A Persian card game that has been popular in the Indian subcontinent since the sixteenth century, ganjifa is notable for its hand-painted playing cards. The name ‘ganjifa’ likely derives from the Persian word ganj, meaning treasure or money. The game has several variations across West, Central and South Asia. 

The rules of ganjifa are largely consistent across its various versions. A game typically has three players and lasts three rounds, although this can be adjusted if required. The objective of each round is to make hands or tricks. When the round concludes, the player with the lowest score is obliged to exchange their high cards for the others’ low cards in the next round. The number of cards exchanged depends on the number of tricks lost.

The oldest surviving reference to ganjifa in India was made in the early fifteenth century by the historian Ibn Taghribirdi, who wrote that a Mamluk sultan gambled with kanjifa (a medieval Arabic name for ganjifa) as a young man. The game likely made its way to India through the Mughals and is referenced in a journal entry by Babur dating back to 1527 CE. A description of the gameplay of this early version of ganjifa can be found in the Humayun-nama, a sixteenth century text on the life and times of the second Mughal emperor, Humayun, written by his sister Gulbadan Begum. From the Mughal or Safavid ganjifa of the north to the dashavatara ganjifa in the Deccan, there have been several variations of the game since it was first introduced, each with a distinct iconography, deck and cultural context. Such was the popularity of ganjifa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the ancient card game of kreeda patra, too, came to be identified as the Persianate card game in the royal courts. 

Like games such as chess, the cards of Mughal ganjifa depict figures and objects closely associated with imperial courts of the time. There are ninety-six cards in a pack, divided into eight suits of twelve cards each. The pack is divided into two parts or bhedas — bishbar bheda and kambar bheda. Each contains four suits, with every suit comprising two court cards called shah (king) and wazir (minister) as well as number cards from one to ten. The court cards of a suit are its strongest. Among the number cards, ten is the strongest and one the weakest in the bishbar bheda, while this is reversed in the kambar bheda, with one being the strongest. The names of the suits — according to the set described by poet Ahli Shirazi in the early sixteenth century — are gulam (servant), taj (crown), shamsher (sabre, or curved sword) and tanka (silver coin) in the bishbar bheda; and barat (cheque or draft), qimash (material wealth, usually in the form of textiles), ashrafi (red or gold coin) and chang (a small harp) in the kambar bheda.

As with Western playing cards, the numerical ganjifa cards depict their suit in the relevant number: a ten of taj will feature ten crowns, a six of ashrafi will show six gold coins, and so forth. Visually, these may be arranged loosely on the card’s face following no particular order, or by dividing the circular card into triangular segments, akin to a pie chart, or in some cases as individual flowerheads on a tree-like form. Despite the word ‘gulam’ meaning slave or servant, cards of this suit often feature comical characters or stereotypes from local stories, or even full scenes of human figures, with the number of individuals reflecting the value of the card. In such decks, the shah and wazir are given an entourage in their respective cards.