Wednesday, October 17, 2007
- Chess is the oldest skill game in the world
- Chess is more than just a game of skill. It can tell you much about the way people lived in medieval times. If you look at the way a chess board is set up, and then study the pieces and how they are used, you will realize that chess is a history of medieval times in miniature.
- The six different chess pieces on the board represent a cross section of medieval life with its many ceremonies, grandeur, and wars।
- Chess was played many centuries ago in China, India, and Persia।
- No one really knows for sure in which country it originated। Then, in the eighth century, armies of Arabs known as Moors invaded Persia. The Moors learned chess from the Persians. When the Moors later invaded Spain, the soldiers brought the game of chess with them. Soon the Spanish were playing chess, too. From Spain, chess quickly spread throughout all of Europe.
- Europeans gave chess pieces the names we know today; they probably had trouble pronouncing and spelling the Persian names, so they modernized them to reflect the way they lived.
- The pawns on the chess board represent serfs, or laborers. There are more of them than any other piece on the board, and often they are sacrificed to save the more valuable pieces. In medieval times, serfs were considered no more than property of landowners, or chattel. Life was brutally hard for serfs during this era of history. They worked hard and died young. They were often left unprotected while wars raged around them. They could be traded, used as a diversion, or even sacrificed to allow the landowners to escape harm.
