Kazakh playing cards

Kazakh playing cards (Qazaq deck) are a deck of 54 cards used in Kazakhstan and other countries for playing Kazakh national playing card games.
Composition
Kazakh playing cards differ from the classic French deck in that it has unique non-standard suits: horse, apple, eagle, and tulip. In other words, there is no division into classes such as: clubs representing the peasantry; diamonds, the merchant class; hearts, the clergy; spades, the warrior class.
Alternatively, the Kazakh suits are divided into the so-called yurts (jurttar) that represent the different ways relatives are connected to a person. There are four traditional yurts: óz yurt symbolizing relatives on father’s side; naÇµashy yurt, relatives on mother’s side; qaÄ±yn yurt, relatives on spouse’s side; and quda yurt, the ones obtained through children’s marriage.
Within the yurts, there is a hierarchy of relatives that sets a one-of-a-kind system of kinship. The yurts lay the foundation for the whole philosophy of family relationships to which nomadic societies have always attached significant importance.
It is not accidental that the Kazakh card suits have such widely recognized symbols. Horse, apple, eagle, and tulip are the key cultural and civilizational symbols of the Kazakhs and many other Turkic peoples. Central Asia gave rise to the first domesticated horses, as well as to the training of falcons and eagles for hunting. It is also widely held that the fertile lands of Central Asia gave birth to modern apples and tulips.

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