Page 13 - Arabian Studies (II)

The Game of Maysir 3

al-taw’am ‘twin’ for a double portion, al-miCalla ‘top score* for a
sevenfold one. All this makes LabTd’s phrase in hisMu'allaqah where
lie speaks of the arrow-shafts being mutashabih ajsamuha ‘with
mutually similar bodies’, slightly puzzling. Perhaps it alludes to the
fact that, in spite of the notches or other recognition marks, the
shafts must have been identical in size and weight, in order to avoid
cheating. Huber (pp. 27—30) remarks that they were invariably made
of one kind of wood, the tough and heavy nab'; and the fact that the
hurdah was required to wrap his hand in a piece of cloth when
drawing was presumably sufficient to prevent him detecting the
notches by touch.
What, however, I particularly wish here to draw attention to is
that there are two accounts by twentieth-century travellers in South
Arabia, which are both fascinating in themselves and clearly have a
relation to the ancient game of maysir. The main point in which they
differ from the descriptions of the ancient game is that the meat won
was actually consumed by the participants. On the other hand, the
procedures used have striking analogies with ancient maysir, and may
help us to understand the latter a little better.
Firstly, Bertram Thomas (Arabia Felix, 1932, pp. 205-6):

Five heaps of fresh meat soon lay on the sands - for the five
camp-fire parties composing my caravan, and a shout of joy
announced the moment to cast lots for them — ever the desert
way. Five representatives stood forth, one for each party. A
head-dress was produced and into it each put a marked round of
ammunition. The four comers were bunched together and the
contents shaken up. A bystander was invited to grasp one through
the head-dress, which was then opened and the owner of the
chosen round given first choice of heaps. Four times the
performance was repeated, and when the last had gone so had the
body of [the camel].

Here, the bullets are the modem surrogates for the ancient
arrow-shafts, although marked for the participants and not for the
shares. The head-dress is the ancient ribabah, the ‘bystander’ is the
hurdah, and he had to fumble through a thickness of cloth in making
the draw, so as not to be able to detect the markings of the bullets,
as in the ancient game. The fact that in this case what the draw
determined was not specified portions of meat but the order in
which the participants could exercise their own choice, may throw
light on a phrase for which Huber (pp. 25, 42) does not give a very
satisfactory explanation: a chieftain who had provided a camel for a
feast says ukhayyiru ashabi ‘give my companions the choice’ by