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

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.

[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.

[Keith Brown Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased A History of Chess by H.J.R. Murray on August 19, 2022. My birthday almost 4 years ago. I purchased the leather bound version from the publishing house Generic. I spent $172.90. I knew that I had bought the book going on 4 years ago, but I didn't remember that I had done so on my birthday. Because I didn't have a job at the time, I can only assume that I had my eyes set on the book for some time, and I was able to put together enough birthday money to buy it, and so I did--that day. Due to just life--law school, Officer Candidate School, the Bar Exam, The Basic School, work, The Naval Justice School--the book just at idle under my foosball coffee table in my Park Place Towers apartment in Hartford, Connecticut, and in my room back home on Long Island, and on my TV stand in my house in Twentynine Palms, California. Until finally, in early April of 2026, I finally had the opportunity to read it.

Almost 4 years of suspense had built up, and I was extremely excited to start this book. And it didn't disappoint. It was a great book. Very early on in the book I knew that this would be one of my top 5 books all-time--and it was. This book is up there with I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Drs. Norman L. Geisler, and Frank Turek, and Sex and Culture by J.D. Unwin. For starters, the craftsmanship of the book is phenomenal. This is one of my favorite books in terms of craftsmanship. But when it comes to the contents of the book, even better. The book was incredibly thorough. To illustrate how thorough the work is, not only is the book 900 extra wide and extra tall pages long, but Mr. Murray taught himself 2 languages (Arabic and German), over the course of 13 years while writing the book. All you can really do is marvel such dedication, and hard work. I admire Mr. Murray for his toil, not only for its sheer impressiveness, but simply because I know that I could never. The book was, at the time, and still is even to this day, over 100 years later, the most comprehensive, and authoritative work n chess history. Now that's a book that has stood the test of time. A History of Chess was also very clear, similar to I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, there are little to no confusing passages within the book. My only criticism of the book, and this is why it receives 4 and not 5 stars (I would give it 4.5 if I could), is the book became quite dry in the middle chapters of Part II. There was a lot of talk about manuscripts, and what was contained within them, and not much history. But then again, I didn't study and research for 13 years, and teach myself languages, so who am I say anything about this work.

Nonetheless, as was stated , it was a great book, and that point cannot be overstated. If you play chess, you must read it. And Mr. Murray, I thank you. I thank you for your contribution to the World with this masterpiece. It is you who ended the debate of the origins of the game of chess. It is you who devoted almost 7% of your life researching, studying, and writing so that I could one day learn about the History of Chess.

[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]

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