Medieval Islamic games
Arabs playing chess in Spain
The big new game of the Islamic Empire was chess. The Arabs learned to play chess from the Sassanians when they conquered them, and probably the Sassanians learned it from people in India. Indian people themselves seem to have learned at least some version of chess from people in China.
Then when the Arabs took over Spain,
in 711 AD, they brought chess with them,
and it began to spread from there to the rest of Europe. The men and
women returning from Crusade
also brought back chess sets with them to northern
Europe.
The Islamic Empire also saw an increase in the popularity of backgammon and checkers, both of which were already being played under Roman
and Sassanian rule
and may go back as far as the Persian
Empire in the 400’s BC.
Chess, checkers, and backgammon to a large extent replaced the gambling
games with dice which had
been very popular under Roman
rule. Islam forbade any kind
of gambling.
Wrestling at the Ottoman court, about 1500 AD
The Sultan Murad II practicing archery, 1584 AD
To find out more about ancient Islamic games, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Birth of the Chess Queen : A History, by Marilyn Yalom (2004). How the game of chess changed from West Asia to Europe.
Arab Falconry: History of a Way of Life, by Roger Upton (2002).
Al-Mansur's Book on Hunting, by Sir Terence Clark and
Muawiya Derhalli
