Mangala → Italian. Mangala is a Turkish mancala game which was very popular in the 17th and 18th century. According to Metin And, a Turkish ethnologue, the game could be related to the "mancala" of The Arabian Nights (fifteenth night), one of the first literary accounts of mancala games. The game was depicted in Turkish paintings as early as in the 16th century. In Europe, it was first mentioned in 1664 by the French traveller Jean de Thévenot in his account "Relation d'un voyage fait au Levant". In 1694, the game was mentioned by the English traveller Thomas Hyde in a list of approximately 30 games. Mangala was very popular in Constantinople in 1771, when it was observed by the French traveller Pierre Augustin Guys. The game was also found by Edward Daniel Clarke in Balaklava, Crimea (now