A History of Chess: The Original 1913 Edition

by H.J.R. Murray

An epic work that took more than a decade to complete, A History of Chess, originally published in 1913, is a historic undertaking that shattered preconceptions about the game upon publication. Over a century later, Murray’s research and conclusions, in which he argues that chess originated in India, are still widely accepted by most chess historians.
Undertaking such a pioneering task, the scope of which has never been attempted before or since, Murray taught himself to read Arabic in order to decipher historical manuscripts on the game and its beginnings. His study unravels the history of the game as it evolved from its Asiatic beginnings, through the role chess played in Europe during the Middle Ages, and up until the nineteenth century with the arrival of modern chess as we know it.
A History of Chess includes transcribed diagrams of important games, as well as some of the more famous historical chess figurines, such as the Lewis chessmen. No single work on the game of chess has become close to touching Murray’s in breadth or significance.

Genres: Chess, History, Nonfiction, Games, Ebooks, Sports

912 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Harold James Ruthven Murray

Author of A History of Chess, widely regarded as the most authoritative and most comprehensive history of the game.

He was the eldest son of Sir James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and was responsible for over 27,000 quotations that later appeared in the OED.

Reviews

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This incredibly long book is worth reading but only if you enjoy reading encyclopedias. Murray leaves no stone unturned in this giant epitome on the history of chess. He takes us all the way back to India and describes several of the games there that could very well have developed into European chess.

He takes us from country to country, Persia, China, Japan, Malaysia, everywhere some 1500 years ago where they played any sort of game that resembled today's chess game.

If one is a chess expert or afficionado then he will enjoy the very detailed accounts of chess players and moves and rules with all the comparisons and contrasts in existance.

The book is also full of amusing anecdotes about Moguls and Warriors and their chess games. He also notes that chess was taken up over games of chance since chess required strategy and it felt more propitious to engage in games one had control over believing there was a connection between the game and real life war strategies.

He also traces the development of the various pieces, ones starting out as elephants and servants, eventually turning into knights, bishops and also the queen. The Queen had its own evolution from an innocuous player to the most powerful piece on the board.

Murray describes the development of chess in Europe and how it might have arrived there. The church at first was against the game, regarding it as sinful but later embracing it and was also instrumental in changing some of the pieces.

He records every instance of chess being mentioned in Medieval literature and also how the church and Aristocrats created analogies between the game and religious life and courtly behavior.

In the end he records some of the most famous games up to that time (the book was published in 1913) and also some of the more famous sets such as the Isle of Lewis chess set.

While it was a slog, I'm glad I read it and feel I have a better understanding of a game that possesses a rich and diverse history.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't finish the book - I gave up. I suspect this is a leading reference in English on the history of Chess. The author discusses at length EVERY manuscript known to him. There is a lot there - too much. I think the book has been abridged in later editions - get that unless you are engaging in graduate-level academic study.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this remarkable game first crossed the threshold of the pages of antiquity, it was titled ‘chaturanga’ and was played in Western India. Then, as now, the board was made up of 64 squares, 8 by 8. The chessmen signified an Indian army and the name was resultant from a Sanskrit expression for “army.” Chaturanga plainly intended “four arms.” Chatur is Sanskrit for “four” and is the ancestor of the Latin word quattuor (visible in such English words as “quartet”). The other half of the term, anga, meant “arms,” and it was used in military Sanskrit precisely as we use it in military English. Thus we speak of the “arms” of the service, meaning its machineries, such as infantry, cavalry, artillery, and so forth. These are the “arms” (the very word “army” has the same origin). The old Indian army was composed of four “arms”: chariots, elephants, cavalry, and infantry; and the word chaturanga meant “the four arms,” that is, the army as a whole. Chess would be introduced in Europe in the 11th century. It would cross from the Islamic jurisdiction predominantly through three entry-points. It would reach Spain, all the way from North Africa. Italy would get used to Chess through the trade passages across the Mediterranean. The Turkish empire in Europe would be infused with this board game via Asiatic Turkey. It would almost be like a cultural incursion of Europe, which would be entirely consummated within the span of 100 years. Amusingly, the two western torrents would amalgamate in France from which the game would exude northward to Britain and eastward into Germany. By the year 1600 chess would have glazed into its present form. This is the voyage in a crux.

Coming to this book, which is considered as a magnum opus on Chess History, we detect that the principal aim of the author is threefold: 1) to present as comprehensive a record as is imaginable of the varieties of chess which exist or have existed in different parts of the world; 2) to consider the decisive origin of these games and the settings of the invention of chess; and 3) to hint the growth of the modern European game from the first appearance of its ancestor, the Indian chaturanga.

The scholarship relected in the pages that follow is unmistakable.

For starters, this book is not for the lay reader. No Sir, this isn’t. It would test every bit of your patience and demand every ounce of your attention if you’re even to make halfway through it. It is almost encyclopaedic.

The whole shimmy of data and analysis is almost unsettling. I gave up reading this book at least twice. I had to refer to Golombek's ‘History of Chess’ and Richard Eales' 1985 book, ‘Chess: The History of the Game’ to form my basic idea, only after which I could return to this tome and complete it.

