Jack of diamonds (playing card)

History

The jack of diamonds traces its lineage to the thānī nā'ib (second or under-deputy) in Mamluk card decks, the lowest of three court cards depicted through abstract art or calligraphy. In Italy and Spain, this card became an infantry soldier and a page respectively. In France, where it was called the valet, the queen was inserted between the king and the knight, and the knight was later dropped from non-Tarot decks, leaving the valet directly under the queen.

This king-queen-valet format then entered England. By the mid-1500s, the card was known in England as the knave, meaning 'boy or young man', akin to the German equivalent. The word 'Jack' was common in the 16th and 17th centuries for any generic man. In 1864, American cardmaker Samuel Hart published a deck using 'J' instead of 'Kn' to designate the lowest-ranking court card, partly because the abbreviation 'Kn' was easily confused with 'K' for king.

This confusion increased when suit and rank markings moved to the corners of cards, a positioning that became widespread after Hart reintroduced it in 1864. Books from the third quarter of the 19th century still referred to the 'knave', and calling them 'jacks' was considered uncouth, as noted by Estella in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations.

Representations

In the English pattern, the jack and other face cards are not linked to any specific person, unlike the historical French system where each court card was tied to a particular figure. For the Paris pattern, the jack of diamonds has traditionally been associated with Hector, the mythological hero of the Iliad. Some southern Italian decks feature androgynous knaves sometimes called maids, while the Sicilian Tarot deck has clearly female knaves also known as maids. This makes it the only traditional deck to survive with two ranks of female face cards. The modern Mexican pattern likewise includes female knaves.

Poetry

The figure of the jack appears in several literary works. The 17th-century English writer Samuel Rowlands wrote a series of satirical tracts on playing cards, including 'The Knave of Clubbs: Tis Merry When Knaves Meet' (first published in 1600) and 'The Knave of Harts: Haile Fellowe, Well Meet' (1612), which contains a 'Supplication to Card-Makers' addressing English manufacturers who copied French court figures. The Knave of Hearts also appears as a thieving antagonist in the traditional children's poem 'The Queen of Hearts'.