Mehmet Türkmen¹ and Adem Kaya², PhD
¹Kyrgyzstan -Turkey Manas University and Muş Alparslan University, Bishkek, KGZ and TUR
²Department of Sport Management, Bowie State University, Maryland, USA

Part of the book: Applications of Traditional Equestrian Sports in the World

Abstract

The “jeered,” which is a type of bayonet or spear used as a war tool for the Turks, is a wooden athletic (jereed) stick, 100 cm long, 2.5 cm in diameter at the head, plastic-coated, oval, with a diameter of 1.5 cm towards the back. Just as many Arabic words entered our language, jereed also entered Turkish from the Arabic word “cilind” during the Ottoman period. Jereed is a game that emerged with the aim of better throwing the bayonet and spear on the horse to the enemy. (Turkman, 1996:128).
In this case, as in the prototype of all sports, the jereed emerged to develop warrior skills, and by doing exercises on the horse with this war training material, it took the form of a game with rules over time, and even though it was a risky game, it still was an element of entertainment over time. In other words, the javelin is the shortened form of this long and penetrating device, which dates back to ancient times and is called “bayonet” in Turkish, “nayza” in Persian, “spear” in Arabic, “guder” in Greek, to throw hunting and war tools at a distant target from a horse. The prototype of the Jereed game is a developed modification by the Ottomans of the game “Sayış” which is a game played even rarely among Central Asian Turkic people (Turkman, 1996: 129).
The jereed on horseback game was not played by the Central Asian Turkic peoples, as stated by the local writers in Turkey. Let us state from the beginning that it has not been played in any Turkish locations such as Turkestan or Central Asia outside the Ottoman borders. The game of jereed, which is not seen in Central Asia, first appeared in Anatolia during the Ottoman period, and in the 14th century, two types of jereed games were seen in the palace. The first is the jereed on foot (range jereed), as the name suggests, it is played without horses, and the second type is the familiar jereed on horseback. (Oztelli, 1976: 51). The only version of the jereed on horseback game in today’s world, with the name “Isındı”, exists in the Abaza, Avar, Chechen, Circassian, Georgian, and Karachay peoples of the Caucasus (Davidov, 1989: 27).

References

All sources and footnotes of this study are provided by Prof. Dr. Mehmet Turkmen who managed the project titled “Research of Traditional Equestrian Sports in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey” numbered KTMU-BAP-2018. GOSAUM.01, which is an International Scientific Research Project directed and completed by Mehmet Turkmen. Since the permission to cite references has not been issued by the Manas University Senate yet, it can be shown in the text and not in the References section.