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Terisakkan Spring Festival of Horse Breeders: Assyk games
  • Manage No PI00006616
    Country Kazakhstan
    Year 2011-05-02
    ICH Domain Social practices, rituals, festive events
Description Children participate in the festive events, enjoying them together with adults and playing various games with assyks - talus bones of sheep. Traditional spring festive rites of the Kazakh horse breeders – taking place in Terisakkan Village – mark the end of the previous and the beginning of the new yearly horse-breeding cycle. Rooted in traditional knowledge about nature and the age-old relations between man and horse, the rites involve skills inherited from nomadic ancestors, adapted to present-day reality. The rites take around three weeks in total, until the koumiss sharing ceremonies, which take place in every household, are over. The rites open a new yearly cycle of reproduction and manifest traditional Kazakh hospitality. Faced with the forced transition in the twentieth century from a nomadic way of life to a settled one, bearers have adapted the traditional form of horse breeding to meet present-day conditions to ensure its continued viability.
Photographer Emma Usmanova (Mrs)
Place Terisakkan, Ulytau District, Karaganda Province File Size 3.77 MB
Definition 3456 x 2304 File Format jpg
Copyright Emma Usmanova; Kazakhstan ICH Committee Copyright
Keyword
Information source
Kazakhstan National Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage

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