Lost Empires | TheArticle

It is a little known fact that Queen Victoria, by virtue of her being declared Empress of India in 1876, was the ruler of the world’s third largest Muslim population, behind only the Islamic

Sultan of Turkey and the Orthodox Christian Czar of Russia. Indeed, the very word Czar (cognate with Kaiser) is derived from Caesar, the name of Julius Caesar, adopted for all subsequent

Roman Emperors, at least until the Diocletian tetrarchy, established in 293 AD. In India, the Queen-Empress was known as Kaisar i Hind, in other words, Caesar in India. And it was during

Victoria’s reign that Great Britain, due largely to the endeavours of the writer, organiser and player, Howard Staunton, established London as the chess epicentre of the world. Staunton

wrote the best books on chess, published the most respected Chess column, in the _Illustrated London News_, organised the first ever international chess tournament (London 1851) and from

1843-1851 was regarded as _de facto_ world champion. Staunton achieved this status by virtue of his match victories against the leading European masters, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint

Amant, Bernhard Horwitz and Daniel Harrwitz. Staunton was ably supported by a cadre of other British chessboard talents, foremost among them, Buckle, Bird, Williams, Owen, Barnes and

Cochrane. It is my contention that of the three empires, Islamic, Russian and British (all of whom at one stage were globally preeminent in chess) only the British Empire has, until now at

least, successfully adjusted to a post-imperial, post-hegemonic role. Russia and elements of Islam have, in contrast, not. It is my further contention that _Das Unbehagen in der Kultur_, 

(‘The Discontent in Culture’) to borrow Sigmund Freud’s epithet, in parts of the Islamic world, led to such outrages as 9/11, not to mention various outbreaks of terrorism in London and

elsewhere. This has been caused, in part at least, by frustration at the loss of the thrill of dramatic expansion and conquest by Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries. This exhilarating

period, checked in Western Europe by Charles Martel, leader of the Merovingian Franks and grandfather of Charlemagne, at the Battle of Tours against the Umayyad invasion (732 AD) culminated

further east in the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by the Turkish Sultan, Mehmet II, Al Fatih, the victorious. The loss of those heady days, the recollection of past glories on an

Ozymandian scale, must rankle with certain misguided modern fanatics. As Edward Gibbon put it, had the Battle of Tours turned out otherwise, “perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would

now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.” Similarly with Russia, once a mighty

empire, and even during the interlude when it was the USSR, the bipolar equal of the USA, the loss of global prestige is still painfully felt in the Byzantine corridors of the Kremlin. The 

urge to reestablish that loss accounts for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In my column last week, I referred to the great yoghurt gambit, from the world championship match between Karpov and

the defector Korchnoi in 1978. This was a time when the Soviets were comfortable in their own sense of superiority, and we treated the serving of a yoghurt with a degree of levity. The

elevated paranoia and insecurity of the current Russian mentality can be seen in the sinister transition from coded milkshakes to Polonium in the teapot and Novichok on the door handles of

Salisbury. Thus, Islamic terrorism and Russian bellicosity can be seen as two sides of the same coin. What follows now is my analysis of the history of chess, viewed through the prism of

both Islam and Russia/ USSR. As I have argued here before, to my mind, prowess at chess is a powerful indicator of the health of a nation or, indeed, an empire. The ancient ancestor of chess

was an Arabic game called _shatranj_. It was popular in Baghdad by the 8th century AD, but its origins can be traced back as far as 350 BC. _Shatranj_ was a slow-moving game in which the 

queen and bishop had much less freedom of movement than their modern counterparts; nonetheless it was recognisably a form of chess. The ancestry of _shatranj_ spanned two continents and –

appropriately for a war game – was a by-product of a military campaign. The blood-line may be traced back more than 2000 years to Ancient Greece. In his _Politics_ Aristotle mentions a group

of classical board games called _petteia_. These were battle games which demanded skill, logic and reason, not simply the fortuitous throw of dice. In his _Republic Plato_ compares victims

of Socrates’ debating skill with “weak petteia players … cornered and rendered unable to move”. In about 330 BCE Alexander the Great invaded Persia and marched on towards in Asia Minor and

India. Along the way he founded Hellenic colonies in which the Greeks continued their passion for _petteia_. At the same time, India had a battle game of its own. It shared its Sanskrit

name, _chaturanga_, meaning “four divisions”, with the Indian army. The divisions in question were elephants, chariots, cavalry and infantry, all mobilised in the game by throws of dice. It

did not take long for _chaturanga_, the Indian war game of chance, to meet and merge with _petteia_, the Greek game of reason. The effect of _petteia_ on _chaturanga_ was to eliminate the

dice, and from this collision of cultures, chess – Greek thought expressed in Indian language – was born. The Muslim Arabs adopted it, and translated the Indian game of _chaturanga_ into the

Arabic _shatranj_. “Via the squares on a chessboard, the Indians explain the movement of time and the age, the higher influences which control the world and the ties which link chess with

the human soul.” (The Arabian historian Al-Masudi writing in AD 947.) Not until about 1470 did chess begin its transformation from the slow Islamic form to the quick-fire game we know today.

