China playing card found near
Turpan Playing cards were most likely invented during the
Tang dynasty around the 9th century, as a result of the usage of woodblock printing technology. The reference to a leaf game in a 9th-century text known as the
Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang (), written by Tang dynasty writer Su E, is often cited in connection to the existence of playing cards. However the connection between playing cards and the leaf game is disputed. The reference describes Princess Tongchang, daughter of
Emperor Yizong of Tang, playing the "leaf game" in 868 with members of the Wei clan, the family of the
princess's husband. The first known book on the "leaf" game was called the
Yezi Gexi and allegedly written by a Tang woman. It received commentary by writers of subsequent dynasties. The
Song dynasty (960–1279) scholar
Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserts that the "leaf" game existed at least since the mid-Tang dynasty and associated its invention with the
development of printed sheets as a writing medium. However, Ouyang also claims that the "leaves" were pages of a book used in a board game played with dice, and that the rules of the game were lost by 1067. 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.
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,
Persia Despite the wide variety of different patterns, the suits show a uniformity of structure. Every suit contains twelve cards with the top two usually being the
court cards of
king and
vizier and the bottom ten being
pip cards. Some decks can contain 8 suits to make a 96-card deck, like the deck for
Ganjifa. Half the suits use reverse ranking for their pip cards. There are many motifs for the suit pips but some include coins, clubs, jugs, and swords which resemble later
Mamluk and Latin suits.
Michael Dummett speculated that Mamluk cards may have descended from an earlier deck which consisted of 48 cards divided into four suits each with ten pip cards and two court cards.
Egypt By the 11th century, playing cards were spreading throughout the Asian continent and later came into Egypt. The oldest surviving cards in the world are four fragments found in the
Keir Collection and one in the
Benaki Museum. They are dated to the 12th and 13th centuries (late
Fatimid,
Ayyubid, and early
Mamluk periods). 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 languages. 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
maw. A fragment of two uncut sheets of
Moorish-styled cards of a similar was found in Spain and dated to the early 15th century. Export of these cards (from Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus), ceased after the fall of the Mamluks in the 16th century. The rules to play these games are lost but they are believed to be
plain trick games without
trumps.
Spread across Europe and early design changes Playing cards probably came to Europe from the East, specifically those used by the
Mamluks in Egypt, and probably arrived first in Spain since the earliest European mention of playing cards appears in 1371 in a
Catalan language rhyme dictionary which lists
naip among words ending in
-ip. According to
Trevor Denning, the only attested meaning of this Catalan word is "playing card". This suggests that cards may have been "reasonably well known" in
Catalonia (now part of Spain) at that time, perhaps introduced as a result of maritime trade with the Mamluk rulers of Egypt. 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, but this source is disputed as the earliest copy available dates to 1398 and may have been amended. Generally accepted as the first Italian reference is a
Florentine ban dating to 1377. 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, As
polo was an obscure sport to Europeans then, the polo-sticks became batons or cudgels. 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. 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. 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
woodcuts in this period. Most early woodcuts of all types were coloured after printing, either by hand or, from about 1450 onwards,
stencils. 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 (clovers), (tiles), (hearts), and (pikes) around 1480. The
trèfle (clover) was probably derived from the acorn and the (pike) from the leaf of the German suits. The names and
spade, however, may have derived from the sword () 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. 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 / system with the "
Knight" and
"" or "" 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 ), 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 status 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 named after the
period.
Later design changes Packs with corner and edge indices (i.e. the value of the card printed at the corner(s) or edges of the card) enabled players to hold their cards close together in a fan with one hand (instead of the two hands previously used). An early example of a pack with edge indices and Latin suits was printed by Infirerra and dated 1693. However, this feature was commonly used only from the end of the 18th century. The first American-manufactured (French) deck with this innovation was the Saladee's Patent, printed by Samuel Hart in 1864. In 1870, he and his cousins at Lawrence & Cohen followed up with the Squeezers, the first cards with indices that had a large diffusion. Not being registered card-makers, they worked with printer Thomas Wheeler to produce a French-suited pack using this patent, which was first sold in 1801. Sharp corners wear out more quickly, and could possibly reveal the card's value, so they were replaced with rounded corners. Before the mid-19th century, British, American, and French players preferred blank backs. The need to hide wear and tear and to discourage writing on the back led cards to have designs, pictures, photos, or advertising on the reverse. by Samuel Hart, The
United States introduced the
joker into the deck. It was devised for the game of
euchre, which spread from Europe to America beginning shortly after the
American Revolutionary War. In euchre, the highest trump card is the Jack of the trump suit, called the
right bower (from the German
Bauer); the second-highest trump, the
left bower, is the jack of the suit of the same color as trumps. The joker was invented c. 1860 as a third trump, the
imperial or
best bower, which ranked higher than the other two
bowers. The name of the card is believed to derive from
juker, a variant name for euchre. The earliest reference to a joker functioning as a
wild card dates to 1875 with a variation of poker. Playing cards were also some of the earliest products to be sold in packaging. Early card packs were sold in paper sleeves held closed with a string. The 19th century saw the apparition of progressively more complex cardboard packaging, with tuck-flap boxes becoming common by the end of the century.
Cellophane wrappers were common by 1937.
Modern-era manufacturers and artists The Japanese video game company
Nintendo was founded in 1889 to produce and distribute , most notably .
Hanafuda cards had become popular after Japan banned most forms of gambling in 1882 but largely left
hanafuda untouched. Sales of
hanafuda cards were popular with the
yakuza-run gaming parlors in Kyoto. Other card manufacturers had opted to leave the market not wanting to be associated with criminal ties, but Nintendo founder
Fusajiro Yamauchi continued, becoming the largest producer of
hanafuda within a few years. With the increase of the cards' popularity, Yamauchi hired assistants to
mass-produce to satisfy the demand. Even with a favorable start, the business faced financial struggle due to operating in a
niche market, the slow and expensive manufacturing process, high product price, alongside long durability of the cards, which impacted sales due to the low replacement rate. As a solution, Nintendo produced a cheaper and lower-quality line of playing cards, , while also conducting product offerings in other cities such as
Osaka, where card game profits were high. In addition, local merchants were interested in the prospect of a continuous renewal of decks, thus avoiding the suspicions that reusing cards would generate. == Research ==