A historical overview of gambling in the Middle East

A historical overview of gambling in the Middle East begins with a clear distinction: Ancient games of chance were not “casinos” in the modern sense, but they show that luck, risk, competition, and material stakes have existed in the region for thousands of years. The story moves from Mesopotamian dice and Egyptian board games to Islamic legal prohibitions, Ottoman social life, limited modern casino exceptions, and today’s tightly regulated commercial gaming models.

Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt provide the earliest regional evidence for games built around chance. In southern Mesopotamia, the Royal Game of Ur was found in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, with British Museum records dating related boards, dice, and pieces to around 2600–2400 BC. The game used dice-like objects and combined luck with strategy, making it one of the clearest early examples of chance-based play in the Middle East.

Ancient Egypt also developed a strong gaming culture. Senet, Egypt’s best-known board game, was played from the Predynastic Period through the Late Period, and it later gained religious meaning connected with the journey to the afterlife. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that Senet pieces moved across a three-by-ten-square board, while other games such as Twenty Squares spread between Egypt, Mesopotamia, Turkey, and the Iranian Plateau.

Pre-Islamic Arabia and the meaning of maysir are central to understanding why gambling became morally and legally sensitive in the region. Maysir referred to gain acquired through chance, and scholars describe it as a gambling practice known among pre-Islamic Arabs. The concept later expanded beyond one specific custom to include betting, wagering, games of chance, and transactions where one side’s gain came mainly from another side’s loss.

Pre-Islamic gambling was not only entertainment. It was tied to status, generosity, rivalry, and social pressure. In some traditions, wagers involved animals, meat distribution, arrows, or lots, which made gambling part of public reputation rather than a private hobby. This background explains why later Islamic teaching treated gambling not merely as a game, but as a social practice capable of producing debt, conflict, and unfair enrichment.

Islam’s legal turning point came through the Qur’anic prohibition of maysir. Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:90 places gambling alongside intoxicants, idols, and divining arrows, instructing believers to avoid them. The following verse links gambling with enmity, hatred, and distraction from prayer, which shaped the moral foundation for Islamic legal attitudes across the Middle East.

Islamic law therefore transformed gambling from a tolerated custom into a prohibited activity in most Muslim-majority societies. The concern was not only the randomness of the outcome, but the transfer of wealth without productive work, the possibility of addiction, and the damage caused when one person’s entertainment depended on another person’s loss. Over time, Muslim jurists applied the idea of maysir to dice games, betting, lotteries, and financial arrangements based mainly on chance.

Medieval and Ottoman everyday life did not remove games from society, but it changed how people viewed them. Chess, backgammon, cards, dice, and informal betting continued to appear in homes, taverns, markets, and coffeehouses. The difference was that play without stakes could be treated as leisure, while wagering money or valuables made the activity religiously and legally problematic.

Ottoman coffeehouses became important social spaces from the sixteenth century onward. Men gathered there to drink coffee, talk, listen to stories, discuss politics, and play games. Historical studies note that gambling, like alcohol, was considered haram and was often associated with forbidden or semi-hidden spaces such as taverns, while backgammon and similar games remained common forms of recreation.

Modern state law and casino exceptions created a more complex picture. Many Middle Eastern countries continued to restrict gambling because of Islamic law, public morality, and social policy. Yet some governments allowed controlled exceptions, especially where tourism, foreign visitors, or state revenue were involved.

Lebanon became one of the region’s best-known exceptions. Casino du Liban says its gaming and entertainment history began in 1957, and it became a symbol of Lebanon’s mid-twentieth-century tourism culture. Egypt also developed a restricted model: Egyptian law treats gambling agreements as void in general, but licensed casino gambling may be allowed in certain tourism facilities for non-Egyptians under ministerial controls.

These exceptions show a recurring Middle Eastern compromise. Gambling is often rejected as a general social practice for citizens, but limited gaming may be permitted when it is isolated, licensed, taxed, and aimed mainly at visitors. This model separates public morality from tourism economics, although the balance differs widely from country to country.

The UAE and the new regulatory model represent the region’s most recent shift. The General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority now says it has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate, license, and supervise commercial gaming activities and facilities in the UAE. Its official licensing page lists The Game LLC as the UAE Lottery operator and Wynn Al Marjan as a land-based gaming facilities licensee.

This does not mean gambling has become broadly casual or unregulated across the Gulf. Instead, it signals a controlled, state-supervised model built around licensing, compliance, responsible gaming, tourism, and penalties for unlicensed operators. The UAE example is historically significant because it moves commercial gaming from informal prohibition into a formal regulatory framework.

Status of online gambling in the Middle East remains highly restricted, even though digital casino platforms, sports betting sites, and games such as online slots are widely searched for by users across the region. In most Middle Eastern countries, gambling is still shaped by Islamic legal principles, public morality rules, and national criminal laws; for example, Qatar’s Penal Code defines gambling as a chance-based game involving gain and loss, and punishes gambling participation and organization. 

The UAE shows the region’s newest regulatory shift, because the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority now licenses and supervises commercial gaming activities, while anyone wishing to conduct commercial gaming business in the UAE must first obtain a GCGRA license. 

Lebanon also stands apart through a more limited licensed model, with BetArabia presenting itself as Lebanon’s licensed online gaming platform owned by Casino du Liban. Overall, online gambling in the Middle East is not a uniform market: It is mostly prohibited or heavily controlled, with only narrow licensed exceptions where governments choose to regulate digital gaming under strict supervision.

This article was written in cooperation with Bazoom