Mace games
A contest of strength and skill with weapons.
About
The mace (gürz; in Turkish also topuz and bozdoğan) is a striking weapon widely used by the Seljuks and the Ottomans. There are many kinds: the round-headed topuz without spikes; the bozdoğan with a segmented head; the şeşper with six to nine flanges; the salık, a spiked ball on a chain made for throwing; and the light, round-headed matrak. The mace also showed the rank of its bearer; it went out of use in the 18th century as firearms spread.
The mace was also a means of training and display. Describing the entry of the Ottoman embassy into Vienna, Evliya Çelebi writes that the mounted cündis stood upright in the saddle at a gallop and threw their maces to one another and caught them.
Among the Ottomans the mace was used on horseback too: in the description M. Kapanşahin gives from the chroniclers, at the festival of 1530 riders lunged with the mace at the gallop while their opponents took cover from the blow.
Peoples
Research: Vasif Namazov, Turan Games Concept
Sources
- T. Çoruhlu, Gürz — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, c. 14, 1996, s. 327–328
- H. Akın Zorba, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi'ne Göre Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda Spor — IntJSCS, 2014, s. 725
- Şəkil: LordReco, CC BY-SA 4.0 — Wikimedia Commons
- M. Kapanşahin, Kanuni Sultan Süleyman’ın Çocuklarının Sünnet Düğününde Oynanan Oyunlar — Türk Halklarının Geleneksel Spor Oyunları, Bişkek, 2015, s. 99–107
