The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
al-Yahūdī (the Jew), and b. an-Nu‘mān, all of whom played blindfold: he goes on to say that Abū-Bakr b. Zuhair was equal to b. an-Nu‘mān. He says that Abū-Bakr b. Zuhair told him as follows: ‘There were assembled at one time in my house in Seville the following experts, aṣ-Ṣaqālī, his father, as-Sijilmāsī, aṭ-Ṭarābulusī, b. an-Nu‘mān, and az-Za‘farān.’ Abū’l-‘Abbās said: now in our time Muḥammad al-Ghamārī (?), Abū’l-Ḥusain b. ash-Shāṭibī, b. ‘Ulāhim al-Mukānisī, and Abū Muḥammad ‘Ahdalkarīm, an eminent man of Fez, formed one class, and b. Abī Ja‘far al-Mursī (the Murcian), b. al-Qaiṭūn, and b. Ayyūb and b. Abī’ẓ-Ẓafar b. Mardanīsh (?) formed another.
We have an interesting collection of players here from Sicily, Fez, Sijilmāsa, Tripoli, Murcia, and Seville. It evidences the spread of the game of chess in Muhammadan lands.
Both Fouché of Chartres48 and William of Malmesbury,49 in their accounts of the siege of Antioch (1097–8) during the First Crusade, tell how Peter the Hermit found the Turkish general Karbuga at chess when he was sent to treat with him at a critical point of the siege.
Aṣ-Ṣafadī (D. 764/1363), in his Sharḥ Lāmīyat al-‘Ajam, to which I have already referred, gives some interesting particulars as to chess in his day.
I once saw a soldier named ‘Alā’addīn in Egypt who was blind, and yet he used to play chess with the nobles and to beat them utterly. I say moreover that nothing pleased me more than the way in which he sat with us and talked and recited poetry, and narrated strange histories, showing that he was taking part in what we were doing. He would withdraw, and when he returned he had forgotten nothing that he had been doing. This is certainly surprising. The man was very famous in Cairo, and there were very few chess-players who did not know him.
At another time, in 731/1331, I saw in Damascus a man named an-Niẓām al-‘Ajamī, who played chess blindfold before Shamsaddīn. The first time that I saw him playing chess, he was playing with the shaikh Amīnaddīn Sulaimān, chief of the physicians, and he defeated him blindfold. We indeed knew nothing until he gave him checkmate with a Fīl, and we did not see that it was mate until he turned to us and said, ‘It is checkmate.’ I have also been told that he sometimes played two games at once blindfold. The sahib al-Maula Badraddīn Ḥasan b. ‘Alī al-Ghazzī told me that he had seen him play two games blindfold and one over the board at the same time, winning all three. He also vouches for this: Shamsaddīn once called to him in the middle of a game, ‘Enumerate your pieces (qiṭ‘a), and your opponent’s,’ and he rehearsed them in order at once, just as if he saw them before him.50
Chess again appears under royal patronage at the court of the great Moghul emperor Tīmūr (B. 1336, D. 1405). His historian b. ‘Arabskāh (D. 854/1450) makes several references to chess in his ‘Ajā’ih al-maqdūr fī nawā’ib Tīmūr.51
Tīmūr ordered a city to be built on the farther bank of the Jaxartes, with a bridge of boats across the river, and he called it Shāhrukhīya.52 It was built in a spacious position. The reason why he gave this name of Shāh Rukh53 to his son, and also to this city was as follows. He had already given orders for the building of this city on the river’s bank, and he was engaged in playing chess with one of his courtiers as was his wont: one of his concubines was also with child. He had just given shāh-rukh (check-rook) by which his adversary was crippled and weakened, and while his adversary was in this helpless position, two messengers arrived. One announced the birth of a son, and the other the completion of the city, and therefore he called both by this name54 (i. 218).
Tīmūr was devoted to the game of chess because he whetted his intellect by it, but his mind was too exalted to play at the small chess (ash-shaṭranj aṣ-ṣayhīr), and therefore he only played at the great chess (ash-shaṭranj, al-kabīr), of which the board is 10 squares by 11, and there are 2 jamals, 2 zurafas, 2 ṭali‘as, 2 dabbābas, a wazīr, &c. A diagram of it is attached. The small chess is a mere nothing in comparison with the great chess 55 (ii. 798).
