Mangala IV
Game type: Two-player two-row mancala without stores; 2×7 board with multi-lap relay sowing; opening ritual with side selection; captures on pits reaching two or four stones along with their opposite pits, chaining backwards.
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Overview
Mangala IV designates the living mancala tradition practiced in Gaziantep in Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey. Far from an obsolete curiosity, the game remains an energetic social pastime in local tea houses and homes. Scholars consider this Gaziantep version to be intimately connected to—and perhaps the authentic, fully playable manifestation of—the historic Syrian game La'b Madjnuni ("The Crazy Game"), which ethnographer Stewart Culin observed in late 19th-century Damascus but documented with numerous contradictions and lacunae.
In November 2007, Turkish researcher Adnan Güllü published the first comprehensive, playable account of the Gaziantep game in the regional journal Elbistan Kaynarca Gazetesi. The game is distinguished by its unique opening guessing ceremony, its structured left-to-right move initiation, dynamic relay sowing, and a devastating cross-board capture rule that strips counters from both sides of the layout.
Board
- Ranks/rows: Two
- Holes per row: 7
- Stores: None
- Seeds per hole at start: Variable (a total pool of 98 counters is randomly distributed across the 14 holes, or evenly divided with 7 counters per pit)
- Each player presides over one rank of seven holes.
How to Play
- Opening Rite: Before play commences, one player conceals either one or two counters in their closed fist and challenges the adversary: "Tek mi, Çift mi?" ("Odd or even?"). If the opponent guesses correctly, they earn the right to choose their favored side of the board; otherwise, the challenger assigns the rows.
- Sowing Procedure: A player initiates a turn by lifting all counters from their leftmost occupied hole and sowing them singly counter-clockwise into subsequent pits around the board. If the leftmost pit is empty, the player must play from the next nearest occupied pit in their row.
- Relay Sowing: If the final counter lands in an occupied hole that previously held two, four, or more counters (thus reaching three, five, or more), the player immediately scoops up all counters from that pit and continues sowing in another lap.
- Turn Termination: The turn terminates when the final counter falls into an empty hole (making one) or into a hole containing one or three counters (bringing the count to exactly two or four, triggering a capture).
- If a player cannot move because their side has been emptied, they pass until counters are sown back into their pits.
Capturing
- When the final counter of a turn brings a pit's contents to exactly two or four counters, those counters are captured, along with all counters residing in the pit directly opposite it across the board.
- Furthermore, if there exists an unbroken chain of pits immediately preceding the landing hole that also contain two or four counters, all counters in those pits—as well as the full contents of their corresponding opposite pits—are swept up in the capture.
- Captures can trigger in either player's territory.
End of Game and Winning
- The contest ends when every hole on the board has been completely cleared of counters.
- The player who has amassed the largest tally of captured pieces wins the game.
Notes
- The Gaziantep variant offers crucial insight into the mysterious Syrian mancala games documented by Culin in 1894, demonstrating how multi-lap relays and even-parity captures naturally coexisted in Levantine gaming culture.
- The inclusion of cross-board opposite captures alongside unbroken parity chains gives Mangala IV exceptional tactical volatility: a single well-aimed turn can wipe out half of the board in one sweep.
- Although informal matches often begin with seeds randomly scooped into pits to create an asymmetric opening puzzle, an even initial distribution of 7 seeds per hole (98 seeds total) provides an equitable, balanced baseline for competitive play.
Source: Mancala World – Mangala IV