The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
reputation in chess remained unchallenged in Arabic circles for more than 600 years. To his successors he represented all that was possible in chess, much as Philidor stood for the unattainable ideal to the early nineteenth century. His biographer, b. Khallikān says:
He stood alone in chess in his own time, for there was no one in that age who was his equal in skill. His play has passed into a proverb, and when men speak of any one who is remarkable for the excellence of his play, they say, ‘He plays chess like aṣ-Ṣūlī.’
Many Muslim players supposed from this proverb that aṣ-Ṣūlī was the actual discoverer or inventor of chess, and aṣ-Ṣafadī, b. Khallikān, and b. Sukaikir all point out the erroneousness of this belief.
We possess in the MSS. which have come down to us sufficient of aṣ-Ṣūlī’s work to form an opinion of the chess-activity of this master. We see him criticizing his predecessors not unkindly but with the touch of superior knowledge. We have his favourite openings, founded no longer on mere caprice but on definite principles. We have End-games which happened to him in play over the board and in blindfold play, with an occasional anecdote that shows how much the master’s play excelled that of his opponent. We see him as the first player to try to discover the science of the game or to enunciate the underlying principles of play. We may even possess some snatches of actual games in the analysis in the chess treatise contained in MSS. L and AE, the work of his grateful and able pupil al-Lajlāj.
This player, whose name is given by an-Nadīm in the Fihrist as Abū’l-Faraj Muḥammad b. ‘Obaidallāh, and in the MSS. as Abū’1-Faraj al-Muẓaffar b. Sa‘īd, probably owed his surname of al-Lajlāj (the stammerer) to a physical defect. The only fact that we know of his life is that recorded by an-Nadīm, who had seen him in Baghdād. In 360/970 he settled in Shīrāz at the court of the Būyid ‘Aḍudaddaula, where he died not long after. Both master and pupil are commemorated in a punning line in an elaborate essay in praise and dispraise of chess by Muḥammad b. Sharaf al-Qīrwānī, which is quoted by Hyde (ii. 57) from aṣ-Ṣafadī’s Sharḥ Lāmīyat al-‘Ajam.
Like aṣ-Ṣūlī, al-Lajlāj has been remembered as a great chess master, but while aṣ-Ṣūlī’s reputation has been in the main preserved in Syria and Egypt, al-Lajlāj’s memory has only survived among the Persians, the Turks, and the Moghul Hindus. To these peoples he has become the great historic figure in chess, and all the myths of the game have been attached to his name. As Lajāj, or more commonly Līlāj, he is the inventor of chess: he appears in the story of the Indian embassy to Nūshīrwān as the Indian ambassador; the fabulous Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir is represented as his father; and the Persian and Turk have forgotten aṣ-Ṣūlī entirely.40
After the time of these great players there is a gap in the succession of references to chess at the court of Baghdād.41 The light of the Eastern caliphate was flickering out, and the centre of Muslim life was moving elsewhere. A few references may be quoted from other parts of Islam that show the wide spread of chess.
‘Omāra b. ‘Alī Najmaddīn al-Yamanī (D. 589/1175) in his Ta’rīkh al-Yaman (Yamau … by Najm ad-din ‘Omarah a1 Hakami, ed. H. C. Kay, London, 1892. pp. 88–92) gives a long account42 of the events leading up to Jayyash’s successful revolt at Zabīd in Southern Arabia in 482/1089. Jayyash had returned to Zabīd from India, and was living there in the disguise of an Indian faqir. He made use of his skill at chess to ingratiate himself with the vizier ‘Alī b. al-Kumm. To do this he took up his position each day at the bench at the outer gate of the vizier’s house.
