Belt wrestling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | |
 | |
| Focus | Wrestling |
|---|---|
| Famous practitioners | Gilgamesh, Kozhomkul, Ivan Poddubny, Qajymuqan |
| Olympic sport | No |
Belt wrestling is a form of wrestling that is one of the oldest historically recorded sports. It involves two belted contestants aiming to take each other over by grappling with a belt.[1] There are hundreds of national belt wrestling styles, but contemporary most widespread and internationally competed are Alysh and Kurash, developed by the previously nomadic Turkic peoples of Central Asia. United World Wrestling recognized Alysh wrestling as the primary international belt wrestling style. It is regulated globally by the International Federation of Wrestling on Belts Alysh, the sport's governing body. Although the sport has been practiced for millennia, and local championships were held in various places of the world, it was until 2001 when Bayaman Erkinbayev started its international version, and it was called "Alysh". Until 2005, Rif Gaynanov and Bayaman Erkinbayev developed this style together, and then the ways separated. Two different styles appeared named "Alysh" and "Kurash" belt wrestling. Since then, the sport has been included in the 2013 Summer Universiade program, recognized by the Asian Olympic Council, and contested at the Asian Games and Asian Indoor Games. The sport's executives struggle to promote it to the level of an official Olympic sport.
Gilgamesh engages in a form of belt wrestling with Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh written around 2000 BC about a king of Sumer who lived around 2800 to 2600 BC.[2] One of the oldest recorded illustrations of wrestling is a bronze statuette, dated to around 2600 BC, found in 1938 at Khafaji, near Baghdad and now stored in the National Museum of Iraq.[3][4] Chinese Tangshu chronicles also mention belt wrestling in Medieval China circa the 11th century. In the 11th century the scholar and philosopher Avicenna wrote about this type of wrestling.
