| rdfs:comment | - Mangala → Italian. Mangala is a Turkish mancala game which was very popular in the 17th and 18th century. According to Metin And, a Turkish ethnologue, the game could be related to the "mancala" of The Arabian Nights (fifteenth night), one of the first literary accounts of mancala games. The game was depicted in Turkish paintings as early as in the 16th century. In Europe, it was first mentioned in 1664 by the French traveller Jean de Thévenot in his account "Relation d'un voyage fait au Levant". In 1694, the game was mentioned by the English traveller Thomas Hyde in a list of approximately 30 games. Mangala was very popular in Constantinople in 1771, when it was observed by the French traveller Pierre Augustin Guys. The game was also found by Edward Daniel Clarke in Balaklava, Crimea (now
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| abstract | - Mangala → Italian. Mangala is a Turkish mancala game which was very popular in the 17th and 18th century. According to Metin And, a Turkish ethnologue, the game could be related to the "mancala" of The Arabian Nights (fifteenth night), one of the first literary accounts of mancala games. The game was depicted in Turkish paintings as early as in the 16th century. In Europe, it was first mentioned in 1664 by the French traveller Jean de Thévenot in his account "Relation d'un voyage fait au Levant". In 1694, the game was mentioned by the English traveller Thomas Hyde in a list of approximately 30 games. Mangala was very popular in Constantinople in 1771, when it was observed by the French traveller Pierre Augustin Guys. The game was also found by Edward Daniel Clarke in Balaklava, Crimea (now a suburb of Sevastopol, Ukraine) in 1801 and by Peter Emund Laurent on Chios Island (now Greece) in 1818. It was also mentioned in two popular novels that were published in the early 19th century in London: "Ida of Athens" (1809) and "Anastasius" (1819). Mangala might have influenced Mandoli (Hydra Island, Greece) and Ban-Ban (Bosnia). Its rules are similar (but not identical) to the Baltic German Bohnenspiel, which originated in Persia where it was known as Manqala or Manqalat. The classic Mangala is still known in Turkey. However, the Mangala played in Gaziantep in Southeast Anatolia is not related to it at all, but is a close variant of La'b Madjnuni ("The Crazy Game"), which was played in Damascus (Syria) in the late 19th century. More games called "Mangala" (again with quite different rules) are popular among the Bedouins in Egypt. Mangala might be the first commercialized mancala game in a western country. A game called "mangola" (a common synonym for the Turkish Mangala at this time) was published by Jaques in England in 1863, after Walter Whitmore Jones claimed to have invented it. Jaques pattern book covering shows a thick wood board with two rows of six cells in which something like white beans are placed. The records of copyrights kept by the Stationers company, the Public Records Office at Kew, includes a volume covering 1862-64, which has an entry showing that the rules of Mangola were protected by copyright at that time. Richard Ballam, a board games collector, found an advertisement in the Illustrated London News (December 23, 1865) saying: "Mangola, a new game. By the author of Squails, Frogs & Toads etc. Wholesale Jaques & Son". Claiming foreign or nearly forgotten boardgames as own designs happens frequently in the game industry. A minor change of the rules and the game can be copyrighted. Well-known examples are Pente, which is a simplified variation of the Japanese Ninuki Renju (and not an invention of Gary Gabrel), and Othello, a variation of Reversi with just half the game-tree complexity (and not an invention of Goro Hasegawa). See also Chuba.
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