The Crusades

The source of backgammon game may have been ancient Sumer, Egypt, India, or all three, but the game the Crusaders encountered among the Saracens - and enthusiastically adopted - was called nard or nard-shir.

Persians has thought the game to Arabs, and it was supposedly named after Ard-shir Babakan of the Sassanid dynasty of the ancient Persian empire, who was said to have invented it. Using two dice instead of the Roman three, the game was played on a chequered cloth that contained twelve divisions corresponding to the solar months of the Persian year.

The number of men(checkers), or muhrahs, corresponded to the number of days in a lunar month; half the counters were black and half were white, since during half the month the nights were dark and during the other half the nights were brightly lit by the moon. Each names of the seven points in the game were richly suggestive: Kad (quantity), Ziyad (growth), Satarah (fortune, curtain or veil, or star), Hazaran (thousands), Khanah-gir (possessor of the house or chamber), Tawil (tall, or long), and Alansubah (scheme, plan, or game).

Early and different versions of backgammon was quite popular in Britain. The game was known in Anglo-Saxon times and dates back to eighth or ninth centuries, it’s popularity dates back to the Crusades.

In fact, this and other gambling games were so popular with the Christian soldiers in Richard the Lion-Hearted’s army that he and his ally, Philip of France, issued a joint act during the Third Crusade in 1190.

Gambling games were so popular among the Christian soldiers in Richard the Lion-Heart’s army and his ally King Philip of France that they issued a joint act in 1190 during Third Crusade:

“It prohibits any person in the army beneath the degree of a knight from playing at any sort of game for money: knights and clergymen might play for money, but no one of them was permitted to lose more than twenty shillings in one whole day and night under the penalty of one hundred shillings, to be paid to the archbishops in the army; the two monarchs had the privilege of playing for what they pleased; but their attendants were restricted to the sum of twenty shillings; and if they exceeded they were to be whipped naked through the army for three days”.

Joseph Strutt, 1841, “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England”

Richard’s brother, King John, also liked to play the game, which by now had acquired its English name “tables”, after the Roman tabulae. King John played his court favourites for modest stakes, if he lost, the amount was faithfully noted in the record of his daily expenses.



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