Buzkashi (goat dragging) is a spectacular, volatile, and
often violent equestrian game played primarily by
Turkic peoples in northern Afghanistan. Central Asian
in origin, buzkashi also occurs, for the most part as a
self-conscious folkloristic survival, in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union north of the Oxus
River and in China’s Xinjiang Province. During the
1980s and early 1990s, buzkashi was played among
Afghan refugees near Chitral and Peshawar in Pakistan
where, however, it bears no cultural relationship to
Pakistani polo. In both its principal forms—i.e., the
traditional-grassroots game (tudabarai) and moderngovernmental sport (qarajai)—the central action is
much the same: riders on powerful horses congregate
above the carcass of a goat or calf, lean from their saddles, struggle with each other to grab the carcass off the
ground, and then try to keep sole control of it while riding away at full speed. While regarded primarily as
playful fun, both forms of buzkashi also exist as an implicitly political events in which patron/sponsors seek
to demonstrate and thus enhance their capacity for
controlling events.
History
The origins of buzkashi are impossible to trace precisely, but it doubtless sprang from nomadic forebears
of the same Turkic peoples (Uzbek, Turkomen, Kazakh,
Kirghiz) who remain its core players. Equestrian nomads, these groups spread westward from China and
Mongolia between the 10th and 15th centuries. The
game quite likely developed, in much the same way as
American rodeo, as a recreational variant of everyday
herding or raiding activity. No evidence supports the
lurid notion, advanced to horrify tourists during the
1960s and 1970s, that the game was originally played
with live human prisoners.
In recent generations other ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan have started to play buzkashi: Tajiks,
Hazaras, and even Pushtun migrants from south of the
Hindu Kush whose new prominence in the north was
supported by central government policy. Another key
development dates from 1955 when the central government, based in Kabul, hosted its first tournament on
the birthday anniversary of King Mohammed Zahir.
From the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, successive national regimes hosted similar buzkashi competitions in
Kabul. With the collapse of the authority of the central
government during the Afghan-Soviet War
(1979–1989), the tournament fell apart. In the 1990s,
as political chaos continues, buzkashi has largely reverted to its original status as a locally based pastime
north of the Hindu Kush.
Rules and Play
Whatever its form and occasion, buzkashi depends on
sponsorship of both the champion horses and riders
and of the ceremonial event in which buzkashi is
played. In the traditional, rural context of northern
Afghanistan, both types of sponsorship are exercised
by khans, men of social, economic, and political importance who constitute the informal and ever-shifting
power elite of local life. The khans breed, raise, and own
the special horses whose bloodlines are proudly chronicled and whose success in buzkashi contributes to
owner status. Khans likewise employ specialist riders
(chapandazan) for their prize horses. Most important
of all is their sponsorship of the celebratory events
called toois at which buzkashi is traditionally played.
These are scheduled for winter, both because it is the
agricultural slack season and because horses and riders can play then without overheating.
Khans stage toois to celebrate ritual events such as a
son’s circumcision or marriage.While the ritual itself is
generally a private, family affair, it provides the occasion for much wider gatherings whose centerpiece is a
day or several days of buzkashi. It also represents a status-oriented initiative in which the social, economic,
and political resources of the sponsor (tooi-wala) are
publicly tested. If those resources prove sufficient and
the tooi is a success, its sponsor’s “name will rise.” If
not, the tooi-walla’s reputation can be ruined. Preparations include the amassing of funds for food and prize
money and the recruitment of nearby hosts for the
hundreds of invited guests who, the sponsor hopes, will
accept invitations to attend. Equally hopeful but likewise problematic is the expectation that the guests will
present the sponsor with cash gifts to help defray the
costs of the tooi.
After a ceremonial first day’s lunch, everyone
mounts and rides to the buzkashi field: sponsor, closest
associates, invited khans, their sizable entourages (including prize horses, chapandazan, and assorted associates who have come in the name of “friendship” but can
be quickly mobilized in case of serious conflict), and the
local populace. The field itself typically consists of a barren plain, unbounded and undemarcated, on the village
periphery. A goat or calf carcass lies in the middle.
