History

Forty men and a spring

The story every child in Edirne knows goes like this. In 1362, or a few years either side, forty raiders under Süleyman Paşa, son of Orhan Gazi, were resting on the way to a campaign in Rumelia. They wrestled to pass the time, as Ottoman soldiers did between marches.

Two of them, Ali and Selim, could not settle their match. They wrestled through the afternoon and into the night, and by morning both were dead on the grass. Their comrades buried them under a fig tree and moved on toward Edirne.

When the raiders came back that way, forty springs were flowing from the spot where the two men lay. The place took the name Kırkpınar, forty springs, and wrestling held there in memory of the dead became a yearly custom. The weight-free classes you see today are the descendants of that camp match. So are the oiled bodies, though the oil came later.

The dates are soft. The tradition is not.

Sources put the year at 1357, 1361 or 1362, and the Edirne municipality uses 1362 for its count. What nobody disputes is the shape of the story: two men, one field, no winner. It is the reason a pehlivan is still expected to embrace his opponent before and after every bout.

The Ottoman centuries

Wrestling in the Ottoman world was court sport and army sport at once. The palace in Istanbul kept a corps of wrestlers who trained in lodges called tekke, ate from the palace kitchens, and performed at circumcision festivals, weddings and Ramadan fairs. The same kitchens that fed them staged the seventeenth-century Baklava Procession for the Janissaries, when trays of baklava were carried from Topkapı to the barracks, so sweets and strength have shared a table for a long time.

Outside the palace, wrestling belonged to the country fair. Each region had its own meeting, and Kırkpınar, held near the village of Samona in what is now Greek Thrace, was the largest in Rumelia. A local landowner, the ağa, paid for the prizes, the food and the guests, and the office he held survives today as the ağa of the festival.

What the ağa bought

The ağa's money went on lambs, bread, oil and the golden belt for the winner. In return he chose the date, invited the villages and sat in the best seat. The invitation itself was a candle with a red base, hung in coffeehouses across Thrace, a custom explained under zembil and the red candle.

The bouts of those centuries had no clock and no points. A man won when his opponent's shoulders touched the ground, or when he was lifted and carried, the same two results that still decide a match under how a bout is won. Some bouts lasted hours; a few, the old wrestlers say, lasted into the next day.

See also: master and apprentice, the cazgır, the golden belt.

The move to Edirne

The Russian war of 1877 to 1878 moved the border, and the border moved the wrestling. Samona fell on the wrong side of the new line, and the tournament retreated east to the outskirts of Edirne, first to a spot called Virantekke and then, after further wars, to the island of Sarayiçi in the Tunca river.

The Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 interrupted it again, and Edirne itself changed hands twice in a year. The wrestlers came back each time the guns stopped. That stubbornness is why the count of tournaments is only a few short of the count of years, a point taken up at the end of this page.

Edirne suited the tournament. It had been the Ottoman capital before Istanbul, it had Selimiye and the old town to fill a visitor's week, and Sarayiçi was the ruined pleasure ground of the old palace, flat, green and shaded by plane trees. The island is described in detail under Sarayiçi.

The Republic

The first tournament under the Republic was held in 1924, though some books say 1923. Within a few years the Edirne municipality had taken over the running of the event from the ağas, and a municipal committee has organized it ever since.

The wrestlers of the early Republic came from the same villages as before, mostly in Thrace, the Aegean and the Black Sea coast. Their training and the chain of masters that produced them are set out under a year of training. Their diet, heavy on yogurt, meat and honey, is described under how a pehlivan eats.

The 1930s to the 1980s

Through the middle of the century Kırkpınar was a three-day country fair with a national final attached. Spectators sat on stands of woven reed called salaşpur, drank ayran and tea from vendors walking the aisles, and left when the head wrestler was carried off the field. The fair side of the week is still there, described under what you will see on the field.

Radio carried the Baş final across the country from the 1950s, and television followed in the 1970s. A boy in a Black Sea village could hear the cazgır call a name from his own valley, and the next spring he would be in a lodge learning the holds. The sport's reach grew without any marketing at all.

The prizes of those years were modest: a lamb, a length of cloth, a few gold coins from the ağa. The belt became a purpose-made object only later, when the municipality began commissioning one each year; the older ones are shown at the Kırkpınar House museum.

Names from those decades are still spoken on the field. The graves of Adalı Halil and Kara Emin in Kaleiçi are visited on the opening Friday before anyone wrestles, a ritual described under the week day by day.

The field at Sarayiçi

Until 1985 the reed stands were rebuilt each summer and taken down each autumn. That year Prime Minister Turgut Özal ordered a permanent arena, and the Er Meydanı you see today, with its concrete stands, its oiling caldrons and its parade ground, dates from that rebuilding.

The field is grass, watered daily during the tournament, and roughly the size of two football pitches. Around forty bouts can run at once in the lower classes, which is why a first-time visitor should read the thirteen categories before sitting down. The seating, the shade and the price of a ticket are covered under tickets and seating.

See also: getting there, where to stay, planning your visit.

UNESCO and now

In 2010 UNESCO inscribed the Kırkpınar oil wrestling festival on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The citation names the whole week, not only the bouts: the ağa's procession with drum and zurna, the cazgır's chanted introductions and the ceremonial warm-up called the peşrev. It also names the red-bottomed candles and the leather trousers called kispet.

Around a thousand wrestlers now enter each year, from boys of eleven in the boys' classes to head wrestlers in their late thirties. The final three days are broadcast live, a habit described under watching on television. The başpehlivan bout on Sunday afternoon is the closest thing Turkey has to a national final in a native sport.

What has changed and what has not

The clock is the biggest change. A 2014 regulation put time limits on every class, described under time limits, and ended the all-night bouts of legend. Referees, fouls and a points system followed.

The oil has not changed. Wrestlers still cover themselves from olive oil caldrons at the edge of the field, still wear kispet that weigh more than a small child, and still begin with the same salute. The stands are concrete now, but the reed mats called salaşpur survive as the cloth a wrestler wipes his face with, a detail kept under salaşpur and the field. A visitor who reads the draw will understand how the pairs are made. One who also reads the final day will understand almost everything else by watching.

Counting the years

The number on the posters, the 665th Kırkpınar in 2026, is not a count of documented tournaments. It counts the years from the legend of 1362, and it skips the years lost to the wars of 1877, 1912 and 1913, the years of the First World War and the war of independence, and 2020, when the tournament was not held in its usual form.

That arithmetic is why the count moves by one each year but sits a few dozen short of the calendar. It is also why a wrestler's record is spoken of in Kırkpınars rather than years: Ahmet Taşçı's eight titles, listed under head wrestlers since 1990, are nine tournaments, not nine calendar years.

The count will not be corrected, and nobody in Edirne wants it corrected. The number is the tradition's way of saying that it has been here, in one field or another, for as long as anyone can prove. The rest of this site explains how to see it. Start with the bill on the home page. If you already have dates in mind, go straight to when it happens.

See also: who we are, how we check facts, glossary.

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