Mancala
The name Mancala (or Mankala'h) refers not to a single game but to an entire family of games popular in Africa and the Middle East. The name probably comes from the Arabic word "naqala": "to move".Although you can buy wooden Mancala sets and boards the original appeal of the game was that you can play with nothing more than a few holes in the ground and some seeds or pebbles. Players today sometimes improvise with plastic mugs and coins.
There is no single set of Mancala rules however the different versions and all follow the same principle. The basic concept is that of "sowing" the seeds: a player takes the seeds from one "pit" and "sows" them around the other pits, usually one seed per pit until the original harvest is exhausted. Depending on the exact version being played pieces can be won and captured depending on how the seeds fall. Note that all seeds are usually shared property - players do not have their own pieces. In general a player can sow seeds from any pit on their side of the board and wins by owning and capturing most seeds in this way.
The most common forms of Mancala are the "Two-Rank" games. Here there are two rows of pits, one for each player, possibly with a pit at each end. The seeds are sown around all the pits as if they formed a circle. Less common are the "Four-Rank" versions. Here each player has two rows of pits and seeds are sown only within a player's own pits.
Well known Mancala games include:
|