Towers of the Alhambra, a new game of skill and strategy created by the author and inventor Paco López Martín, is a two-player game inspired in the Monument, played on an inlaid woodcraft board with 35 squares, made of Sycamore, Oak and Walnut tree woods and 10 pieces (towers) made of gold and copper. Size of board: 38 x 27.5 cm.
The set also includes a study on the towers of the Alhambra, written by Paco López with the support of Alhambra and Generalife archaeology advisor Jesús Bermúdez. The study comes in Spanish, English and French, and contains history, anecdotes and legends concerning the towers. The set is completed with a DVD containing the game instructions, also in three languages.
Players move five Alhambra towers to try to conquer the opponent’s fortress. Of the ten towers used in the game, five are based on towers along the northern wall of the Alhambra and are finished in old gold, while the other five correspond to the southern wall and are finished in copper.
Towers of the Alhambra is not just any game. “It is also a collector’s item, and great care has gone into every detail”. Several professionals were involved in creating the pieces, including Granadan sculptor Juan Manuel Gabarrón, who designed the miniature towers, and marquetarian Tomás Lara Bimbela, expert craftsman in ‘taracea’, the Moorish inlaid wood design works. (See also our post: Taracea, an Arabic influence crafts from Granada).
This Nasrid strategy game, it’s a fun, instructive, educational tool, and can be acquired at the Alhambra Museum Gift and Book Shops and from www.alhambratienda.es
Table games as ‘alquerque’ and checkers, were popular in mediaeval courts, particularly chess, the game of strategy based on the battlefield that requires great skill and intelligence. The game was introduced into the Spanish Middle Age kingdoms by the Muslims, although the name comes from a Persian word ‘shatranj’ (that in Spanish was rendered as ajedrez).
This game is from the family of Halma (‘Jump’ in Greek), devised by George Howard Monk in 1883 (supposedly inspired on previous English game called Hoppity, 1854) and more popularly known in its version of Chinese Checkers from publication with star-shaped board, published in Germany in 1893 with the title of Stern-Halma. In these games the pieces jump, onto each other above, to fill out the checkerboard squares opposite. Although this family of games can be linked in form of movement with the traditional game of Checkers or Draughts, the pieces are not removed.
We can understand the rules in this video:
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