We saw all sorts of odd characters in the previous post on the entrance vault of the Ganjali Khân bath, but perhaps the strangest is this double Hercules, doubling even the number of his clubs. Who is he, who are they?
They are pehlevâns, heroes from the zurkhâneh.
But what exactly is a zurkhaneh?
The zurkhaneh is a large vaulted building tucked into the inner part of the neighborhood. Not exactly in the city center, but rather down a side street. Yet its dome can be seen from afar, as here in Yazd, and four wind towers stand alongside it to cool the heated air during workouts and the water reservoir beneath the training hall.
The door of the zurkhane is always low, forcing anyone entering to bow. The circular or octagonal practice area, the goud, is sunken about a meter below floor level, partly to signify humility and partly to create a ritual “other world.” Entering the zurkhane is a descent in both a physical and spiritual sense.
The pehlevâns leap into the practice area, bow, touch the ground with their fingers, and kiss their fingertips. They loosen up, form a circle, and start their warm-up exercises.
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The hero is not the one who shows off strength: |
Pahlavân ân nist ke zur âvarad |
پهلوان آن نیست که زور آورد |
– sings the morshed from the platform.
In the zurkhaneh, the men move in a circle. They don’t face each other like in a Greek palaestra or an Ottoman tekke: training the body is not about competition, but about communal cohesion. Descending into the goud, men from different social classes become equal.
Equality and camaraderie have been central to the zurkhaneh from the start. The zurkhaneh originated from the futuwwâ—various urban, guild, religious, and sometimes bandit military groups—when the Safavids, who unified Persia in 1501 after centuries of fragmentation, wanted to channel and integrate these urban power cultures into the service of the state.
On a raised platform above the goud, sits the morshed. His title comes from the masters of Sufi orders, pointing to the zurkhaneh’s Sufi and Gnostic roots. But he is not a “coach” in the usual sense; like the Sufi masters of ritual, he sings rhymes and classical Persian poems on moral teachings and the deeds of great heroes—Rustam, Ali—set to the rhythm of the zarb, the drum, while the pehlevâns carry out their exercises.
For the pehlevâns, Rustam, the hero of the Book of Kings, and Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad and Islam’s “knight without fault,” are the guiding examples. Rustam symbolizes strength, Ali the discipline of strength. Often, their images hang on the zurkhaneh wall: Rustam defeating the lion with a drawn sword, and Ali with his sword in the scabbard, a lion at his feet—like who tames and disciplines the lion within. Much of the morshed’s chanting revolves around this theme: the true use of strength lies in its self-discipline.
Rustam and the lion. Wall painting at the Âzadi teahouse, Tehran
Ali and his sons, Hasan and Husayn, the Imams. Print, mid-20th century
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Help us, Ali, Lion of God, |
Yâ Ali madad, shir-e Khodâ |
یا علی مدد، شیر خدا |
– with this rhyme, the morshed begins the session.
After warming up, participants step into the center of the circle one by one and spin around it. It’s not a dance, not an ecstasy—it’s about dissolving the ego and then returning to the circle, similar to the whirling dervishes’ ritual. This is repeated several times during the exercises.
Following the warm-up and spinning, comes the zurkhaneh’s signature strength exercise: training with the two mil (wooden clubs). This builds arm and shoulder strength, as well as endurance. It must be done quietly and with discipline, often accompanied by the morshed singing:
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Strength is for service, |
zur barâye khedmat ast, |
زور برای خدمت است، نه برای حکومت |
The hardest exercise is the kabbadeh, lifting and lowering the iron arc. The movement is slow and precise. Anyone showing off collapses. Symbolically, this recalls Ali’s heroic feat in 628, when he lifted the metal gate of besieged Khaybar, using it as a shield and then a bridge for his army.
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Ali lifted the gate of Khaybar, |
Dar Khaybar Ali dar-râ kand |
در خیبر علی در را کند |
On either side of the goud are benches for spectators. The zurkhaneh is, after all, a somewhat private spectacle: meant for relatives and friends. They often bring along young female acquaintances so they can closely observe the physiques of the neighborhood’s eligible young men.
And through connections, even foreigners can gain entry into the zurkhaneh’s restricted public, as we did.
At the end of the exercises, the pehlevâns leave quietly, bowing again at the door. The real test begins outside: in the market, within the family, in justice.
The zurkhaneh is often traced back to the Sasanian or even Achaemenid era—but this is more myth than history. What is Sasanian in the zurkhaneh is the figure of the pehlevân: a Zoroastrian tasked with protecting the ashâ, the cosmic order, shielding the weak, serving power rather than owning it. Rustam embodies this principle. The morshed evokes this ethos through epic storytelling, much like the bards mentioned in the previous post.
The earliest description of the zurkhaneh tradition, which fully developed in the Safavid era, comes from the European traveler Jean Chardin. He spent an extended period in Persia in 1666 as a jeweler, and four years (1673–76) at the court of Shah Abbas I in Isfahan, providing detailed accounts. In Book 2, Chapter 12 of his Persia description (“On the Physical Exercises and Games of the Persians”), he writes:
Wrestling is the Exercise of People in a lower Condition; and generally Speaking, only of People who are Indigent. They call the Place where they Show themselves to Wrestle, Zour Kone, that is to say, The House of Force. They have of’em in all the Houses of their great Lords, and especially those of the Governours of Provinces, to Exercise their People. Every Town has besides Companies of those Wrestlers for Show.
They call the Wrestlers Pehelvon, a Word which signifies Brave, Intrepid. They perform their Exercises to divert People; for this is a Show, as I have said, and thus it is, They strip themselves Naked, only with their Shoes on, made of Leather, that fit them very exactly, oil’d and greas’d, and a Linnen Cloth about their Wast greas’d and oil’d likewise. This is, that the Adversary may have less to take hold of, because if he should touch there, his Hand would slip, and he would lose his Strength.
The two Wrestlers being Present upon an even Sand, a little Tabour, that always plays during the time of Wrestling, to animate them, gives the Signal. They begin, by making a thousand Bravadoes and Rodomontades; then they promise each other fair Play, and shake Hands. That being done, they strike at each others Buttocks, Hips, and Thighs, keeping time with the little Tabour; then they shake Hands again, and strike at each other as before, three times together. This is as if it were for the Ladies, and to recover their Breath.
After that, they close, making a great Out cry, and strive with all their Might to overthrow their Man. The Victory is never judg’d to signifie any thing, till the Man be laid flat upon his Belly, stretch’d all along upon the Ground.
Zurkhaneh wrestlers. Photo by Antoine Sévruguin
Mentioning competition might seem to contradict what I wrote earlier about equality and humility, but in reality—as Chardin notes—wrestling was carried out with utmost respect. For example, if a younger pehlevân defeated an older one, he was obliged to kiss his hand after victory.
The golden age of the zurkhaneh came in the second half of the 19th century, when national wrestling championships were held annually at the court of Shah Nasreddin, who himself sometimes stepped into the ring. Shah Reza Pahlavi rejected the zurkhaneh as Qajar legacy, but his son embraced it as a long-standing Persian tradition, participating himself. After the Islamic revolution, it was viewed with suspicion due to its Sufi and Gnostic texts, yet it was not banned thanks to the Ali cult. Today it is widely accepted, with roughly five hundred traditional zurkhanehs operating nationwide. Membership passes from father to son, though new members can also be recommended. Its popularity is growing steadily.
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