(While the term buzkashi specifically refers to “goat,”
calf carcasses are often used because, it is said, they last
longer.) Without ceremony but in accordance with Muslim law (hallal), the animal has been bled to death, decapitated, and dehooved to protect contestants’ hands.
An eviscerated carcass makes for faster play, but purists
tend to favor a heavier, ungutted animal so that only real
power, rather than mere quickness, will prevail.
Most traditional buzkashis begin without fanfare
and gather intensity as more and more participants arrive. Any number may take part, and some games involve hundreds of riders at once. A morning or afternoon session consists of several dozen play cycles, each
of which starts with the riders forming an equestrian
scrum over the dead calf. With their horses lurching,
rearing, and trying to hold position, riders lean down
from the saddle and grab at the carcass. More horses
and riders batter their way toward the center of an
ever-growing, ever more fiercely contested mass of
wild movement. Lunging half-blind in the melee, one
rider manages to grab hold of the carcass briefly, but, as
a saying goes,“Every calf has four legs,” and other riders quickly wrench it away. The calf is trampled,
dragged, tugged, lifted, and lost again as one competitor after another seeks to gain sole control. There are no
teams although friendly riders (or the riders of friendly
khans) may sometimes assist each other. Everyone has
the right to try, but play is monopolized in practice by
the chapandazan in their distinctive fur-trimmed
headgear. Meanwhile the “town crier” (jorchi) shouts
the amount of prize money offered. The longer a given
play cycle is contested, the greater that amount grows
and the fiercer the competition.
Finally one horse and rider emerge from the mass
(tudabarai), take the calf free and clear, and drop it in
uncontested triumph. Play stops for a brief moment
while the town crier launches into a stylized praise chant
for the rider, the horse, and most of all the horse owner:
Oh, the horse of Hajji Ali,
On him rode Ahmad Gul.
He leapt like a deer.
He glared like a leopard.
How he took it away.
How he showed what he is.
How the name of Hajji Ali rose.
How we all hear his name.
How his pride is complete.
Prizes for the victorious rider once took the form of
carpets, rifles, and even horses. Now almost all are
cash, with amounts depending on tooi sponsor liberality and sometimes exceeding $100. The horse owner’s
sole reward is prestige or “name,” that amorphous but
most important currency of traditional Afghan life.
Barely has the chant finished before the next play
cycle starts. Cycle follows cycle with no sense of cumulative score. The last cycle each day, typically played
with a carcass in shreds, has special value, and the winning rider proudly departs with the tattered calf dangling across his saddle. The visiting khans and their entourages then retire for dinner and sleep at one or
another of the nearby host houses where every event of
the past day is reviewed in conversation: whose horse
did well, whether the prize money was sufficient,
and—most of all—what happened in case of serious
dispute. Disputes and the issue of who can control
them represent the darker, less readily admitted core of
interest in buzkashi.
Three factors contribute to dispute in traditional
buzkashi. First, the play activity itself is already full of
physically brutal contact. Second, the question of being
sufficiently “free and clear” for a score is notoriously
subjective and difficult to adjudicate. And third, the
horse-owner khans, whose horses and riders compete,
are very often rivals of each other in the real-life game
of local politics. Indeed it is during buzkashi that such
rivalries and alliances, otherwise hidden by the diplomatic niceties of day-to-day existence, are revealed in
all their disruptive potential.
It takes little to trigger a dispute. Had a victory
claimant really gotten the carcass “free and clear” before dropping it? Was one rider guilty of grabbing another’s bridle or whipping him in the face? Did the chapandaz of Mujib Khan have a rope secreted in his sleeve
in order to enhance his grasp of the carcass? Suddenly
the violent pushing and shoving, hitherto “for fun,” now
becomes “for real.” Each khan’s entourage coalesces
around him. The current play cycle is abandoned and
the air is full of angry shouts as everyone tries to gain
control of an increasingly uncontrollable situation.
