Ganjifa


Ganjifa, Ganjapa or Gânjaphâ, is a card game and type of playing cards that are most associated with Persia and India. After Ganjifa cards fell out of use in Iran before the twentieth century, India became the last country to produce them. The form prevalent in Odisha is Ganjapa.

Description

Ganjifa cards are circular or rectangular, and traditionally hand-painted by artisans. The game became popular at the Mughal court, and lavish sets were made, from materials such as precious stone-inlaid ivory or tortoise shell. The game later spread to the general public, whereupon cheaper sets would be made from materials such as wood, palm leaf, stiffened cloth or pasteboard. Typically Ganjifa cards have coloured backgrounds, with each suit having a different colour. Different types exist, and the designs, number of suits, and physical size of the cards can vary considerably. With the exception of Mamluk Kanjifa and the Chads of Mysore, each suit contains ten Pso abachamuchacktin

History

Etymology

The earliest origins of the cards remain uncertain, but Ganjifa cards as they are known today are believed to have originated in Persia. The first syllable is attributed to the Persian word 'ganj' meaning treasure. Gen. Houtum-Schindler suggested to Stewart Culin that the last two syllables in the word 'Ganjifa' may be derived from the Chinese chi-p'ai, meaning playing cards In a related passage Chatto explains that an early Chinese term was 'ya-pae', meaning 'bone ticket', and that the term 'che-pae' came later, meaning literally 'paper ticket'. These different terms could account for the different spellings and pronunciations of 'Ganjifa'. Rolf Zimmermann goes further in his 2006 article, and suggests that the first syllable of the word Ganjifa could come from 'Han' as in Han Chinese, and thus 'Ganjifa' would mean 'han-chi-pai', or 'Chinese playing cards'. These remain unproved theories, but the 18th century traveller Carsten Niebuhr claimed to have seen Arabian merchants in Bombay playing with Chinese cards. In the 19th century Jean Louis Burckhardt visited Mecca and wrote that 'cards are played in almost every Arab coffee-house '.
Ganjifa became popular in India under the Mughal emperors in the 16th century. The term has been used at times in many countries throughout the Middle East and western Asia. In Kuwait, the word 'Janjifah' has become a general term and so is applied to the internationally known French deck.

Arabic sources and surviving cards

Despite the significance of Persia in the history of ganjifa cards, the very earliest known text reference and card specimens are from Egypt.
An exhibition in the British museum in 2013 noted "Playing cards are known in Egypt from the twelfth century AD. Ganjafeh was a popular card game in Iran and the Arab world." For example, the word 'kanjifah' is written in the top right corner of the king of swords, on the Mamluk Egyptian deck witnessed by L.A. Mayer in the Topkapı Palace museum. The Mamluk cards are difficult to date with any certainty, but Mayer estimated these cards to be from the 15th century. The piece of playing card collected by Edmund de Unger may be from the period of the 12-14th centuries. The term Kanjifah can be found in the 1839 Calcutta edition of the One Thousand and One Nights, in Arabic, at the end of night 460. The first known reference can be found in a 15th-century Arabic text, written by the Egyptian historian Ibn Taghribirdi. In his history of Egypt he mentions how the Sultan Al-Malik Al-Mu'ayyad played kanjafah for money when he was an emir.
The cards used by the Mamluks most likely entered Italy and Spain during the 1370s. As early as 1895, William Henry Wilkinson pointed out the similarities between Spanish and Italian playing cards and Chinese money-suited cards. He was unaware of the existence of the Mamluk cards since Mayer did not make his discovery until 1939. The similarities between the Latin European cards and Chinese money-suited cards become more apparent when the Mamluk Kanjifa is described. Looking at the actual games played with Ganjifa cards, Andrew Leibs points out that the cards are divided into strong and weak suits, and in one set the order of the numerical cards is reversed, so that the order runs King, Vizier, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 the weakest. This feature can also be found in the old games of Tarot, Ombre, and Maw played in Europe, and the Chinese money-suited card game of 'Madiao'. He suggests these games may have a common ancestor.
Kanjifa consists of 52 cards divided into four suits:
Richard Ettinghausen speculated that importation of European cards killed off manufacturers in Egypt and the Levant. Trade continued after the conquest of these regions by the Ottomon Turks in 1517. They were also mentioned by Ibn Hajar al-Haytami. The lack of references or cards after the 16th century is likely due to the Ottomans taking a harder stance against cards and gambling which would last until the 19th century.

