Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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Chess
(2,875 words)
Chess was a board game played in the Middle East already before the coming of Islam. Originating in India, the game reached the Arab world via Persia and arrived in Europe via the Arabs, mostly through interactions in Spain. The Arabic word for “chess” is
shaṭranj or
shiṭranj, with the latter said to be better according to Arabic lexicographers wishing to make the word conform to standard Arabic morphology. In Middle Persian the term is
chatrang and in Sanskrit it is
caturaṅga (with four limbs), referring to the four army divisions represented in the game. Al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/8…
Source:
Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
Date:
2022-09-14
Backgammon
(983 words)
Backgammon, or trictrac, a board game for two persons, played with dice, of the race-game type, was known in the central Islamic lands as
nard, a Persian word of uncertain origin, said to be a shortening of
nardashīr, in turn derived from Ardashīr (Artaxerxes, r. 224–41 C.E.), founder of the Sāsānian dynasty (224–651 C.E.), who in some legends is said to have invented the game (in the version of the poet Firdawsī (d. 411/1020),
Shāhnāma, trans. Davis, 701–4, the game called
nard is not a race game but a battle game, not unlike the Roman
latrunculi) [Illustration 1]. In these stories
nard is ver…
Source:
Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
Date:
2021-07-19
Epics, Persian
(4,099 words)
Persian epics are the product of a long-lasting oral and then written transmission of myths, stories, and beliefs. Its pre-eminent literary product is the
Shāh-nāma (“Book of kings”), a long epic poem written down by Abū l-Qāsim Firdawsī (d. c.410/1020) of Ṭūs. 1. Indo-Iranian roots Iranian peoples maintained an unbroken transmission of their heroic epics, reaching back to a common Indo-Iranian and even a more distant Indo-European past (Skjærvø, Importance; Watkins, 14–6, 57–8; Dumézil, 1:9–27, 2:137–45). The themes of epic narratives roo…
Source:
Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
Date:
2021-07-19