Nevertheless, if you are to read ‘one’ book on Chess History in your entire life, this would be the one.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is incredibly long, and in my view, not well balanced. The book was published in 1913, but only covers up to about 1900.

If you want to know about every precursor to modern chess, from India to China to Japan to Persia to medieval Europe, you will find the information here. However, only about 20% of the book covers the period after the development of the modern rules of the game. In this section of the book, there are very few games or diagrams. (In contrast, there are hundreds of medieval chess problems.)

His coverage of the 19th century is particularly poor. This century saw the finalization of chess rules, the development of the world championship, the beginning of modern tournaments, and the development of modern strategy. Unfortunately, he crams all this into about 20 pages, and he ends the book abruptly, as if he had a sudden heart attack and could not continue his work.

[James Stripes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has no peer. It's length and excruciating detail render it a chore to read clear through. Nonetheless, I keep it near at hand as a reference book. I return to it almost every time a question arises concerning the history of chess from its invention and early spread until the modern era in the late nineteenth century.

[Dwayne Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholarly, exhaustive. Not the book if you want a readable history of chess with anecdotes. On the other hand, there are nuggets of humor and humanity whenever Murray quotes letters, poems, etc. from distant eras. It's also educational to see how a diligent academic dealt with cataloging extant manuscripts in the pre-digital age. Don't let the page count scare you too much, if all this sounds interesting. Much of the book can be skimmed or skipped.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough, academic study of chess, with a massive range of sources.

The author uses more than just written history (e.g., some archaeology, some linguistics tracing the different words for chess pieces). But it is mostly written history. The bulk of the book covers the development of chess culture by reviewing "chess problems" from the Golden age of Islam to the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. I skipped almost all these problems, but not the context around them. The author showed how chess problems deteriorated in the European Middle Ages: some of the problems had no solutions. The author assumes that this was on purpose. These books helped con artists and swindlers to bilk unsuspecting opponents in chess-related scams. It's an interesting historical fact that makes today's rise of sports gambling look like a sign of decadence.

For any gamer, chess is worth reading about for the same reason that any literate person should read the Bible. No game has been analyzed more than chess, just as no book has been analyzed more than the Bible. This history traces chess from its beginnings to its spread throughout Asia. It has a broad definition of chess, including China's xiangqi, Japan's shogi, and other games derived from the original in India. Islamic chess gets a starring role as the immediate ancestor of today's chess.

The comparison with Islamic chess will interest today's game designers. Some pieces are the same as today's pieces, others are not. The queen and bishops as they are today were not in Islamic chess; their moves were much more limited. This meant that the early game was a lot slower in Islamic chess. Many times, players would take several of their first turns simultaneously because it didn't matter to them what the other did. It just took too long for the players to interact. Players of real-time strategy games like StarCraft 2 might recognize this: in that game, you no longer start with six workers as originally designed, I think you start with ten. This avoids the repetitive, low-stakes early game and pushes the game to earlier interactions.

I also enjoyed the bits of philosophy sprinkled throughout. In the more religious ages of Islam and the Middle Ages, authors wondered if playing chess was moral or not. Some authors didn't like chess because it was often played for stakes. Others didn't see any distinctions between chess and games we might associate more with casinos (in fact, some early versions of chess used dice to determine which pieces could move on a turn, and how they could move). Contemporary gamers might appreciate these passages; it's common for them to encounter people saying that they are wasting their life on their games.

It's a certain type of person who will like this book. You'll want patience, fearlessness in the face of blocks of text in foreign languages, and sufficient knowledge of world history and European history. If it looks like too much of a commitment, you can get away with just reading the chapters on early chess before the Islamic era. I doubt this history has been done much better anywhere else.

There are plenty of reasons like that to pick up this book. It is high quality work. If you think it's the right book for you, and you can handle a 1500 page book from the year 1913, then you're probably right. Go for it.

[Autumn Kearney · Rating 2 out of 5]

A History of Chess: The Original 1913 Edition. My favorite part of the book is entitled Chessboards and Chessmen. This gigantic book and its extensive research are overwhelming. I felt as if I were drowning in the details. If that's your thing, you will cherish this book. It was a bit much for me.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very comprehensive, but very dry

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does what it says on the tin

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A big epic tome (what some folks would call 'magisterial') about, um, the history of chess, starting from early 1st millennium Indian 'chaturanga' to 19th century Europe. It is way too long and detailed and chess-nerdy for a non-chess player like myself to read end-to-end, but nevertheless one can extract out interesting tidbits about what we know (or don't know) about the origins of the game, its various transformations to the current game, and most interesting, the diversification of the original chaturanga into many many distinct forms into every corner of Eurasia. Much but not all these variations both describe and are explained by the connections and relations between the various Eurasian civilizations, none of which does not have its own version of chess. As such, the book is not just a history of chess, but a geography of chess, and a small bit of the history of Eurasia. One warning: the copy I am holding right now was printed in 1913. It's written in the Imperial British style, which means it is not politically correct.

[Le Huynh]

Tôi muốn đọc