# Chovgan

Chovgan, Chowgan or Chogan (Persian: چوگان, romanized: čōwgan) is a team sport with horses that originated in ancient Iran (Persia). It was considered an aristocratic game and held in a separate field, on specially trained horses. The game was widespread among the Asian peoples. It is played in Iran, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
It was later adopted in the Western World, known today as polo.

## History

Chovgan originated in ancient Iran and was a Persian national sport played extensively by the nobility. Women played Chovgan as well as men. Chovgan originated in the middle of the first millennium A.D., as a team game. It was popular during the centuries in the Middle East. Fragments of the game were periodically portrayed in ancient miniatures, and detailed descriptions and rules of the game were also given in the ancient manuscripts. Chogān is an Iranian traditional horse-riding game accompanied by music and storytelling. It has a history of over 2,000 years in Iran and has mostly been played in royal courts and urban fields. Some authors give dates as early as the 5th century BC (or earlier) to the 1st century AD for its origin by the Persians. Certainly, the earliest records of polo are from the Persian. During the period of the Parthian Empire (247 BC - 224 AD), the sport enjoyed great patronage under the kings and noblemen. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, polo (known as čowgān in Middle Persian, i.e., chovgan), was a Persian ball game and an important pastime in the court of the Sasanian Empire (224–651). It was also part of royal education for the Sasanian ruling class. Emperor Shapur II learned to play polo when he was seven years old in 316 AD. Known as "chovgan," it is still played in the region today.
Englishmen had a significant role in the distribution and development of the game in Europe and around the world. Chovgan was later brought from India to England in the 19th century it became more popular, and the addition of new rules favored the spread of this game in Europe and the United States. Namely, on the initiative of Englishmen, this game acquired its present name, "polo," and was included in the program of the Olympic Games held in 1900 in Paris.

### Chovgan in Iran

Chovgan, known as chowkan in the Sasanian Empire (Middle Persian: čowkān), was part of the royal education for the Sasanian ruling class. The neighboring Eastern Romans adopted chovgan from the Sasanians and called it tzykanion, which derives from the Middle Persian word. During the reign of Theodosius II, the Roman imperial court started playing tzykanion in the tzykanisterion (polo stadium). By the time of the Tang dynasty (618–907), records of polo were well-established in China. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, the popularity of polo in Tang China was "bolstered, no doubt, by the presence of the Sasanian court in exile".
Polo was, at first, a training game for cavalry units, usually the king's guard or other elite troops. In time polo became an Iranian national sport played generally by the nobility. Women as well as men played the game, as indicated by references to the queen and her ladies engaging King Khosrow II Parviz and his courtiers in the 6th century AD. Certainly Persian literature and art give us the richest accounts of polo in antiquity. Ferdowsi, the famed Iranian poet-historian, gives several reports of royal chogan tournaments in his 9th-century epic, Shahnameh (the Book of Kings). In the earliest version, Ferdowsi romanticizes an international match between Turanian force and the followers of Siyâvash, a legendary Iranian prince from the earliest centuries of the Empire; the poet is eloquent in his praise of Siyâvash's skills on the polo field. Ferdowsi also tells of Emperor Shapur II of the Sasanian dynasty of the 4th century, who learned to play polo when he was only seven years old. Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan is a polo field which was built by king Abbas I in the 17th century.
Sultan Qutb al-Din Aibak, a Turkic military slave from present-day Northern Afghanistan who later became Sultan of Delhi Sultanate for only four years, died accidentally in 1210 while playing polo. While he was playing a game of polo on horseback, his horse fell, and Aibak was impaled on the pommel of his saddle.
From Persia, polo spread to the Byzantines (who called it tzykanion), and after the Muslim conquests to the Ayyubid and Mameluke dynasties of Egypt and the Levant, whose elites favored it above all other sports. Notable sultans such as Saladin and Baybars were known to play it and encourage it in their court.
Later on Polo was passed from Persia to other parts of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent and China, where it was trendy during the Tang dynasty and frequently depicted in paintings and statues. Valuable for training cavalry, the game was played from Constantinople to Japan by the Middle Ages. It is known in the East as the Game of Kings. The name polo is said to have been derived from the Tibetan word "pulu", meaning ball. In 2017, Chogān in Islamic Republic of Iran was included in the UNESCO Cultural Heritage List.

## Chovgan in Azerbaijan

In Azerbaijan, chovqan (Azerbaijani: Çövkən) is considered a national sport. Various antique prints and ceramics suggest that the sport has a long history there. For example, a vessel with fragment pictures of a chovgan game was found during archaeological excavations in the Oran-Gala area, suggesting indirectly that the game existed during the 11th century around Beylagan city. Mentions of the chovgan game also appear in “Khosrow and Shirin”, a poem by the Persian poet and thinker Nizami Ganjavi, and in pages of the Turkic epic “Kitabi Dede Korkut”.
One of the varieties of this game was broadly cultivated in Azerbaijan. Two teams strive to score a goal with special clubs. Rules in the modern edition of the game are the following: two goals with a width of 3 meters with semi-circled areas with a radius of 6 meters are fixed in enough big place. The game was held with a rubber or woven leather belt ball. Clubs can be different in form. In Azerbaijani, the clubs are reminiscent of a shepherd's crook. There are six riders in each team, 4 of whom act as attackers and two as fullbacks. The latter can play only in their half of the area. Goals can be scored behind the borders of the penalty area. The duration of the game is 30 minutes in two periods.
In 1979, a documentary called “Chovgan game”, shot by Azerbaijan's Jafar Jabbarly film studio recorded the sport's rules and historical development. However, overall the Soviet era saw a decline of the sport to near 'oblivion' and the dislocations of the immediate post-Soviet period proved difficult for the breeding of horses. In recent years, however, the sport has rebounded somewhat. Since 2006, Azerbaijan has held a national tournament in December known as the President's Cup at the Republican Equestrian Tourism Center, at Dashyuz near Shaki. The first of these, held from December 22–25, 2006, pitted teams from eight cities of Azerbaijan – Shaki, Aghdam, Ağstafa, Balakən, Qakh, Gazakh, Oğuz, and Zagatala with those from Aghstafa taking overall victory.
In 2013, chovqan was included in the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.