wrestle, let us see». In my view the name of wrestling comes from this root too: the meeting of the «kür», that is, of the brave.

The kinds of wrestling are many as well. Among Azerbaijanis, pahlavan wrestling; among the Turks of Türkiye, oil wrestling, karakucak, aba wrestling and shalwar wrestling; among Uzbeks, kurash; among Kazakhs, qazaq küresi; among the Kyrgyz, alysh — a belt wrestling —, Kyrgyz kurosh and balban kürösh, which is named in the Manas epic; among Turkmens, göreş and yakalashma, fought with a grip on the collar; among Tatars and Bashkirs, köräş; among Altaians, küresh; among Tuvans, khüresh; among the Khakas, küres; among the Sakha, khapsagay; among the Gagauz, güreş. There is wrestling on horseback too: the Kyrgyz call it er enish, the Kazakhs audaryspak.

Today there are also those who attribute wrestling to the Greeks and Romans alone. The reason is that a style called «Greco-Roman wrestling» is known all over the world and has its place in the Olympic Games.

With so many kinds of wrestling in the Turkic world, why was it «Greco-Roman wrestling» that was admitted to the Olympic Games?

Because that style was formed on the basis of the depictions of wrestling on ancient Greek and Roman monuments and of the written sources. It entered the Olympic Games under that name as well. The founders of the Olympic movement relied on the sources they knew; the wrestling tradition of the Turkic peoples was little known in Europe at the time.

At the roots of Roman culture, however, stand the Etruscans. In his book «Etrusk-Türk bağı» («The Etruscan–Turkic Link») the Turkologist Professor Firudin Aghasioglu connects the origin, mythology and language of the Etruscans with the Turks. One of the arguments he brings is the she-wolf, the symbol of Rome: according to the author, the legend of Romulus and Remus suckled by a wolf has the same root as the Turkic legend of the grey wolf.

Archaeological finds also show that wrestling has lived in the nomadic world since ancient times. A bronze belt plaque of the second–first centuries BCE, found in the Ordos region (northern China), shows two nomad horsemen who have left their horses behind them and wrestle, each gripping the other by the waist. The wide trousers they wear are the same as the dress of the wrestlers who meet at folk festivals in Azerbaijan, Anatolia and Central Asia today.

To this day, contests of valour are held to the sound of music at weddings and folk festivals in Azerbaijan, in many parts of Anatolia and in Central Asia. Alongside the games on horseback there are other sports as well. Such gatherings cannot be imagined without wrestling.

Thus wrestling was born of the way of life of the ancient Turkic nomadic clans (tribes) as training for battle, and later became a sporting culture.

The article was first published on alpagut.az on 23.05.2020 — https://alpagut.az/vasifnamazovgulesh

Photo: Dilaver Najafov, CC BY-SA 4.0 — Wikimedia Commons (Baku, 2022)