Mangala (game)

Mangala is a traditional Turkish mancala game. It is strictly related to the mancala games Iraqi Halusa, Palestinian Al-manqala, and Baltic German Bohnenspiel. There is also another game referred as Mangala played by the Bedouin in Egypt, and Sudan, but it has quite different rules.

The game can be traced in Ottoman miniatures starting from the 16th century. According to the Turkish ethnologue Metin And, the "mancala" of The Arabian Nights (fifteenth night) could be directly related to this game. It was first described in 1694 by British orientalist Thomas Hyde. The game was also referred as Mangola in some later western works.

The classic mangala game is still known in Turkey, but mangala played in Gaziantep, in Southern Anatolia, is more similar to Syrian mancala La'b Madjnuni (Crazy Game). There are many other mancala variants played in Anatolia: Pıç in Erzurum, Altıev in Safranbolu, Meneli Taş in Ilgın, etc.