The Role of Ancient Sports and Zurkhaneh in Ethical Promoting and Religious Virtues

ABSTRACT The roots of ‘ancient sport’, or Zurkhaneh, as its name implies, go back to ancient Iran and the rituals of Mithraism, in which believers pray and learn morality and humanity in cave-shape temples built in connection with running water. After the advent of Islam and the fall of the ancient religions, temples gave way to Zurkhanehs, and athletes who, while learning moral teachings, cultivated physical strength to resist external enemy forces and internal oppression, grown in those Zurkhanehs. With a tendency to Sufism, Shi`ism and following the first Imam of the Shiites, athletes became heroes and knights, many of whom today, after hundreds of years, are still the cultural myths of the people of Iran. The ancient sports such as wrestling are a symbol of human and moral virtues, the promotion of which can lead to the growth and development of the moral beauty and chivalry culture among all athletes in various sports and lead to institutionalize characteristics of heroism and magnanimity in society. Ancient sports exercising tools, art and architecture of Zurkhaneh, poems, rituals and personalities form the nature of Zurkhaneh and ancient sports have a great impact on the formation of heroic identity and the way to perform the sport movements with the special instruments of Zurkhaneh, which is accompanied by epic and religious poems. In fact, Zurkhaneh instruments, the type of poems that are recited and the existence of epic and religious patterns complement each other. This process increases the effect of Zurkhaneh on the formation of athletic and heroic identity among sportsmen. As such, it will be suggested that Zurkhareh offers an ethical ideal from which globalized Western sport can learn.