Yagli Gures - 'Oil Wrestling'
is the Turkish national sport and every year, in June
and wrestling championships are held in Kirkpinar, outside
Edirne.
For 630 years the celebrated
Kirkpinar oil wrestling tournament has commenced with
this chant. The master of the festival, known as the
cazgir, recites a prayer for the wrestlers. Then the
drums zurna (a wind instrument with a double reed) begin
to play, hundreds of wrestlers bow in salute, and the
first pairs lock in combat on the green meadow.
There are several versions
of the story about how the Kirkpinar wrestling tournament
began, the best known relating how Sultan Murad I's
general Suleyman Pasa crossed the Dardanelles with a
vanguard of forty warriors on two rafts, and commenced
the march through Thrace. At every halt the men engaged
in wrestling bouts as a way of forgetting the hardships
of the journey. One day when they reached a meadow at
Ahirkoy near Edirne they began wrestling as usual. As
the sun set only two wrestlers remained, neither able
to inflict defeat on the other. They continued to wrestle
into the night until finally both collapsed and died
of exhaustion. They were buried where they fell, and
the next day a spring of crystal clear water appeared
on the spot...
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