Rules

No weights, only classes

The first thing a visitor notices at Kırkpınar is what is missing. There is no scale, no weigh-in and no announcement of kilograms. A wrestler is placed in a class by a board of referees who look at his age, his years on the field and his results, and a light man with good hands can meet a heavy one.

The reasoning goes back to the fairs described under the Ottoman centuries. A village sent whoever was best, and the ağa's field sorted men by what they could do. The pehlivan who moved up a class did so because the board had seen him win, not because he had eaten more.

Boys enter in the lowest classes and rise one step at a time, a ladder described under the boys' classes. A wrestler who wins his class two years running is usually moved up whether he likes it or not, and a wrestler who loses badly can be moved down.

See also: a year of training, forty men and a spring.

The thirteen categories

The old site of this domain listed twelve classes; the federation's current regulation lists thirteen, with Ayak added between the boys' classes and the Deste group. From smallest to largest:

Times above are the regulation times in general use since 2014 and may be adjusted by the federation from season to season. The names are older than the clock: Deste means a bundle, Orta a middle, Baş a head, and Başaltı is simply the class under the head.

The Baş class is the one the television follows and the one whose winner becomes başpehlivan. About forty men enter it, and the road from Ayak to Baş takes a good wrestler ten to fifteen years. The list of men who have finished that road is under head wrestlers since 1990.

The draw

Pairs are made by lot, in public, on the morning of each day. The names are read aloud by the cazgır, the announcer whose chanted introductions are described under the cazgır, and each wrestler steps forward when he hears his name and his hometown.

The draw is the moment a wrestler learns whether his day will be short or long. Byes exist in the lower classes when numbers are odd; in the Baş class the board seeds the previous year's finalists apart so that the title bout is not decided on Friday. The whole three-day program is set out under the week day by day.

Once paired, the two men oil up side by side from the caldrons at the field's edge, a ritual described under the oiling. Then they walk out together for the salute and the peşrev. A wrestler who is not on the field within a few minutes of his name forfeits.

How a bout is won

Four things end a bout, and three of them are older than the Republic.

The first is the fall: the opponent's back flat on the grass, both shoulders down, however briefly. There is no count, and there is no requirement to hold him there. The middle referee's hand goes up and the bout is over.

The second is the lift. Take your opponent off the ground, hold him clear, and walk three steps. The wrestlers call it carrying, and it is the most spectacular finish on the field, the one the crowd stands up for.

The third is surrender. A wrestler who is exhausted, injured or simply beaten says so, or taps his opponent's kispet, and the bout stops. In the old days a wrestler whose kispet was torn open also lost, a detail from the days when the trousers described under the kispet were the only equipment.

The fourth is the clock, introduced by the 2014 regulation and described in the next section. When regulation time runs out with no fall, the side referees' points decide it, and if the points are level a short decision period follows in which the first score wins.

Shoulders to the grass, feet off the ground, or a word of surrender: the same three endings for six centuries.

Time limits

Until 2014 a Kırkpınar bout had no clock. The legend under forty men and a spring is a bout that never ended, and as late as the 1990s Baş bouts of two and three hours were ordinary. Television, heat and the size of the entry made that impossible to schedule.

The federation's 2014 regulation set a regulation time for every class, from ten minutes for the smallest boys to forty for the Baş class, and added a points system for bouts that reach the limit. The details of scoring change from season to season; the principle does not. A wrestler who attacks and nearly turns his opponent scores, and a wrestler who stalls does not.

The decision period

When the clock runs out level, the referees order a decision period. It is short, a few minutes, and the first meaningful score ends it. If even that produces nothing, the side referees award the bout to the more active man. The arguments that follow are part of the entertainment, as any afternoon described under what you will see on the field will show.

The old wrestlers do not love the clock. The men who wrestled before it went for hours on a diet of yogurt, meat and honey, described under how a pehlivan eats.

See also: the golden belt, counting the years.

The referees

Each bout has a middle referee on the grass, in white, and two side referees on chairs at the edge of the pair's patch of field. Above them, in a raised box, sits the tower referee, who settles disputes and keeps the clock. On the Friday morning described under the week day by day, with forty bouts running at once, that is more than a hundred officials on the field.

The middle referee's whistle is final. There is no video review, and a referee who gets a fall wrong is argued with, loudly, and then obeyed. The side referees score the points that matter only when the clock runs out, and they signal fouls.

Referees are former wrestlers as a rule, and many of them were once a başpehlivan or close to it. Their photographs, in kispet and in referee's white, line the walls of the Kırkpınar House museum.

Fouls and what is allowed

The sport looks lawless and is not. The hands may go anywhere on the kispet, including inside the waistband and the legs, because the leather is the only thing there is to grip on an oiled man. The classic hold, the paça kazık, drives an arm down inside the trouser leg to lift the opponent by it.

What is not allowed is striking of any kind, gouging, choking, twisting fingers, or holding the rim of the kispet to stall. Grabbing the paçabent, the felt binding below the knee described under the kispet, to prevent a lift is also a foul.

The peşrev, the ceremonial warm-up before each bout, has its own rules of manners, described under the peşrev. A wrestler who skips the salute or refuses the embrace at the end is fined by the board and, worse, talked about in Edirne for a year.

Prizes for manners

Two prizes each year go to conduct rather than results: one for the best peşrev and one for the most gentlemanly wrestler on the field. Both are older than the points system, and the old site of this domain listed them before it listed the classes. If you know of a winner we have missed, send a correction.

See also: salaşpur and the field, what you will see on the field.

The final day

Friday and Saturday clear the lower classes and cut the Baş entry down to a handful. Sunday is the day the stands fill, the day described under tickets and seating, and it runs from the small finals in the morning to the Baş final in the late afternoon.

The Baş final is wrestled on a cleared field with every referee watching. Its winner is lifted onto shoulders and carried to the box of the ağa. There he is given the golden belt, the prize whose three-years-and-keep-it rule is explained under the golden belt. He is başpehlivan of Turkey until the next Kırkpınar.

The losing finalist is second, and the two losing semifinalists share third. All three are named on the field by the cazgır, and drum and zurna play them off. The week described under when it happens ends with the crowd walking back across the Tunca bridges into the old town. For the obvious next question, see what to eat.

See also: the bill, watching on television, glossary.

Questions