Question about Middle-Eastern Martial Arts

[Mathieu Westernosse]

Hallo everyone, I'm new to the forums and not exactly sure if I should make a topic about this, but here goes.

Recently I came into possession of a late 17th Century antique Arabic Scimitar known as a "Saif". Being a fan of both the German Renaissance arts of Meyer as well the enchantment of 1001 Nights and other pre-Islamic stories and artifacts, I was wondering if there were codified manuals from the middle-east on the use of the scimitar or other weapons as I could find none from my searching that weren't based off of Oriental arts- specifically I was wondering if there were any "native" Middle-Easter martial arts concerning the scimitar and related disciplines.

According to the man I bought the sword from, the weapon was used by his ancestor to strike at foes from horseback, which causes me to think that perhaps it is a primarily mounted form of swordmanship compared to the popular depictions of its use in media. Then again, I can't be sure. In fact, I can't even be sure of the dating, and it might be a more modern replica(although it does seem old, it's still in usable condition).

Any help would be appreciated! I'd love to see if there is a codified martial arts style to go with curved blades like this.

[Stacy Clifford]

That question has been asked on here a few times before, and aside from a (Turkish, I think) document about test cutting, nobody has found much that I'm aware of. If they did, either they didn't write that sort of thing down in their cultures or nobody has found it yet. I can guarantee you that other people are looking as well, though.

[Jaron Bernstein]

http://www.middleeastmedievalists.org/

Might be a good starting point.

[Mathieu Westernosse]

Thank you for the link Jaron. I wonder why there are so few extant materials detailing such arts in the middle-east. Iran(Persia) seems to have some well documented forms of wrestling (I'm looking at Silat as an example) yet apart from modern day manuals at my local bookstore (which aren't even that good, let alone well written) there appears to be a vacuum on Middle-Eastern martial arts in detail.

This actually brings up another question in my mind: during the Crusades, were there cases of Crusader's using Arabic weapons and Arabic warriors using European weapons? I wonder if there could have been a bleed in styles between the two cultures that may have contributed to later European Martial Arts in the Renaissance.

[Jaron Bernstein]

The books may be out there, but not read and undiscovered. All of the books we use in MARE were extant from 1600-1900, but no one used them like we do today. The Arabic and Ottoman world certainly had a written tradition. What you seek is probably in an archive somewhere. There is also a linguistic challenge. The Ottomans wrote in Turkish with an Arabic script that stopped with Ataturk (Mustafa Kamel) after WW1. Modern Turkish uses a different alphabet and is a very different creature from what pre-WW1 Ottoman books were written in. I once had a professor (an American) whose specialty was Ottoman history. He had native Turkish graduate students who he had to teach the old language to, despite them being native Turkish speakers. Also, the Arabic of today is quite different than the Arabic used back then.

I suggest doing primary source archival research (if you can) on old Ottoman and Arabic books. You might just find an Arabic fechtbuch. Don't forget that Silver (quite popular in MARE studies) was found by dumb luck when someone was poking around in the British Museum IIRC and very recently (last year) a 4th edition of Fiore was discovered in France.

[Jonathan Hill]

There is a gentleman working on translating some fight books of Persia, he’s still in process on it but here’s his web site:

http://www.mmkhorasani.com/index.html
http://www.arms-and-armor-from-iran.de/ ... ation.html

He is currently working through the texts, ironically most of the older texts refer to strait blades. This goes a bit further to support my statement that curved blades trace their origin to cavalry work, so yes most curved blades start as a cavalry sword and then get adopted to footman as Europe did with the Sabre. The Saif being a cousin of the Sabre I’d wager that its roots come from Cavalry as well.

While we may not have many Persian texts translated at this point, there are many texts on Sabre from England which as I mentioned is a cousin of the Saif. This will not teach you how the Persians use the blade but it will tell you how England used the blade. As many people are noticing when comparing single handed blades across cultures, the basics are almost the same. It’s the finer details which differ.

This is a link to a ‘cliffs notes’ version of a Broadsword/Sabre manual. http://www.careyroots.com/broadsword.html


As to bleed during the Crusades, while I can’t point you to direct texts stating it, it is understood that the Falchion ‘came back’ from the crusades, and that the Muslims were fond of raiding the Christian graves because the swords were of better quality.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

it is understood that the Falchion ‘came back’ from the crusades,

Unfortunately, this is a myth--single-edged blades, and probably even curved ones, were already in use in Europe by the time the Crusades began. They might not have been as widespread as straight double-edged blades, especially among the upper classes that tended to get disproportionately more attention in art, but they existed.

(And it has been pointed out already that curved swords were the mark of Turks, who were seen as not-quite-thoroughly-Islamized barbarians by the other Muslim peoples during the Crusades. Saracens (Arabs, Kurds, Syrians, Egyptians, whatever) mostly used straight swords until the Ottoman conquest in the 15th and 16th centuries.)

and that the Muslims were fond of raiding the Christian graves because the swords were of better quality.

While the Christians thought Damascus blades were better than theirs. It was a very real and hilarious (from our hindsight-coloured perspective) case of the neighbour's lawn is always greener than ours. Frank and Saracen envied each other for the quality of their blades, which tells us that both sides were quite capable of making downright excellent blades!


