Talk:Early Arabic chess literature

Merge suggestion
Shouldn't we merge this article into shatranj, as a subsection in History section? All "Early Arabic chess literature" were about shatranj. Andreas Kaufmann 21:32, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Does these books really exists?
Unfortunately, I am sorry to say that everything on this page is bogus. None of the documents cited exist.

This is not the fault of the user here. It is the fault of HJR Murray, who simply invented references.

I believe that this page should simply be deleted. First, however, the author here should be given a fair chance to prove the validity of his claims. Sam Sloan 06:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Hm, your statement is very strange, Murray is considered very respectable chess historian. What about 300 shatranj mansubats, 30 tabias (some analyzed very detailed) and other shatranj information in Murray book? From where all these come? Andreas Kaufmann 07:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I checked Murray, he writes that this list of chess books is from Fihrist, book by Ibn al-Nadim. Andreas Kaufmann 19:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I knew already that you had checked Murray. You did not have to tell me that, because HJR Murray is the sole and only source for the claims that these documents exist. I sincerely wish that they did exist, because I have searched for them for more than 20 years and I hate to think that I have wasted 20 years searching for non-existent documents. I have consulted the top scholars in Arabic and Persian literature at such places as Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley and none of them have ever even heard of these documents, much less seen them.


 * In short none of the documents cited by Murray have been shown to exist. His sole source seems to be a German publication that came out at the time Murray was writing in 1913 but the claims made in that German publication are not verifiable either. Sam Sloan 20:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

So what did you exactly found out:
 * 1) Fihrist doesn't exists.
 * 2) Fihrist doesn't mention any chess book.
 * 3) Fihrist lists chess book, but none of these book has been found.

Did you publish your research in some verifable sources, so that we can also publish it here? Andreas Kaufmann 21:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes. It is published in my 1985 book "Origin of Chess" which is on file with the Library of Congress. This was reviewed by Ken Whyde in British Chess Magazine. I have a chapter about this in my subsequent book, Chinese Chess for Beginners".

HJR Murray often cited famous works, such as Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, and claimed that these works discussed chess. However, no reference to chess has been found in any of them. I am sure that Fihrist contains no reference to chess, because if it did, I would know about it. Sam Sloan 01:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


 * WP:NOR Billbrock 05:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * User:Billbrock whose only notability is that he is known to attack me all the time, cites the "no original research" rule. However, this is not original research. I completed this research 21 years ago in 1985 and published it in a book then. So, this is old research, not original. Sam Sloan 06:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) There is nothing wrong with citing one's own research (e.g., in a link to external readings). But to cite it as an authority to circumvent WP:NOR is disingenuous.  Otherwise, twenty years from now, I could cite RGCP to prove a number of things on WP....  2) You're right that Murray is outdated; your 9x9 go-ban thesis is actually very interesting.  Who knows; perhaps it's even correct.  But I find the article falls far short of scholarly standards---typical Sloancentrism--and as written, is just an interesting suggestion. Billbrock 00:29, 7 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for refrences! I will read your book on origins of chess, I even found it's translation into German . What about other 20 manuscripts listed by Murray in chapter X in his book, do they exist? Andreas Kaufmann 18:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Murray cited the most famous works of ancient Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit literature and claimed that they contain references to chess. NONE of them have been found to contain references to chess. Most of these works are very long and still have not been translated into English, so without exact quotes or exact page references (none of which are provided by Murray) it is impossible either to prove or to disprove Murray's claims. However, if these references did exist they would be cited by modern day scholars, and none of them are. Sam Sloan 14:36, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

ar-Razi
The link for ar-Razi points to the famous physician. According to Murray, the physician could not have been the chess player and author. The chess player was dead before 900 AD. They were two different persons. I think it's worth a correction.


