Chess is a very popular and competitive game that is played by two players. This game has its origin in India. The time of origin that is associated with this well liked game is the sixth century and then it was referred to as chaturanga; a strategy game with military style. Caturanga when translated means “four divisions of the military”; chariotry, infantry, elephants and calvalry. The four divisions would later develop into the current rook, pawn, bishop and knight respectively. Both Persians and Arabs attribute the origin of the game to India.
In Sassanid Persia, the name of the game changed to shatrani and there was development of the rules as well. Shatrani was later taken by the Muslims after the Islamists conquered Persia. The pieces
Chess Pieces
managed to retain their names which were in Persian. In the Greek language the “shatranj” became zatrikion, in Spanish it became ajedrez and in Portuguese it became xadrez. The rest of Europe however replaced it with shah (king) which belonged to the Persians. Shah seemed more familiar and became the current “chess and check”. It is theorized that Muslim traders are responsible for the change of the names on the European seaports as they came with chess kings in ornaments as curios before introducing the chess game.