playing card

95 small, circular Mughal Ganjifa playing cards. The complete set should be 96. There are eight suits, with two higher cards in each set, depicting a king (mir or shah) and a minister, (wazir) usually on a horse. The rest of the cards in each suit are numbered one to ten, and each suit depicts a different attribute. Each suit is also in a different colour: 1. black (white or silver coin, safid); 2. russet (sword, shamshir); 3. brown (crown, taj); 4. red (cheque, manuscript or bill of exchange, barat); 5. gold (bundles or merchandise, qimash); 6. yellow (slave, ghulam); 7. dark green (harp, chang); 8. light green (red or gold coin, surkh). The missing card is the king in the 'red coin' suit. One of the court cards in each suit has a handwritten sticker on the back with the name of the suit.

Collection Information

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