Continuing with a look at some older games worth play we look at Alquerque this week.
Alquerque (also known as Qirkat) is a strategy board game that is thought to have originated in the Middle East. It is considered to be the parent of draughts (checkers) and Fanorona.
“The game does not appear in literature until late in the 10th century when the muslim author Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani mentioned Qirkat in his 24 volume work Kitab al-Aghani (“Book of Songs”). This work, however, made no mention of the rules of the game,” notes Wikipedia.
“In Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, R. C. Bell writes that ‘when the Moors invaded Spain they took El-quirkat with them’. Rules are included in Libro de los juegos (“Book of games”) commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile in the 13th century.”
The game of Alquerque is played on a special board of 5 x 5 points with lines between them to indicate allowed moves. Since it is a specialty board you will need to fashion one.
You can easily draw one; first draw a 5 x 5 orthogonal grid. Then draw two diagonal lines - from each corner to the opposite corner. Finally draw four diagonal lines in the form of a square that connects the midpoints of each side.
While drawing a board is easy enough so too is doing a quick Internet search, and downloading an Alquerque board to print.
Alquerque is played with 12 black pieces and 12 white pieces in a similar way to draughts (checkers).
The player playing black pieces places them on the 10 points of the nearest two rows plus the two rightmost points on the middle row as the player looks at it. Again the initial layout is easily found online.
The other player sets the white pieces up in exactly the same way. This leaves only the middle point without a piece upon it.
The objective of the game is to take all of the opponent’s pieces or to produce a position such that the opponent is unable to move, so again checkers in most respects, but with a unique board.
A piece may only move along the lines inscribed upon the board. For each turn a piece makes either a capturing move or an ordinary move.
Whenever a piece has an opponent’s piece adjacent to it and the point immediately beyond the opponent’s piece is vacant, the opponent’s piece can be captured. A piece is taken by simply hopping over it into the vacant point beyond and removing it from the board, so again very familiar in terms of checkers.
Unlike an ordinary move, a capturing move can consist of several such hops - if a piece takes an opponent’s piece and the new position allows it to take another piece, then it can do so straight away. The move finishes when the position of the capturing piece no longer allows it to take any more pieces or the player could make another capture but decides not to.
Note that it is not mandatory to take the maximum number of captures on a turn, which is generally the case in most checker variants.
An ordinary move is made by simply moving a piece along a line to an adjacent point.
The game is won by the player who first manages to take all his opponent’s pieces or by the player who has more pieces when it becomes apparent that no more pieces will be taken. Alternatively, a player can win by rendering the other player unable to move.
Again, note a difference in Alquerque is that there is no promotion to a king, although there are suggestions there may have been.
“In his book Draughts in relation to chess and alquerque (2005) Arie van der Stoep contends that Alquerque de doze was in medieval times played by the following rules. Counters can move and capture, by the short leap, forwards and sideways. Capture is not compulsory. Counters are promoted to Sultans at the last rank. The Sultan (King) moves and captures in all directions. Counters are obliged to follow the pattern on the board. Goal is to capture all the opponent’s counters,” explains the games description at www.boardgamegeek.com
“There existed two variants of Medieval Alquerque. In one version the Sultan can only move one square (short Sultan), and captures by the short leap. This was fore mostly played in countries within the Roman sphere of influence.
“In the other variant the Sultan moves any number of squares, and captures like the King in international draughts, landing anywhere behind the captured piece. This was fore mostly played in countries within the Arabic sphere of influence. In Sultan endgames, a majority of at least two Sultans is necessary for a win.”
Since checker variants abound, and many are worth exploring, it can be fun to find one that you may not be familiar with, and Alquerque is certainly worth some play time.