Castling was introduced at this time, pawns gained the privilege of advancing two squares on their initial move, and the queen switched from being a waddling cripple (the Arabic vizier, 

allowed to move only one square at a time) to the most powerful piece on the board. The powers of the Alfil or Bishop were also considerably enhanced. It was in 1946 that the USSR began to

dominate world chess and develop the most sophisticated system of state support for chess since the introduction of the new chess, six centuries beforehand. The Soviet dynasty was founded

with Mikhail Botvinnik’s World Championship victory in 1948. Why was the Soviet Union, and subsequently Russia, so overwhelmingly successful at chess? From 1948 to 1972 the USSR dominated

the World Championship, and thereafter still provided the majority of the world’s elite Grandmasters. This has much to do with the gigantic material resources that the USSR ploughed into

achieving victory in virtually every international sport. In the collective mind of the Soviet regime, chess was not merely a sport; it also conferred intellectual respectability. It should

never be forgotten that the Russian Revolution had made the USSR very much a pariah state. Hence, from the Soviet viewpoint of craving international prestige, the game was worth substantial

financial investment, in order to seize the World Championship and, by systematic nurturing of young players, consolidate and retain it. A critical factor in the dissolution of the Soviet

Union and the fall of its communist masters was the regime’s dependence on restricting information and ideas. This was at the precise moment when the economies of the western world, and many

in the East Asia, were on the brink of an information explosion, driven by new information-based technologies and reliant to an unprecedented degree on intellectual capital. In the Islamic 

world over the past millennium, chess has from time to time been banned, and then the prohibition has been lifted again. When the Ayatollahs came to power in Iran, one of their first acts

was to ban chess; the prohibition has now been relaxed and chess is permitted once again. This periodically hostile attitude towards chess is curious, given that chess first flourished in

the Baghdad Caliphate over 1000 years ago and that Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid Caliph of Islam from 786AD to 809AD, was known to be a chessplayer. The problem derives from a verse of the 

Koran which reads: “Oh true believers, surely wine and lots and images and divining-arrows are an abomination of the works of Satan, therefore avoid ye them that ye may prosper.” Although

chess is not specifically proscribed in the Koran, some Muslim lawyers in about 800AD extended the condemnation of lots (or dice) and images to chess and chess-players. Salvation came from a

certain Ash-Shafii, the 9th century Arab jurist, who put forward counter-arguments, claiming that chess was an image of war and that the game could be played, not just for a stake or for

pure recreation, but as a mental exercise for the solution of military tactics. This view has tended to prevail, not least because the Caliphs themselves were often not only warriors but

avid chess-players. Hence during the late 9th and early 10th centuries in Baghdad, they kept a court retinue of _aliyat_, or grandmasters, who regularly conducted competitions for their 

amusement. Tradition states that the oldest chess problem on record was composed in 840 AD by the Caliph Mutasim Billah, third son and successor of Harun al-Rashid. The Soviet empire is no 

more, but the information revolution has accelerated and the value of intellectual capital continues to appreciate. Playing chess remains one of the most powerful methods of cultivating a

free yet disciplined intellect. Chess grandmasters are increasingly viewed as high-level mental athletes, commanding the world stage along with million-dollar purses. Since 1972, when the 

mercurial American genius Bobby Fischer wrested the World Championship from Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, chess and its most prominent personalities have become international superstars. Hot

off the press comes a splendid new book _From Ukraine With Love For Chess_. The former FIDÉ World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov coordinated this wonderful collection of chess games from

Ukrainian players, published by New In Chess. All games were nominated and annotated by Ukrainian players. With contributions by Vasyl Ivanchuk, Ruslan Ponomariov, Anna and Mariya Muzychuk,

Natalia Zhukova, Anton Korobov, Vladimir Tukmakov, Pavel Eljanov, Andrei Volokitin, and many, many others. All proceeds of the book will go to charities in Ukraine, selected by Ponomariov

and Zhukova. New In Chess will make the first donations this week. The Ukrainian theme extends through this week’s brilliancies. The first game is between the Russian Grandmaster, Nikolai

Krogius and top Ukrainian Grandmaster, Leonid Stein. The second is between arguably the strongest-ever Ukrainian player, Vasyl Ivanchuk and the highest-rated World Champion of all time,

Magnus Carlsen. _ RAYMOND KEENE’S LATEST BOOK “FIFTY SHADES OF RAY: CHESS IN THE YEAR OF THE CORONAVIRUS”, CONTAINING SOME OF HIS BEST PIECES FROM THEARTICLE, IS NOW AVAILABLE FROM 

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