History of Chess

The origins: chaturanga in ancient India

The origins of chess go back to India in the Gupta period, probably between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. The ancestral game is called chaturanga, a Sanskrit term meaning “the four divisions of the military”: infantry (the future pawns), cavalry (the future knights), elephants (the future bishops) and chariots (the future rooks).

Chaturanga was played on an 8x8 board and already contained the essentials of the structure of modern chess: two opposing armies, a king to capture, pieces with differentiated movements. Some differences remained: certain later variants were played by four people with dice (chaturaji), and the pieces had slightly different rules of movement.

The transmission to Persia: chatrang and shatranj

Around the 6th century, the game reached Sassanid Persia under the name chatrang, which soon became shatranj. Persia is the first country with written documents on chess — notably the “Wizārišn ī čatrang” (“Explanation of Chess”), a text describing how the game was brought from India to the court of King Khosrow I.

In Persia the game was greatly refined. The rule of “mate” was established — the king cannot be captured; he must be placed in a position where capture is unavoidable (mate comes from shah mat, “the king is dead” in Persian). The strategic, cerebral dimension of the game, distinct from the ritual warlike dimension, asserted itself.

The Islamic conquest and the Arab spread

When the Arab armies conquered Persia in the 7th century, they adopted shatranj and spread it throughout the Islamic empire, from Spain to Central Asia. The game became a prized art in the caliphal courts; the caliphs Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma’mun were passionate players. Arab theorists — al-Adli, al-Lajlaj, as-Suli — wrote the first strategic treatises on chess, analysing positions and endings.

The medieval Islamic world also developed the “mansubat” — pre-composed chess problems (ancestors of modern problems) — and the first game notations.

The arrival in medieval Europe

Chess arrived in Europe in the 9th–10th centuries by two routes: via Moorish Spain (the chess players of al-Andalus passed the game on to the Christian kingdoms of the north) and via Italy (contact with the Byzantine and Arab Mediterranean world). The 10th century saw chess pieces appearing in monastery inventories and royal court chronicles.

Medieval European pieces long kept the abstract Islamic iconography (Arab pieces had no human representation for religious reasons), before gradually adopting figurative forms: the king as a king, the queen as a queen, the knights on horseback.

The revolution in the modern rules (15th century)

The decisive turning point in the history of the rules came at the end of the 15th century, probably in Spain or Italy between 1470 and 1490. Several fundamental changes transformed the medieval game into the chess we know:

• The queen: The old piece “firz” or “fers” (the king’s counsellor, which moved only one square diagonally) became the queen — the most powerful piece in the game, able to move in a straight line or diagonally across any number of squares. This transformation was revolutionary.
• The bishop: The old “alfil” (elephant) could only leap two squares diagonally. It became the modern bishop, gliding along the whole diagonal.
• The pawn: Can advance two squares on its first move. En passant capture was added to compensate.
• Castling: Introduced to speed up the king’s development to a safe position.

These changes considerably accelerated the pace of the game and increased tactical complexity exponentially. Spain became the first great power of modern chess: in 1561 Ruy López de Segura published one of the first great treatises of modern chess, with the analysis of the opening that bears his name.

The great champions before the official title

Before the establishment of the first official World Championship in 1886, several players were recognised as the best in the world of their time:

Philidor (1726–1795) was the first European player universally recognised as superior to all his contemporaries. A Frenchman and a composer of music, he also wrote one of the first great modern treatises on chess, with his famous formula: “Pawns are the soul of chess.”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884), an American from New Orleans, dominated world chess for a few brilliant years before mysteriously retiring. His games, of striking elegance and depth for his time, are still studied today.

The era of the official World Champions

In 1886, Wilhelm Steinitz beat Johannes Zukertort in what is recognised as the first official World Championship. Steinitz became the first official world champion. Since then, the succession of world champions has been continuous (18 champions to date; here are the main ones):

Champion	Years	Nationality
Wilhelm Steinitz	1886–1894	Austrian/American
Emanuel Lasker	1894–1921	German
José Raúl Capablanca	1921–1927	Cuban
Alexander Alekhine	1927–1935, 1937–1946	Russian/French
Max Euwe	1935–1937	Dutch
Mikhail Botvinnik	1948–1963 (with interruptions)	Soviet
Bobby Fischer	1972–1975	American
Garry Kasparov	1985–2000	Soviet/Russian
Magnus Carlsen	2013–2023	Norwegian
Gukesh D	2024–	Indian

To deepen your knowledge of the great champions who wrote this history, discover the portraits of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov, or explore algebraic notation, which makes it possible to preserve the games of this whole history.