A Glossary of Persian Card-Game Terms

There's a particular moment, common to anyone learning Pâsur (پاسور) from an Iranian friend or family member, where you realize that half the words being said at the table aren't English. Someone calls out "Bibi!" while sweeping up a Queen. Someone shouts "Sur!" while clearing the pool. Someone asks for the khâj (clubs) count and then announces "Haft khâj!" with delight when they cross seven. If you don't have the vocabulary, you're playing the game with one ear plugged.

This is a Persian card games glossary — an alphabetical reference for the terms you'll actually hear when you sit down at a table. Most of these are specific to Pâsur, but several (hokm, kot, âs) belong to the broader Persian card-game vocabulary and will come up in conversations about Hokm, Shelem, and the older Âs-Nas tradition. The goal is to make you fluent at the table, not to be exhaustive.

A note on spelling: Persian doesn't have a single standard Latin transliteration. Pâsur, Pasur, Pasoor, and Pâsour are all the same word; khâj and khaj are the same; sarbâz and sarbaaz are the same. I'll use the form with the circumflex (â) consistently below to mark the long a sound, but in practice you'll see all the variants.

Âs (آس) — Ace

"Ace." In the Persian deck, âs is the Ace, worth 1 point in Pâsur scoring. The word predates the modern 52-card deck — it was the highest-ranked card in the older 19th-century Âs-Nas game (whose name literally means "Ace-cards"), where the Âs card showed a lion fighting a dragon, sometimes with the human-faced Sun (Khorshid Khânom) above it. The modern usage at the Pâsur table is much plainer: "I took two Âs this round" means you captured two Aces, worth 2 points.

Etymology: from Persian âs (آس), a loanword that traces back through medieval card-game vocabulary to the same Latin-derived root as French as, Italian asso, English ace.

Bibi (بی‌بی) — Queen

"Queen." Literally "lady" or "grandmother" in colloquial Persian — a respectful term for an older woman. In the Pâsur deck, Bibi is the Queen card (Q♣, Q♦, Q♥, Q♠). Captures are by rank: a Bibi played from your hand captures one Bibi from the pool.

The term is inherited from the older Persian Âs-Nas pack, where Bibi was one of the five suits — the queen card, sometimes depicted seated with an infant on her knee. When the Russian 52-card deck displaced the Âs-Nas deck in the late 19th century, the Persian name Bibi stuck for the new Queen card.

Example at the table: someone plays a Q♥ to capture the Q♠ in the pool and says, "Bibi-ye man, Bibi-ye to" — my Queen, your Queen — taking both. Queens are 0-point in raw Pâsur scoring; you only chase them to deny the opponent.

Chahâr Barg (چهار برگ) — "Four Cards"

The name of the Pâsur initial-deal: four cards to each player. Chahâr means "four"; barg means "leaf" or "card." The phrase doubles as one of Pâsur's many regional alternate names — some Iranians call the whole game Chahâr Barg in reference to the four-card hand size. You'll see it on older boxed sets and in some Persian-language card-game references.

If someone says "let's play Chahâr Barg," they mean Pâsur. There is no separate game by that name.

Haft Khâj (هفت خاج) — "Seven Clubs"

The 7-point bonus for capturing the majority of the clubs suit in a round. Haft is "seven"; khâj is "clubs." There are 13 clubs in the deck; you need at least 7 to score the bonus. In a 2-player game, somebody always wins this (since 13 is odd, no tie is possible).

Haft Khâj is, in many people's view, the single most important scoring category in Pâsur — bigger than any other single bonus. It's also the term that gives Pâsur one of its alternate names: some Iranians call the game Haft Khâj outright. See How to Win the Haft Khâj for the full tactical breakdown.

The term is also the source of one of Pâsur's nicknames: Haft-o Chahâr Yâzdah — "seven and four, eleven" — combining the Haft Khâj bonus, the four-card hand size (Chahâr Barg), and the 11-target sum capture rule.

Hokm (حکم) — "Rule" / Trump suit / The game itself

Outside Pâsur but common in Iranian card play: Hokm is both the name of a four-player partnership trick-taking game (similar to Whist or Spades) and the word for the "trump" suit within that game. Hokm literally means "rule" or "decree" in Persian — the hakem (ruler) chooses the trump suit for the deal.

