Arabic Culture and The Duel

[twilight2000]

Another one folks. Looking to find out if in Arabic culture there is (or was at any time, my characters are long lived) anything resembling the duel and if so, what it's called, how the challenge is made and what the rules (and timeline for popular use) were. If it matters, my Arabic characters are from Northern Africa, Morocco to be specific

Comments

[rickmangled]

though I'm not an expert by a long shot, dueling seems like an un-muslim thing. (But I'm not sure about North African traditions, which might have wigglged their way into Muslim culture, and I'm sure it depends on the time-frame.) There's eye-for-an-eye style kin-group rivalry killings, but afaik Muhammad encouraged groups to accept 'blood money' reparitions instead of perpetuating the "Hatfields-McCoys" revenge killing cycle. I'm assuming that would show up in the hadith ('traditions' -- edifying things Muhammad is remembered saying/doing.) a search for "hadith+dueling" gets me nothing though. Different words?

Something that might be helpful or not is something *like* dueling -- but only in pitched-battle warfare -- the commanders would send out "champion" fighters to fight one-on-one with the champions of the enemy, for a few rounds -- if they could intimidate their enemy, they could maybe spare their armies from having to slaughter each other, since it was all based on strategic advantage anyway. ( The only sources I have that mention this are from the 680s -- really early territorial expansion. That's all I've happened to read.)

[twilight2000]

This Champion thing might just work -- it'd be a little bit of a stretch, but given the excessive age of the characters and the warlike behaviour of the participants, it just might do...

Thanks!