Bastinado
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A 15-year-old Egyptian Girl in position for Falaka. The knots circumnavigating her feet are actually organized to restrain movement. This degree of Falaka is reserved for severe misconduct. |
Bastinado, originally, was a Spanish word for the act of caning in the literal sense of beating with a stick or similar implement.
It is specifically used to refer to a form of
torture or
corporal punishment which consists of beating the soles of the offender's bare
feet with a hard object, like a
cane or rod, a
club, or a piece of
wood, or a whip. This torture is effective owing to the clustering of
nerve endings in the feet, and the structure of the foot, with numerous small
bones and
tendons. The feet were often tied together or to a wooden plank (called
falaka in Persian, possibly the origin of the tradition in the Near East), and the victim would be made to walk around on his or her damaged feet afterwards, sometimes carrying weights. The wounds inflicted are particularly painful and take a long time to heal, rendering it a redoubtable deterrent but impractical as punishment for useful surbordinates. Some point out that the prominent display of the offender's bare feet contains an element of punitive
humiliation as well.
This punishment has, at various times, been commonly used in
China, as well as the
Middle East, where it is known by the
Arabic word
falaqa and especially its Turkish form
falaka, as it was spread throughout the
Ottoman Empire (including the
Balkans).
Bastinado had been until recently utilized as a form of
corporal punishment in schools in the Middle East.[
1] If was convenient such that it could be employed on both male and female students, whereas canning of the behinds seemed inappropriate for female students. Bastinado that was employed on students was not as harsh the kind employed on adults, such that only a long ruler was used to firmly slap the
soles of the feet, delivering a slightly less agonising blow but sufficient to teach a student a lesson. Whether female or male, it is humiliating, in the Middle East, to bare one's soles, especially in the Arabic culture, where it is an insult to bare the soles of your feet to anyone.
* In act V, scene i of
William Shakespeare's play,
As You Like It, Touchstone threatens William with the line: "I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel..."
* Included in a scene, which is set in Egypt, in Mark Twain's novel "The Innocents Abroad" (1869), see illustrated external link [
2]
* This torture became well known to the Western public because of the
1978 movie,
Midnight Express.
* The late
Uday Hussein, a leader of Iraq's now-fallen
Ba'ath Party regime and son of
Saddam Hussein, is alleged to have used this method of torture on Olympic athletes who did not perform according to standards.
* In the 1994 film
Quiz Show, Charles van Doren suggests this torture along with the rack and the iron maiden.
* In a 2002 episode of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Principal Robin Wood, after mentioning the bastinado, says, "No one ever knows what that thing is." Without hesitating,
Buffy Summers responds, "A wooden rod used to slap the soles of the feet in Turkish prisons, but, if made with the correct wood, makes an awesome
billy club." (7.2 - "Beneath You")
* Bastinado is the name of a rock band from
Portland, Oregon.
* In Bones (TV Series) Dr Brennan notes that Agent Booth had been subjected to beatings on the bottom of his feet as a POW
*The word 'bastinado' can also refer (metonymically at best) to the device used to inflict the torture.
*Definition of Bastinado given by
Ambrose Bierce in
The Devil's Dictionary, BASTINADO, n. The act of walking on wood without exertion.
