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Evidence for Gabata (Aksum)

1 pieces of evidence found.

Id DLP.Evidence.665
Type Ethnography
Location 14° 7'55.67"N, 38°43'8.99"E
Ruleset Gabata (Aksum)
Date 1977-01-01 - 1977-12-31
Rules 3x6 board. Play begins with three counters per hole. Each player owns the row closest to them and the right half of the central row. Variant: Can be played with three players, where one player has a full row of six and each other player has two rows of three on either half of the board. Sowing occurs in the following direction: from left to right in the player's full row, right to left in the player's half of the central row, proceeding to the opponent's full row and sowing right to left, then left to right in the opponent's part of the central row, then proceeding back to the player's full row and proceeding as before. Sowing always begins from a player's own holes. When the last counter falls into an empty hole, the turn ends. If the last counter falls into an occupied hole, the contents of that hole are picked up and sowing continues. Captures are made by dropping the last counters of a sowing into an opponent's hole which contains three counters, making it have four counters. Captures cannot be made until after the original three counters placed in the holes at the beginning of the game have been moved. Once such a hole is captured, the player owns this hole, but cannot sow from it. When a player captures a hole like this, they may continue sowing from any hole on their side of the board. During sowing, if the final counter lands in an opponent's captured hole, the player captures the last counter dropped and one of the counters from the hole, or just the final counter if the hole is now empty. Play ends when all the counters are captured or have accumulated in captured hole. The player with two or more counters more than the original number captures one hole from the opponent; one hole for every three extra counters, taking these holes from the opponent's left hand holes. If the player only has two extra counters, the opponent gives the player one more counter to make three extra. Play continues as before. Play ends when one player has captured all of the holes.
Content "The Aksum Area Gabata as played in the Aksum area is little different from that described above for the country around Adowa, and thus once more makes use of three rows of six holes, with three halls per hole. The game was played by Wasihun Tatamke, Amha Sahay and Abraha Berhe, all of the city, now studying at the Baeda Maryam School, Addis Ababa, to whose Director, Walter Grisdale, we are much indebted. The game, as in Adowa, is based on the capture of an enemy hole as wegue, once more prefereably on the extreme left of one's opponent's main row, i.e., on his left. That hole was known as chafa enda, and, to facilitate its capture by his opponent, a player was not allowed to pick up its contents unless they numbered more than three balls, though this was permissible if he had no other counter with which to play. The purpose of this restriction was of course to facilitate a capture in the hole in question. Apart from this restriction the game is as described from Adowa." Pankhurst 1977: 164-165.
Confidence 100
Source Pankhurst, R. 1971. Gabata and Related Board Games of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia Observer 14(3):154-206.

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