II.
It may be supposed, then, following the dates of Sir W. Jones, that the game of chess made its entrance into Arabia in her most glorious era; and it is easy to believe that a recreation so purely intellectual, so entirely reliant on skill and removed from chance, and which called into action all the higher powers of mind, would speedily find favor with the refined and cultivated Arabians in the golden days of her history. It is easy to picture Haroun-al-Raschid, who "never built a mosque without attaching to it a school," and who taught his subjects that "the most noble homage of a creature is to cultivate the faculties bestowed on him by his Creator"—it is easy to imagine him seeking relaxation from the cares of government in a game of chess; and not he alone—but that, from the universal diffusion of learning and refinement among the people, under him and his immediate successors, it would meet universal acceptance, and be engrafted, as it were, on their nationality. And thus we find it was; and so entirely adopted that it was the most cherished pleasure which they carried with them to (what was to them) the far-off land of Spain.
To the Arabians then, the west of Europe, at least, if not the whole of it, is indebted for chess; and it is pleasant to believe that its present perfections may have been wrought out by some modifications of it, in those famous old universities and schools of learning which history tells us were scattered over every land where the Arabians held sway, but more especially over Arabia proper.
Chess, looked upon in this connection, wears a mantle of romance; there is a spell upon it of that departed glory! It is redolent of orange-groves, and jasmines, and thickets of roses; of sculptured halls, and gorgeous tapestry, and marble pavements; of learned men and beautiful women. All around it in that land breathed an impassioned poetry and an enchaining eloquence; the language of passion, and inspired thoughts, and bold imagery, of whose power to sway mankind our rule-bound brains can form no conception.
It speaks to us of the days when Bagdad was the gathering-place, under Al-Mamoun, (Mahomet-aben-Amer,) of the wise men of all nations; when her universities and schools of science were the boast of her rulers; when long trains of camels were daily seen entering her gates laden with precious manuscripts for her libraries; when medicine, law, mathematics, astronomy, counted among her citizens their most renowned professors, and when all these sciences were made accessible to the people by colleges and academies in every town. Nor were Bassora, Kaffa, Samarcand, and numerous other cities much less famous; Alexandria possessed more than twenty schools for philosophy alone; and Fez and Larace held in their immense libraries works of rare value nowhere else to be found. In every department of science and art they seem to have labored with success. They had dictionaries, geographical, critical, and biographical; the universal history of the world by Aboul-Feda, and the great historical dictionary of Prince Abdel Malek. Al-Assacher wrote commentaries on the first inventors of the arts; and Al-Gazel, a learned work on Arabian antiquities. Nor were their researches confined to the schools; after forty years of travel in studying mineralogy, Abou-ryan-al-Byrony produced his treatise on precious stones—rich in facts and observations. With equal zeal, at a later period, Aben-al-Beither traversed the mountains and plains of Europe, the sands of Africa, and the most remote countries of Asia, to gather every thing rare and worthy of record in the vegetable and animal world. Chemistry they applied to the arts of life; and Al-Farabi, who spoke seventy languages, spent his life in making a compend of all known sciences in one immense encyclopædia.
They had invented gunpowder although the honor is often falsely given to a German chemist—and they were familiar with the compass, long before either was named in Europe; and our sciences of calculation are indebted to them for numerals. The mass of their poetry and fiction exceeds that of all other nations put together. One, at least, we all know; for who cannot recall many—yes, how many happy hours of boyhood, beguiled with the gorgeous impossibilities of Arabian Nights?
Amidst all these royal students, these accomplished scholars, the chess-board had its place; it was the pleasure, the recreation—the field whereon wit encountered wit in sharp and pleasant tilt. And while from all that land the light of science has departed; while the glories of the past are, with the mass of its people, not even a tradition, travellers tell us that, after the day's journeying is done, the dusky Arab "spreads out on the ground a checkered cloth, and plays on it a game similar to our chess."