Over coffee, my Syrian friend Anas mentioned that some backgammon players use Persian numbers to call the dice, even when they are speaking Arabic. That sent me looking for the words and how they had become part of the game.

In his study of chess and backgammon in Sasanian Persia, the historian Touraj Daryaee describes Persian number words surviving in the game’s vocabulary in Turkey and Arab countries. He reads that shared vocabulary as evidence of a Persian form of the game spreading into the wider Near East and Anatolia.

Six numbers that travelled with the game

The Persian numbers behind many of the calls are easy enough to recognise once you have seen them together:

The Persian numbers from one to six, in a simple Latin transcription.
DiePersian number
1yek
2do
3se
4chahar
5panj
6shesh

Pronunciation and spelling change as the words move between languages. Daryaee records forms such as du for two, jahr for four and benj for five alongside their Persian counterparts. The table gives the Persian base forms, and these variations help you recognise them when listening to a game.

Persian-speaking players in Iran already use these numbers in everyday conversation. What caught my attention in Anas’s observation was hearing related words at an Arabic-speaking table, where the players have other words for those same six numbers.

What you can hear in “shesh besh”

The familiar expression shesh besh, also used as a name for the game, means six–five. Its two halves come from different languages: shesh is Persian for six, while beş, usually written besh in English, is Turkish for five. The Persian word for five is panj.

There is a lovely example of this mixture in a Jordanian Ministry of Culture field survey of traditions in Karak. Its entry on backgammon specifically notes that the name for five changes to besh when it is paired with six. It gives shesh besh for 6–5 and a Persian-derived form for five in 5–4. Even within that one local account, the roll determines which word you use.

The doubles have their own familiar calls

By 1907, this vocabulary was established enough to appear in a language textbook. On page 264 of his Ottoman-Turkish Conversation-Grammar, V. H. Hagopian lists the Persian numbers, followed by the combinations used in backgammon and other games. His list includes du-shesh for 6–6 and du-se for 3–3: two sixes and two threes.

For 1–1 he gives hep-yek, combining Turkish hep, meaning “all”, with Persian yek, meaning “one”. The Karak survey records a recognisably similar call more than a century later. Learning the calls can therefore mean learning a few whole expressions as well as the six individual numbers.

Anas also told me that, in Syrian cafés, some experienced players refuse to play with you unless you call the dice this way.

With thanks to Anas for the conversation that prompted this article. The examples come from Touraj Daryaee, The Games of Chess and Backgammon in Sasanian Persia, p. 23; V. H. Hagopian, Ottoman-Turkish Conversation-Grammar (1907), p. 264, §§ 521–522 (and § 186 for hep); and Jordan’s Ministry of Culture, the community field survey of intangible cultural heritage in Karak (2016), p. 213. Latin spellings are simplified and local calls vary. The suggested historical route is an interpretation of these records; they do not establish an exact date of transmission or a vocabulary shared by every Arabic-speaking community.