Tamerlane's Captive Chess Set The Game That Shaped a Conqueror

Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History · Jun 14, 2026 · 7m · transcript

Long before Tamerlane built his empire from Samarkand, he played chess. Not just any chess — a massive, 112-square variant called Tamerlane Chess, or Shatranj al-Kabir. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how the game's rules — with pieces like the Giraffe, the War Machine, and the Camel — mirrored the asymmetric warfare that made Timur-i Lang legendary. They trace the game's origins to Persian and Indian influences, its presence in the Zafarnama, and how a captive scholar from Damascus may have taught Tamerlane new strategies. Along the way, they discuss the 14th-century chess…