Playing cards may have been invented during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD as a

result of the usage of woodblock printing technology. [18][19][20][21][22] The first possible reference to card
games comes from a 9th-century text known as the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written
by Tang dynasty writer Su E. It describes Princess Tongchang, daughter of Emperor Yizong of
Tang, playing the "leaf game" in 868 with members of the Wei clan, the family of the princess'
husband.[20][23][24] The first known book on the "leaf" game was called the Yezi Gexi and allegedly
written by a Tang woman. It received commentary by writers of subsequent dynasties. [25][verification
needed]
 The Song dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserts that the "leaf" game
existed at least since the mid-Tang dynasty and associated its invention with the development of
printed sheets as a writing medium.[20][25][verification needed] However, Ouyang also claims that the "leaves"
were pages of a book used in a board game played with dice, and that the rules of the game
were lost by 1067.[26]
Other games revolving around alcoholic drinking involved using playing cards of a sort from the
Tang dynasty onward. However, these cards did not contain suits or numbers. Instead, they were
printed with instructions or forfeits for whomever drew them. [26]
The earliest dated instance of a game involving cards occurred on 17 July 1294 when "Yan
Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog were caught playing cards [zhi pai] and that wood blocks for
printing them had been impounded, together with nine of the actual cards." [26]
William Henry Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which
doubled as both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for, [19] similar to trading
card games. Using paper money was inconvenient and risky so they were substituted by play
money known as "money cards". One of the earliest games in which we know the rules
is madiao, a trick-taking game, which dates to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). 15th-century
scholar Lu Rong described it is as being played with 38 "money cards" divided into four suits: 9
in coins, 9 in strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude
drawings), 9 in myriads (of coins or of strings), and 11 in tens of myriads (a myriad is 10,000).
The two latter suits had Water Margin characters instead of pips on them[27] with Chinese to mark
their rank and suit. The suit of coins is in reverse order with 9 of coins being the lowest going up
to 1 of coins as the high card.[28]

Persia and Arabia[edit]

Despite the wide variety of patterns, the suits show a uniformity of structure. Every suit contains
twelve cards with the top two usually being the court cards of king and vizier and the bottom ten
being pip cards. Half the suits use reverse ranking for their pip cards. There are many motifs for
the suit pips but some include coins, clubs, jugs, and swords which resemble later Mamluk and
Latin suits. Michael Dummett speculated that Mamluk cards may have descended from an earlier
deck which consisted of 48 cards divided into four suits each with ten pip cards and two court
cards.[29]

Egypt[edit]

Four Mamluk playing cards.

By the 11th century, playing cards were spreading throughout the Asian continent and later came
into Egypt.[30] The oldest surviving cards in the world are four fragments found in the Keir
Collection and one in the Benaki Museum. They are dated to the 12th and 13th centuries
(late Fatimid, Ayyubid, and early Mamluk periods).[31]
A near complete pack of Mamluk playing cards dating to the 15th century and of similar
appearance to the fragments above was discovered by Leo Aryeh Mayer in the Topkapı
Palace, Istanbul, in 1939.[32] It is not a complete set and is actually composed of three different
packs, probably to replace missing cards.[33] The Topkapı pack originally contained 52 cards
comprising four suits: polo-sticks, coins, swords, and cups. Each suit contained ten pip cards and
three court cards, called malik (king), nā'ib malik (viceroy or deputy king), and thānī nā'ib (second
or under-deputy). The thānī nā'ib is a non-existent title so it may not have been in the earliest
versions; without this rank, the Mamluk suits would structurally be the same as a Ganjifa suit. In
fact, the word "Kanjifah" appears in Arabic on the king of swords and is still used in parts of the
Middle East to describe modern playing cards. Influence from further east can explain why the
Mamluks, most of whom were Central Asian Turkic Kipchaks, called their cups tuman which
means myriad in Turkic, Mongolian and Jurchen languages.[34] Wilkinson postulated that the cups
may have been derived from inverting the Chinese and Jurchen ideogram for myriad (万).
The Mamluk court cards showed abstract designs or calligraphy not depicting persons possibly
due to religious proscription in Sunni Islam, though they did bear the ranks on the
cards. Nā'ib would be borrowed into French (nahipi), Italian (naibi), and Spanish (naipes), the
latter word still in common usage. Panels on the pip cards in two suits show they had a reverse
ranking, a feature found in madiao, ganjifa, and old European card games like ombre, tarot,
and maw.[35]
A fragment of two uncut sheets of Moorish-styled cards of a similar but plainer style was found in
Spain and dated to the early 15th century.[36]
Export of these cards (from Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus), ceased after the fall of the
Mamluks in the 16th century.[37] The rules to play these games are lost but they are believed to
be plain trick games without trumps.[38]

