It is a hot June afternoon in Sulaimaniyah, on the second day of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that concludes the holy month of Ramadan. While most Iraqis spend the day at home with their families or neighbors, roughly 50 men have gathered in a musty room on the third floor of a teahouse to watch one of the largest cockfights of the year. Everyone is smoking, sweating and shouting as two black roosters launch at one another during an exhibition match.

Cockfighting is among the most popular blood sports worldwide. It may also be the world’s oldest spectator sport, originating in Persia over 6,000 years ago. In fact, some archaeologists believe chickens were first domesticated for fighting and not for eating.

The sport maintains a small but steady following in Iraq. It was tolerated during the Baathist regime and has since expanded due to weak regulations on betting. Cockfighting today provides many men with an escape from the country’s precarity, despite the efforts of animal welfare activists to ban it.

According to Hajar Hamid, an organizer of cockfighting matches, approximately 100 men train roosters to compete and another 500 come regularly to watch in Sulaimaniyah. Matches are held every night except Fridays, when the match takes place in the late morning, and the fights take place year-round apart from July and August, the hottest summer months.