Playing card

 ( Chinese Inventions ) 

Other games revolving around alcoholic drinking involved using playing cards of a sort from the Tang dynasty onward. However, these cards did not contain suits or numbers. Instead, they were printed with instructions or forfeits for whoever drew them.

The earliest dated instance of a game involving cards occurred on 17 July 1294 when the Ming Department of Punishments caught two gamblers, Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Zhugou, playing with paper cards. Wood blocks for printing the cards were impounded, together with nine of the actual cards.Lo, Andrew. (2000). The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 63(3), 389–406.

William Henry Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which doubled as both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for, similar to trading card games. Using paper money was inconvenient and risky so they were substituted by play money known as "money cards". One of the earliest games in which we know the rules is madiao, a trick-taking game, which dates to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Fifteenth-century scholar Lu Rong described it is as being played with 38 "money cards" divided into four suits: 9 in coins, 9 in strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings), 9 in (of coins or of strings), and 11 in tens of myriads (a myriad is 10,000). The two latter suits had Water Margin characters instead of pips on them with Chinese to mark their rank and suit. The suit of coins is in reverse order with 9 of coins being the lowest going up to 1 of coins as the high card. Money-suited playing cards at The Mahjong Tile Set

A near complete pack of Mamluk playing cards dating to the 15th century, and of similar appearance to the fragments above, was discovered by Leo Aryeh Mayer in the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, in 1939. It is not a complete set and is actually composed of three different packs, probably to replace missing cards. The Topkapı pack originally contained 52 cards comprising four suits: polo-sticks, coins, swords, and cups. Each suit contained ten pip cards and three court cards, called malik (king), nā'ib malik (viceroy or deputy king), and thānī nā'ib (second or under-deputy). The thānī nā'ib is a non-existent title so it may not have been in the earliest versions; without this rank, the Mamluk suits would structurally be the same as a Ganjifa suit. In fact, the word "Kanjifah" appears in Arabic on the king of swords and is still used in parts of the Middle East to describe modern playing cards. Influence from further east can explain why the Mamluks, most of whom were Central Asian Turkic Kipchaks, called their cups tuman, which means "myriad" (10,000) in the Turkic, Mongolian, and Jurchen language languages.Pollett, Andrea "The Playing-Card", Vol. 31, No 1 pp. 34–41. Wilkinson postulated that the cups may have been derived from inverting the Chinese and Jurchen ideogram for "myriad", , which was pronounced as something like man in Middle Chinese.

The Mamluk court cards showed abstract designs or calligraphy not depicting persons possibly due to religious proscription in Sunni Islam, though they did bear the ranks on the cards. Nā'ib would be borrowed into French ( nahipi), Italian ( naibi), and Spanish ( naipes), the latter word still in common usage. Panels on the pip cards in two suits show they had a reverse ranking, a feature found in madiao, ganjifa, and old European card games like ombre, tarot, and Spoil Five. Mamluk cards. Cards.old.no. Retrieved on 2015-05-10. A fragment of two uncut sheets of Moorish-styled cards of a similar was found in Spain and dated to the early 15th century.Wintle, Simon. Moorish playing cards at The World of Playing Cards. Retrieved 22 July 2015.

Export of these cards (from Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus), ceased after the fall of the Mamluks in the 16th century. The Mamluk Cards. L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10. The rules to play these games are lost but they are believed to be plain trick games without trumps. No trump trick-taking games at pagat.com

The earliest record of playing cards in central Europe is believed by some researchers to be a ban on card games in the city of Bern in 1367,Peter F. Kopp: Die frühesten Spielkarten in der Schweiz. In: Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 30 (1973), pp. 130–145, here 130.Timothy B. Husband: The World in Play. Luxury Cards 1430–1540. Metropolitan Museum of Art 2016, S. 13. but this source is disputed as the earliest copy available dates to 1398 and may have been amended.Hellmut Rosenfeld: Zu den frühesten Spielkarten in der Schweiz. Eine Entgegnung. In: Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 32 (1975), pp. 179–180. Generally accepted as the first Italian reference is a Florentine ban dating to 1377.Detlef Hoffmann: Kultur- und Kunstgeschichte der Spielkarte. Marburg: Jonas Verlag 1995, p. 43. Also appearing in 1377 was the treatise by John of Rheinfelden, in which he describes playing cards and their moral meaning. From this year onwards more and more records (usually bans) of playing cards occur,Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber: Die ältesten Spielkarten und die auf das Kartenspiel Bezug habenden Urkunden des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Heitz, Straßburg 1937. first appearing in England as early as 1413.

