Alkerk ( Eng. Alquerque , from Arabic. "Fortress"), aka Kirkat , Eng. quirkat (Persian or Turkish.? "mill")
A checkerboard board game, common in the Middle Ages. Came from the Arabs to Spain. It gave impetus to the European varieties of checkers, as well as the Madagascar game of fanarona (fanorona).
... And today it is widely known, but under other names in the Caucasus and among the Kurds. A drawing of a board for an alkerk was discovered during excavations under the direction of N. Ya. Marr in Ani in 1915.
- Golosuyev, Ancient and mysterious game
Content
References
Under the name “kirkat” is mentioned for the first time Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani born in Persia in the book “ Kitab al-Aghani ”, Kitab al-Aghani.
Talking about the poet Al-Ahvaz (died in 728), the author gives an episode of a poet visiting one of the houses in Mecca, where people had fun with three games: a tentrang, an nardat (backgammon) and a kirkat (mill).
- Golosuyev, Ancient and mysterious game
For the first time in Europe, it was mentioned in the treatise on board games Libro de los juegos ("The Book of the Games"), written in 1283 in Seville at the behest of the Castilian king Alfons X the Wise .
As in checkers, both sides have 12 checkers, but place them on a 5x5 board. In the initial position, each side occupies all the fields formed by the intersections of lines on the board of the near horizontals, and two fields of the middle horizontal on one side of the center. And only the central field remains free.
Rules
5 x 5 board (a similar board is used in the Nepalese logic game Bag Chal ).
Also, as in checkers, there are simple moves - to any free field along the line of the board, and moves with capture - jump your checkers over someone else's to the free field. And therefore there are also combinations of their own, as a result of which you can take several checkers at once. But nothing is still known about the checker strengthened in rights - the lady.
- Golosuyev, Ancient and mysterious game
On the odd rows (a, c, d, g, and; 1, 3, 5, 7, 9) of the drafts there are 25 fields where the lines of the diagonal and orthogonal grids converge, on which the chips only went (12 white and 12 black) to neighboring fields. At the beginning of the game, the d5 square is free, and the fields on rows 1 and 3, as well as a5 and b5 are occupied by white chips, the rest of the fields are occupied by black ones. The goal of the game is to beat the opponent's chips. Beat the chips by jumping over the beaten chip. The same kind of game is possible on a 5 x 5 cell board.
- Kulichikhin, History of the development of Russian drafts
On the above 5 x 5 draftsman there was another game. White chips stood in the same fields as indicated above. On the d5 square there was a black chip, which retained the full range of movements (walking and beating), as indicated above, and White could walk (but not beat) forward and to the sides (but not backward). The goal of the game is to lock the black checker by analogy with locking the “wolf” in the “wolf and dogs” task game. Games of this kind (with locking a stronger chip, but simpler) were later known as " fox and geese " in England and " wolf and sheep " in Germany.
- Kulichikhin, History of the development of Russian drafts
Varieties
- Dizym - in Turkmenistan
- Fighting Snakes - North American Zuni Tribe
Literature
- Bell, RC (1979). Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, volume 1. New York City: Dover Publications, pp. 47-48. ISBN 0-486-23855-5 .
- Alexander Ivanovich Kulichikhin. The history of the development of Russian drafts. - M.: Physical education and sport, 1982.
- V. M. Golosuev. An ancient and mysterious game. World of Drafts - St. Petersburg, 1997