Spread across Europe and early design changes[edit]

Further information: Tarot

Knave of Coins from the oldest known European deck (c. 1390–1410).

Card players in 18th Century Venice, by Pietro Longhi.

Four-suited playing cards are first attested in Southern Europe in 1365,[26] and are likely derived
from the Mamluk suits of cups, coins, swords, and polo-sticks, which are still used in traditional
Latin decks.[39] As polo was an obscure sport to Europeans then, the polo-sticks became batons or
cudgels.[40] Their presence is attested in Catalonia in 1371, 1377 in Switzerland, and 1380 in many
locations including Florence and Paris.[41][42][43] Wide use of playing cards in Europe can, with some
certainty, be traced from 1377 onward. [44]
In the account books of Johanna, Duchess of Brabant and Wenceslaus I, Duke of Luxembourg,
an entry dated May 14, 1379 reads: "Given to Monsieur and Madame four peters, two forms,
value eight and a half moutons, wherewith to buy a pack of cards". In his book of accounts for
1392 or 1393, Charles or Charbot Poupart, treasurer of the household of Charles VI of France,
records payment for the painting of three sets of cards.[45]
From about 1418 to 1450[46] professional card makers in Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg created
printed decks. Playing cards even competed with devotional images as the most common uses
for woodcuts in this period. Most early woodcuts of all types were coloured after printing, either by
hand or, from about 1450 onwards, stencils. These 15th-century playing cards were probably
painted. The Flemish Hunting Deck, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the oldest
complete set of ordinary playing cards made in Europe from the 15th century. [47]
As cards spread from Italy to Germanic countries, the Latin suits were replaced with the suits of
leaves (or shields), hearts (or roses), bells, and acorns, and a combination of Latin and Germanic
suit pictures and names resulted in the French suits
of trèfles (clovers), carreaux (tiles), cœurs (hearts), and piques (pikes) around 1480.
The trèfle (clover) was probably derived from the acorn and the pique (pike) from the leaf of the
German suits. The names pique and spade, however, may have derived from the sword (spade)
of the Italian suits.[48] In England, the French suits were eventually used, although the earliest
packs circulating may have had Latin suits.[49] This may account for why the English called the
clovers "clubs" and the pikes "spades".
In the late 14th century, Europeans changed the Mamluk court cards to represent European
royalty and attendants. In a description from 1377, the earliest courts were originally a seated
"king", an upper marshal that held his suit symbol up, and a lower marshal that held it down. [50]
[51]
 The latter two correspond with the ober and unter cards found in German and Swiss playing
cards. The Italians and Iberians replaced the Ober/Unter system with the "Knight" and "Fante" or
"Sota" before 1390, perhaps to make the cards more visually distinguishable. In England, the
lowest court card was called the "knave" which originally meant male child (compare
German Knabe), so in this context the character could represent the "prince", son to the king and
queen; the meaning servant developed later.[52][53] Queens appeared sporadically in packs as early
as 1377, especially in Germany. Although the Germans abandoned the queen before the 1500s,
the French permanently picked it up and placed it under the king. Packs of 56 cards containing in
each suit a king, queen, knight, and knave (as in tarot) were once common in the 15th century.
In 1628, the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards was incorporated under a royal
charter by Charles I; the Company received livery status from the Court of Aldermen of the City of
London in 1792. The Company still exists today, having expanded its member ranks to include
"card makers... card collectors, dealers, bridge players, [and] magicians". [54]
During the mid 16th century, Portuguese traders introduced playing cards to Japan. The first
indigenous Japanese deck was the Tenshō karuta named after the Tenshō period.[55]