The History of Chess till the Printing of the First English Book on

Chess by William Caxton in 1474

Muhammed Abdullah al-Ahari
Chicago, Illinois
July 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).