The History of Chess till the Printing of the First English Book on Chess by William Caxton in 1474

Muhammed Abdullah al-AhariChicago, IllinoisJuly 17, 1994

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Introduction

The earliest point of chess into the chronicles of history is in much dispute. There are four basic schools as to the origin of Chess: Chinese, Persian, Arab, and Indian. The Chinese origin is the weakest as the source is actually called Chinese River Chess, a game totally different from modern chess. The game of India involved the same chess pieces but involved a 10 X 10 square board and extra pieces called camels. The Indian version of Chess was played by four players instead of two. This is likely the true origin because we read in a twelfth century manuscript which quotes the work of al-Adli (an early Arabic Chess enthusiast discussed below) we read, "This is the form of Chess which the Persians took from the Indians, and which we took from the Persians. The Persians altered some of the rules, as is agreed."

Persia

The entry of Chess into Arabic literature came from as early as the conquest of Persia. However, extant manuscript refrence date only to the ninth century. In Middle Persian literature there are several references as to how Chess was developed as a game. The Persian national epic- Shah Nama by Firdausi- recounts many early legends as to the origin of the game. These are not able to be checked by historical analysis however, but are very informative as to the feelings of people of the eleventh century felt about Chess.

According to legend the Rajah of India sent a challange to Nushirwan (Shah of Persia at the time) stating that he would pay him tribute if he could figure out the rules of the chequered board game enclosed in the diplomatic pouch sent by him. The letter named the pieces as foot-soldier, elephant, the rest of the army, and challanged the Shah to tell where the pieces should be placed on the board, what their names were, how they moved, and other rules of the game. The Vizer of the Shah- Bozorgmehr- answered the challange and won. He in turn sent another diplomatic pouch to India with the game of Nard (backgammon) enclosed with the same challange given above for Chess given for it. The Rajah failed the test and continued to pay tribute.

Arabian Origins

The first documented historic Arabic reference to Chess puts it as being widely spread from Persia by the rule of the Abbassids from Baghdad (after 750 A.D.). The earliest writer was al-Suli who was the leading Chess champion in the court of Caliph al-Muktafi (902-908). Al-Suli was a Turk who chronicled the rule of the Abbassids and wrote several works on Chess. His main pupil was al-Lajlaj. The bibliographer Ibn al-Nadim found two writers earlier than al-Suli, namely, al-Adli and al-Razi. Both of them were players of the court of Caliph al-Mutawakkil (847-861). Al-Adli was the court champion who lost to his younger rival al-Razi. Al-Suli felt al-Razi the greater player so he used much of his writing to refute the ideas of al-Adli. Thus we have the thoughts of champhions earlier than al-Suli being preserved mainly in his works.

Some push the origins of Arabian Chess masters as early as the sixth century to the reign of the second Caliph 'Umar, but all of this is conjecture. If the early Caliphs or the Prophet Muhammad had heard of Chess surely their rulings on it (like their ruling against gambling and Backgammon that involved gambling) would have been preserved.

The Arabic word for Chess is Shatranj. This word is dervived form the Persian Chatrang which in turn came from the Sanskrit Chaturanga. Most of the Arabic terminology of Chess also derived from Persian. (see attached charts)

Introduction into the West

Sometime before 1000 A.D. Chess was introduced into Europe likely through the then Muslim rulers of Sicily. The earliest account in a European language is contained in the so-called "Einsiedeln Verses." This poem is a ninety-eight-line work which discribes the game and its rules. (see "The Earliest Evidence of Chess in Western Literature: The Einsiedeln Verses", Speculum, 1954, pp. 740-44. for details.)

By the time of Chaucer it had a fairly wide currency and was played by nobles, the clergy, and even some more ambitious peasants and merchants. In Spain King Alfonso X of Castile collected material on the Arabian souures in his Libro del Acedrex in 1283. This was the first European royal to give patronage to Chess. The name in Spanish ajedrez is the only term in European languages

which can readily be traced back to an Arabic root word.

Unlike the formulation of rules and strategies, the shapes and names of the Chess pieces were almost entirely a European invention. There are parallels such as Shah=King but others are new to the game. The reason the shapes are not Arabian like the rules is that in Islam there was an injunction against painting and carving living figures and thus Arabian (and Islamic pieces in general) were abstract pieces only vaguely resembling their namesakes.

By the middle of the eleventh century more than fifty distinct references to Chess in the literature of time can be found and are far too diverse to ennumerate here. To show the influence of the Arabs, the first Chess boards were called Scaccarium in Latin. This word is dervived from the Sicilian word Saracean which ultimately comes from the Arabic Sharqiah (Easterner).

Petrus Alfonsi listed Chess as one of the seven knightly virtues in his Disciplina Clericalis (Clerk's Instructions. The other six were: riding, swimming, archery, boxing, hawking, and writing poetry. This work is mainly a collection of Oriental tales much like those transmitted into Arabic in the fables of Kalila wa Dimna. Likewise in the German version of the Tristan knight of Arthurian legends, part of the knightly studies he partook in was a study of Chess. Other knightly stories such as Parzival, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Chaucer's translation of Romance of the Rose all have Chess as an important feature in their narrative.

Certain clerical orders of the Middle Ages forbade Chess (such as the Knight Templers) but this undoubtedly aided more in its spread than in its curtail in popularity. Later, however, the church gave in and allowed Chess and such games that were games of skill and not games of chance.

Chess was also used in teaching mathmatics. Dante used it to ennumerate the number of angels in Heaven in his Divine Commedy. The most common problem in math is based on where an early philosopher outsmarted a boastful King. Once a King boasted he could give the philosopher anything he wanted- diamonds, rubies, pearls, etc. The philosopher asked him to bring a Chess board and put a kernal a wheat on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, etc, doubling the number of kernal on the next square until all sixty-four squares were filled. At the end the amount of wheat was enough to cover the British Isles to a depth of almost forty feet!

The last two work that were important in the years before Chess had been introduced into the British Isles are Liber de Moribus

Hominum et Officiis Nobilium by the Dominican friar Jacobus de Cessolis (written in Latin around 1300 and totaling around 20,000 words) and its English translation The Game and Playe of the Chesse. Cessolis was from Cessole in Northern Italy and served as Vicar to the Inquisitioner there. This work served as the basis of the later work Regement of Princes due to it setting forth Chess as a way to teach social order and nobility to both Kings and commoners.

1474 saw the printing of The Game and Playe of Chesse. This work was the second full length work published in English (in England. It was earlier published in Bruges, in the Low Countries of the present day nation of Holland). The first was The Dicts and Saying of the Philosophers as translated from French by Anthony Woodville, Earl of Rivers. This is a work translated into French from Latin and into Latin from Arabic. This work was originally a collection of saying of Greek philosophers entitled Mukhtar al - Hikmah compiled by Abu al-Wafa Mubashir ibn Fatik of Damascus in the year 1053 A.D.

Thus the earliest published works in English were indirectly the collection of wisdom of the Arabs (sayings of philosophers and the intellectual persuit of Chess) which was in turn the collection of the wisdom of ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Indians. Living in a multi-cultured nation such as this is, those who strive for a multi-cultural ideal should teach these facts and also that English has almost four thousand words from Arabic that deal with subjects other than Chess such as the words: alchemy, alcohol, alkali, and thousands more.

Bibliography:

Eales, Richard, Chess: the History of a Game (New York: Facts On File Publications, 1985).

Golombek, Harry, Chess: A History (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1976).