The History of Chess

By Catherine Rose

The game of chess is nearly 1,500 years old and is as popular today as it has ever been, with more than 600 million people around the world playing. Interest in the game has only increased during the past year’s lockdowns, thanks to us having a lot more time at home and the popular Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. But what is the history behind this ancient game? It is believed that chess originated in India around 500AD, with a strategic military board game called chaturanga. Ivory and ebony pieces on an eight-by-eight board represented a king, an adviser (that later became the queen) and two armies of four soldier divisions: those on foot, on horse, on elephant and in chariots. All had different rules about how they could move across the board. From India the game was taken up in Persia (now Iran) where it was known as Shatranj, and from there it spread through the Muslim empire. It is thought that the Muslims changed the pieces from the animals and people depicted in the Indian game into more abstract pieces, as it is forbidden to represent images of animals and people in the Islamic religion. From the Arab world, the game travelled across North Africa and the Moors brought it to Spain and Europe in around the twelfth century. The oldest recorded game of this forerunner of chess is a tenth-century match played between a Baghdad historian and his pupil. There are also very old chess sets still in existence, such as the twelfth century glazed pottery fritware shatranj set in the New York Metropolitan Museum, and the Isle of Lewis set made from walrus ivory that can be found in the National Museum of Scotland, and is also from the twelfth century. With its move into the Christian world, chess pieces

changed to show people and horses again. The bishop and rook (or castle) appeared. The queen became the most powerful piece on the board and the rules of chess evolved to those similar to the game we play today. The oldest book to explain these rules that is still in existence is a Spanish one: Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez (Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess) by Luis Ramirez de Lucena published in 1497. The name for chess evolved over time through the language of each country that adopted it, to finally sound something like ‘check’ in many European languages (for example, in France it was known as Échecs and in Sweden Schack). In Russia chess became known as Shakhmaty, which literally translated means ‘checkmate’. It is believed this is why we use the well-known words ‘check’ and ‘checkmate’ to signal the end of a game. There are also those who believe another ancient game may have influenced our modern-day chess. At the same time that chaturanga was being played in India, a strategic game called tafl – which is old Norse for ‘board’ – was being played by the ancient Nordic and Celtic people. Tafl was played on a chequered nine-by-nine game board with two armies of uneven numbers – one side of which were the attackers and the other the defenders. There was a difference with the placement of pieces on the board to chess. Rather than facing each other, the two opposing sides were positioned in the middle and around the edge of the board, and there was only one king and a castle at the centre. Variants of the game were played under different names across Scandinavia, Lapland, and the UK until it was overtaken by chess in the twelfth century. The Romantic Style of chess was played from the 1500s until the 1800s. It centred around short tactical manoeuvres rather than long-term strategic ones. The modern chess set was patented in 1849 following a design by Englishman Nathaniel Cook. It was favoured by the world’s best player at the time, Howard Staunton, and following his endorsement it became known as the Staunton pattern. It was at this time that modern chess developed and to this day, only Staunton pattern sets are allowed in international competition. In 1886 the first official World Chess Championships were held. Chess theory and chess clubs were born. The World Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded at the beginning of the twentieth century when moves began to be analysed and named. With the digital age, it was possible to mathematically examine all possible moves and outcomes by computer, which eventually led to a computer first beating a world chess champion in 1997. Today, chess competitions are a recognised sport. You can now buy all sorts of novelty chess sets with characters ranging from The Simpsons to Game of Thrones. Chess is so respected in Russia that it has been taught in primary schools since 2017.