Chess in Spain refers to Spain's contribution to the history of chess, from its integration around the 10th century to the present day. The Spanish received Shatranj, one of the predecessors of chess, from the Arabs during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula between the 7th and 15th centuries. As chess spread to the rest of Europe, Spain contributed to the chess literature of the period, culminating with the Libro de los juegos (1283), commissioned by Alfonso X in the 13th century. Also of Spanish origin are the first archaeological pieces of evidence of the game on European soil: the Ager pieces, a set of medieval chess pieces dating from the 11th century, of abstract design and made of crystal, that belonged to Arnau Mir de Tost.
With the reformulations of the rules of the game in the late 15th century, Spain was one of the first European countries to stand out in chess. The Repetición de Amores y Arte de Axedrez (1497) by Luis Ramírez de Lucena and Libro de la Invención Liberal y Arte del Juego del Axedrez (1561) by Ruy López de Segura were the first literary works contemplating the new rules and innovations such as the capture en passant . However, after López's defeat by Giovanni Leonardo Di Bonna in 1575, Italian players showed to be extremely skilled.
The inclusion of the Queen in chess was probably influenced by medieval queens, of which the Spanish Queen Isabella I of Castile was likely the most influential. Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, were known chess aficionados and, by expelling the Jews from Spain in the late 15th century, helped spread the new rules to the rest of Europe.
Spain has no great highlights in the chess Olympiad, with the best results being individual medals per board. The Spanish team has won a total of seven medals in the men's category (one gold, two silver, and four bronze), and three medals in the women's category (two silver and one bronze). Spain hosted the 2004 Olympiad and the 1987 World Championships.
Around 711, the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Muslims, under the command of Tariq, who crossed the Mediterranean Sea at the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the Peninsula defeating Roderic, the last Visigoth king of Hispania, at the Battle of Guadalete. In the following years, the Muslims extended their conquests, taking over the territory of Al-Andalus, which they ruled for almost eight hundred years. Despite the constant conflicts that lasted until the reconquest of the entire territory, the Arab culture had intense contact with the Christian kingdoms. [1]
Following the Qur'anic interpretation of not representing living figures, the first sets of chess pieces found in Spain were abstract. [3] The Ager set of pieces, which belonged to Ermessenda Countess of Urgel, and were left in her will to the Church of Saint Giles in the year 1058, are among the earliest archaeological evidence on European soil. A total of 44 crystal pieces with abstract shapes remained, with the King represented by only one throne and the ferz , predecessor of the Queen, by a slightly smaller throne. [4] [5] From this period, there are records of other pieces donated through wills to churches and monasteries in Spain and southern France. [6] Abstract crystal pieces have also been found in the northern towns of Celanova and San Millán de la Cogolla, all dating between the 10th and 11th centuries. [7] Another piece of Spanish origin dating to the 12th century has a humanized representation of a small Lady encased on a throne, wearing a headdress similar to that worn by women of the period. [8]
In literature, the poem Verses on the Game of Chess written by the Spanish Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra at the end of the 11th century did not include the Queen in the game, but a later poem by the same author makes this mention (Shegal). These records show the European origin of the inclusion of the Queen in the game since in the Arab version of chess played in Spain, the figure of the ferz coexisted until the 13th century. Ezra lived with both Christians and Arabs and probably received the piece from the former. [9] Another work, written by Petrus Alphonsi called Disciplina Clerical which is essentially a collection of texts translated from Arabic, mentions chess as one of the seven skills expected of a knight. [10]
The most important work of the period was the Libro de los Juegos, a work commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile and completed in 1283, which consists of 93 scrolls illustrated with approximately 150 color figures. It contains 103 chess problems, which are Arabic models similar to endgames; fourteen of these problems are distinguished by having a greater richness in their composition in which one side has a clear material advantage, having likely been created by another author. [11] The first five pages contain a description of the philosophy of chess, the rules, movement, shape of each piece, and their relative value. The illustrations contain a wide representation of the court and how the game was played by courtiers, foreigners, Muslims, Jews, and Christians. One of the illustrations contains Edward I of England with his bride Eleonor of Castile. [12] [13]
