Timeline of Chess - Early History

Early History

• 6th century - The game chaturanga probably evolved into its current form around this time in India.
• 569 A Chinese emperor wrote a book of xiangqi, Xiang Jing, in AD 569
• c. 600 - The Karnamuk-i-Artakhshatr-i-Papakan contains references to the Persian game of shatranj, the direct ancestor of modern Chess. shatranj was initially called "Chatrang" in Persian (named after the Indian version), which was later renamed to shatranj.
• c. 720 - Chess spreads across the Islamic world from Persia.
• c. 840 - Earliest surviving chess problems by Caliph Billah of Baghdad.
• ca. 900 - Entry on Chess in the Chinese work Huan Kwai Lu ('Book of Marvels').
• 997 - Versus de scachis is the earliest known work mentioning chess in Christian Western Europe.
• 1008 - Mention of chess in the will of Count Uregel, another early reference.
• 10th century - As-Suli writes Kitab Ash-Shatranj, the earliest known work to take a scientific approach to chess strategy.
• late 10th century - Dark and light squares are introduced on a chessboard.
• 1173 - Earliest recorded use of algebraic chess notation.
• 1283 - Alfonso X compiles the Libro de los juegos, with an extensive collection of chess problems.
• late 13th century - Pawns can now move two ranks on first move.
• late 14th century - The en passant rule is introduced.
• 1422 - A manuscript from Kraków sets the rule that stalemate is a draw.
• 1471 - The Göttingen manuscript is the first book to deal solely with chess.
• 1474 - William Caxton publishes The Game and Playe of Chesse, the first chess book in English.
• 1475-1525 - The modern moves for the queen, bishop, and castling are slowly adopted.
• 1475 - Scachs d'amor the first published game of modern chess, written as a poem.
• 1497 - Luis Ramirez Lucena publishes the first European work on chess openings.
• 1510 - Marco Girolamo Vida wrote Scacchia ludus(The Game of Chess) with the first reference to a goddess of chess.
• 1512 - Pedro Damiano publishes one of the first chess treatises, Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi et de li partiti
• 1561 - Ruy López coins the word gambit to describe opening sacrifices.
• 1690 - Openings are now systematically classified by the Traite de Lausanne.