Backgammon Set

A Persian backgammon set isn’t a modern import into Persian culture — it may well be where the game itself began. The oldest confirmed backgammon board in the world was excavated at Shahr-e Sukhteh, the “Burnt City” in southeastern Iran, dating to roughly 3000 BC: an ebony board with sixty pieces and dice, laid out almost exactly like the boards played today.

By the Sassanid era, the game had a name of its own, Nard or Nardshir, and Persian legend credits the vizier Bozorgmehr with formalizing its rules under King Khosrow I. Every board in this collection carries that lineage forward, cut and inlaid by hand in Iran rather than machine-stamped.

Walnut, khatam and leather: the three ways we make it

The collection splits along the traditional Persian craft techniques used to build a board, not arbitrary style categories. Walnut sets, like the Rostam & Dragon Backgammon (€539) or the Faravahar Backgammon Set (€489), use monabat kari relief carving, where mythic and Achaemenid-era motifs are cut directly into solid walnut.

Khatam sets take a different approach entirely: fine geometric marquetry built from slivers of wood, bone and metal, assembled piece by piece into the surface — the Shiraz Khatam Dual Board (€470) is a working example, made in Shiraz, historically the center of the khatam-kari craft. For something lighter to travel with, the leather-bound boards fold flat and skip the inlay work in favor of stitched hide over a wooden frame.

What “handmade” actually means here

A single carved or inlaid board can take a few days to several weeks depending on the complexity of the design and the availability of walnut root or mother-of-pearl for inlay — there’s no production line shortcut for monabat kari or khatam work, which is part of why no two boards are perfectly identical.

Every set ships with the checkers, dice and doubling cube it needs to play, and each is sourced through Ersaly’s buying office in Mashhad, Iran, then shipped by Ersaly Ltd, a UK-registered company, to players worldwide.

Browse related collections

If khatam marquetry is what draws you in specifically, our Khatam Backgammon Set collection goes deeper into that technique alone. For other handcrafted pieces from the same workshops, our Ghalamzani engraved metalwork and the wider Persian Handicraft & Artwork collection share the same Iranian sourcing.