Scythe martial arts...

Himokiri Karate · Green Belt

It looks cool and in fiction, a halberd has a scythe blade which makes it formidable. Curios to know if this is something a person practicing martial arts likes to learn?
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Zaine · Black Belt

HEMA does! Paulus Hector Mair wrote a treatise on how to use the sycthe in combat. Check out this Wiktenauer page for the details. As far as history goes, scythes were typically used as weapons in peasant uprisings. The English used it in 1684, when a Duke fielded roughly 5000 peasants in the Battle of Sedgemoor. In 1784 again peasants used them in the Revolt of Horea in Transylvania.

In general, as you might guess, scythes were weapons used by peasants and anyone who couldn't afford weapons that we might typically see on a battlefield from the Medieval period onward. As such, Paulus is a weird exception to the rule that most fighting manuscripts dealt with weapons that one might see in a tournament of arms.

Aside from this, you would have to look at the kama for Eastern Martial Arts. I'm not aware, nor could I find, any information that suggests that Eastern Martial Arts cares about the two handed scythe. Furthermore, I couldn't find any information on a system that currently practices with it a lot. Even within HEMA you would struggle to find someone who is using a sycthe, it's a hard weapon to manufacture a safe, trainer version of.
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bushido_man96 · KF Sensei

Good ole Paulus! Great resource!
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LionsDen · Orange Belt

The fantasy scythe isn’t a real weapon.
I agree it’s cool but not really a weapon, outside of militias suddenly mustering with farming tools as weapons

ryanryu · Yellow Belt

Awesome link! I'm going to pretend there was some Seven Samurai like action going on in Europe where a wandering weapons master spent days training village farmers in proper scythe form to defend against marauders.

For the East/West difference - how widely used were two-handled scythes in Asia to begin with? I had thought the kama was designed specifically to harvest rice whereas the scythe is more suited to wheat & grass - different climates led to different crops led to different tools...

It looks like there are a lot variations on the spear (yari) in Japanese - for example the kama-yari is a spear with a side hook:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama-yari

I'm sure there are weapons traditions for these long weapons across the world, but not something I've come across personally.

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