Home > Early Arabic chess literature

During the golden age of Arabic, many works on chess were written, recording for the first time the analysis of opening games, chess problems, the knight's tour, and many more subjects common in modern chess books. Many of these are missing; while we have firm evidence of their existence, no copies are known to have survived.

The earliest listing of works on chess is in the Kitab al-fihrist , a general bibliography produced in 377 AH ( 988 CE) by ibn Ishaq an-Nadim . It includes an entire section on the topic of chess, listing:

• Al-Adli 's Kitab ash-shatranj ('Book of chess')
• Ar-Razi's Latif fi'sh-shatranj ('Elegance in chess')
• As-Suli's Kitab ash-shatranj (two volumes)
• Al-Lajlaj 's Kitab mansubat ash-shatranj ('Book of chess-positions or problems')
• B. Aliqlidisi 's Kitab majmu'fi mansubat ash-shatranj ('Collection of chess problems')

(list based upon translation by Harold Murray)

There is a passage referring to chess in a work said to be by Hasan, a philosopher from BasraBasra (also known as Basrah or Basara historically sometimes called Busra Busrah and early on Bassorah Arabic: , Al-Basrah is the second largest city of Iraq with an estimated population of about 1,377,000 in 2003. It is the country's main port. The city who died in 728Events Births Deaths The danish king Angantyr on Samsoe 728. CE; however the attribution of authorship is dubious.