Four mid-19th-century Qajar Persian ace cards made for the game of As-Nas

What Was As-Nas? Iran’s Historic Card Game and Its Poker Connection

Long before modern decks of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades became standard in Iran, players gathered around a much smaller set of hand-painted cards. The game was called As-Nas (آس ناس), or simply ās. Its cards showed a compact cast of animals and people: an ace, a shah, a lady, a soldier, and a lower-ranking figure often represented by a dancer or musician.

As-Nas is frequently introduced as “Persian poker.” That shorthand captures its five-card hands, wagering, and bluffing, but it can also make the history sound more certain than it is. As-Nas was a distinctive Iranian game in its own right. It resembled early poker, yet historians still debate whether it directly produced the American game or merely belonged to the same wider family of bluffing card games.

What does As-Nas mean?

The name is commonly explained through the deck itself. As (آس) is the ace, traditionally its highest design. Nas (ناس) means people or humankind. In that reading, “As-Nas” refers to a pack containing aces and a sequence of human characters.

Unlike a modern 52-card deck, an As-Nas pack did not divide its cards into four suits. Surviving sets generally use five repeated designs, often producing a deck of 20 or 25 cards. Background colors and painted subjects helped players recognize each rank without numbers, corner indexes, or suit symbols.

The five traditional As-Nas ranks

Artwork varied from one workshop and patron to another, but the best-known hierarchy runs from high to low as follows:

  1. As (آس): the ace. Common images include a lion with the sun or moon, animals in combat, or a mounted hunter.
  2. Shah (شاه): the king, frequently enthroned or shown on horseback.
  3. Bibi (بی‌بی): the lady, sometimes seated and holding a child.
  4. Sarbaz (سرباز): the soldier.
  5. Lakat: the lowest rank, often represented by a dancer, musician, or dancing pair. Historical sources use several spellings and labels for this figure.

The cards were miniature works of art as well as playing pieces. Encyclopaedia Iranica describes Persian As-Nas cards as hand-painted and heavily lacquered to protect them during play. Qajar-period examples range from luxury ivory sets by accomplished artists to more modest paper and papier-mâché packs. Their imagery could draw on Persian epics, literature, contemporary dress, flowers, and popular art.

When was As-Nas played?

Iran had a much older card tradition called ganjafa, documented in Safavid literary and travel sources. As-Nas emerged later, probably around the late 17th or early 18th century, and became especially prominent during the Qajar era.

The Qajar dynasty ruled Iran from 1796 to 1925, and many surviving museum cards date from the 19th century. The Brooklyn Museum’s As-Nas ace card, for example, is identified as a mid-19th-century Qajar work made with ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on wood or papier-mâché beneath lacquered varnish.

European-style cards gradually displaced traditional packs. According to Encyclopaedia Iranica, As-Nas remained popular into the 20th century but fell out of fashion around the end of World War II, as poker, rummy, bridge, belote, and other games became more common.

How was As-Nas played?

The clearest widely cited account comes from General Albert Houtum-Schindler and was preserved by ethnographer Stewart Culin in the 1890s. Culin’s full public-domain study, Chess and Playing-Cards, is available through the Smithsonian Institution.

In that account, four people each received five cards. Players decided whether to remain in the hand, match the stake, raise, or discard their cards. No new cards were drawn. Once the commitments were equal, the remaining players revealed their hands.

The recorded vocabulary is one of the game’s most memorable features:

  • Didam (دیدم): “I have seen,” said when a player looked at the cards and continued.
  • Nadidam (ندیدم): “I have not seen,” used when declining the hand.
  • Nadid didam: continuing without first looking at the cards—a risky show of confidence.
  • Tup zadan (توپ زدن): literally “to fire a cannon,” the expression recorded for bluffing.

Hand combinations emphasized matching ranks rather than suits or sequences. The historical account lists a full house (seh va joft), three of a kind, two pairs, and one pair, with the ace ranking highest. Flushes and straights did not matter because the traditional deck had no modern suits and only five designs.

Was As-Nas really the ancestor of poker?

The resemblance is striking. Both games use five-card hands, ranked combinations, raises, folds, and deliberate bluffing. Early American poker was also played by four people with a 20-card deck, which encouraged a neat story: Persian As-Nas traveled west and became poker.

But resemblance is not proof of direct descent. Card-game historian David Parlett argues in his history of poker that poker developed in a French-American setting around New Orleans, with important links to European “vying” games in which players bet on whether their concealed hands were strongest. The documentary descriptions of As-Nas are comparatively late, and a clear transmission route from Iran to early American poker has not been demonstrated.

The careful conclusion is therefore two-part: As-Nas is genuinely poker-like, and it may belong in discussions of poker’s wider background; calling it poker’s proven direct ancestor goes beyond the surviving evidence.

How to recreate As-Nas with a standard deck

You can make an accessible 20-card approximation from an ordinary deck by keeping only the aces, kings, queens, jacks, and tens. Treat the suits as irrelevant and read the ranks this way:

  • Ace = As
  • King = Shah
  • Queen = Bibi
  • Jack = Sarbaz
  • Ten = Lakat

Deal five cards to each of four players. Players may continue, raise, or fold; after the final round, reveal the hands. Count matching-rank combinations, but not straights or flushes. Because surviving descriptions do not answer every modern rules question, agree on details such as four-of-a-kind and tie-breaking before starting. For a family game night, use points, beans, or play chips instead of money.

This recreation is not identical to holding a lacquered Qajar pack. It does, however, make the game’s compact design and bluffing structure understandable at the table.

From museum object to modern game night

As-Nas cards now survive largely in museum and library collections, including institutions in Tehran, New York, London, New Haven, and Paris. Their preservation matters because each small card records several kinds of history at once: painting technique, popular entertainment, social characters, and the movement of games between cultures.

The Persian Iranian Art Poker Cards with 19th-century Qajar designs are a modern standard playing-card deck rather than a reproduction As-Nas pack. That distinction is important. Still, their Qajar imagery makes them a fitting deck for trying the simplified 20-card adaptation above or for bringing Persian art into a contemporary game night.

If you want a modern Iranian card tradition with rules still widely played today, see our separate beginner’s guide to how to play Hokm. Hokm and As-Nas belong to different periods and use different mechanics, but together they show how deeply card play has been woven into Iranian social life.

Sources and image credit

Featured image: four As or ace cards made for the Persian game of Nas, Qajar period, mid-19th century; unknown Iranian artist; ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on wood or papier-mâché under lacquered varnish. Photograph and objects: Brooklyn Museum Collection. The image is available through Wikimedia Commons, where the Brooklyn Museum contribution is identified as having no known copyright restrictions.

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