Narde has two histories and they sit awkwardly together. One is eastern and runs for thousands of years, a game with a legend about its inventor and no author at all. The other is short and almost administrative: records, ranks and championships, the first of them held in 1947.
What follows is what is known for certain about both — and where the certain part ends.
Five thousand years, and several starting points
The careful estimate: the game arose in the East roughly five thousand years ago. A softer figure is also given, around four and a half thousand. The main point is not disputed: it is one of the oldest games in the world and older than five thousand years.
The starting point is named differently. One account points to Persia — modern Iran — and the third millennium BC; another traces the line to the Royal Game of Ur, played from 2600 BC with four-sided dice rather than the six-sided ones we know.
A distinction worth keeping: as a board game in its present shape, nard took form between the third and sixth centuries AD. The five thousand years belong to the ancestors, not to the game played today.
The legend of the vizier who was given ten days
The game has no author but it does have a story. A Persian text credits its invention to the vizier Bozorgmehr Bokhtagan, who served Shah Khosrow, and says he managed it in ten days. Another text ties the game’s origin to Ardashir I, founder of the Sasanian dynasty.
Both versions live side by side, and neither displaces the other.
One game, a dozen names
The names trace the route the game travelled. In Europe it is backgammon, in Italy tavola, in Turkey tavla. In Azerbaijan the most widespread version is Narde, called shesh-besh. India and Egypt have their own related games.
The two best-known variants are the short game and the long one — the same distinction this whole site is built around.
The Russian thread: “tavlei”
In Russian the game was long called tavlei, and it is under that name that it turns up in texts that were not about games at all.
In the seventeenth century keepers of morals threatened hellish torment for “the sovereign himself, his children and Christians” should he fail to forbid dice, knucklebones, chess and tavlei in his own house. Other countries issued their own prohibitions, and they helped very little.
In the historical song “The Cossacks and Prince Repnin”, recorded in Siberia in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Cossacks play “with golden tavlei”.
The Azerbaijani thread: from Spartakiad to championship
Here the second history begins, the one with dates and records in it.
In 1934 nard was included in the second Republic Spartakiad of the then USSR, and in the same year the Nakhchivan team won the nard event. Thirteen years later, in 1947, the first Republic championship in nard was held.
Azerbaijani literary classics wrote about nard too: the game was not only a courtyard but a subject.
The draw that did not exist
One turn in the rules happened within living memory, and it shows the game’s history has not finished.
The game was conceived as an uncompromising argument in which somebody must win, and for centuries classical Narde had no concept of a draw at all. The draw was introduced by the Nard Federation and has been in use in face-to-face tournaments for many years now.
Sport: April 2022
In April 2022 narde was recognised as an official sport in Russia. Ranks and titles followed, and with them the first official champions: the first Russian champion in Narde was Anatoly Krasilov.
It is worth saying plainly: the game is five thousand years old and the sporting discipline is a few years old. The rules, the judging and the very notion of a result are still settling in this part of the history.
The game itself — its rules, the disputes about them and its variants — is covered by the rules page and the comparison of variants.
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