Cavalry Games?

[Musivarius]

Here's a clip from Youtube on Turkish Jereed, it does seem to bear some similarities to the Roman Cavalry Hippica Gymnasia. Below is the info from one clip;
'Jereed (also jerreed, jerid, or jerrid; Turkish: Cirit aka Çavgan) is a traditional Turkish equestrian team sport played outdoors on horseback in which the objective is to score points by throwing a blunt wooden javelin at opposing team's horsemen.
Jereed is a means of improving equestrian skills, and involves two teams of horsemen, each armed with dried oak or poplar sticks. The sticks with rubber-tipped, blunt ends are 70-100 cm in length and 2-3 cm in diameter'.
(You might want to skip forward to the 2 minute mark)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc6kR4B8 ... re=related

Lawrence

[PhilusEstilius]

Lawrence. That was realy fantastic I even followed up with all those horse shots just great. infact it's a lot of years now that I never got to making those eye gaurds for you or are you completely into pottery now.

[Musivarius]

Hi Brian,

It's really interesting the similarity between this and the Hippica G. you do have to wonder what the root is for these. Could it be a throwback to Roman?
The samian ware's been a bit of a sideline, it's the mosaic work I concentrate on now. I even sold my horse as I couldn't afford him and the marble I needed!

[John Conyard]

This looks great fun. I had never come across it before, cheers Lawrence. I pulled this off the net.

"Cirit was particularly widespread in the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century onwards, becoming the foremost martial sport. In peace time it was played to improve the cavalry’s attack and defence skills, and during campaigns to whip up their enthusiasm for battle. Some of the sultans are known to have been cirit players, and early Ottoman sultans like Yildirim Bayezid (1389-1402) and ÿelebi Mehmed (1413-1421) attached importance to cirit in the training of their armies. A superior class of cavalrymen known as cündi was formed from those skilled at cirit. However, the game was not without its dangers, and injuries and even death from falls in the attempt to catch the flying cirit sticks prompted Mahmud II (1808-1839) to ban the sport altogether after he dissolved the Janissary Corps. Although playing cirit resumed before long, particularly in the provinces, it never recovered the importance of former times. Today cirit is not as widespread as it once was, but is still played as a spectator sport, primarily in Erzurum, but also in the provinces of Artvin, Kars, Bayburt, Diyarbakir, Siirt and Konya. Folklore societies are also attempting to keep this traditional sport alive by organising tournaments."

In the UK we allow jousting, with horses getting hit in the neck with blunt lances at around 60mph (the combined speed of both horses). But throwing javelins at each other is frowned upon in case we hit the horse, even though the javelin is blunt and on occassion traveling in the same direction as the horse. We are allowed to throw javelins at infantry.

http://www.comitatus.net/events_files/K ... velin.html

[Musivarius]

"We are allowed to throw javelins at infantry."
It's ok to throw them at poor, dumb animals then :lol:

[John Conyard]

Absolutely. 8)

http://www.comitatus.net/events_files/S ... _8252.html