Medieval games: Women playing chess Early medieval games: Dice, checkers, chess The games of medieval Europe were mainly the same as those of Egypt, Greece, and Rome: dice, knucklebones, marbles, checkers. But there were some new games, too. [...]
Medieval Islamic games: Muslims playing chess in Spain Chess from India The big new game of the Islamic Empire was chess. The Arabs learned to play chess from the Sassanians when [...]
Topkapi Palace, Istanbul (Turkey, 1400s AD) By the time the Ottoman sultans conquered Constantinople from the Roman emperors in 1453 AD, the old palace of the Roman emperors was really very, very old. The Roman [...]
Sports history: The Discus-Thrower (ca. 450 BC) The earliest sports Indo-European people like Central Asians and the Greeks had a very strong tradition of athletic competition. Competing in, and winning, [...]
Men playing polo When was polo invented? Polo was first invented in the Islamic Empire, during the Abbasid period (as far as we can tell). Probably it comes from earlier [...]
Kids with challenges ride special bikes in this bike race project (Wheels to Succeed) A Central Asia project As you can see from reading the Alpamysh, horse racing was a [...]
Women of the Tang court playing double land (about 800 AD) - Ancient Chinese games Where did Chinese games come from? In ancient China, as in other places, both board [...]
Wrestlers from Samarkand (Uzbekistan, 600s AD) People in Central Asia played games that helped them get better at skills they would need in their lives. They needed to ride horses [...]
Girls playing jacks with knucklebones Playing jacks To get a better idea what it was like to be a kid in Central Asia, try playing some of the games that [...]
