The Culture of Chess: The Evolution of the Game

Chess is believed to have started in India around the sixth century. The game back then had many differences from the game we have today. It also had many differences from the game that would appear in European countries around the end of the first millennium. The game of chess that was played in Indian and Arab countries as well as Spain consisted of “the king, vizier (predecessor of the queen), elephant (predecessor of the bishop), horse (predecessor of the knight), rook and pawns.” [Yalom 14]  These pieces would be abstract to honor the ban on “idols” in the Koran.

Around 990's chess made a very large change. The poem “Verses on Chess” shows the game in Europe and is the first mention of the queen replacing the vizier piece.  The queen was given the same move as the vizier (1 square in a diagonal direction) a fraction of the power she would gain in later centuries [Yalom 17].  However a distinction was made between the queen and the vizier: there was only allowed to be one queen on the board for each side. Through “queening” a pawn was allowed to be promoted to the ranks of the queen or vizier. In the Arab version a player was allowed to have multiple viziers, this act actually became a social metaphor of a rags to riches story. On the other hand, in the European version the king was only allowed to have one wife, one queen, and the games rules reflected that element of there culture.

Another change that occurred concerned the elephant piece later known as the bishop. In “Verses on Chess” the piece made a step towards the form it has today. The piece was named the “count or aged one” it would take many years for the piece to gain the name we know today. In the poem the piece was said to “[move] diagonally to the third square of [the piece’s] original color.” [Yalom 18] This movement style, much like the queens, is a primitive form of the pieces current abilities. This piece wouldn’t attain some of the features we know today until the twelfth century where “bishops wielded enormous power as administrators of church moneys, properties, and even armies.” [Yalom 19]

The game would continue to evolve from there. The game it self would evolve based on the ideas and morals of the day it was played in. the powerful queens who ruled through the eras after the chess queens birth would ultimately shape the power of the piece much like the piece that later became the bishop was shaped by there real life equivalent. The game would be used to represent many social events and ideas. Ideas such as what was written in a short poem in the thirteenth-century

“The black pieces belong to the Devil, the white one to God. Our first ancestor, called Adam, was like a great king on the board. He played against the Devil, who defeated him in three moves. When God saw that Adam had been checkmated, he started the game over again, this time with Jesus as the white king, and the Virgin Mary at his side in the place of the queen.” [Yalom 109]

This poem is an example of what the game could represent to some. In many other instances the game carried a much lighter idea behind it. Because the game didn’t belong to one gender, female and male players were considered to be of equal value. The game often became a metaphor for courtship. The pieces were given names such as “knight of the lion, boldness” and “knight, shame” [Yalom 142 143] which would enhance the metaphor of courtship. The movements in the “love battle[s]” would “represent a decisive moment in the game of love.” [Yalom 141]  This form of chess was just a different variation to reflect the ideas at the time. This particular game was vastly different in that the pieces were spread across three rows instead of two.

 

Bibliography

Yalom, M. (2005). Birth of the Chess Queen. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.