On hot summer afternoons or during cool evenings in Beirut, the sound of clattering dice can be heard everywhere from Gemmayze’s Ahwet Al Azzaz to the shady corners of Sanayeh Gardens. It is the sound of backgammon, a game that has been around for nearly five thousand years, and it is the sound of Lebanon’s connection to a rich historical legacy.
Backgammon has been part of Middle Eastern life since ancient times, although the form of the game has evolved over the millennia. Its ancestor is most likely an Egyptian board game called Senet, which dates as far back as 3500 BC, but the game was popular in Persia as well. By the first century AD, the game was found in Rome, and two hundred years later, it had made its way to China and Japan. It was actively being played throughout the Arab World by the mid-800s, and seems to have made its way to Europe as a result of the Arab conquest of Sicily in the early 900s. By the medieval period, both aristocrats and commoners from as far as England and Germany could be found enjoying the game in pubs and private homes.
Even today, most words used for the game refer either to the backgammon board itself or the table on which it is played. The Latin tabula became tavola in Italian, which in turn gave birth to the Arabic tawla and the Turkish and Greek tavli; in Spain, people play tables reales. And while the game in France today is known as tric trac, it was historically called the jeu de tables. (The English “backgammon” is a relative newcomer – until the 1700s, people in Britain played “tables”.)
The backgammon board is really two boards that fold together, one for each player. Each board has twelve long narrow triangles, arranged in 2 sets of 6, with each player assigned 2 sets of fifteen pieces that they try to move from triangle to triangle as each progresses around the board.
No one knows for certain what the board’s layout means, but medieval Arabs and Greeks described it as a miniature version of the world itself. The twelve triangles, called ‘houses’, represent the twelve months of the lunar calendar, while the dice that determine how far each player can move his or her pieces represent the planets, and the players’ tosses represent their orbits. The pieces themselves represent people.
With such symbolism and such a rich history, backgammon should have been a welcome part of daily life in Europe and the Middle East. But the fact that backgammon was often played for money made it an activity that both priests and Muslim clerics condemned. The game could be played purely for fun – but critics and players agreed that it was most enjoyable only when money was involved.
According to Ibn Khallikan, a medieval scholar, backgammon was an ancient Persian game invented to remind people how much of their lives depended on fate and God’s will. The cast of the dice, Ibn Khallikan said, followed “the example of divine determination and decree, which are sometimes in [the player’s] favour, and sometimes against him.”
On a less spiritual level, backgammon was criticized for distracting people, for making them ignore their work and cut short, time with their families. Like today’s video games, it was described as a waste of time. But regardless of the criticism, people kept on playing.
Fast forwarding a few centuries to today, backgammon’s reputation has evolved from being considered a morally questionable activity into a legitimate means of spending time with friends and family. After all, backgammon is a social game: it unfolds at a leisurely pace, allowing people to play and talk at the same time. Hence players are often surrounded by friends who watch and chat with them as they play.
Backgammon’s reputation has also improved thanks to the beauty of the set itself. The inlaid wood and mother-of-pearl decoration of traditional Damascene backgammon sets have turned them into art objects. Their popularity with tourists and as gifts has led to the emergence of a new product: backgammon sets that look Damascene but are made of cheaper synthetic materials in Malaysia and the Far East.
While casual players are the majority, serious players exist as well. Today a number of backgammon tournaments are held around the world, offering cash prizes. Most are held in Europe, but from 2000 until 2004 Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan sponsored a yearly backgammon championship with an AED 50,000 (13,600 USD) top prize that drew a mixture of Arab and foreign nationals.
The Abu Dhabi tournament is not currently being held, but would-be champions can try their luck in another arena: online games. Pay-to-play sites like Tawla.com cater to an Arabic-speaking audience, but they lack the table talk that makes real life backgammon so engaging. For a true backgammon experience, exchange the desktop for a table-top and roll the dice.