You won't hear Hokm during a Pâsur game itself, but if you're at an Iranian gathering and the deck is out, Hokm is the other game the family is likely to play. It's covered in basically every overview of Persian card games for that reason. The two games are completely different — Pâsur is a fishing game, Hokm is a trick-taking partnership game — but they're played with the same 52-card deck and the same Persian vocabulary for ranks (Âs, Sarbâz, Bibi, Shâh).

Khâj (خاج) — Clubs

The clubs suit (♣). The Persian word khâj literally means "cross" — referring to the trefoil-cross shape of the club symbol. Each Pâsur scoring round revolves around the Haft Khâj bonus (most clubs, 7 points), so khâj is the suit you hear named most often during play. "Has she taken any khâj yet?" is a perfectly normal table question.

The other three suit names in Persian:

English	Persian	Literal
Clubs ♣	Khâj (خاج)	Cross
Diamonds ♦	Khesht (خشت)	Brick / tile
Hearts ♥	Del (دل)	Heart
Spades ♠	Pik (پیک)	(from French pique)

Three of the four are native Persian words; Pik is a French loanword that arrived with the deck itself.

Khesht (خشت) — Diamonds

The diamonds suit (♦). The word literally means "brick" or "tile" — referring to the diamond shape, which looks like a rotated square tile. In Pâsur, khesht is the suit of the 10 of Diamonds, the 3-point bonus card (also called Dah-e Khesht — "10 of khesht"). Other than the 10♦, the diamonds don't carry special weight in Pâsur scoring.

Pâsur (پاسور) — The game itself, or "deck of cards"

The name of the game. The Persian Pâsur (پاسور) entered Persian from Russian Пасур during the 19th century along with the Russian-style 52-card deck. (See The History of Pâsur for the full etymology.) The transliteration into Latin script varies: Pâsur (most accurate), Pasur (common simplified), Pasoor (older English-language texts), Pâsour (German conventions).

In modern colloquial Persian, Pâsur is sometimes used to mean "deck of cards" or "card game" in general — Iranian linguistic drift. If a friend says "Pâsur dâri?" — "do you have Pâsur?" — they might mean "do you have a deck?" rather than "do you know the game?"

Per shodam (پر شدم) — "I'm full"

The Pâsur equivalent of "I win." Literally "I've become full," with per meaning "full" or "complete." A player calls per shodam when they believe their cumulative score plus the cards in their current pile would put them over the 62-point winning threshold — claiming victory mid-round before it's officially over.

The catch: if you call per shodam and the count comes up short of 62, you've embarrassed yourself in front of the whole table. Some house rules penalize a failed per shodam call (negating points or forfeiting the round). Others just treat it as a social loss — the laughter at the table is punishment enough.

The Pagat reference and several traditional Iranian sources describe this rule. Our online game doesn't currently support per shodam — we end rounds based on actual point counts at the natural end of the round. But it's a beautiful piece of the table tradition, worth knowing about.

Sarbâz (سرباز) — Jack

"Soldier." The Persian name for the Jack card (J♣, J♦, J♥, J♠). Inherited from the older Âs-Nas tradition, where Sarbâz was one of the five suits — depicted as a soldier in European-style military dress, dating the design to the mid-19th-century Qajar period when Iran's military was modernizing along European lines.

In Pâsur, the Sarbâz (Jack) is the wild card — it sweeps every non-King, non-Queen card on the table at once. It's worth 1 point in scoring (so all four Sarbâz together are worth 4 points). The wild-Jack rule is the signature mechanic of Pâsur; without it, the game is a much tamer affair.

Word origin: sarbâz combines sar ("head") and bâz ("playing" or "open"), historically meaning something like "one who gambles with his life" — a poetic name for a soldier.

Shâh (شاه) — King

"King." The Persian word for the King card (K♣, K♦, K♥, K♠). Inherited from Âs-Nas, where Shâh was the king card, often depicted seated and attended by young noblemen. The word itself is the same Shâh you know from Persian royal history (Shah of Iran, Shâh-nameh, and so on) — literally "king."

