From: nbadie@rd.hydro.on.ca (Navid Badie)
Subject: On the origin of chess (was Re: Words of Persian Origin)
Organization: "Ontario Hydro - Research Division"
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 18:12:18 GMT

amojahed@uwovax.uwo.ca writes:

: Hello my dearest compatriots,
: 	Just the other day I was reading a book about the origin of words in
: the English language when I discovered that quite a few words that we have
: taken for granted to be english (or perhaps even of french, russian or arabic
: origin), are indeed persian (farsi).
: 	Finding it very interesting, I decided to share this with you.
 [stuff deleted]
: 
: MEDIEVAL GROUP:
: algorism	arsenic			azure			borax
: candy		check			checker			chess
                                                                ^^^^^
 [more stuff deleted]
: 
: 	I always thought tulip to be french, mummy to be arabic, saccharine to
: be russian and chess to be of chinese origin, but then again....

You have listed many interesting words, and I haven't yet looked at all
of them. But the word "chess" suddenly attracked my attention, and I 
thought I could share with you a few words about the origins of chess.
(I am cross-posting this to rec.games.chess in the hope of getting
some more knowledgeable chess people to comment on it and/or to
correct any inaccuracies).

Well, as you probably know, the *game* of chess is of Indian origin. It
was originally called "chaturanga" meaning "four armies". There is not
general agreement about what the four armies were. Some experts believe
that the original game of chaturanga was played by four players, each
of whom had pieces in one corner of the board. Others believe that
"four armies" refers to the 4 different kinds of units used in Indian 
armies of the time, namely foot soldiers (pawns), soldiers riding elephants,
soldiers rinding horses, and rooks (the rook, I think, referred to soldiers 
riding a carriage [arrabeh] but this is also a point of contention).

Anyway, when the game of chess was introduced to Iran, before Islam,
the iranians called it "chatrang", a mild distortion of the original 
name. The game flourished in Iran, and Iranians made some significant 
changes to the rules of the game, some of which have survived to this day. 

After the Islamic conquest, the arabs were introduced to chess, which
they called "shatranj". They also made some changes to the game, and it 
spread everywhere in the Islamic world, and finally, through Spain, to
Europe. Most of the European countries gave this new game a name which
was derived from the persian word for king (Shah, or as we say it on
s.c.i., shaw :-) I have read that even the expression for the end of the
game (checkmate in English, echec et mat in French, and similar
words in German, Italian and Spanish) are derived from the Persian
expression "Shah Maat" which, according to the book I was reading, 
meant "the king is dead". (This was news to me, I thought the expression 
kish-o-maat* meant that the king is threatened and "maat maandeh" i.e. he 
is stunned, and cannot go anywhere. Can some knowledgeable person shed 
some light on this please?)

Anyway, the Europeans made many more changes to the game of chess, most
of which were designed to make the game more lively. In the 
Indian/Iranian/Arabic version of the game, the queen (or advisor) could
only move one square at a time, the elephants could only move
on diagonal square in any direction or one adjacent square forward,
there was no two square move by the pawns, no castling, and no queening
of the pawns. It was then customary for two players to make their first
few moves independent of each other, since the forces of the two players
would not clash until well into the game (the rook, the most powerful 
piece at the time, could not get out of its confinement easily.) This
is another topic by itself. I believe that the game of chess reached
its modern form as late as the eighteenth century, with the last change
being the introduction of the "en-passant" rule for pawn capture.

Another interesting aspect of the many-phased transformation of chess
to its modern form is the name that each piece is assigned in each
language, e.g. the Indian/Iranian/Arabic Pil/Fil is the Bishop in
English, and le Fou (the court Idiot) in French. Or the Queen in English,
which is now the Vazir (minister) in Persian and Arabic, used to be called 
"Farzin" (Wise cousellor) in the days of Chatrang. The nomenclature of chess 
has also been studied extensively, and I can provide references to anyone who
is interested. 

Anyway, I hope to see more followups on this topic here. Imagine if you
get an article this long about every single word you included in your post.
It should make for interesting reading.

:     		SEASON'S GREETINGS & HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

Cheers,
--Navid Badie
nbadie@rd.hydro.on.ca

* Note to non-Iranians: kish-o-maat is the Persian expression for
checkmate. "Kish" can be interpreted either as warning to the king,
or as an instruction to the king to "move away". "Maat" can be 
interpreted as "Stunned". There is, however, an arabic verb, "Mowt" 
(for lack of a better latin spelling) which means "to die". This is 
why I am asking for a clarification from a more knwoledgeable person.

Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian