The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
the different systems of numeration current in his day. At least two Arabic treatises were written on the problem, viz. the Taḍ‘if buyūt ash-shaṭranj of al-Missisī (9–10th c. A.D.)25 and the Taḍ‘if‘adad ruq‘a ash-shaṭranj of al-Akfānī (D. 749/1348), and several shorter discussions occur in MSS. which I have seen. The MS. Man. gives no less than five methods of treating the problem, one from b. Khallikān (who naïvely states that he did not believe the total could be so great until he met an accountant of Alexandria who showed him the actual calculation), two from ar-Rāghib,26 the fourth from the Durrat al-muḍī’a of Quṭbaddīn Muḥammad b. ‘Abdalqādir, and the fifth from al-Akfānī. MS. Gotha Ar. 1343 has also three calculations, the last of which is interesting since the story is different from the usual one. In this a Sultan who used to challenge all comers at chess, beheading all whom he defeated, after beating ninety-nine opponents met his superior in a dervish. The latter claimed the usual reward—in dirhems.
The calculation reached Europe with the Arabic mathematics, and was discussed by Leonardo Pisano in his Liber Abbaci. Other European references to the Progression will be found below in Part II, Chapter IX.
The later Arabic legends which bring chess into association with Bible history need not detain us. They are clearly an attempt to rehabilitate the game of chess at a time when the legal schools were looking with disfavour upon it. The earliest record of this type of tradition that I know occurs in the preface to aṣ-Ṣūlī’s K. ash-shaṭranj. After referring to al-‘Adlī’s statement that chess was invented by Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir, aṣ-Ṣūlī goes on to say that this is a fabrication which he had found in many works. For himself he preferred to accept the ‘statement based on sound tradition’ which he traces back to Ka‘b al-Akhbār, one of the most notorious forgers of traditions that Islam ever knew, that chess was invented by Būshāqūs, Yūsh‘a b. Nūn (Joshua) and Kālab b. Yūfannā (Caleb), and that the first who played the game was Qārūn (Korah). Būshāqūs taught the game to the Persians. Later writers are still more daring in their assertions. The MS. H suggests that chess was invented by Adam to console himself for the death of Abel, and numbers Shem, Japhet, and King Solomon among the chess-players.
From the time of al-Ma’mūn onwards, the writings of the more famous Greek philosophers became known to the Muslim world in translation. It was, perhaps, inevitable that the scattered allusions to the Greek board-games which occur in Plato and other writers should be misapplied to chess, but to this we owe the statements in H and later chess books that Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates were also chess-players.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GAME OF SHAṬRANJ: ITS THEORY AND PRACTICE. I
The chessboard.—The names of the chessmen in Muslim lands.—Symbolism of the game.—Forms of the chessmen.—The arrangement of the men for play.—The moves of the chessmen, and technical terms.—Relative values of the pieces.—Aim and method of play.—Notation.—Concordant and discordant men.—Classification of players.—Gradations of odds.—Etiquette of play.
The shaṭranj board resembles all native Asiatic boards in being unchequered, but differs from the Indian and other boards in showing no trace of any regular marking of certain squares. The term ‘board’, however, is somewhat deceptive. The Arabic names,1 ruq‘a (a patch or piece of paper), sufra (a table-cloth or napkin), naṭ‘a (a cloth) and bisāt (a carpet), all imply a soft material, and from the earliest days of the Muslim game down, the board has generally been a square piece of cloth or other substance upon which the dividing lines of the squares (Ar. bait, house, pl. buyūt; Per. khāna, pl. khānahā; Turk, au, pl. aular) are worked in another colour. In more elaborate chess-cloths the individual squares may bear a pattern of some simple type, or be merely indicated by the regular recurrence of a conventional design which occupies the centre of the otherwise undivided squares, while these patterns or designs may even, as in the ease of the so-called Turkish cloth of which Falkener gives a photograph (196), show a further differentiation on lines analogous to the Indian marked squares. In the desert rougher materials still are employed: Stamma (Noble Game of Chess, London, 1745, xii) notes:
The wild Arabs draw the Squares on the Ground, and pick up Stones of different Shapes and Sizes, which serve them for Pieces.