Among chess-players (in Tīmūr’s reign) were Muḥammad b. ‘Aqīl al-Khaimī and Zain al-Yazdī, &c., but the most skilled at that game was ‘Alā’addīn at-Tabrīzī, the lawyer and traditionist, who used to give Zain al-Yazdī the odds of a Baidaq and beat him, and b. ‘Aqīl the odds of a Faras and beat him. Tīmūr himself, who subdued all the regions of the East and the West and had given mate to every sultan and king, both on the battle-field and in the game, used to say to him, ‘You have no rival in the kingdom of chess, just as I have none in government; there is no one to be found who can perform such wonders as I and you, my lord ‘Alī, each in his own sphere.’ He has composed a treatise on the game of chess and its situations. There was no one who could divine his intention in the game before he moved. He was a Shāfi‘ite…. He told me that he had once seen in a dream ‘Alī, the Commander of the Faithful, and had received from him a set of chess in a bag, and no mortal had beaten him since then.56 It was noteworthy about his play that he never spent time in thought but the instant his opponent made his move after long and tedious thought, ‘Alī played without delay or reflection. He often played blindfold against two opponents, and showed by his play what his strength would have been over the board. With the Amir (Tīmūr) he used to play at the great chess. I have seen at his house the round chess (shaṭranj muddawara) and the oblong chess (shaṭranj ṭawīla). The great chess has in it the additional pieces that I have already mentioned. Its rules are best learnt by practice; a description would not have much value (ii. 872).
Wo have sundry references to this great master under the name of Khwāja ‘Alī Shaṭranjī in Persian literature,57 while the MS. RAS gives no less than 21 positions from his games. When this circumstance is considered in connexion with the preface to this work, it certainly lends colour to the view that the MS. is the work which b. ‘Arabshāh tells us ‘Alī himself wrote. The passage runs—
I have passed my life since the age of 15 years among all the masters of chess living in my time; and since that period till now, when I have arrived at middle age, I have travelled through ‘Irāq-‘Arabī, and ‘Irāq-‘ajamī, and Khurāsān, and the regions of Māwarā’n-nahr (Transoxiana), and I have there met with many a master in this art, and I have played with all of them, and through the favour of him who is Adorable and Most High I have come off victorious.
Likewise, in playing blindfold, I have overcome most opponents, nor had they the power to cope with me. I have frequently played with one opponent over the board, and at the same time 1 have carried on four different games with as many adversaries without seeing the board, whilst I conversed freely with my friends all along, and through the Divine favour I conquered them all. Also in the great chess I have invented sundry positions, as well as several openings, which no one else ever imagined or contrived.
There are a great number of ingenious positions that have occurred to me in the course of my experience, in the common game, as practised at the present day; and many positions given as won by the older masters I have either proved to be drawn, or I have corrected them so that they now stand for what they were intended to be. I have also improved and rendered more complete all the rare and cunning stratagems hitherto recorded or invented by the first masters of chess. In short, I have here laid before the reader all that I have myself discovered from experience as well as whatever I found to be rare and excellent in the labours of my predecessors.
Chess remained one of the favourite recreations at the courts of Tīmūr’s descendants, and the Baber Autobiography (tr. Leyden and Erskine, London and Edinburgh, 1826, pp. 187–195), names several courtiers at the court of Ḥusain Mirza, King of Khurāsān (D. 1506), as inveterate chess-players. Among these were Zūlnūn Arghūn, Ḥassan ‘Alī Jelāir, Mīr Murtāz, and the poet Bināi of Heri.
My last authority for the unreformed Muhammadan chess is b. Sukaikir, the author of one of the MSS. which I have described in Chapter X. By birth a Damascene, he travelled through Syria, and visited Constantinople before filling the post of Preacher of the Mosque al-‘Ādilīya at Ḥalab (Aleppo), where he died 987/1579. In his chess work he mentions some experiences of his own. In 964 or 5/c.