Nuba Stick Fighting
Fights with a heavy stick and shield that S. F. Nadel described in a 1947 monograph among the Tira and Moro groups in the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan in Sudan.
Quick Facts
SudanCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Nuba Stick Fighting
Stick fighting in the Nuba Mountains was described by the anthropologist S. F. Nadel in the monograph The Nuba (Oxford University Press, 1947). According to him, it is a tribal sport of the Tira and Moro groups, linked in both with the same period of adolescence. Among the Korongo and Mesakin groups, Nadel describes spear fights instead. According to Nadel, Tira warriors carry heavy sticks about a yard long, used to fight in the manner of a sword or saber, and a heavy round shield made of plaited grass ropes. The Moro have heavy shields of cowhide with serrated edges. According to Nadel, the tournaments were held in an annual cycle together with wrestling. Among the Tira they were governed by unwritten rules: a referee from the oldest age-grade, a ban on blows below the belt, and the end of the fight at first blood. We have not found the state of stick fighting after the conflict in South Kordofan, which began in June 2011, in the sources. The press from 2014 to 2023 describes only Nuba wrestling in Khartoum and in the Yida refugee camp.
History
The main source is the monograph by S. F. Nadel The Nuba. An Anthropological Study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan, published by Oxford University Press in London in 1947. Nadel describes stick fighting as a tribal sport shared by the Tira and Moro groups. The season differs between the two groups. Among the Tira, according to Nadel, stick fights begin in August and September, and the great tribal tournaments, in which local teams fight for tribal precedence, are held at the end of September or in October. Among the Moro, informal practice fights begin shortly after the harvest of the early cereal, and serious fights come toward the end of April. According to what Nadel heard, the Moro formerly also held spear fights for men older than the adumo age-grade. They gave them up twenty or thirty years before his research, because they cost many lives and gave rise to blood feuds. According to Nadel, the Tira chiefs determined, apparently at the instigation of the district commissioner, that they recognize accidental killing only in the regular annual tournaments, not in fights over disputes or in unauthorized brawls at dances. Green and Tausk state in Green's encyclopedia that Egyptian engravings and paintings depict Sudanese Nuba wrestlers. This concerns wrestling, not stick fighting.
How it differs
Nadel documents stick fighting as a tribal sport of the Tira and Moro groups. Among the Korongo and Mesakin groups he describes spear fights (kafony) as a sport of adults, fought with bamboo spears 9 to 11 feet long with blunted ebony-wood tips and round shields of giraffe or cow hide. According to Nadel, stick fighting belonged to the same annual cycle as wrestling. According to the English Wikipedia, stick tournaments, unlike wrestling ones, are not usually seen in today's towns.
Technique
According to Nadel, Tira warriors carry heavy sticks about a yard long to the tournaments, with which they fight in the manner of a sword or saber. In the left hand they hold a heavy round shield made of plaited thick grass ropes and a spare stick, and on the right hand a small round guard made of the same material. They aim heavy blows at the head or the body. The Moro use heavy shields of cowhide with serrated edges, pointed at the lower end, which become a dangerous weapon when used for stabbing and pushing. According to Nadel, Moro fights are harder and fought more fiercely than Tira fights.
Training
Beginner youths of the Tira practice stick fighting in the seclusion of the cattle camps with light sticks and practice shields made of palm leaves, and occasionally they are allowed to fight in specially prepared matches. According to Nadel, Moro warriors prepare for a tournament by rubbing their bodies and hair with milk and butter, wrapping softened sheepskins around their legs and thick rolls of cloth around their chest and back. Nadel saw even cut-open petrol cans used as leg guards.
Ranks and progression
Stick fighting is tied to age-grades according to Nadel. The Tira age-grade organization is called kbit, and Nadel links it to the word lebito, which in the Tira language denotes stick fights. Each grade lasts three years. The main sport of novices is wrestling, the amucu and detea grades fight with stick and shield, and the oldest grade (the grandfathers) no longer fights but acts as referees. Among the Moro, boys called lemi leave their father's house for the cattle camps and begin to practise stick fighting playfully. The main actors of the tribal sport are men in the adumo phase, which lasts four to six years. Men aged thirty or thirty-five can still fight, but only among themselves. Every four years the Moro hold the ereda dance, which closes the adumo phase, and whoever takes part in it does not fight in stick fights that year.
Competition
At Tira tournaments only two opponents may be in the ring at a time, each from a different local team. Blows below the belt are forbidden and count as a foul. Young men of the oldest age-grade act as referees, pair the fighters by age-grade, size and build, and stop the fight as soon as blood flows. According to Nadel there are essentially no winners and losers in a Tira fight, because standing one's ground and taking the risk is sufficient proof of courage. For the annual tournament the tribe divides into two sides, and the one-day tournament is held at Konyoro in the north of Tira el Akhdar.
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Before a Moro tournament the old men deliver admonitions, which Nadel recorded in Umm Dorein: fight fairly, aim at the legs and not at the head, let only those of the same age fight one another, and stop at dusk. A typical challenge is a blow of the stick to the opponent's shield, and the real fight is opened by a mock fight of the old men. The only rule the Moro never break is that only members of opposing sides fight one another. There are two or three such tournaments a year, and the closing fight of the year is fought among the hills after the first rains. Among both the Tira and the Moro, according to Nadel, young men of the same clan through the father or the mother may not meet in a fight, so as to exclude killing within the clan. The Moro also hold fights over disputes between young men, mostly over a girl, in which relatives and friends replace the local teams.
Today
We have not found a source describing the state of stick fighting after the conflict in South Kordofan. National Geographic wrote in November 2014 that wrestling is for Nuba refugees in the Yida camp in South Sudan one of the few rituals that link them to life in the mountains, where fighting began in June 2011. According to the chairman of the refugee council in the camp, whom the magazine quoted, Nuba traditions such as wrestling were banned or altered during forced Arabization and Islamization from the end of the sixties. The Christian Science Monitor wrote in 2015 about Nuba wrestling clubs in Khartoum, and The New York Review of Books in 2023 about Nuba wrestling in Khartoum.
Did you know
According to Nadel, Tira girls have a counterpart of their own, a fight with rods of flexible twigs of the tibeldi tree, and able girls advance in it to the amucu grade. Moro girls fight with leather whips and heavy iron bracelets on the left wrist, usually as an improvised continuation of the young men's tournaments. Nadel states that in the two years before his description a boy was killed in Tira fights on two occasions. He also recorded the case of a young man from Kororak who killed an opponent at a tournament, and his whole family fled to Umm Dorein before the nmar ritual was held and blood money was paid. According to the English Wikipedia, the photographer Leni Riefenstahl spent sixteen weeks in 1975 among the Nuba in Kau, and her book The People of Kau depicts their knife fights.
Frequently asked questions
Do all the Nuba fight with sticks?
S. F. Nadel documents stick fighting as a tribal sport of the Tira and Moro groups. Among the Korongo and Mesakin groups he describes instead fights with bamboo spears with blunted points.
Does Nuba stick fighting have rules?
It has unwritten rules. Among the Tira, according to Nadel, referees are men from the oldest age-grade, blows below the belt are a foul, and the fight ends at the first drawing of blood. Among both the Tira and the Moro, men of the same clan may not fight each other.
How long is the stick in Nuba fighting?
According to Nadel, Tira warriors carry heavy sticks about a yard long, with which they fight in the manner of a sword or saber. In addition they have a heavy shield, among the Tira a round one of plaited grass ropes, among the Moro of cowhide with serrated edges.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.