Among the early patterns of playing card were those derived from the Mamluk suits of cups, coins, swords, and polo sticks, which are still used in traditional Latin-suited.Donald Laycock in Skeptical—a Handbook of Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, ed Donald Laycock, David Vernon, Colin Groves, Simon Brown, Imagecraft, Canberra, 1989, , p. 67 As polo was an obscure sport to Europeans then, the polo-sticks became batons or cudgels. Andy's Playing Cards - The Tarot And Other Early Cards - page XVII - the moorish deck. L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10. In addition to Catalonia in 1371, the presence of playing cards is attested in 1377 in Switzerland, and 1380 in many locations including Florence and Paris.J. Brunet i Bellet, Lo joch de naibs, naips o cartas, Barcelona, 1886, quote in the "Diccionari de rims de 1371 : darrerament/per ensajar/de bandejar/los seus guarips/joch de nayps/de nit jugàvem, see also le site trionfi.com Wide use of playing cards in Europe can, with some certainty, be traced from 1377 onward.

In the account books of Johanna, Duchess of Brabant and Wenceslaus I, Duke of Luxembourg, an entry dated May 14, 1379, by receiver general of Brabant Renier Hollander reads: "Given to Monsieur and Madame four peters and two florins, worth eight and a half sheep, for the purchase of packs of cards". In his book of accounts for 1392 or 1393, Charles or Charbot Poupart, treasurer of the household of Charles VI of France, records payment for the painting of three sets of cards.Olmert, Michael (1996). Milton's Teeth and Ovid's Umbrella: Curiouser & Curiouser Adventures in History, p.135. Simon & Schuster, New York. .

From about 1418 to 1450 professional card makers in Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg created printed decks. Playing cards even competed with devotional images as the most common uses for in this period. Most early woodcuts of all types were coloured after printing, either by hand or, from about 1450 onwards, . These 15th-century playing cards were probably painted. The Flemish Hunting Deck, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the oldest complete set of ordinary playing cards made in Europe from the 15th century.

As cards spread from Italy to Germanic countries, the Latin suits were replaced with the suits of leaves (or shields), hearts (or roses), bells, and acorns. France initially used Latin-suited cards and the Aluette pack used today in western France may be a relic of that time, but around 1480, French card manufacturers, perhaps in order to facilitate mass production, went over to very much simplified versions of the German suit symbols. A combination of Latin and Germanic suit pictures and names resulted in the French suits of trèfles (clovers), carreaux (tiles), cœurs (hearts), and piques (pikes) around 1480. The trèfle (clover) was probably derived from the acorn and the pique (pike) from the leaf of the German suits. The names pique and spade, however, may have derived from the sword (spade) of the Italian suits. In England, the French suits were eventually used, although the earliest packs circulating may have had Latin suits. This may account for why the English called the clovers "clubs" and the pikes "spades".

In the late 14th century, Europeans changed the Mamluk court cards to represent European royalty and attendants. In a description from 1377, the earliest courts were originally a seated "king", an upper marshal that held his suit symbol up, and a lower marshal that held it down. History of Playing-Cards at International Playing-Card Society websiteWintle, Simon. Early references to Playing Cards at World of Playing Cards. The latter two correspond with the Ober and Unter cards still found today in German and Swiss playing cards. The Italians and Iberians replaced the Ober/Unter system with the "Knight" and "nocat=y" or "nocat=y" before 1390, perhaps to make the cards more visually distinguishable.

In England, the lowest court card was called the "knave" which originally meant male child (compare German Knabe), so in this context the character could represent the "prince", son to the king and queen; the meaning servant developed later. Queens appeared sporadically in packs as early as 1377, especially in Germany. Although the Germans abandoned the queen before the 1500s, the French permanently picked it up and placed it under the king.

In 1628, the Mystery of Makers of Playing Cards of the City of London (now the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards) was incorporated under a royal charter by Charles I; the Company received Livery company from the Court of Aldermen of the City of London in 1792. The Company still exists today, having expanded its member ranks to include "card makers... card collectors, dealers, bridge players, and magicians".

During the mid 16th century, Portuguese traders introduced playing cards to Japan. The first indigenous Japanese deck was the Tenshō karuta named after the nocat=y period. Andy's Playing Cards - Japanese and Korean Cards. L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.