The book's contribution to the history of chess resides as a fine work of medieval literature, although it did not become a reference due to the works published by Italians and Germans on the game. [12] [13] The main innovations compared to the Arabic rules were the inclusion of the privilege of the Queen being able to perform a jump on her first move in the game, provided that the destination square be unoccupied and does not put the opponent's King in check, and the double advancement of the Pawn by two squares, which was allowed for all Pawns until a capture was made in the game. [14]
In the late Middle Ages, the Queen's movement was expanded reaching the current rule. The first evidence of this new rule can be found in the Catalan poem Hobra intitulada scachs damor feta per don franci de Castelvi e narcis vinyoles e mossen fenollar sots nom de tres planets ço es Març Venus e Mercuri per conjunccio e influencia dels quals foninventeda written between 1470 and 1480. The poem describes a game with the current movement rules between Mars wooing Venus, observed by Mercury, and reiterates that only one Queen is allowed on the board and when she is captured the game is virtually lost. [15] The poem describes other rules of the game such as the en passant capture, the possibility of the King jumping on the first move as long as he does not pass through an attacked square and does not capture opponent's pieces, and that the player must move the piece that was touched, and capture the opponent's piece that it touched. [16]
Besides this manuscript, two other books describe the new rules of the game: the Libre Del jochs partits dels schachs em nombre de 100 by Francisco Vicente, lost in 1811 during a sacking by Napoleon's soldiers of the monastery of Montserrat, and the Repetición de Amores y Arte de Axedrez by Luis Ramírez de Lucena, printed in the city of Salamanca and dedicated to Prince John, son of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile. [13] [15] Lucena's book also contains 150 problems from two to ten moves with both the old and new rules, as well as the analysis of eleven openings, considered by the author to be the best in Italy, France, and Spain. However, the analysis is not systematic and contains errors due to the confusion between the old rules with the new ones. The change in rules was so significant that the game was called Lucena dela dama and the old version del viejo. [17]
In 1559, with the ascension of Pope Pius IV, several clergymen went to Rome, and among them was Father Ruy López de Segura, considered the best player in Spain. López considered that Italian players still had much to learn before they could match the Spanish, and among his opponents in Italy was Giovanni Leonardo Di Bonna, il puttino. He wrote the Libro de la invencion liberal y arte del juego del Axedrez in 1561, based on the work of Pedro Damiano de Odemira Questo Libro e da impare giocare a scachi et de la Partite, which he had acquired in Italy and whose content he found poor. The book contains several new openings but López's analysis was not as good as his skill at the game. [18] In 1574, López was defeated by Leonardo in the presence of King Philip II of Spain and shortly after was defeated again by another Italian named Paolo Boi. [19]
In the late 16th century, St. Teresa of Ávila published the work Camino de Perfección, in which she used chess as a metaphor for moral progress, although the game was frowned upon by the Order of Carmelites. For this work, St. Teresa was named the patroness of chess in Spain in 1944. [20]
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Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon were keen chess players. Pulgar, the royal historian, reports that Ferdinand devoted more time to chess and backgammon than he should have, while Isabella disapproved of games of chance and banned them at the royal court. In 1487, during the siege of the city of Málaga in the Granada War, a Faqīh named Ibrahim Al-Gervi attempted to assassinate the royal couple, who were often seen playing chess. However, the assassin mistook for the queen and king Beatriz de Bobadilla, a friend of the queen, and a nobleman named Alvaro of Portugal, who were playing chess there. Beatriz survived the attempt, and Al-Gervi was killed on the spot by Castilian soldiers. [22] [23]
Around 1491, Christopher Columbus was seeking financial support for his plan to travel to the Indies via a new route. Although it was his third attempt to convince the Spanish Monarchs, on this occasion Isabella was convinced that supporting such an expedition could bring honor and wealth to Spain. Columbus sought the posts of Admiral and Viceroy as one of the conditions for him to continue with his plan, but these titles were considered extravagant for a navigator with little experience. Ferdinand was asked about this demand when he was concentrating on a chess match. Isabel then helped him achieve a winning move and convinced him to grant the title to the Genoese navigator. [21]
