- Libro de los juegos
__NOTOC__The "Libro de los Juegos", ("Book of games"), or "Libro de acedrex, dados e tablas", ("Book of chess, dice and tables") was commissioned by Alfonso X, king of León, Galicia and Castile, during the
13th century and completed in1283 .Wollesen, Jens T. "Sub specie ludi...: Text and Images in Alfonso El Sabio's Libro de Acedrex, Dados e Tablas", "Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte" 53:3, 1990. pp. 277-308.] It consists of 98 pages, many with color illustrations. The games covered includechess (including the earliest known European chess problems),dice , and tables (the family of games that includesbackgammon ). The book contains the earliest known description of some of these games, including many games imported from theArab kingdoms.Fact|date=February 2007It is one of the most important documents for researching the
history of board games . The only known original is held in the library of the monastery ofSan Lorenzo del Escorial nearMadrid inSpain . The book is bound in sheepskin and is 40 cm high and 28 cm wide (16 in × 11 in). A1334 copy is held in the library of the Historical Academy of Madrid.Fact|date=February 2007Background
Alfonso was likely influenced by his contact with scholars in the Arab world. Unlike many contemporary texts on the topic, he does not engage the games in the text with moralistic arguments; instead, he portrays them in an astrological context. He conceives of gaming as a dichotomy between the
intellect andchance . The book is divided into three parts reflecting this: the first on chess (a game purely ofabstract strategy ), the second on dice (with outcomes controlled strictly by chance), and the last on tables (combining elements of both). The text may have been influenced by Frederick II's text onfalconry .Chess
The Libro de juegos contains an extensive collection of writings on chess, with over 100
chess problem s and variants. Among its more notable entries is a depiction of what Alfonso calls the "ajedrex de los quatro tiempos" ("chess of the four seasons"). This game is a chess variant for four players, described as representing a conflict between thefour elements and thefour humors . The chessmen are marked correspondingly in green, red, black, and white, and pieces are moved according to the roll of dice. Alfonso also describes a game entitled "astronomical chess", played on a board of seven concentric circles, divided radially into twelve areas, each associated with a constellation of theZodiac .Tables
The book describes the rules for a number of games in the tables family. One notable entry is "todas tablas", which has an identical starting position to modern
backgammon and follows the same rules for movement and bearoff.Cite book |last=Murray |first=Harold James Ruthven |authorlink=Harold James Ruthven Murray |title=A History of Board-Games Other than Chess |publisher=Hacker Art Books |year=1952 |id=ISBN 0-87817-211-4 |chapter=6: Race-Games] Alfonso also describes a variant played on a board with seven points in each table. Players rolled seven-sideddice to determine the movement of pieces, an example of Alfonso's preference for the number seven. [cite paper |author=Sonja Musser Golladay |title=Los libros de acedrex dados y tablas by Alfonso X, el Sabio |date=9 March 2001 |url=http://www.u.arizona.edu/%7Esmusser/ljgradsymp.htmlDead link|date=May 2008]References
External links
* [http://www.u.arizona.edu/~smusser/ljtranslation.html A translation] Dead link|date=May 2008 by Sonja Musser Golladay
* [http://games.rengeekcentral.com/ Alphonso X Book of Games] at RenGeekCentral
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