Sabantuy contests
Sack race, pole climbing, sack fighting, pot breaking (chölmək vatu), egg-and-spoon race, finding a coin in katyk.
About
Sabantuy is the summer festival of the Tatars and the Bashkirs; its name means "the feast of the plough". It is held roughly between 15 June and 1 July, usually on a Sunday, and is regarded as one of the national symbols of Tatarstan.
The main contest of the festival is köräş: the wrestlers hold each other with towels and try to throw the opponent down. The winner becomes the batyr, the hero of the Sabantuy; in villages he is given a ram as the prize. There are also horse races, sack races, pole climbing, races with an egg in a spoon, breaking pots blindfold and fishing a coin out of sour milk.
History
As İ. Kemaloğlu writes, the word sabantuy first appears in the sources in the thirteenth century: it stands on a gravestone dated 1292 found in the Alkeyevo district of Tatarstan. In a manuscript calendar of 1775 the fourth of April is marked as the day of sabantuy. Scholars hold that the festival has been kept since the time of the Volga Bulgars. It was once celebrated in April, when work in the fields began, and later after the sowing was finished — in June. Among the Chuvash a like festival is called akatuy, among the Bashkirs habantuy.
The preparations begin long beforehand: young people go from quarter to quarter in decorated carts collecting gifts for the prizes — mostly headscarves and embroidered towels; a towel embroidered by a bride married since the last sabantuy is counted the most precious gift. In 1992 the republics of the Volga–Ural region declared sabantuy an official holiday. It is held first in the villages, then in the districts and towns, and last in the capitals.
The contests are arranged separately for children, the young and adults. The chief ones are the horse race and belt wrestling. The wrestler girds his opponent's waist with a towel and tries to bring his back to the ground; in Tatar wrestling the use of the legs is strictly forbidden. There are no weight classes, but in the first rounds the elders try to match the wrestlers with their equals. The wrestler who beats all his opponents bears the title of batyr until the next sabantuy.
Peoples
Research: Vasif Namazov, Turan Games Concept
