Backgammon in the Middle East and AsiaBackgammon is widely played in the Middle East and Central Asia, particularly in cafes. There are three main variants played in the Middle East: the European game as described above and known as ifranjiah (meaning Frankish in Arabic, shesh besh in Azerbaijan, Israel, and Uzbekistan and tavla in Turkey); mahbusa (meaning 'imprisoned'); and maghribiyya. The most popular of those is probably mahbusa. In this game each player's 15 checkers are all initially positioned on his 24-point. When hit, an isolated checker is not placed on the bar. Rather the hitting piece sits on top of the hit piece forming a block i.e. the same rules apply as if the point was occupied by two or more pieces of the same colour. The checker which has been hit is 'imprisoned' and cannot be moved until the opponent removes his piece: hence the name of the game. Sometimes a further rule requires that a player must bring his first checker to the opponent's home board before moving any other checkers. Whether or not this rule is applied, a rapid advance to the opponent's side of the board is desirable as imprisoning the opponent's checkers on his home table is highly advantageous. An interesting feature of backgammon as played in some Arab countries is that Persian or Kurdish numbers, rather than Arabic ones, are called out by a player announcing his dice rolls.
©2008, BackgammonPit.
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