Jogos de Tabuleiro, em Contextos Islâmicos (Séculos VIII-XIII), do Castelo de Silves (Algarve)

Abstract

Despite prescriptions against gambling, the Islamic contexts of al-Andalus have shown not a few testimonies of the so-called board games (tāb), which oppose two people. Also in the Castle of Silves, a place occupied at least since Late Antiquity, with periods of cultural fl ourishing between the 8th and the mid-13th century, emerged, in the Muslim levels excavated directed by one of us (RVG), game boards, in portable stone supports, but also fi xed, engraved on fl oors. Discoid game marks, made in stone, ceramic or bone, with different dimensions, as other game pieces made in those same materials were also exhumed, which would have been part of board games. Although numerous game boards are known, it is not uncommon for those, from the Middle Ages or earlier, to which a safe chronology can be attributed, which does not occur with the examples from Castelo de Silves, which come from strata and precise locations. Playing has pedagogics, competitive, inter-active, strategic, ethics, creative, ludic, emotional or cognitive, but also oracular, even ritual implications, and are a cultural identifi er, given it handles with symbols, and can often constitute a metaphor for aspects of human life.