Backgammon Boards in the Coffeehouse
Walk into a traditional coffeehouse in Istanbul, Tehran, Beirut, or Cairo around 1900 and one of the most familiar sounds would have been the clatter of dice and the snap of wooden checkers on a hinged board. Backgammon, known in Turkish as tavla, in Persian as takhte nard, and in Arabic as tawla, was a fixture of daily social life across the Middle East. Its endurance is the point of the story: a game with roots reaching back several thousand years was still an everyday pastime at the dawn of the twentieth century, and it remains one today.
The game's ancestry is long and, in places, uncertain. Boards and pieces resembling early race games have been found at sites such as Shahr-i Sokhta in eastern Iran, and the Royal Game of Ur from Mesopotamia dates to the third millennium BC. These are related to backgammon but not identical, and historians debate how directly they connect to it. More clearly, the Romans played a dice-and-board game called tabula, and in Sasanian Persia a game called nard was well established by late antiquity. A Middle Persian text, the Wizārishn ī Chatrang ud Nihishn ī Nēw-Ardashīr, credits its invention to the courtier Wuzurgmihr, though this is a legend rather than documented history.
Through the medieval Islamic period, nard spread widely and was discussed by poets, jurists, and scholars. Some religious authorities disapproved of it because of its association with dice and gambling, while others tolerated it, and opinions varied by time and place. Despite this, the game flourished. Travelers and traders carried versions to Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia, giving rise to many regional relatives.
By 1900 the coffeehouse had become the natural home of the game. These establishments, which had spread across the Ottoman and Persian worlds since the sixteenth century, served as places for conversation, news, music, and storytelling. Backgammon suited them well. It needed little space, could be played in a short round or an extended match, and drew onlookers who offered commentary. Boards were often handsome objects, with inlaid wood, mother-of-pearl, or carved geometric designs. Players developed their own table slang, and dice calls in Turkish and Persian are still used with relish.
The legacy is a living one. Backgammon has remained popular in the region through the political upheavals of the last century, and in Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere it is still played in cafés, on porches, and in homes. In the West it saw a surge of interest in the 1960s and 1970s, with organized tournaments. The humble coffeehouse board is a reminder that some of history's most durable inventions are not tools of empire but simple games that bring people to the same table.