La'b Madjnuni, also known as Crazy Game, is a

mancala Mancala ( ''manqalah'') is a family of two-player Turns, rounds and time-keeping systems in games, turn-based Strategy game, strategy board games played with small stones, beans, marbles or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board ...

game played in

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

(

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

) in the late 19th century.

Rules

Source:{{cite web , url=http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Culin/Mancla1894/index.html , title=Mancala, The National Game of Africa , author=Stewart Culin , publisher=

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

, accessdate=2 September 2011 , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110809025642/http://gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Culin/Mancla1894/index.html , archivedate=9 August 2011 *The La'b Madjnuni board has seven pits, called bute, "houses," in front of each player. *At the beginning of the game, at least 2 pieces are placed in each pit. *The first player takes all the pieces from the hole at the right of his row and drops them counterclockwise, one at a time. *If the last piece ends in an occupied pit, then all the pieces in that pit including the last one are distributed as before. *These multiple turns continue until the distribution process ends, either the last piece drops into an empty hole, or it drops into a hole containing one or three pieces. *If the last piece ends up in a pit which, after sowing, contains exactly two or four pieces, all pieces in this pit are captured with those in the hole opposite. Also, if there is a continuous line of pits with either 2 or 4 pieces before the one where the capture has occurred, all the pieces in those and their opposite pits are captured as well. * Culin wrote that the ''"game ends when all the pits are empty"'', but that's not possible. The exact ending rules is, therefore, unknown. The player who captured most pieces wins the game. La'b roseya is a variant of this game that each hole has seven pieces (cowries) at game setup, and played by children in Syria.

References

Traditional mancala games

Rules

See also

References