Nuba Stick Fighting
A ritual seasonal contest with a long stick and a small hide shield in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, 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.
Catalogs & Databases for Nuba Stick Fighting
About Nuba Stick Fighting
Nuba stick fighting is a traditional competitive practice of the Nuba peoples in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, Sudan. It belongs to the same cycle of seasonal ceremonies as the far better known Nuba wrestling: bouts take place after the harvest, when the villages have food and time to spare, and they let young men display courage and physical condition in front of the whole community. Fighters come out with a long springy stick and a small round shield of cattle or elephant hide; blows are swung from above and from the side at the head and torso, while the shield both deflects and presses. Among the south-eastern Nuba groups a related contest with a sharp-edged metal bracelet worn on the wrist is also documented; Leni Riefenstahl photographed it in the villages of Kau, Nyaro and Fungor in the 1970s. An earlier ethnographic account of Nuba games and duels was given by the British anthropologist Siegfried Nadel in his monograph The Nuba, published in 1947. This is a living folk tradition with no founder, no codified rules and no single governing body, which is why the page gives no year of origin. The civil conflict in South Kordofan after 2011 sharply curtailed the practice in the mountains; Nuba wrestling, however, continues in Khartoum and in camps for the displaced, where it carries Nuba identity.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.