Traditional sports and recreation in Central Asia are deep-rooted and
ancient. The Central Asian Turkic people participated in physical culture for
different reasons; horse races, wrestling, archery, and hunting had combat
training elements—while fairs, circuses, and home entertainments allowed
people to be distracted from everyday issues. Sports and leisure events helped
social interaction and family bonding during seasonal festivals and Islamic
holidays. Indeed, the following study shows that particular sports were
permissible in the Islamic tradition. This descriptive essay contains three parts:
(i) concepts and definitions; (ii) traditional and folk sports, hunting, and
recreational pastimes; and (iii) traditional sites of sports places among the
nomad and oasis societies. The focus is the majority-Muslim Turkic and Iranian
Persian peoples of the lands and societies that modern-day scholars label as ‘Central Asia’.
The historical sweep from 1400 to 1850AD covers the era when
Muslim dynasties, tribal leaders, and communities had long-established
regional control, influencing cultural construction (despite an increasing
Russian presence since 1731AD on the Kazakh and Kyrgyz steppe lands). The
paper will outline more than twenty-five different historic sports and leisure
pastimes among Turkic and Persian Central Asians.