As-Nas

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As-Nas cards
As
Shah
Bibi
Serbaz
Couli

As-Nas ( آس ناس) is a card game , or a type of playing card that was used in Persia .

description

The design of the cards is simple; there are only five different card designs with a characteristic background color. These cards come four or five times each, making the game a total of 20 or 25 cards. The As-Nas cards are rectangular and relatively small with a size of about 4 × 6 cm. As-Nas cards, like Ganjifah cards, are usually hand-painted, but some late copies have printed images applied to a painted background. The figures shown are single-headed (not double as with today's standard cards) and have no indexes or titles. Nevertheless, the player can recognize the cards from the background color. Usually the cards have a decorative border, often oval in a rectangle.

The pictures are designed very differently. Most of the five card designs include an ace with an animal motif and four court cards . This combination could also explain the name As-Nas . As is the name of the Ace card. Nas means people or persons in Arabic and Persian . Hence the name As-Nas would refer to aces and a group of people. The figures shown represent people from different social classes. The following representations in descending order are typical:

  • As (آس): Ass. Frequent depictions are a lion with a sun or moon in the background, a lion / dragon in a fight (sometimes with leopards or other animals) or a hunter on a horse who is being attacked.
  • Shah (شاه): King. Often on a throne, sometimes on a horse.
  • Bibi (بی‌بی): Lady. Often sitting and holding a child.
  • Serbaz (سرباز): Soldier.
  • Couli or Lakat (لکات): Lowest card, usually a female dancer, a pair of dancers or a musician.

However, there are also other representations than those mentioned above, for example a pack of playing cards in which only flowers are depicted, as well as erotic versions.

history

As-Nas was played parallel to the older Ganjifah for a long time. Sally Wilkins claimed that As-Nas had been around since the 17th century and that a pack of 25 cards in five suits was used at the time. There was a picture card and four payment cards of each color. Maps from the 19th century are exhibited in museums; few surviving copies are dated to the late 18th century. According to Robert Murdoch Smith , As-Nas cards “fell into oblivion in 1877 and were supplanted by European cards.” As a result of the Foreign Trade Monopoly Act of 1931, a card monopoly was set up in Iran to control the import and production of cards. The British playing card manufacturer De La Rue received the monopoly in the 1930s. The company's playing cards showed Persian characters and pictures of Persian history. Nevertheless, the western playing card colors (hearts, clubs, spades, diamonds) were used on the cards. As-nas went largely out of fashion by 1945, but continued to be played in rural areas. In his work, published in the 1960s, Reza Arasteh wrote that “rural life in Iran revolves around traditional practices that have remained unchanged for centuries.” In a section on Muslim values, he writes that “the Qashqai, and probably other tribes as well Allow men to drink alcohol. Some khans also enjoy smoking opium in their spare time . The ace, similar to poker, is a popular card game among tribesmen. "

Rules of the game

In 1895 General Albert Houtum-Schindler described the rules as follows:

The game of Ace is like poker , but without flushes . There are four players, each player being dealt five cards that are dealt clockwise. The giver places a bet. The first player then looks at his cards. If he “calls,” he says dîdam (I've seen) and either places the same bet or increases it. If he doesn't want to play, he says nadîdam , (I haven't seen) and discards his cards. However, he can also “go” without looking at his cards and say nadîd dîdam (Don't see, I have seen). The second player must also place or raise the stake if he wants to play. The third player and the dealer act as in poker. If all bets are equal and no player wants to raise any more, the cards are revealed and the player with the best hand wins the bets.
The following sheets are available with decreasing value:
She va just : threesome and a couple, "full."
Sehta : threesome
Do just : two couples
Just : A couple
If two players have the same pair or the same pairs, the other cards are decisive.
Bluffing is also part of the game and is called tûp zadan (literally “firing a gun”). A bluff is called tûp .

As-nas cards can also be used for other games. Murdoch Smith writes that the game is "somewhat like Landsknecht ," which is a simpler game of chance.

As-Nas with normal playing cards

A 20-card ace-nas can be made from an ordinary deck of playing cards using only the ace, king, queen, jack and ten cards. The better solution, however, is to use four identical packs of cards and use five of the same cards each. Thus have at different card values are not the same colors are used (example: 4 × ace of spades, 4 × cross-King, 4 × queen of hearts, 4 x Jack of Diamonds, 4 × Joker (or numbers game card)). With four packages, several As-Nas games can be put together.

Museums and collections of As-Nas cards

See also

References and comments

  1. ^ A b Sports and Games of Medieval Cultures. Sally ED Wilkins. (2002). 325 pages. ISBN 0313317119 , ISBN 9780313317118
  2. ↑ In modern Persian there is another name for the ace:تکfrom the word for one, only andتوس, which could be derived from the word Daus (the equivalent of the Ace is the Daus with the value two).
  3. ↑ Example: Translation in an English – Persian dictionary from 1841. The Arabic term can be found in the Oxford Essential Arabic Dictionary (2010), the Abdelnour de Poche (Beirut, 2007) and Wiktionary .
  4. ↑ M. Roschanzamir, "Persische Lackmalerei auf As-Spielkarten", communication from the Museum für Völkerkunde (Hamburg), NS 16, 1986, pp. 71–90.
  5. ↑ Example: Persia Collection 00008, inventory number 43399 in the Museum of Fournier de Naipes .
  6. ↑ Example: Maps of the Fournier Museum in Spain, Persia Collection 00002, inventory number 44582.
  7. ↑ Major R. Murdoch Smith (1877: 41)
  8. ↑ Article from the Brooklyn Museum website, accessed November 15, 2014: “As-Nas was popular among the Qajars and played until the end of World War II, before losing popularity to games like poker, rummy and bridge. "( Link )
  9. ^ A. Reza Arasteh (1964: 148)
  10. ↑ (1964: 155) Online at Google Books
  11. ↑ Quoted from Stewart Culin .
  12. ↑ Maj.Murdoch Smith (1877: 41)
  13. ↑ As an example, the As or Ace Playing Card for the Game of Nas from the Brooklyn Museum.
  14. ↑ As an example the search result for playing card iran
  15. ↑ Website with catalog search. As an example the search result for Persia baraja
  16. ↑ Some images are available online ( example )
  17. ↑ Example (accessed May 3, 2015)
  18. ↑ Archived copy . Archived from the original on March 31, 2015.
  19. ↑ http://museums.ut.ac.ir/mm/
  20. ↑ https://collectie.wereldculturen.nl/#/query/294e6fc8-c9e6-4569-9823-3d970261f973

supporting documents

  • This article contains text from the public domain work Chess and Playing Cards: Catalog of games and implements for divination exhibited by the United States National Museum in connection with the department of archeology and paleontology of the University of Pennsylvania at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta , Georgia, 1895. by Stewart Culin .
  • Major R. Murdoch Smith: Persian Art . Scribner, Welford & Armstrong, New York, USA.
  • Sally Wilkins: Sports and Games of Medieval Cultures . Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT, USA 2002.

Web links

Commons : As-Nas  - collection of images, videos and audio files