Husayn, son of ‘Aly the Kummite, the poet, came forth on a certain day. He was at that time the most skilful chess-player of all the inhabitants of Zabīd. ‘Indian,’ he asked me, ‘art thou a good chess-player?’ I answered that I was. We played, and I beat him at the game, whereupon he barely restrained himself from violence against me. He went to his father and told him that he had been beaten at chess. His father replied that there had never been a person at Zabīd who could overcome him, excepting only Jayyash, the son of Najah, and he, he continued, has died in India. ‘Aly, the father of Husayn, then came forth to me. He was an exceedingly skilful player and we played together. I was unwilling to defeat him, and the match ended in a drawn game.
From this time Jayyash played frequently with the vizier, until he incautiously betrayed his identity by an involuntary exclamation after a game in which he had allowed Ḥusain to beat him for reasons of policy.
In Egypt the mad Fāṭimid ruler al-Ḥākim biamrillāh prohibited chess in the year 1005, and ordered all the sets of chess to be burnt. The order did not extend to the magnificent sets of chess in the palace treasury, for in a description of the treasures of a later ruler, al-Mustanṣir billāh (1036–94), al-Maqrīzī (D. 1441) mentions ‘chess and draught (read nard) boards of silk, embroidered in gold, with pawns (read men) of gold, silver, ivory, and ebony’. Much of this treasure had belonged to the ‘Abbāsid caliphs before the Fāṭimids acquired it.43
I have already quoted from the Persian writer al-Bērūnī. His patron, the Ziyārid Qābūs b. Washmgīr (976–1012) of Tabaristān,44 refers to chess in a poem in which he recounts his favourite occupations:
The things of this world from end to end are the goal of desire and greed,
And I set before this heart of mine the things which I most do need,
But a score of things I have chosen out of the world’s unnumbered throng,
That in quest of these I my soul may please and speed my life along.
Verse and song, and minstrelsy, and wine full flavoured, and sweet,
Backgammon, and chess, and the hunting-ground, and the falcon and cheetah fleet;
Field, and ball, and audience-hall, and battle, and banquet rare,
Horse, and arms, and a generous hand, and praise of my lord and prayer.
B. al-Athīr (Cairo ed., ix. 128) tells a story of the famous Maḥmūd of Ghaznī, which shows him as a chess-player.45 In the spring of 420/1029 he seized Rai and dethroned Majdaddaula. He summoned the latter before him, and the following colloquy took place:
‘Hast thou not read the Shāhnāma and aṭ-Ṭbarī’s history (i.e. Persian and Arabic history)?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your conduct is not as of one who has read them. Do you play chess?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you ever see a Shāh approach a Shāh?’
‘No.’
‘Then what induced you to surrender yourself to one who is stronger than yourself?’
Thereupon Maḥmūd exiled him to Khurāsān.46
References to chess in Muhammadan Spain have, perhaps, a greater interest for us. I have already mentioned a chess poem by the Spanish poet ar-Ramādī as being quoted in the MS. H. There are one or two references belonging to the eleventh century. B. Hayyān (D. 469/1075), one of the best historians of Spain, records that the vizier Abū Ja‘far Aḥmad b. al-‘Abbās of Almeria, (D. 1038) was a keen chess-player. B. Ammār is said by al-Marrākoshī (writing 621/1224) to have played chess with the Christian King Alfonso VI of Castile, c. 1078. The poet b. al-Labbān ad-Dānī (c. 485/1092) wrote:
In the hand of fate we resemble the chess, and the shāh is often defeated by the baidaq.
There is a reference to chess in al-Maqqarī’s (D. 1041/1632) Nafḥ aṭ-ṭīb (ed. Dozy, &c., Leyden, 1855–61, i. 480) in connexion with the biography of the qāḍī Abū-Bakr b. al-‘Arabī (D. 543/1148); and b. Abī Uṣaibi‘a (D. 668/1270) in his K. ‘uyūn a1 anbā’, in his biography of b. Zuhr al-Ḥafīd of Seville (D. 596/1200), of Jewish descent, describes him as a good chess-player, who used to spend many an hour at chess with a friend of the tribe of al-Yanaqī.47
Towards the end of MS. H (f. 51 a) we have a note from Abū’l-‘Abbās b.