Sir sanat

A family teaching assigned to Turkic martial culture and said to have come down from a Uyghur master: philosophy, medicine and a fighting art built on strikes to vital points.

About

Sir sanat (Sirsanat, in full Sirsanate Akili) is a family teaching of Central Asian origin, assigned to Turkic martial culture. The name is rendered as "secret knowledge" or "secret art". Within the teaching itself it has three parts: the art of protecting the soul, of protecting the feelings and of protecting the body — in other words philosophy, medicine and a fighting art. The fighting part is called Sanate Zanozani Akili; as the Russian magazine Patron writes, this means "the art of wisdom in battle" in the Dari dialect.

The bearer of the teaching known today is Alexander Akilov, who lives in Jerusalem; those close to him and his pupils call him "teacher Abo". All that is known of him comes from the school's own circle: an account written in 2007 by Yuri Fridman, his pupil for nine years; an article of 2005 in Patron based on talks with Fridman; and the school's website. There is no independent study, so what follows is what the school says of itself.

In Fridman's description this is an attacking system: there is no notion of a block, and "there must be defence in attack and attack in defence". Strikes are aimed not "at the head" or "at the body" but only at the vulnerable points, each point being touched with a particular part of the hand or foot and from a particular direction. The movements are not devised but grow out of a person's walking and running; there is no strict pattern — in the teacher's words, "look for what is comfortable". Since a human being is asymmetrical by nature, so is the technique: the left hand is open and quick, its symbol the whip; the right hand is a fist, its symbol the club. Kicks are low and made with the knee bent.

The system is built as a "weapon system": the actions with a weapon and without, against an armed and an unarmed opponent, are the same, and the correctness of a technique is tested precisely against an armed opponent. Beside the knife, sword, spear, staff and bow, a waist-cloth, a whip, a sling and a stone also count as weapons. Combat is thought of not as a duel but as a fight against several opponents on every side; among the old sections are fighting against a whip, a horseman and a dog, with bound hands, in the dark, in the mountains and in water.

Training begins in childhood. By tradition the child is taught not by the father but by the grandfather, and for the little ones there are special games that give fighting habits. Traditional training took seven hours a day — four in the morning and three in the evening; for a movement to become automatic it had to be repeated seven thousand times. No strike is practised standing still: everything is worked in motion, with a partner and with hand pads. There is a seven-step system of exercises against fear; the teacher's saying is "Be afraid of being afraid!". Akilov stresses that the teaching is medicine first and a fighting art only after that.

Sir sanat is not a sport: it has neither competitions nor sparring. Pupils from outside the family are taught a simplified section — "the merchant's art", a three-month course once made for the owners of caravans. According to Fridman, there are such instructors in Israel, Riga, St Petersburg and Perm. The art known in Russian-language writing as kulsinat (kol sanat) is connected with this school: Patron calls it a component of Sirsanat.

In Uzbek and Uyghur sir means "secret" and sanat "art". The Kazakhstani author Sanatbek Seydekhanov places the fighting part of the school — kulsinat — in the Central Asian, that is the Turkic, line of Eastern martial arts and explains its name by the Turkic kul sanaty, "the art of the hands"; in a text circulated by the Uyghur community it is written Қол сәнъәт.

History

As Fridman writes, the tradition of the family gives the art about a thousand years and looks for its roots in Tibet and India. Tradition links it with the personal bodyguards of Genghis Khan, with the guard of three hundred that went with Babur to conquer India in the 16th century, and with the professional guards who protected caravans on the Great Silk Road; members of the family are said to have lived at various times in Central Asia, Kashgar, Inner Mongolia and India. These are family traditions and are not confirmed by documents.

There are two different accounts of how Akilov learnt the art. By the school's website he was born in 1947 in the Pamir mountains and from the age of six learnt it in the family, in the way it had been passed from father to son for generations; Fridman writes that his training began at five, and Patron calls him a native of Uzbekistan. The second account comes from his St Petersburg pupil Mikhail Arshavsky: in a Uyghur family that had fled China and settled in Central Asia — the house of the last of the Chai Fu Shan line — Abo was an adopted son and learnt the secrets on a par with the son by birth. The two accounts do not agree; other pupils quoted in the magazine do not regard what Arshavsky says as reliable.

After moving to Israel in 1990 Yuri Fridman met Akilov in Jerusalem and studied with him for nine years; later he taught "the merchant's art" in Riga. To the journalist's question whether the Israeli special services take an interest in the art he gave no answer: "That concerns the security of my country." The school's website presents Akilov's book Sirsanat and training videos.

Akilov's own book Syrsanat (2006) also gives the first account: by the biography in the book he was born on 4 December 1947 in the Pamir mountains, when he was two the family moved to the Tian Shan, and he received the knowledge from his father. The family legend in the book takes the beginning of the art back to the time of Alexander the Great and traces the masters' road thus: from India to Tibet, then to Kashgar and China — today's Xinjiang; later they joined the Mongols and went on campaign with the Horde.

Peoples

Uyghurs

Research: Vasif Namazov, Turan Games Concept

Sir sanat

About

History

Peoples

Sources