Nard (backgammon)
An old board game for two, in which dice are thrown and the pieces are moved round the board.
Names among the peoples
- tavla (Turks of Türkiye)
About
Nard is an old board game for two players. The board has 24 points; each player has 15 pieces — 30 in all, 15 white and 15 black. Moves are made by the throw of a pair of dice. The player who first brings all his pieces home and bears them off the board wins.
The throws of the dice are called by names of Persian origin: yek, du, se, chahar, panj, shesh. The Middle Persian text Chatrang-namak and Ferdowsi's Shahnameh ascribe the invention of the game to the Sasanian vizier Bozorgmehr. By the 17th century nard was played in Azerbaijan and Georgia; in Türkiye the game is called tavla.
History
The oldest story of how nard was invented is in a short Middle Persian text, "The explanation of chess and the arrangement of backgammon". As A. Panaino writes in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, the manuscript that has come down to us is late, but the core of the text probably belongs to the late Sasanian period.
In the story an Indian king sends a chess set to the court of the Sasanian king Khosrow I to test the sages of Iran. The minister Wuzurgmihr (Bozorgmehr) solves the game, beats the Indian envoy and in answer devises nard; he names the game nēw-ardaxšīr, in honour of the first Sasanian king.
The text gives the game a cosmic meaning: the board is the earth, and the thirty pieces are the thirty days and nights of the month — fifteen white like the day, fifteen black like the night. The numbers of the die have meanings of their own: one is the oneness of the creator, two the mental and the material world, three good thought, good speech and good deed, four the four elements and the four directions, five the five lights, six the six periods of creation.
Peoples
Research: Vasif Namazov, Turan Games Concept
