Many countries claim to have invented the chess game in some
incipient form. The most commonly held belief is that chess originated in India,
where it was called Chaturanga, which appears to have been invented in the 6th
century AD. Although this is commonly believed, it is thought that Persians
created a more modern version of the game after the Indians. In fact, the oldest
known chess pieces have been found in excavations of ancient Persian
territories.
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Another theory exists that chess arose from the similar game of Chinese chess,
or at least a predecessor thereof, existing in China since the 2nd century BC.
Joseph Needham and David Li are two of many scholars who have favored this
theory.
Chess eventually spread westward to Europe and eastward as far as Japan,
spawning variants as it went. One theory suggests that it migrated from India to
Persia, where its terminology was translated into Persian, and its name changed
to chatrang. The entrance of chess into Europe, notably, is marked by a massive
improvement in the powers of the queen. The oldest known texts describing chess
seem to indicate a bi-directional spread from the Persian empire. In fact, the
oldest known reference points to Shah Ardashir as being a master of the game,
his rule was from 224 - 241 AD. This would indicate that chess was invented some
time before his rule.
From Persia it entered the Islamic world, where the names of its pieces largely remained in their Persian forms in early Islamic times. Its name became shatranj, which continued in Spanish as ajedrez and in Greek as zatrikion, but in most of Europe was replaced by versions of the Persian word shah = "king".
There is a theory that this name replacement happened because, before the game of chess came to Europe, merchants coming to Europe brought ornamental chess kings as curiosities and with them their name shah, which Europeans mispronounced in various ways.
checkmate: This is the English rendition of shah mat, which is Persian for "the king is finished".
rook: From the Persian rukh, which means "chariot", but also means "cheek" (part of the face). The piece resembles a siege tower. It is also believed that it was named after the mythical Persian bird of great power called the roc.
bishop. From the Persian pil means "the elephant", but in Europe and the western part of the Islamic world people knew little or nothing about elephants, and the name of the chessman entered Western Europe as Latin alfinus and similar, a word with no other meaning (in Spanish, for example, it evolved to the name "alfil"). This word "alfil" is actually the Arabic for "elephant" hence the Spanish word would most certainly have been taken from the Islamic provinces of Spain. The English name "bishop" is a rename inspired by the conventional shape of the piece. In Russia, the piece is, however, known as = "elephant".
queen. Persian farzin = "vizier" became Arabic firzan, which entered western European languages as forms such as alfferza, fers, etc but was later replaced by "queen".
The game spread throughout the Islamic world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. Chess eventually reached Russia via Mongolia, where it was played at the beginning of the 7th century. It was introduced into Spain by the Moors in the 10th century, and described in a famous 13th century manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice named the Libro de los juegos. Chess also found its way across Siberia into Alaska.
The source of this article is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL
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