The popularity of playing cars for many centuries is easily explainable: you can spend time with friends playing games or card tricks with them, decompose complex solitaire alone, tell fortunes or build a house of cards. And all this - with the help of a small deck, which you can take with you to the beach or on a picnic.History of playing cards
The earliest mention of playing cards or dominoes - in China the same word still means both, is found in Chinese literature of the 10th century, but without marking cards and games that people played.
However, there are other opinions. Archaeologists of the same China believe that the history of the creation of playing cards dates back to the time of the Tang Dynasty, that is, cards were known already in the 7th-8th centuries. Only they were made not of paper, but of wood or ivory.
China? India? Who is next?
There is no exact information about where and when playing cards appeared. There is an Egyptian version according to which maps are a carrier of information about the relationship between the universe, God and man. An encrypted message from the priests of ancient Egypt to future generations.
An equally beautiful legend associated with playing cards exists in India. The cards were an illustration of the various incarnations of the gods on Earth and their exploits.
It turned out to be impossible to find out the history of the origin of playing cards. Mention of games, to one degree or another similar to card games, using sheets of paper with images, are found in documentary sources of the X-XII centuries in almost all the peoples of the East, including Korea and Japan.
Spread in Europe
The history of the appearance of playing cards in Europe can be traced. Maps have been known here since the 1370s. They were probably brought to Italy or Spain by merchants from Egypt or the crusader knights returning to their homeland along with other captured trophies. The fact that maps were imported to Europe from an Islamic country is confirmed by the fact that there were no images of people in accordance with Islamic religious tradition.
Like the Chinese originals, the first European maps were hand-painted, making them luxuries for the rich. In the account book of the French king Charles VI, payment was made to 56 sous court jester Jacques Grangonner for painting a deck of cards for the king’s entertainment.Based on this record, researchers of the history of playing cards for some time considered him the author of their invention, but then this error was refuted.The new fun gradually spread throughout Europe and during the fifteenth century became a favorite pastime of the upper classes.Guttenberg's invention of a printing press at the beginning of the 15th century significantly reduces production costs. In addition, in 1480, in France, by analogy with the press, the practice of painting through stencils was introduced. Mass production of cards has expanded the social attractiveness of card games and increased their inherent advantages over traditional indoor games, and accelerated their distribution throughout Europe.
If you track in which century playing cards appeared in the context of countries, then in most cases it will be the second half of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Card Games Popularity
The main reason for the interest in cards was the ability to play with a different number of players. Prior to the advent of cards, the choice was limited: either chess for two players, or a more universal multiplayer dice game.
Card games are more diverse and provide an opportunity for entertainment for players with a different mentality and temperament - from unskilled gambling to more sophisticated and complex ones.
For some reason, playing cards attracted more ladies of high society. The associations between card game and seduction are widespread in European literature and painting. This factor, along with the proliferation of gambling card games, has led to frequent condemnation of card games by the church and even to the prohibition of certain games by civil authorities.
If the history of playing cards can be tried to recover from the preserved documentary evidence, then with regard to card games, everything is much more complicated. One can only assume that unpretentious games first appeared, in which it was necessary to group cards according to drawings or suits. The second type of such entertainment was solitaire. Among the nobility was popular game for money, for their fortune. And ordinary people played simple games in order to pass the time.
Replenishment of the Treasury
Gambling card associations have prompted some governments to seek their share in the business. The fiscal history of playing cards is also interesting. In France of the 17th century, the Minister of Finance of King Louis XIV, Cardinal Mazarin, replenished the royal treasury, effectively turning the Palace of Versailles into one huge card casino.Some countries have made card production a state monopoly on pain of fines, imprisonment, and even the death penalty of falsified criminals. Less bloodthirsty limited to the introduction of special taxes.Despite advances in printing and production and the relentless popularity of games, the production of playing cards remains a highly specialized and competitive market. In the 20th century, many traditional suppliers went out of business or were taken over by larger companies.National decks
The history of playing cards in Europe is the history of the evolution of images from the original Mamluk deck, some of which have survived to the present, to national decks. Since Islam forbids the depiction of man, the Mameluke cards were decorated with arabesques.
Spreading over the countries of Europe, in whose religion there were no such prohibitions, cards changed their appearance. Map producers in each country adapted them to their national culture and symbols. On the maps of the major lasso people began to draw people in suits corresponding to the modern fashion of the highest nobility. Eventually, several national decks formed, which are still used in countries of origin.
The evolutionary process ended with the creation of an international deck.
International deck
It is reliably known in which year playing cards appeared in the usual modern form for us. The last fundamental change in the design of cards was introduced in 1830.
Human figures on playing cards were initially depicted in full growth. In the cribbage game, there was a figurative expression to indicate the position of a card with a figure: "one for his nose" and "two for his heels."
In other games, such an image was a drawback. Observing players could identify cards on the hands of their opponents by the natural practice of turning the card head up.
This problem was resolved by the image of the torso of the figure on both sides of the mid-horizontal line of the map. This invention quickly spread to all regional decks.
By the middle of the 19th century, all the elements of a modern playing card were defined and spread everywhere. Kings, ladies and jacks are firmly entrenched in the deck. Worms, spades, clubs and tambourines were printed on cards issued in the Old and New Worlds. Corner side indices appeared in the diametrical corners of the map.
