Bastonade

--- CONTENT ---
Bastonade, Bastinado (French bastonnade, ital. bastonata = stick strikes, to: bastonare = beating, to: bastone = stick) or earlier sole stroke, in the Arabic-speaking area Falaka, denotes, depending on the purpose and method of execution, a punishment practice or torture method in which a sequence of strokes on the bare soles of a person's feet is performed.

The bastonade is often associated with Middle Eastern and Far Eastern countries, where it is mostly carried out publicly in the Falaka method used there and is recorded by eyewitness reports and photographic documents, but is still used in many countries of the Western world in different ways. With the beating of the exposed feet, this method of chastisement often also consciously refers to the symbolic character of punishment for transgressions.

In China, a completion of the Bastonade has been documented since 960, in Europe it is first mentioned in 1537. In the German usage language, the term sole stroke was previously common, cf. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (see below), which corresponds to the less commonly used term sole stroke in current usage. In the German colloquial language, the bastonade was sometimes also described by the phrase (number) on the soles of the feet. In the English-speaking world the term variation Bastinado is mainly used, temporarily the term booting was used, occasionally it is also referred to as foot whipping or sole caning.

The respective number of strokes administered successively varies depending on the factual context and the method used in the respective culture. In Iran, 50 lashes are considered a comparatively mild punishment, many times this can be imposed on offenders. In the Ottoman Empire, the imposition of 250 lashes is historically documented (for Iran and the Ottoman Empire see section Modern History). Mozart’s The Magic Flute mentions 77 lashes. During the period of National Socialism, for example, 100 to 170 beatings are reported from children’s homes.

Conditions of application
The bastonade is often used in circumstances in which certain persons are in principle subject to the right or de facto possibility of being chastised by other hierarchically superior persons. It is increasingly used where, moreover, the people in question are constantly forced to be barefooted, as was often the case in prisons and still is in many countries today.
The circumstances for the use of the bastonade for the persons concerned may be due, for example, to personal unfreedom in the form of imprisonment or slavery and comparable constellations in which there is a fixed hierarchy with a usually steep power gap.

The bastonade is still used in various