 * Thanks, I corrected this. What do you think about the comment above that these books didn't exist at all? Andreas Kaufmann 18:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

My answer is below (Cazaux 20:59, 22 April 2006 (UTC)) Fortunately, it is not difficult now to get a copy of H.J.R.Murray's History Of Chess and check by himself.(http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/32801//Location/Oxbow) Murray devoted 7 chapters of his book to these Muslim sources. He commented those manuscripts on over more than 180 pages, full of details, analysis, with no repetition. Among those pages, I will just take the example of Chapter XV which deals with the mansubat, the end-of-games. 553 end-of-games problems are presented and solutionned. There is nowhere a comparable source for the chess historian as well as for the chess amateur. Murray, him, as a true scholar, indicated his sources very often. It is said that it took 16 years to Murray to write this huge 900 p book. Had he invented everything from scratch (or from an obscure German publication) as suggested, it would have taken several lifes to build something so complete and consistent. I find easier to believe that those sources exist and that they inspired Murray. Internet is full of negationists of all kinds. (Cazaux 20:35, 24 April 2006 (UTC))
 * Yes, it is unbelievable that Murray thought off himself all this stuff on shatranj in his book. However the point was that Fihsrist, the book by Ibn al-Nadim doesn't contain any references to chess/shatranj books. In very beginning of Chapter X, Murray writes: "...In b. Ishaq an-Nadim's great bibliographic work, the K. al-fihrist, compiled 377/988, we find a section devoted to the authors of books on chess." Further the text fragment from Fihrist is following, which list the shatranj books. Murray really doesn't provide page number or whatever location information where in Fihrist this fragment can be found. Sloan claims that there is no such fragment in Fihrist at all. This statement is verifyable: there are translations of Fihrist into English, see e.g., one just needs to find text fragment given by Murray and provide the page number. Andreas Kaufmann 06:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I see the point. But I think that the Firhist is not really the problem for the following reasons 1) Not only the Fihrist is questionned in this page. Firdowsi's Shanama as well, and the question starts as "none of the documents exist". 2) I understood that different versions of Firhist exist, more or less long. Talking about medieval texts is not as simple as talking about modern books, as you imagine. A page number has no sense per se, it will be a page number in a given edition of a given translation of a given manuscript from a given collection. There will be always an individual to deny one of the steps in this chain. 3) Murray said the that Firhist listed these books because it was a convenient introduction to his chapter (X if I remember). He also cited another source just after. Then, all his description and details come from the different manuscripts he had studied. Even if the Firhist would not exist at all, Murray would have written the same thing about Shatranj as everything was based on the manuscripts.

Does this book exist ?
I've been working for years in Chess history too. What I read here is surprising. Actually a lot of modern day scholars are citing Murray, saying the opposite is not true. See for instance Antonio Panaino "La novella degli scacchi e della tavola reale". Of course all the mentioned manuscripts exist and of course Firdawsi told the story of Chess-Nard at Khusraw's court in the Shahnâma. Modern scholars, for instance those writting in Board Games Studies, do accept those facts without any trouble. It is not true to say that Murray cited those Arab and Persian manuscripts "without exact quotes". On the contrary, he gave his study with a lot of details, in a very erudite style. Of course he made an English translation and didn't give the original Arab or Persian text as he did elsewhere for European languages. But remember that he wrote in 1913, the world was very "eurocentric" then. Also, complaining about a missing page number in 12th or 15th muslim manuscript is a pathetic request, has it any sense? Murray's huge book was very rare few years ago but it has been re-edited now and interested readers can make their opinion by theirselves. I think that no one which has ever opened this book can believe that the author was inventing or cheating. This book represents the full achievement of one life, as an author of books on game history myself, I feel very respectful, I would never been able to do such a work. This is also why this book is still unsurpassed today. However, maybe Chess did not originate in India, maybe yes, maybe no, the question remains open. But I wonder, why such a hate against someone who is dead from long time and who let such a huge cultural heritage? I'd be glad to read Sloan's Origin of Chess. All what I got is 2 or 3-pages article on Internet, this is not a book. Where is this book available? (Cazaux 21:00, 22 April 2006 (UTC))