The Game of Chess

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Salam Kaoukji
Salam Kaoukji

Salam Kaoukji is the curator and collection manager of The Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait.

— Editor

Throughout history few games have captured the minds of people as much as the game of chess, which even though it has been played all over the world and over centuries no fundamental changes occurred in the rules of the game, except in the “moves” of certain chess men.

The game which originated in India was introduced to Europe in the early middle ages by the Arabs through Spain, and although the rules of the game are generally known, the process that led to naming the chess men in the West is less well known.

This set of rock crystal chess pieces from The Al-Sabah Collection is attributed to the ninth century AD and serves to illustrate the symbolic abstraction of forms in which Muslim craftsmen excelled.

Mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, where it is referred to as chaturanga (four-membered army), once the game spread it was accordingly named shatranj by the Persians whence by the Arabs, and the names of the chess pieces progressively changed into Persian and Arabic.

The war game conducted by the “four-membered army” was comprised of elephants, cavalry, chariots and infantry led by the Persian “shah”, which as can be expected became the “king” in the West, andthe firzan or “vizier”, was replaced by the “queen” who in Europe traditionally stood beside the king.

On the “battlefield” or chess board the foot-soldiers were deployed in the forefront followed by the elephants, al-fil in Arabic, whence alfiere in Italian which was designated “bishop” in England, because the two stylized projections on the top of the pawn that represent the elephant’s tusks, were mistaken in Europe for a bishop’s miter.

The farasor horses were called“knights” in the West, and the war chariots (rook or tower in the west). As the word for war chariot is rukhin Persian (which latter often led to its confusion with the mythical bird roc), the Italian termed itrocca (or tower), from which derived the western “tower”, both on the basis of linguistic similar sounding words and visual similarity. In fact, the sides of ancient war chariots were shaped much like the battlements of a castle, and can be seen on the war chariots on the Standard of Ur dating from around 2600 to 2400 BC, which furnish an interesting model for ancient war chariots and by association the shape of the rukh chess piece.

The game ends with “checkmate” when the shah is either prevented from making any further moves or considered dead, in Arabic Shah mat or “the Shah is dead”.

Notwithstanding the game’s popularity in the East, legends abound about its popularity in the West where an anecdote recounts that Emperor Charlemagne reportedly staked his kingdom on a game of chess, and that addiction to the game had become so generalised that playing it was forbidden by the Church and European rulers because it was thought that too much time was spent playing the game.

By Salam Kaoukji

 

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