Edirne Kirkpinar
Oil Wrestling Championship 2009
( 29 JUNE -
05 JULY 2009 )
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...
