Alquerque is an ancient board game of jump capture, played on a cross hatched board of twenty five points, in which pieces move and capture much as men do in draughts. Boards of the alquerque pattern are cut into the sandstone roof of the temple of Kurna in Egypt, built around 1400 BC, though graffiti of this kind cannot be reliably dated to the building itself, so that attribution is disputed; the earliest securely dated reference is the tenth century Arabic compilation Kitab al-Aghani, and the game is recorded under its Spanish name in the Alfonso X manuscript of 1251 to 1282. It is the direct ancestor of draughts, its pieces and jump-capture rule transplanted onto a chequered chessboard in twelfth century France.
Facts
Disputed
Origin Year976 AD is the death year of the Kitab al-Aghani's author, the earliest secure textual attestation. The Kurna temple boards, if genuinely ancient, would push the game to roughly 1400 BC, but graffiti cut into temple stone cannot be reliably dated to the building's own construction; both figures are carried in the description rather than collapsed to one. Originating RegionDisputed: ancient Egypt for the earliest possible (undated) board evidence at Kurna; the Arabic-speaking Near East and Moorish Iberia for the earliest securely dated textual record 2 The dating dispute is over TIME, not place; both proposed regions are named because the evidence for each rests on a different kind of source. Game TypeBoard game, ancestral jump-capture strategy 2 Open Questions
Governing BodyNo governing body identified
No governing body found in research (Wikipedia Alquerque article read directly, plus Historic Games Club and Cyningstan rules materials); the game is not known to be played in organized competition today and no modern club or federation was located. Classification
Player Count Sport
Game Type (category) Game Type (category) Alquerque
Filter Results2 entries
Connections
Ancestor Of
Source A History of Board-Games Other Than ChessH.J.R. Murray
Fanorona, Games Why this is disputed. Fanorona is Madagascar's national board game; some scholars link its lineage to alquerque-family capture games introduced by Arab or later traders, but the precise line of descent is debated among game historians rather than settled, per the entity's own record.
Source A History of Board-Games Other Than ChessH.J.R. Murray
Long-Form Articles
Source Sport and Games Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Africa, found in there.
Sources
1. Alquerque (Wikipedia)
2. A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess
H.J.R. Murray, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1952
Sport and Games Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
Sport and Games AtlasLong-Form Articles: One Root, Two Branches: Draughts, Fanorona and the Limits of Alquerque's Family Tree
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