While outright fighting is rare, an aggrieved group
may leave the buzkashi and go home rather than suffer perceived injustice. Such defection tarnishes the reputation of a tooi and thus of its tooi-wala. More typically
the shouting and jostling gradually subside as one or
another of the khans makes himself heard and emerges
in the role of peacemaker. Much prestige thereby attaches to him. He has, after all, demonstrated an ability
to control volatile events, to impress his will on a dynamic that had shifted from playful to political. Now
his “name will rise” in the countless tellings and
retellings of this buzkashi. Such reputational gain can
then be of considerable importance as potential followers calculate the benefits of attaching themselves to a
patron or of taking sides in a real-world dispute over
land, water, livestock, or women.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, Afghanistan’s central
government likewise began to enlist buzkashi in its efforts at political impression management. The Afghan
National Olympic Committee was charged with staging
a “national tournament” in Kabul each year on the
birthday of King Mohammed Zahir. Provincial contingents were organized in the north (as yet unlinked by
all-weather roads to the rest of the country), and the
game itself was transformed into a more or less codified sport (qarajai) with uniformed teams, authorized
referees, a demarcated field of play (the qarajai), a cumulative scoring system, and severe penalties (including arrest) for any form of dispute during play. Only the
players (typically 10 or 12 per team) and the referees
(usually military officers) were allowed on the field.
Horse-owner khans, their tooi-sponsorship role now
co-opted by the government, had to sit on the sidelines.
And instead of having the vague “free-and-clear” objective of tudabarai, players now had to carry the calf
around a flag and drop it in clearly marked circle (the
daiwra). The king assumed the role of national tooiwala, hosting the tournament banquet and presented
the championship medals. The tournament allowed
Kabul residents to rub elbows with rustic horsemen
from the distant north. And the northerners returned
home each year with fresh tales of a broader Afghanistan and potent impressions of the central government’s capacity for control.
By the time of the king’s fall from power in 1973, the
Kabul buzkashi tournament had become a fixture in
the national calendar. Subsequent nonroyalist regimes
retained the October timing but shifted the occasion
first (under President Mohammed Daoud, 1973–1977)
to United Nations Day and then (under communist
rule) to the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Always presented in the name of sheer play and
fun, Kabul buzkashi tournaments continued to serve as
a symbol both of Afghan national unity and of governmental capacity for dispute-free control. The nationwide collapse of Afghan government control in the
early 1980s was reflected in the year-by-year disintegration of Kabul buzkashi. In Daoud’s era, the tournament had lasted 12 days and featured ten provincial
teams in a precisely orchestrated round-robin. From
1980 onward, fewer teams came each year. By 1983 the
Soviet puppet government had abandoned all pretense
of staging buzkashi.
During the Afghan-Soviet War (1979–1989),
buzkashi was played in Pakistan’s North West Frontier
province by refugees based in Peshawar and Chitral.
Many of the same khans and riders who had dominated the game in prewar Afghanistan now formed the
core of competitions played on Fridays in the winter
months. Now, however, the principal tooi-wala role
shifted to several men whose newly developed renown
rested on their leadership of local refugee relief efforts.
As usual, all was done in the name of fun, but soon the
new breed of sponsor-entrepreneurs were competing
to attract resource-rich spectators from the fast-growing expatriate community: diplomats, United Nations
personnel, and directors of nongovernmental aid organizations. Thus ingratiated with their “guests,” these
tooi-walas in exile promoted themselves as conduits for
international aid to the refugee community.
By the mid-1990s, the central government in postSoviet Afghanistan was still too weak to resume the national tournament and the main locus of buzkashi had
reverted to the northern provinces. Some traditional
khans still sponsored toois, but local warlords and militia commanders were replacing them in the primary
sponsorship role.
—G. WHITNEY AZOY
Bibliography: Azoy, G. Whitney. (1982) Buzkashi: Game and
Power in Afghanistan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Michaud, Roland, and Sabrina Michaud.
(1988) Horsemen of Afghanistan. London: Thames and
Hudson.