Lobut throwing
Throwing a wooden club far or at a target.
About
The lobut (labut) is a large, heavy wooden club. In the Ottoman period throwing the lobut was a form of sport and training: among the pursuits of the sultans who kept up sport after coming to the throne, "throwing the lobut and the hışt" is listed alongside wrestling, archery and jereed.
One of the tests of skill of the expert riders, the cündîs, was to strike the lobut on the ground at a gallop and send it over a rope stretched between the tops of tall trees. The training weapon matrak was also shaped like a lobut: a big, rather heavy stick of boxwood.
History
As M. Özveri and Ş. Acar write, the word lobut comes from the Arabic nebbût: in Turkish it first took the form nobud and then lobut. The dictionaries explain it like this: before the cannon was invented, in sieges of fortresses the skilled horsemen — the cündi — threw it over the walls to wound those inside; later it became a training tool for improving the throwing of the javelin.
In books on the history of Ottoman sport the lobut is described as a straight, dry oak stick with the bark peeled off, 70 to 90 centimetres long and 5 to 6 centimetres thick. So that it could be thrown far and high and would stick in a green tree, its end was cut to a six-sided point; because it looked like a big pen it was also called kalemli, and one with an iron head was called a hışt.
The only written "record" of a lobut throw is in Topkapı Palace. On the wall of the Chief Physician's Room, behind the marble seat of Murad IV, there is a marble inscription of 139 by 75 centimetres. It says that in the month of Ramadan of the year 1046 of the Hijra (January–February 1637) the sultan mounted an Arab horse, rode from one stone to another and threw an oak lobut so far that it was a long time before it was found; when measured, the distance came to 115 architect's cubits, about 87 metres. As the authors write, there is no second example of this in the history of Ottoman war and sport.
Lobut throwing was especially popular in the time of Mahmud II. The authors link this to the sultan's ban on the mounted jereed game: a companion of his from the Enderun had been killed in it, whereas in lobut throwing the players do not touch one another. In the Gülhane and Ağa gardens of Topkapı Palace the sultan had a rope stretched between two very tall trees and a horse with precious harness tied there for the man who sent his lobut over the rope; the aghas of the palace tried for days to clear it.
Rules in brief
In the description the authors quote, the throw was made like this: the rider spurred his horse from a distance and came up to the middle of the rope, leant down and touched the rear end of the lobut in his right hand to the ground, then, taking force from the stirrups, stood up and hurled it upward. What mattered most was to judge the horse's speed, the distance and the angle of the throw. The man who sent his lobut over the rope stretched between two tall trees was the winner.
The authors point out that the lobut is not thrown like a javelin: a short, thick club with no iron head does not fly along its own axis — it is held by one end, swung and let go so that it travels turning over in the air.
Peoples
Research: Vasif Namazov, Turan Games Concept