These improvements seem insignificant, but it took hundreds of years to invent, implement and combine them into one elegant package - a standard playing card.
The most successful and universally recognized deck is one that is based on a set of 52 cards divided into four suits, each of which contains 13 ranks, so each card is uniquely identified by suit and rank.
Ace of spades
Ace of Spades is considered the emblem of the deck. Traditionally, it is used to display the logo of the manufacturer or brand name, as a certificate of quality and an identification mark.
This practice began in the seventeenth century in England, when a decree was introduced by King James I on local manufacturers of playing cards. The ace of spades was supposed to have a typography emblem so that the manufacturer could be identified by the deck, and the seal of the fiscal authority as evidence of tax payment. The duty was abolished in the 1960s, but the practice of displaying the manufacturer's logo on the ace of spades remained.
Playing card attributes
The signs of the suit of the international, or standard, deck indicate two black and two red suits, namely peaks, clubs, worms and tambourines.
Where did the suits of playing cards come from? Signs were first used on Italian and Spanish decks. Soon after, nature-oriented badges adorned German and Swiss decks. Simple screen designs reduced the cost of playing cards in France, and French designs were slightly modified in England. This modified version of the French deck was internationally recognized.
Playing cards with national suits are still common in some countries, but all international competitions use only international badges and suit names.
Ranks are indicated by numbers from 1 to 10 on the "spot cards". Ranks of higher cards are indicated by the symbols J, Q and K.
In most Western card games, the number 1 denotes the ace and is marked with the symbol A. In games based on the superiority of one rank over another, the ace is considered the most important card that surpasses all the others. In games based on a numerical value, it is usually considered a unit, as in cribbage, or takes the value of eleven, as in blackjack. In games based on the ordering of cards or their series, the ace can take on the value of both the oldest and the smallest cards, or simply take its place in the ring sequence of cards: QKA-2-3.
Jokers
Standard international decks usually contain two or more additional cards called jokers, each of which depicts a traditional court jester. Not all card games use them. In games with jokers, the latter are used in different ways. In some games, they take an indefinite value. The player can use the joker instead of any desired “natural” card.
The joker is a symbol of irony in the deck. Endowed with special powers of imperial power, it is a card that solves all problems and wins all tricks, like in poker. A card that can be any card. In many cases, he is an undefeated deck wizard. Nevertheless, despite this convincing and enviable role, the joker does not have any real defining characteristics. A kind of vague and unexplored character of the Anglo-American deck.Special Design Elements
The reverse side of the card, initially simple, tended to acquire random, and sometimes deliberate, decals. The card makers sought to make them less visible by printing a pattern of small dots on the back. Advances in color printing in the nineteenth century led to a wide range of card shirt designs.
Another invention of the XIX century was the practice of indexing the rank and suit of each card in diagonal angles. This allowed players to identify their cards without risking to reveal them to their rivals.
Russia and card games
In the seventeenth century, playing cards appeared in Russia. Where from? Sure, from Europe. From which country, one can only speculate. At the beginning of the century, Russia fought with the Poles, and from the middle began to attract mercenaries to the military service in the regiments of the "German system". A deck of cards could well have been a trophy or property of a reitar who served the king.
Russian playing cards: history and style
The first Russian cards have a lot of individuality, both in the design, reminiscent of embroidery on a tapestry, and in the attitude of the tsarist government towards the income from this business. In 1817, with the consent of Emperor Alexander I, the Imperial Card Factory was founded. Monopoly revenues were sent to imperial educational homes, and some pupils were employed there. On an ace they printed a pelican raising his chicks.
In the nineteenth century, the English company De la Rue was the main exporter of playing cards to Russia. In October 1842, the younger brother of Thomas De La Roux, Paul Bienvenuu De La Roux, went to St. Petersburg, where he was appointed by the royal grace the superintendent of the Russian card monopoly.
A roller mill was sent from London to St. Petersburg. Paints, paper and other equipment for making royal playing cards were supplied by De la Rue. The Russian establishment was an important buyer of De la Rue if the company opened its first foreign subsidiary in the country.
His Imperial Majesty had reason to be satisfied with the results of cooperation. Paul, as the Fields in Russia was called, managed the business so skillfully that by 1847 the production of the tsarist monopoly had grown to four million card decks per year.
Conclusion
This review in no way exhausts the variety of hypotheses about the time and place of occurrence of playing cards still used in Europe and America, not to mention other countries of the world and specialized decks of Jewish or Scandinavian cards, Tarot cards and others.
In a few decades, any study of the history of the occurrence of playing cards will certainly be supplemented by a section on computer card games. But to look into the depths of centuries and to get to the truth will be possible only with the help of a time machine.
The fact of the appearance of almost identical sets of 52 pictures from different nations may be associated not so much with the search for entertainment. Perhaps at some time they were used for magic rituals or fortune telling. And fell into the hands of the enemy from the destroyed temples.
Or maybe this is really the temptation of the devil, sent to people, as monks and rulers of the Middle Ages claimed, who fought against the spread of card games under pain of death?
This mystery is hidden in the mists of time.