On a more relevant note to the original question, I seem to recall discussions over a Kipchak-Mamluk manual that is in the process of being translated or has been recently translated. The Munyatu'l Ghuzat, perhaps? In any case, it's a comprehensive training manual for Mamluks, and if I remember correctly it has a few potentially relevant passages about swordsmanship. It might be worth trying to look for more information on the thing (because the original translation--if it was finished--might have gone out of print by now).

[Andrew F Ulrich]

There is an anonymous Dutch fencing manual (circa 1600) in the member's area that features two pages of guys fighting with scimitar and shield (no text, just two images). They even dressed up in turbans and stuff for the picture. There is text in the book but it's at the beginning and end of the book, with all the images in the middle, and as far as I know, it hasn't been transcribed or translated yet (so some of the text possibly mentions scimitar fighting). The original currently rests at the Chicago Art Institute.

[Corey Roberts]

There is at least one Arabic fighting manual which I know for a fact exists, it has a very long name but I'm fairly certain the first part of the title is "kitaab al furesiya". It focuses on the use of a curved "saif" (which just means sword in Arabic, whether straight or curved) On foot and on horseback, and I believe there is also a mounted archery section, but I'm not totally sure. Many others probably exist but they are more or less in an undiscovered state similar to much of our MARE material had been until recent decades. There are also Persian fighting manuals, and Turkish ones as Stacy mentioned. I do believe however that the clay cutting image Stacy described may actually be in the Arabic fighting manual Kitaab Al Furesiya because I remember seeing an image of cutting at clay in that manual when I stumbled across an online copy which I have since lost the link to . (Or perhaps clay was a common test cutting medium in the Middle East?)

There is a long standing Persian grappling tradition inside Persian traditional gyms known as Zoor Khane or "House of Strength" Which definitely qualifies as a martial art, but which may have been ritualized to the point of non-martiality in the modern world, although again I'm not really certain as I have not had the opportunity to grapple in a Zoor Khane and determine how martial the focus is today, and it also probably varies from gym to gym.

Arabic, thankfully, has actually changed very little from the days of the 7th century to the present, and a person who has a high fluency in Modern Standard Arabic could probably understand one of these manuals without too much difficulty once they got through and overcame the obviously technical language related to swords and their use which would be found in such material.

Interestingly, swords in the Middle East, particularly in the Arab world, were typically actually straight double edged weapons with either cruciform, or downward curving cruciform hilts, during the period of the Crusades, and it was actually Turkish influences from Central Asia in the 14th-15th centuries who brought the popularization of the well known "scimitar" shape into the region.

I think it would definitely be interesting if any of these manuals and Middle Eastern fighting arts were to be uncovered in greater depth by somebody to make a comparison between our Art, and those of the Middle East. Our Arts are compared to death with those of Asia, a part of the world they had fairly limited contact with. But throughout the period we study there was frequent warfare between Europe and the Middle East and the two would in fact be a far more appropriate comparison.

[Corey Roberts]

I also responded to a similar topic on here a few years ago which is buried somewhere in the forum, if you do a search for "arabic" you can probably find the old thread. Here is an Egyptian news article I posted at the time listing a number of Arabic military treatise:

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/615/cu4.htm

[Mathieu Westernosse]

That's very interesting Corey. My Arabic is a little rusty, but "Kitaab Al-Furesiya" definitely mean "Book of Fencing" in Modern Arabic. While it is true that most of the technical aspects of Arabic have not changed much, a lot of words in Modern Arabic were not present, or are changed from their Old Arabic forms.

Case in Point: Lahm-baaqr (beef) in Modern Arabic is present in older Arabian poetry and texts as Bahaaqur(spelling is different, and there is also a Dagger alif diacritical symbol over the "q", which changes the inflection.)

Thank you for the news article, I'll begin looking into it now.

[Manouchehr M. Khorasani]

Dear gentlemen,

I am happy to be hear and actually I have very limited time to post on the internet but when I came across this post, I was really happy to read that there is a wide interest in this field:
I thought you might be interested in the folliwng:

Swordsmansship and historical weapons arts from Iran/Persia

My next book exclusively deals with this topic, I have found Safavid manuscripts on combat wrestling, spear and lance fighting, archery and swordsmanship. Also I have found other manuscripts from different periods. The result will be published in my next book which deals with swordsmanship, maces, axes, knives and daggers, wrestling and archery. The book will have up to one thousand scenes from Persian miniatures next to a detailed analysis of the manuscript. For more information please see:

http://dr.mmkhorasani.com/search/label/Mai%202011

http://mmkhorasani.com/10.html

Kind regards
Manouchehr

[Andrew F Ulrich]

Sounds pretty cool, Manouchehr. I'm looking forward to your translations.

[Kyle Sutton]

Wow! It was only the other day that i was wondering if there were any fightbooks out of the middle east. I'm glad to hear that there are people hard at work, bringing them to light.

I know that some of the Sikh combat arts are still being practiced. Though, endangered. As far as Sikh fencing manuals and the like go, I wouldn't know where to start.

On a side note. I'd be fascinated to know what kind of influence the Crusades had on both the fighting styles of the european and arabic cultures. What they could have learned from one another, and what adaptations they may or may not have made as a direct result.

[nathan featherstone]

I must have it finally a book with axe and mace it will be very interesting to see when its done i would love to be kept informed on this.