Early history Shatranj made its way via the expanding
Islamic
Arabian empire to Europe. Previously little known, chess became popular in Northern Europe when figure pieces were introduced. The sides are conventionally called White and Black. But, in earlier European chess writings, the sides were often called Red and Black because those were the commonly available colours of ink when handwriting drawing a chess game layout. In such layouts, each piece was represented by its name, often abbreviated (e.g. "ch'r" for French "chevalier" = "
knight"). Europeans took to referring to the piece that had been called the "vizier" in the Islamic world the "queen" piece. Historian Stephanie Coontz argues this reflects the power that medieval queens held in court. The social value attached to the game – seen as a prestigious pastime associated with nobility and high culture – is clear from the expensive and exquisitely made chessboards of the medieval era. The game found mention in the
vernacular and
Latin language literature throughout Europe, and many works were written on or about chess between the 12th and the 15th centuries. Chess was soon incorporated into the knightly style of life in Europe. Chess also became a subject of art during this period, with caskets and pendants decorated in various chess forms.
Queen Margaret of England had green and red
chess sets made of jasper and crystal. This ordinance turned out to be unenforceable and was largely neglected by the common public, and even the courtly society, which continued to enjoy the now-prohibited chess tournaments uninterrupted. Chessmen made of ivory began to appear in
North-West Europe, and ornate pieces of traditional knight warriors were used as early as the mid 13th century. The initially nondescript pawn had now found association with the
pedes,
pedinus, or the
footman, which symbolized both infantry and loyal domestic service. The game, as played during the early Middle Ages, was slow, with many games lasting days. In Europe some of the pieces gradually received new names: •
Fers: "queen", because it starts beside the king. •
Aufin: "bishop", because its two points looked like a bishop's
mitre. Its Latin name was reinterpreted many ways.
Early changes to the rules {{Chess diagram small Attempts to make the start of the game run faster to get the opposing pieces in contact sooner included: • Pawn moving two squares in its first move. This led to the
en passant rule: a pawn placed so that it could have captured the enemy pawn if it had moved one square forward was allowed to capture it on the passed square. In Italy, the contrary rule (
passar battaglia = "to pass battle") applied: a pawn that moved two squares forward had passed the danger of attack on the intermediate square. It was sometimes not allowed to do this to cover check. • King jumping once, to make it quicker to put the king safe in a corner. (This eventually led to
castling.) • Queen on its first move moving two squares straight or diagonally to a same-coloured square, with jump. (This rule sometimes also applied to a queen made by
promoting a pawn.) • The
short assize. ("assize" = "sitting") Here the pawns started on the third rank; the queens started on d3 and d6 along with the queens' pawns; the players arranged their other pieces as they wished behind their pawns at the start of the game. This idea did not endure. Other sporadic variations in the rules of chess included: • Ignoring check from a piece that was blocking an opposing check, as capturing the king would cost the attacker their own king (see diagram).
Introduction of new rules , 1847 The queen and bishop remained relatively weak until between 1475 AD and 1500 AD, in Spain (in the
Kingdom of Valencia), the queen's and bishop's modern moves started and spread, making chess close to its modern form. This form of chess got such names as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess" (Italian
alla rabiosa = "with the madwoman"). This led to much more value being attached to the previously minor tactic of
pawn promotion. These new rules quickly spread in Spain and throughout the rest of Western Europe, with the exception of the rules about stalemate, which were finalized in the early 19th century. The modern move of the queen may have started as an extension of its older ability to once move two squares with jump, diagonally or straight.
Marilyn Yalom says that the new move of the queen started in Spain: see
history of the queen. In some areas (e.g. Russia), the queen could also move like a knight. A poem
Caïssa published in 1527 led to the chess rook being often renamed as "castle", and the modern shape of the rook chess piece; see
Vida's poem for more information. An Italian player,
Gioacchino Greco, regarded as one of the first true professionals of the game, authored an analysis of a number of composed games that illustrated two differing approaches to chess. The first full work dealing with the various winning combinations was written by
François-André Danican Philidor of France, regarded as the best chess player in the world for nearly 50 years, and published in the 18th century. Centers of chess life in this period were
coffee houses in big European cities like
Café de la Régence in Paris. and ''
Simpson's Divan'' in London. As the 19th century progressed, chess organization developed quickly. Many
chess clubs, chess books and chess journals appeared. There were correspondence matches between cities; for example the London Chess Club played against the
Edinburgh Chess Club in 1824.
Chess problems became a regular part of 19th-century newspapers;
Bernhard Horwitz,
Josef Kling and
Samuel Loyd composed some of the most influential problems. In 1843,
von der Lasa published his and
Bilguer's Handbuch des Schachspiels (
Handbook of Chess), the first comprehensive manual of chess theory. == Modern competitive chess ==