An early chess knight carved from jet, an abstract shape dotted with small circles
Chess Piece, Knight, 8th–10th century
Marked Gupta and post-Gupta India

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Chess

Chess began in India as chaturanga by about AD 600, travelled to Persia and the Islamic world as shatranj, and reached Europe by about 1000. The queen became the strongest piece in Spain or Italy around 1475.

Place
Gupta and post-Gupta India · Baghdad · Lewis, Outer Hebrides · ValenciaThe whole world
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IChaturanga
  2. IIShatranj in Baghdad
  3. IIIInto Europe
  4. IVThe Lewis chessmen
  5. VThe mad queen
  6. VIChampions and computers

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Al-Suli
  • Ruy López
  • Vera Menchik
  • Garry Kasparov

Objects

  • The Lewis chessmen
  • Arabic chess manuscripts
  • Deep Blue

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

AD 600 to now. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?