Mancala

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Mancala, also Manqala, Mankala (derived from ), is the generic term for board games, which are mostly played by two people mainly in Africa and Asia. It is characteristic that they redistribute play pieces that are located in hollows. In English-speaking countries, these kinds of games are also called Pit and Pebble Games (“pit and pebble games”) or Count and Capture Games (“count and catch games”). In Germany, they are called bean games.

The first European to describe Mancala scientifically was Richard Jobson in the 17th century in his work The Golden Trade. The generic name Mancala was coined by the American ethnologist Stewart Culin, who wrote a scientific essay on the worldwide distribution of these games in 1894. The name derives from the Egyptian Mancala game, first described in the West by Englishman E. W. Lane in 1843. This game was played in many Cairo cafés in the first half of the 19th century.

Historical

The origin of the Mancala games is unknown. Among the oldest game boards are archaeological finds in the late Roman fort in Abu Sha'ar on the Red Sea in Egypt (4th century AD) as well as in Matara, Eritrea, and Yeha in northwestern Ethiopia (6th–7th century AD). The game itself was first mentioned in the Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs), written in the 10th century by Abu l-Faradsch from Isfahan. Whether older trough rows (called cup marks in archaeology) found in Egypt, Sri Lanka and Cyprus, for example, are game boards is not known. Even if these troughs were used for play, one does not know what was actually played on them. The dating of such finds is also extremely problematic, as there are indications that some rows of troughs were created much later than the buildings on which they are located. Nevertheless, it is repeatedly claimed by amateurs and game producers that Mancala is the oldest game in the world, "5000 years old".

With the slave trade, West African Mancala variants came to the West Indies around 1640 (except Puerto Rico and the Bahamas), the USA (Louisiana) and parts of South America. Due to the spread of Islam, these games also reached Central Asia (e.g. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), India, the Maldives, southern China, southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. From there they eventually spread to Sri Lanka, the Philippines and the Mariana Islands.

In Europe, traditional Mancala variants have been described in the Baltic region, in the northern provinces of the former German eastern territories (Pomerania to East Prussia), in Bosnia and on the Greek Cyclades island of Hydra. At Schloss Weikersheim in Baden-Württemberg there are two Mancala tables from the early 18th century. century.

Tournaments are mainly in the following games:

Oware (Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Great Britain, France, Spain, Switzerland, Tschec)