In 1492, through the Alhambra Decree, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled about two thousand families of Jews from Spain, who emigrated to other major cities in Europe, Turkey, and the Near East. This may have spurred the spread of the new rules for chess, which became firmly established as early as the first half of the 16th century. [24]
In the early 20th century, the Spanish government funded mathematician and civil engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo in developing the automaton known as El Ajedrecista , which aimed to demonstrate that a machine was capable of executing a set of instructions. The automaton was capable of automatically playing an endgame of Bare King against Rook and King from any position, without any human intervention. This device is considered the world's first computer game. [25] It was first presented in Paris in 1914 and was a success, defeating in 1951 Savielly Tartakower, the first Grandmaster to be defeated by a machine. [26]
In 1924, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded, with Spain as one of its founding members, and three years later the Federación Española de Ajedrez (FEDA) was founded in the city of Barcelona, the maximum entity in the organization and regulation of competitions in the country. Its men's national championship was first played in 1902 but only after 1942 [27] on an annual basis, while women's began in 1950 and was held biennially until 1971 when it became annual. [28] [29]
The country regularly participates in the Chess Olympiad and hosted the event in Calvià (2004). Its best result in men's was sixth place in Yerevan (2006) and women's, third place in Haifa (1976). Individually, the country holds one gold medal, in Thessaloniki, 1984, on the 1st reserve); two silver, in Buenos Aires (1978, on the fourth board) and Dresden (2008, on the second); and four bronze, Leipzig (1960) and Varna (1962, on the second board), Bled (2002) and Turin (2006, on the third board). [30] In the women's Olympiad, the country had its first participation in the edition in Medellín (1974) and the best individual results were two silver medals in Medellín (1974) and Haifa (1976, on the second board), and a bronze medal in Bled (2002, on the third board). [31]
Spain has hosted FIDE events such as the 1987 World Championship, the World Junior Championship in 1965 in Barcelona, two quarterfinals of the 1971 Candidates Tournament, won by Bobby Fischer, and several zonal tournaments of both the men's and women's World Championships. [32] The Linares Tournament has been held since 1978 in the city of Linares, with the participation of the best players in the world. In the year 1994, the average Elo rating of the competition was 2685, being the first category XVIII event ever held, and in 1998 the event reached category XXI. [33]
Chess is a board game for two players. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi and shogi.
The Libro de los juegos, or Libro de axedrez, dados e tablas, was a Spanish treaty of chess which synthesized the information from other Arabic works on this same topic, dice and tables games, commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile, Galicia and León and completed in his scriptorium in Toledo in 1283. It contains the earliest European treatise on chess as well as being the oldest document on European tables games, and is an exemplary piece of the literary legacy of the Toledo School of Translators.
A chessboard is a game board used to play chess. It consists of 64 squares, 8 rows by 8 columns, on which the chess pieces are placed. It is square in shape and uses two colours of squares, one light and one dark, in a chequered pattern. During play, the board is oriented such that each player's near-right corner square is a light square.
The queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess. It can move any number of squares vertically, horizontally or diagonally, combining the powers of the rook and bishop. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first rank next to the king. Because the queen is the strongest piece, a pawn is promoted to a queen in the vast majority of cases.
The bishop is a piece in the game of chess. It moves and captures along diagonals without jumping over intervening pieces. Each player begins the game with two bishops. The starting squares are c1 and f1 for White's bishops, and c8 and f8 for Black's bishops.
Alfonso X was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1 June 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Germany on 1 April. He renounced his claim to Germany in 1275, and in creating an alliance with the Kingdom of England in 1254, his claim on the Duchy of Gascony as well.
