Abstract: From the famous wrestling scenes of the Beni Hasan cemetery in Egypt to self-defence manuals of the globalised martial arts world of the twentyfirst century: the depiction and description of body techniques of combat is a phenomenon that can be witnessed thro

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Abstract: No bibliometric or analytic studies of the fight books have been conducted and few reference publications offer analyses of the genre as a whole. Moreover, the existing bibliographies all have their own limitations and do not allow for an investigation of the

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Abstract: This article gives an overview of the evolution of trial by combat in the Principality of Catalonia, culminating in a study of this interesting treaty that, because of historiographic circumstances, is relatively unknown to most academics. The Libellus de bat

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Abstract: The fifteenth-century fight book author Filippo Vadi wrote that the sword “is a cross and a royal weapon”: this inherent chivalric symbolism associated with the sword has led to a wealth of scholarship on the weapon but seemingly at a cost to research into ot

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Abstract: La Noble Science des Joueurs d’Espée (originally La Noble Science des Ioueurs Despee) is a fight book printed in 1538 by Willem Vorsterman, a local printer in Antwerp. Printed in several exemplars, the book is the French translation of a German fencing treati

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Abstract: Little is known about the undated and presumably anonymous fight book which was once owned by Hugold Behr the Elder (sixteenth century), Rostock UB Mss. Var. 83. The small booklet shows how to fight with rapier and dagger, a combat system which was relatively

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Abstract: Fight books can be much more than repositories of knowledge or cornerstones of tradition. In some cases they may also reflect fundamental changes in the intellectual and social life of a society and even attempt to change the latter for the better. This is ve

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Abstract: From the late eighteenth century the British military produced official ‘fight books’ outlining the methods with which the cavalry were to use their swords. As these ‘fight books’ were military manuals for instructors, designed to turn trainees into effective

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Abstract: The depiction and description of body techniques of combat have always been a part of martial arts culture. For example, self-defence techniques of the Israeli system of Krav Maga have routinely been depicted and described in books. More recently, the dissemi

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Abstract: The Illustrated Catalogue of the Shinkage-Ryū Martial Arts (新陰流兵法目録書; shinkage-ryū heihō mokuroku), drawn in 1601 by Yagyū Munetoshi, the founder of the Yagyū shinkage ryū, is a classical catalogue of the style’s techniques. Munetoshi painted the scroll as a

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Abstract: While most fight books were presumably written by elites or sociallyhonoured martial classes, this article will explore a fight book of an AfroColombian martial arts style that emerged just six years after the abolition of slavery. The Afro-Colombian martial

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Abstract: In 1874 an anonymous author published a partial English language translation and discussion of a now lost Southern Chinese martial arts manual originally titled Selected Techniques of Hero Boxing. This was a critical period in the development of the modern Ch

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Abstract: Fight books can be defined as texts specialising in the theories of martial arts and the instruction of techniques (for future generations) based on actual experience of real fighting and training. According to this definition, today’s

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