Re: Old, historical rules?
- From: "Taylor Kingston" <tkingston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 25 Oct 2005 06:48:44 -0700
Orjan Westin wrote:
> I do Viking-age re-enactment, and recently bought a set of chess pieces
> copied from the ones found on Isle of Lewis ( see
> http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/ixbin/goto?id=OBJ566 for pictures)
> in 2/3 size.
>
> Naturally, I'd like to be able to use these in the "living history
> encampment" on our shows, but I'd prefer to do that as authentically as
> everything else, and so I'm in search of the rules that would have been in
> use in the eleventh century.
I'm not an expert on this, so this is not to be considered
authoritative, but I have a few good sources on chess of the era you
ask about.
The respected tome "A History of Chess" (1913), by scholar H.J.R.
Murray, says:
"When ... chess was first played by Christians in Western Europe it
was played with the same rules that were followed throughout the
Muhammadan world, and for a period -- lasting, perhaps, as late as 1200
-- there was no serious difference of rule or move from the Indus to
the Atlantic and from the Sahara to Iceland."
So the rules then used by Europeans would have been those of the
Islamic world, where the game was called "shatranj." Shatranj was
played on an 8x8 board, with six different pieces arrayed just as in
today's chess. However, some pieces moved in different ways. Below I
summarize the differences, as taken from "The Oxford Companion to
Chess" by Hooper & Whyld:
Rook: exactly as in today's game.
Knight: exactly as in today's game.
Bishop: called "Alfil" or "Fil" by the Muslims, "Aufin" in Europe.
Moved diagonally, but only a fixed length of two squares, however it
could leap over intervening men. A very weak piece, which could move to
only eight squares total -- for example the aufin standing in the
opening array at f1, could only ever move to b1, b5, d3, d7, f5, h3, or
h7. No aufin could ever attack an opposing aufin -- they simply never
could touch the same squares.
King: exactly as in today's game.
Queen: called "Firzan." Diagonally only, one square at a time, e.g. a
Firzan on e4 could move only to d3, d5, f3, or f5.
Pawn: as in today's game, but no two-square option on first move.
Promotion to Firzan only.
There was no castling. There were three ways to win: checkmate (as
today), stalemate (the stalemated player loses, unlike today when it is
a draw), and "bare king," when one side has only the king but the other
has at least one other piece (rare in practice, due to the difficulty
of exhanging Alfils and Firzans).
There may have been other rule differences. You can find many online
references -- one is
http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/shatranj.html. If you are
*really* seriously interested, you might want to tackle Murray's
900-page monster; barring that, there is a lot of good info on shatranj
in the Oxford Companion and in "The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants" by
D.B. Pritchard.
Keep in mind that it is not certain, that whoever actually used the
Isle of Lewis chessmen would have played by shatranj rules. There were
local variants. Also, the Lewis pieces have never been definitely
dated. They were not discovered until 1831, and may have been carved as
late as the 1600s, when the shift toward the modern rules was well
under way. Still, shatranj seems their most likely use.
Good luck with your reenactments -- they sound both educational and a
lot of fun.
Taylor Kingston
.
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- From: Orjan Westin
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