Because God wanted that man have every manner of happiness, in himself naturally, so that he could suffer the cares and troubles when they came to them, therefore men sought out many ways that they could have this happiness completely.
King Alfonso X of Castile1 was a patron of many books - especially translations and compilations of Arabic and Hebrew texts. The Libro de los juegos or Book of Games was one of these works, focused on explaining chess, dice and “tables”2.
Footnotes
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And Toledo, Leon, Galicia, Seville, Cordova, Murcia, Jaen and Algarve, according to his preface. ↩
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The category of games most recognizable today as backgammon. In the categorization this book devizes, these games are seen as a middle ground between the purely skill based chess and luck based dice games, because there is a random element (determining how much you can move your pieces each turn) but undeniable strategy on how to use that. ↩