chargement...
A team of archaeologists has uncovered a 1,200-year-old game board at the ancient site of Walīla (Volubilis), near Meknes, shedding new light on leisure and social life in early Islamic Morocco.
The discovery, detailed in a June study published in Libyan Studies, was made by Tim Penn of the University of Reading, Corisande Fenwick of University College London (UCL), and Hassan Limane of Morocco’s National Institute of Archaeological Sciences and Heritage (INSAP).
The game board was carved directly into a stone step leading to a cold-water plunge pool inside a medieval hammam dating to the Idrisid period. According to the researchers, the bathhouse was built between the late eighth and early ninth centuries and appears to have been abandoned by the tenth or eleventh century, providing a rare securely dated context for the find.
The board consists of three rows of at least thirteen small holes and was positioned so that two people could comfortably sit facing each other while playing. Its location inside the bathhouse suggests that gaming formed part of the social experience associated with the hammam.
«The prominent placement of the gameboard suggests that gaming was an accepted, perhaps even encouraged, part of the social experience of bathing», the authors write.
After examining several possibilities, the researchers concluded that the board was most likely used for a form of tāb, known as sīg in the Maghreb, a strategy game that is still played in parts of North Africa today. If correct, the discovery would represent the earliest known evidence of the game in North Africa.
The authors suggest the game may have reached Walīla through contacts with the eastern Islamic world during the Idrisid era, possibly carried by people arriving from the Levant or the Arabian Peninsula.
«Whatever its origin», the researchers conclude, «the presence of a gameboard in the hammam at Walīla sheds important light on the activities that took place in this building and its role as a social space».
