tahtib

Tahtib (Arabic: تحطيب, romanized: taḥṭīb) is the term for a traditional stick-fighting martial art originally named fan a'nazaha wa-tahtib ("the art of being straight and honest through the use of stick"). The original martial version of tahtib later evolved into an Egyptian folk dance with a wooden stick. It is commonly described in English as a "stick dance", "cane dance", "stick-dancing game", or as ritual mock combat accompanied by music. Nowadays, the word tahtib encompasses both martial practice and performance art. It is mainly practiced today in Upper Egypt. Tahtib is regularly performed for tourists in Luxor and Aswan. The stick used in tahtib is about four feet in length and is called an asa, asaya, assaya, or nabboot. It is often flailed in large figure-eight patterns across the body with such speed that the displacement of air is loudly discernible.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tahtib”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

tahtib is Egyptian martial art and folk dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