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The original moroccan cards, Kept well for over 70 yearsthe playing cards look a whole lot more like Tarot cards than like the standard 52 card deck that most of us know. The suits are tarot suits coins, cups, swords, and wands.Unlike Tarot or poker cards, these cards are missing the 8's and 9's. The cards go 1-7 and then they jump to the face cards numbered 10-13. The facecards are a jack, a knight, and a king. So that adds up to only 40 cards.The earliest literary references to playing cards in Europe refer to the game having been introduced by a 'Saracen', and also to Moorish and Damascene varieties of playing card. We do not know for sure what these fourteenth century cards looked like...The occupation of enclaves in North Africa was one of the objectives most actively pursued by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella after the conquest of Granada. This expansionist policy was curtailed shortly afterwards when Spain turned its efforts to the recently discovered West Indies. It might be logical to assume that North Africa has always been supplied with Spanish suited cards, and that these came primarily from France or Spain.During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries playing cards were imported into Morocco and Algeria from Spain and France by manufacturers such as Camoin, La Ducale, B.P. Grimaud and others. These were of the Spanish National pattern, based on the Felix Solesio designs produced by the Real Fabrica de Madrid at Macharaviaya (1776-1815).Morocco is now one of the last remaining countries to use the old Spanish National pattern.Of course, with only 40 cards there aren't any major arcana either, but they appear in other ways. I'm certain that these cards are used by Moroccan soothsayers and fortune tellers. There really isn't any way they couldn't be. They are beautiful cards.

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9781655150609

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