In chess, a smothered mate is a checkmate delivered by a knight in which the mated king is unable to move because it is completely surrounded by its own pieces, which a knight can jump over.
Versus de scachis, also known as the Einsiedeln Poem in some literature, is the title given to a 10th-century Medieval Latin poem about chess. It is the first known European text to provide a technical description of chess for didactic purposes and it is considered a fundamental document to understand the development of chess in Europe.
Luis Ramírez de Lucena was a Spanish chess player who published the first extant chess book. He is believed to be the son of humanist writer and diplomat Juan de Lucena.
This is a timeline of chess.
In chess, en passant describes the capture by a pawn of an enemy pawn on the same rank and an adjacent file that has just made an initial two-square advance. This is an exception or special case in the rules of chess. The capturing pawn moves to the square that the enemy pawn passed over, as if the enemy pawn had advanced only one square. The rule ensures that a pawn cannot use its two-square move to safely skip past an enemy pawn.
Rodrigo "Ruy" López de Segura was a Spanish chess player, author, and Catholic priest whose 1561 treatise Libro de la invención liberal y Arte del juego del Axedrez was one of the first books about modern chess in Europe. He made great contributions to chess opening theory, including in the King's Gambit and the Ruy López opening that bears his name. López was also the strongest player in Spain for about 20 years.
The history of chess can be traced back nearly 1,500 years to its earliest known predecessor, called chaturanga, in India; its prehistory is the subject of speculation. From India it spread to Persia, where it was modified in terms of shapes and rules and developed into Shatranj. Following the Arab invasion and conquest of Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to Europe via Spain and Italy. The game evolved roughly into its current form by about 1500 CE.
The Göttingen manuscript is the earliest known work devoted entirely to modern chess. It is a Latin text of 33 pages held at the University of Göttingen. A quarto parchment manuscript of 33 pages, ff. 1–15a are a discussion of twelve chess openings, f. 16 is blank, and ff. 17–31b are a selection of thirty chess problems, one on each page with a diagram and solution. Authorship and exact date of the manuscript are unknown. Similarities to Lucena's Repeticion de Amores e Arte de Axedres con CL iuegos de partido have led some scholars to surmise that it was written by Lucena or that it was one of Lucena's sources. Although the manuscript is generally assumed to be older than Lucena's work, this is not established. The manuscript has been ascribed possible writing dates of 1500–1505 or 1471.
The game of chess is commonly divided into three phases: the opening, middlegame, and endgame. There is a large body of theory regarding how the game should be played in each of these phases, especially the opening and endgame. Those who write about chess theory, who are often also eminent players, are referred to as "theorists" or "theoreticians".
Ferdinand II was King of Aragon from 1479 until his death in 1516. As the husband of Queen Isabella I of Castile, he was also King of Castile from 1475 to 1504. He reigned jointly with Isabella over a dynastically unified Spain; together they are known as the Catholic Monarchs. Ferdinand is considered the de facto first king of Spain, and was described as such during his reign, even though, legally, Castile and Aragon remained two separate kingdoms until they were formally united by the Nueva Planta decrees issued between 1707 and 1716.
The Granada War was a series of military campaigns between 1482 and 1492 during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, against the Nasrid dynasty's Emirate of Granada. It ended with the defeat of Granada and its annexation by Castile, ending the last remnant of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula.
Libro de la invencion liberal y arte del juego del axedrez is one of the first books published about modern chess in Europe, after Pedro Damiano's 1512 book. It was written by Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura in 1561 and published in Alcalá de Henares.
Isabella I, also called Isabella the Catholic, was Queen of Castile and León from 1474 until her death in 1504. She was also Queen of Aragon from 1479 until her death as the wife of King Ferdinand II. Reigning together over a dynastically unified Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand are known as the Catholic Monarchs.
Grant Acedrex is a medieval chess variant dating back to the time of King Alfonso X of Castile. It appears in the Libro de los Juegos of 1283.