Boards of more solid materials—it will be remembered that al-Ya‘qūbī describes Qaflān as making his board of leather—and even chequered boards are not entirely unknown, but the chequering is incidental to the ornamentation of the chessboard, and is not essential for its use. With the fondness of the Egyptian, the Turk, and the Persian for inlaid work in wood, it would be strange indeed if so obvious a method of beautifying the board had not suggested itself. The artist, painting a chess scene for some MS., found the same device at hand.2 But all these are by way of exception only; with the limited powers of move of the older Muslim game, the chequered board was less of a convenience than it is in modern days, when more pieces move with larger sweeps.
Other Arabic terms in connexion with the chessboard which I have noted from the older MSS. are ḥāshyā, margin (generally of the Rooks’ files); wijh, wujh, jiha (pl. jahāt), jānib, side or wing of the board; nāḥīa al-firzān, the Queen’s wing; zāwaya, rukn (R and H only), corner square; wasṭ ar-ruq‘a, the four central squares; sāf (pl. sāfāt), file, as sāf ar-rikkākh, the Rooks’ file; ṣaff (pl. ṣufūf), ṣaffa, file or row, as in ṣaff al-awsaṭ, a central file; mashya (rarely), file.
The names of the chessmen (Ar. dābba, pl. dawābb, beast—used apparently at times in a more restricted sense, e.g. L, 14 b, firzān wa dawābb, Queen and Pieces, and f. 65 b, dawābb kull wa bayādiq, all the Pieces and Pawns; qiṭ‘a, piece; kalb, pl. kilāb, dog; mithāl, pl.’amthila, tamāthīl, figure. Per. kālā, pl. kālāhā, in RAS only; muhrah. Collectively: Ar. ālāt ash-shaṭranj) that are used by the Muhammadans of India and Malaya have been already given, but it will be convenient to collect in a table those that are used by other Muslim peoples. To these I add the Abyssinian (Amharic) terms, since the Abyssinian chess is a variety of the Muslim game.
(NOTE. The ordinary Arabic names are those of the MSS.; the other terms, which I designate as colloquial, are taken from descriptions by Europeans: Hamilton, who gives houssān from Egypt, and Grimm, who obtained his terms from Syria.)
The military character of chess was well understood by the earlier Arabic writers on the game. Apart from many allusions in general literature, there are three descriptions in the chess MSS. which I quote because of the light which they throw upon other features of the Muslim game. The first of these is the work of aṣ-Ṣūlī, and is contained in AH (f. 19 b), V (f. 12 b), and Man. (f. 27 b):
The chessmen are classified in this chapter. The shāh, it is said, is the king. The firzān is the vizier, because he protects and covers the king, and is placed next to him, advancing before him in the battle. Muḥammad b. ‘Abdalmalik az-Zayyāt3 says, ‘How beautiful is the function of the fīl in chess! He resembles the secretary who reveals and plans. His use in war is slight except when he does a deed of renown. His is the secretary’s cunning, as when he gives shāh-rukh or shāh-faras or forks two pieces. Or, perhaps in another game when a number of pieces are collected against him, and he draws the game since none of them can attack him. The firzān has the same power. In a case like this the fīl is better than the faras, and when there are several firzāns it is even better than a rukh when the latter cannot attack it.’ The faras, it is said, is different: he is a bold horseman, and this is his function in chess. The rukh, it is said, is like a commander and a general of an army: like the faras he is a horseman, and the command is his. His work is to confine the game, and his strength is manifest when the ninth (read seventh) of the game is his.4 The baidaqs (Ar. bayādiq), it is said, are like the foot-soldiers who move in advance and hinder the horses (’afrās) and rukhs (rikhākh); but when the rukh gets behind them and attacks