Mamluk Cards and the Making of the European Deck

What follows focuses on the origins of the standard Anglo-American playing cards. We are told, for example, that the Chinese had playing cards from around 800 CE (AD) onwards. However, these cards bear little relation to modern sets. Chinese chess and domino cards suggest that these were meant as portable or ‘travel’ versions of other games – a great idea, but not the one behind the structure of our modern cards.

Our playing-card sets have several familiar characteristics that make them what they are. One is the existence of four suits, designated with their own symbols (symbols that don’t appear to mean anything outside of a card set). Another is the division into two groups, the plain pip or numeral cards and the higher-ranking court cards. Lastly, the court cards have named ranks and show pictures.

Above: early European references to playing cards (1371–79), plotted against the medieval Mediterranean world. The red lines indicate major mediaeval trade routes; the coloured areas show contemporary political regions. The first recorded ‘naib/nayb’ mentions cluster at port cities along these routes, suggesting transmission into Europe through established trading networks.

Above: Mamluk cards — King and Lieutenant of Cups (Topkapi Palace group, 15th–early 16th century). Court cards with named ranks, but rendered without human figures: the suit is identified by the cup emblems and ornamental calligraphy.

A great collection of the earliest references to European playing cards has been assembled, and these have been superimposed onto a map of Europe with the contemporary trading routes. Playing cards started to arrive in Europe from 1376, and the illustration above shows that they tended to arrive at ports bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to note a set of ‘Mamluk’ cards, identified in the Top Kapi Palace, Istanbul, by Leo Mayer in the 1930s. These are thought to date from XV or early XVI century. The cards have the ‘Spanish’ suits of Coins, Cups (curved) Swords and straight batons.

The 47 surviving cards show that a full pack had four suits of fourteen cards. Each suit’s courts have bands of a distinct color (the blue in the images below) and there are four named cards – a ruler, two lieutenants and a member of the royal entourage. However: there are no pictures of people, probably for religious or cultural reasons.

There is a good reason for taking these cards very seriously, and that is the word “naib”. Various spellings of this word appear in the first references to cards in the areas close to the Mediterranean. It is the Arabic word for the Lieutenant, and we assume also the term used for the games played with this pack. Europeans adopted this word, rather than taking the obvious and available European terms (i.e. “cartas de jogar”, “Cartes à jouer” and so on.

What does that suggest to you? I emphasize the question because it is such a critical one. To me, it very strongly implies that cards came to Europe from what we now call the Middle East or North Africa, and that the naib game and its name were both adopted along with the cards. While we may never know for sure, I find these the most convincing ancestors of our card decks.