Plague of Strength

The oldest continually running sporting competition in the world is an oil wrestling tournament held in Turkey called the Kirkpinar, which began being held yearly in 1346.  In case you’re unaware, that is about the only good thing that occurred in the 14th century, as disease, war, famine, and natural disasters wiped out all but the worst of humanity throughout western Eurasia, and the Mongols destroyed anything the Black Plague hadn’t already in the rest of that continent.

In any event, oil wrestling has been contested since at least 2650BC in and around the area of Turkey, and has been a favorite of everyone from the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians to the modern inhabitants of every bit of land from the Balkans to Iran, and the second-most popular contest for the sport is now held yearly in Amsterdam. And though it might seem ridiculous to us, the most martial of cultures in history adored this sport, for it requires insane grip strength in particular and overall strength and skill to perform.

“The Ottoman sultans and elite were actively involved in organizing wrestling competitions. Virtually every village, town and city had its champion. It was these local champions who would gather in Kirkpinar to compete, though for much of its history the Kirkpinar competition itself was a local affair. It has been suggested that the Ottomans built a specific lodge for training wrestlers in every town that they conquered, from the Balkans to North Africa and even in Makkah. Matches were often organized on Fridays or as part of ‘Īd celebrations. Wrestlers were invited from across the empire and even beyond it, including some Africans and Indians. Sultans often sponsored the most impressive of these athletes; Süleyman (r. 1520-66) paid his favourite wrestlers a daily wage.

Some sultans went a step further and became wrestlers themselves. The best example of this is Murad IV (r. 1612-40) [Whom I mentioned in the Globular History of Globular Weights]. Murad frequently stripped down and wrestled his court officials, including his calligrapher (who was, of course, a great wrester himself). There are amusing incidents in which a court servant gave Murad the advice that, since he had already taken a bath and must be exhausted at the end of a long day anyway, he shouldn’t oil himself for wrestling; Murad responded to the servant’s “trash-talking” about the sultan’s exhaustion by lifting him up in the air and spinning him around until he pleaded to be let down. Murad let him down, laughed, and rewarded him with gold coins” (Source).

The ventablack guy in the pics is of note not because he’s considered to be the greatest or strongest champion of Turkish oil wrestling, but because he is the first black man to win the Kirkpinar. Mustafa Yildiz (1943-2001) won the 1972 Kirkpinar, marking an end to the 634 year drought people of African descent had in the event. That drought occurred in spite of the fact that slavery was arguably the Ottoman Empire’s biggest industry- they imported 10k-12k slaves from Africa every year in the mid-1830s (the US stopped importing slaves in 1807, when they imported a record 23k) and didn’t abolish slavery until 1908.

There’s not a ton of info on Mustafa Yildiz due to the fact that he was a big dude of few words and died before the internet really hit Turkey. What he did was impressive as hell though, as he shrugged off 600 years of shitty history and prejudice to demonstrate the fact that it’s all about your balls/ladyballs, biceps, and brains, not the color of your skin or the type of junk you’re rocking. And as we know that Turkish wrestling legends were all sick grip specialists who fuck with heavy-as-hell kettlebells (in 1622 Sultan Osman II was executed by a wrestler by crushing his balls with his bare hands), so if you’re planning on being a world-beater you better build the grip to snatch victory from the sky.  

“According to 17th Century Ottoman explorer Evliya Çelebi, the young sultan was “put to death in the Castle of the Seven Towers by the compression of his testicles, a mode of execution reserved by custom to the Ottoman Emperors.” However, other accounts state Osman was strangled. Because of these discrepancies, some believe Osman may have had his testicles crushed as a diversionary tactic, forcing him to involuntarily move his hands to his groin to allow his killer to access his neck. After he was dead, the soldiers cut off Osman’s ears and sent them to his mother as proof of his death” (Source).

And if you’re curious about the man considered to be the strongest of all of the Kirkpinar champions, that would be Yusef Ismail, who was an insane badass killed by the only thing that could- his own hubris.

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