Persian sources

The earliest Persian reference is found in Ahli Shirazi's poem, 'Rubaiyat-e-Ganjifa', there is a short verse for each of the 96 cards in the 8-suited pack, showing that the Persians had the same suits and ranks as the Mughals. The Austrian National Library possess eight Safavid lacquer paintings from the 16th-century that mimic ganjifeh cards. Despite being produced around the same time as Shirazi's poem, they do not match his description. Shah Abbas II banned ganjifeh and the game decline precipitously with no known rules surviving into the present. Around the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, the game of As-Nas became more popular.
In 1895, General Albert Houtum-Schindler described ganjifeh and As-Nas with the following comments:
Michael Dummett noted the differences between Mamluk kanjifa and Safavid ganjifeh and postulated that there was an earlier ancestor. This ur-ganjifeh would be similar to kanjifa but with only two court cards, the king and the viceroy/vizier. The second viceroy rank found in the kanjifa pack is not based on any historical title and may be a Mamluk invention. According to his hypothesis, the Chinese money-suited pack entered Persia where the Persians added three new ranks: the 10, viceroy, and king to make a 48-card pack. He suggests the Persians eventually changed most of the Chinese suits to fit their culture while the Mamluks were more conservative with the suits. The addition of new suits in both Persia and India was to make the game more challenging as memory is the most important skill in the eponymous trick-taking game. Chinese money-suited cards copied their pips directly from Chinese banknotes. In 1294, Gaykhatu began printing an imitation of Yuan banknotes in Iran although these were withdrawn quickly after merchants rejected them. By the 17th century, the money-suited deck had acquired a new card depicting a Persian merchant.

Early history in India

Rudolf von Leyden suggested that the Ganjifa cards may have been brought by the first Mughals from their ancestral homeland in Inner Asia. A key reference comes from an early 16th-century biography of Bâbur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty. In his work the Baburnama, Babur notes in the year 933H that he had a pack of Ganjifa cards sent to Shah Hassan. This took place in the month of Ramzan, on the night he left Agra to travel to nearby Fatehpur Sikri. The earliest surviving rules date to around 1600 in India. When Edward Terry visited India in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, he saw ganjifa cards often. Modern ganjifa is usually round but rectangular cards were more common during the 18th-century and from records Persian ganjifeh was always rectangular. Its circular shape must have been an Indian innovation.
While Mughal ganjifa had the same suits and ranks as Safavid ganjifeh, a 10-suited deck, the Dashavatara Ganjifa, was created to appeal to Hindus in the seventeenth century. Some historical decks have had more than 30 suits.

Competition from Western style cards

In countries such as India and Persia, the traditional hand-made Ganjifa cards lost market share to Western-style printed cards, which came to dominate in the 20th century. This decline has several aspects.
By the 21st-century, the only place with a significant community of ganjifa makers and players is Odisha in the east of India. They use ganjapa, the local variation known for abstract and highly stylized suit symbols and extra suits.

Variants

Ganjifa

This is a trick-taking game, played individually. This is the game most commonly associated with ganjifa cards, each player playing for him or herself. The objective is to win the most cards by taking tricks. At least three players are required. In some games 4 players play individually, and it is also possible to play in pairs. The rules vary, but generally the following apply:

Dealing

Play

Following rounds

Partnership Ganjifa

Played in partnerships. Some call this game 'Dugi'. In this game the order of the suits and the cards is the same as for the individual ganjifa trick taking game described above, however the aim of the game is for one partnership to win all the tricks. The partnership dealt the King in the lead suit has to take on this challenge. It is possible to determine the lead suit by the day or night rule as above, or by cutting cards. The following game rules are taken from an account by John McLeod

Naqsh

This game can be played with any pack of cards, including the Mughal types, and the shorter 48 card decks. European style packs can be used by removing the jacks. Each suit therefore has two court cards, and ten numeral cards. The game has some similarities with Blackjack. In Naqsh the 'Mir' is given a value of 12 points, and the second court card, the 'Ghodi' is worth 11. The other cards are worth their pip values, including the ace which has a value of 1. Several players can play the game. Mr. Gordhandas suggests 5-7 players, with 6 being the ideal number. The aim is to achieve a total value of 17 with the first two cards dealt, or the nearest number below this total. Players with low value cards can continue to draw further cards to try to improve their total. Variations can be played where 21 is a target total, or where different winning combinations are accepted such as pairs, triples and so on. The game is suited to gambling.

Notable Ganjifa card collections and collectors