In Pâsur, the Shâh captures only another Shâh (King takes King). It's worth 0 points in scoring — you only capture Kings to deny them to your opponent or to clean them off the table.

Some regional dialects also use Shâh informally; older players might say Shâh-e khâj (King of Clubs) where younger players would just say "King of clubs" or "K♣".

Sofreh (سفره) — "Spread"

"The spread" or "tablecloth." In Pâsur context, sofreh informally refers to the playing surface — the cloth or rug spread out for the game. It's not a technical card-game term so much as a hospitality term: when an Iranian host says "sofreh bezan" — "lay out the spread" — they might mean dinner, or they might mean dinner plus the card-playing setup that follows.

The reason to mention sofreh in a glossary is that you'll hear it adjacent to a lot of card-game talk. Pâsur is a sofreh game — you play on a household tablecloth, often surrounded by tea, fruit, and pistachios.

Sur (سور) — "Sweep" / Feast

The 5-point bonus in Pâsur for emptying the pool with a single non-Jack capture. Sur literally means "feast" or "celebration" in Persian — the kind of feast you'd throw for a wedding or a religious holiday. The card-game usage borrows the festive connotation: clearing the entire table in one play is a celebration.

The mechanics of the sur are subtle. A Jack sweep doesn't count (Jacks have their own rules). The last deal of a round doesn't count (because the last-capture-sweeps rule is already in effect). And the sur cancellation rule — perhaps the most distinctively Persian rule in the whole game — means your opponent's sur erases one of yours instead of stacking. Only one side can carry net surs into round-end scoring.

Some sources also use sur as a verb: "I just sur-ed!" or in Persian "sur kardam" — "I made a sur." Either is correct table usage.

Yâzdah (یازده) — Eleven

"Eleven." The target sum in Pâsur's number-card capture rule. Your hand card plus one or more pool cards must equal yâzdah — 11 — for a capture to be legal.

The word shows up in several of Pâsur's regional names: Yâzdahtâyi ("eleveny," roughly) and Haft-o Chahâr Yâzdah ("seven and four, eleven," combining Haft Khâj + Chahâr Barg + Yâzdah). The number itself is, in some traditions, considered to have specific significance — see Why Pâsur Cards Add Up to 11 for an honest look at whether the choice of 11 has any deeper basis or is just historical accident.

A few terms you'll hear less often

These come up rarely enough that I've grouped them together rather than giving each its own entry.

Khorshid Khânom (خورشید خانم) — "Lady Sun." The human-faced sun motif sometimes depicted above the lion-and-dragon on Âs-Nas Ace cards in the 19th century. You won't hear this at a Pâsur table, but it's part of the broader Persian card-game iconography.
Lakkât (لکات) — "Harlot." The lowest suit in the Âs-Nas pack, depicted as a dancing girl or low-ranking female. Obsolete since the 52-card deck took over; included here only because you might encounter it in historical writing about Persian cards.
Hâkem (حاکم) — "Ruler." The trump-caller in Hokm. Related to hokm itself. Not used in Pâsur.
Kot (کوت) — In Hokm: winning the first 7 tricks in a row, before the opposing side wins any. Scores double. Pâsur has no equivalent.
Bavney (باونی) — In Hokm: winning all 13 tricks, the maximum possible. Extremely rare; scores triple. Again, no Pâsur equivalent.
Ganjifa (گنجفه) — The 96-card, 8-suited Persian court game played from the 16th to 18th centuries. Predecessor to Âs-Nas, completely unrelated mechanically to modern Pâsur. The word means "treasure cards," from the Persian ganj (treasure). Of historical interest only; nobody plays Ganjifa today.

At the table

If you want to sound less like a tourist when playing Pâsur with Iranian friends, the three terms to memorize are: Sur (for the sweep bonus, said with mild triumph), Haft Khâj (for the clubs majority, the prize everyone's chasing), and Bibi (for the Queen — just the comfortable everyday word). The rest will come naturally once you've played a few rounds.

For the full rules these terms come up in, see the complete guide to Pâsur. For the broader history of how these words ended up in a Persian card game in the first place, see The History of Pâsur. And of course, the easiest way to put any of this into practice is to start a game at playpasur.com — though you'll have to provide the pistachios yourself.