Latest / Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History / Tamerlane's Captive Chess Set The Game That Shaped a Conqueror
Transcript
- Lucas: So, Luna, we've talked a lot about Tamerlane's battles, his sieges, his engineers. But today I want to look at something a bit quieter — a game of chess. Luna: Chess? Like, he actually sat down and played? Lucas: He did. And not just any chess — he played a variant called Shatranj al-Kabir, the great chess. It was played on an 11 by 10 board, 110 squares, sometimes 112. And it had pieces you wouldn't recognize: a Giraffe, a Camel, a War Machine, a Vizier. Luna: Wait, a War Machine? That sounds like something from a siege. Lucas: Exactly. The piece moved like a rook but only two squares — maybe reflecting a battering ram's limited reach. And the Camel moved in a kind of elongated knight's move. The game was asymmetric, unbalanced, unpredictable. And that, I think, is why Tamerlane loved it. He was a master of asymmetric warfare himself. Lucas: You know, this is a bit like the show itself — we dig into these unexpected corners of history, and it's only thanks to listeners like you that we can keep doing this ad-free. If you've been enjoying these conversations, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just every little bit helps keep the research flowing. Luna: Absolutely. It's because of that support we can dive into things like Tamerlane's chess set instead of just battles. Lucas: Right. So, back to the board. The Zafarnama — that's the official biography of Tamerlane — actually mentions him playing chess. And there's a surviving manuscript from the 14th century, now in the Topkapi Palace library in Istanbul, that describes the rules of Shatranj al-Kabir. It's a remarkable document. Luna: Who wrote it? Was it one of his court historians? Lucas: Not exactly. The manuscript is anonymous, but it's thought to have been compiled by a scholar from Damascus or perhaps Baghdad, someone who was brought to Samarkand as a captive. We know Tamerlane deported artists, astronomers, and scholars to his capital. This chess manual might be another product of that brain drain. Lucas: The game itself is ancient. Chess originated in India, then traveled to Persia, where it became shatranj. The Arabs spread it across the Islamic world. By Tamerlane's time, there were dozens of variants. But his version, Shatranj al-Kabir, was especially complex. It had pieces like the Dabbaba — that's the War Machine — and the Zarafa, which is the Giraffe. Luna: The Giraffe? How did that move? Lucas: It moved like a knight but one step farther — so it could jump two squares in one direction and one perpendicular, but also three and one. Very long-range. It might reflect the use of mounted archers who could strike from unexpected distances. And the Camel moved like a knight, but asymmetrically — one step diagonally, then three straight. It was a piece that forced you to think in new patterns. Lucas: Tamerlane reportedly preferred this larger board because it slowed down the game. Standard chess on an 8x8 board could be decided quickly by a tactical blunder. But on a 10x11 board, with more pieces and slower development, strategy mattered more. And he was all about long-term strategy. Luna: So he used chess as a training tool for his generals? Lucas: Possibly. There's a story — I can't vouch for its accuracy — that after a victory, he would sit with his commanders and replay the battle on a chessboard. Not just for fun, but to analyze what worked and what didn't. The Zafarnama doesn't confirm that, but the game's complexity would have lent itself to such exercises. Luna: I wonder if any of those boards survive today. Lucas: None that we know of. But the rules manuscript gives us a glimpse. One of the most interesting pieces is the Vizier — it moved like a king but only one step orthogonally. And the War Machine moved like a rook, but only two squares. So it was a short-range siege engine. The board also had a 'courtyard' in the middle where pawns could promote differently. Luna: Wait, so pawns promoted to these weird pieces instead of queens? Lucas: In standard chess, pawns promote to queens. But in Shatranj al-Kabir, when a pawn reached the opponent's back rank, it could become any piece except a king — but the promotion options were limited to pieces already captured. So you couldn't just get a new War Machine if you hadn't lost one. That added a layer of resource management. Lucas: And the board itself was sometimes called the 'Tamerlane chessboard' in later centuries. It influenced European chess variants too. Some historians think the game spread westward through the Ottoman Empire. The Topkapi manuscript was likely copied in the 15th century, but it records older traditions. Luna: So how did Tamerlane actually play? Did he have a favorite opening? Lucas: We don't know his style, but we do know his character. He was patient, calculating, and willing to sacrifice pieces to achieve a larger goal. That sounds a lot like his military campaigns. He would feign weakness, let enemies overextend, then strike. Chess would have been a natural outlet for that mindset. Lucas: One of his contemporaries, Ibn Arabshah, who was no fan of Tamerlane, wrote about his love of chess. In his hostile biography, he says Tamerlane was 'addicted' to the game, playing it even during campaigns. That might be an exaggeration, but it suggests chess was a known part of his daily life. Luna: It's weird to think of him sitting around playing board games when he was busy conquering half of Asia. Lucas: It humanizes him, doesn't it? And it also shows he wasn't just a brute. He appreciated intellectual challenges. The chess variant he played required deep strategic thinking. And by patronizing the game — having scholars write about it, importing new pieces from different cultures — he contributed to its evolution. Lucas: There's even a theory that the game's name, Shatranj al-Kabir, was a deliberate echo of his own title, Sahib-i Qiran — Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction. Both suggest a grand scale. But that might be reading too much into it. Luna: So what happened to the game after Tamerlane died? Lucas: It declined in popularity. The standard 8x8 chess became dominant, especially as it spread to Europe. But the variant survived in some pockets — in Iran, in India under the Mughals, and in the Ottoman world. The Topkapi manuscript is our best evidence. And today, there are modern enthusiasts who reconstruct the game and play it online. Lucas: It's a small window into how Tamerlane's mind worked. We think of him as a destroyer of cities, but he was also a man who enjoyed the subtleties of a complex board game. Maybe that's why he was such an effective general — he could see the board from a different angle. Luna: I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of want to try playing Shatranj al-Kabir now. Lucas: It's not easy to find a set, but there are apps. And if you ever do, remember: the Giraffe is your friend.