- 1 - CHESS IN JEWISH HISTORY AND HEBREW LITERATURE by Abraham Victor Keats of University College Dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of London 1993 ProQuest Number: 10105699 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10105699 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 “ 2" Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to deai with the origins of chess before AD 500 with attention to the record of sources and commentaries in the Babylonian Talmud. At the same time the names of other games which could be connected with chess are analysed. It is argued that Jews played a part in the the spread of chess through the Jewish Khazars. Medieval Jewish writing on chess (primarily in Spain) demonstrate possible Jewish influence on the development of chess in the Middle Ages. Also allusions to chess in Hebrew Literature are recorded together with background material on the historical periods concerned. Among the main Sources are JEHUDAH - HA- LEVI who made one of the earliest significant European references to chess in HA -KUSARI. DISCIPLINA CLERICALIS is cited as an example of the role played by Jews in the pattern of transmission of chess to Europe in the 11th and 12th Century. Jewish literary references to chess after AD 1600, and the re-discovery of the earlier texts from the DE LUDIS ORIENTALIBUS are cited with special reference to the volume entitled SHAHLUDIUM TRADITUM in TRIBUS SCRIPTIS HEBRAICs of Thomas Hyde. The most important of these three works being the 11th Century Hebrew Rhythmic verse of Abraham - Ibn - Ezra which at such a remarkably early date contains probably the earliest Rules of chess written in Europe. This is followed by an ELEGANT ORATORIO by IBN - YEHIA. The third work, MA’ADONEH MELECH which Hyde ascribes to an anonymous author is shown to have been written by YEHUDA Dl MODENA. Its rich Hebrew language is underscored with my Concordance Notations of Biblical Phraseology. This is extended by revivals of DE LUDIS ORIENTALIBUS in the (1) 18th Century German commentaries and translations by Ludimagistro and (2) in a French publication entitled DELICE ROYALE by Leon Hollanderski (1884). A chess manuscript is discovered to be by a Proselyte ABU ZACHARYA, whose writings retrieve and revive otherwise lost 9th C. Arabic chess studies and records. Chess in the MA’ASEH book, Moses Mendelsohn and Lessing’s Nathan the Wise are also presented. This is followed by two of the most important Hebrew chess works of the first half of the 19th Century. The Hebrew chess Treatise by Zevi Uri Rubinstein , LIMUDEI-HA- INYANAI VE - HAMASEH-BEDARCHEI HASCHOK - HANIRA - SCHACHSPIEL is translated and explained. JACOB EICHENBAUM’s 1840 Poem ''HA-KRAV' is also translated and explained as based upon a game of STAMM A. Talmudic references to chess and other chess texts (one in Pahlavi) coincide as being of . approximately the same period in pre-dating the assertion contained in Firdausi’s mythological account of the invention of chess at the time of Chosroes I. The Talmudic word for chess suggests that the conclusion that the origin of chess is associated with the period of Alexander the Great. This argument is supported by a Vatican Library Hebrew manuscript containing an extract from SECRETUM SECRETORUM. The importance of Jewish influence upon the development of chess is underscored by important books, as landmarks in chess. History which are shown to have been written directly by Jews or “Gonversos”. Among these are ALPHONSO’s” LIBRO DIVERSOS DE ACEDREX, DADOS-Y-TABLAS translated by Don Zag Ibn Cid and others. However an equally important and rare volume is by LUIS Dl LUCENA, who is presented as a MARRANO, the father of modern chess with a newly researched explanation of the AMORES part in REPETITION DE AMORES EARTE DEAXEDREZ, 1497 A.D. This is provided with greater breadth by newly researched links with CELESTINA Y CALISTu an6 MELIBOEA. - 3 - CONTENTS 1 introduction 4 Overview 4 Sir Thomas Hyde: The Book of Oriental Games 6 The influence of Hyde 1 3 Moritz Steinschneider: Chess Among the Jews 1 9 2 Chess and Other Games in the Talmud 22 Texts and Commentaries 2 2 Firdausi and the Shahnama 3 4 ‘Alexander's Game’ 4 0 Postscript 4 5 3 The Jewish 'Golden Age’: Chess in Medieval Spain 59 Arab and Jew 5 9 Moses Cohen: Disciplina Clericalis 6 3 Judah Halevi: Ha-Kuzari 6 5 Abraham Ibn Ezra: Verses on the Game of Chess 7 0 The Chess Poem of Bonsenior Ibn Yehia 7 9 Chess and Society -- and Gambling 8 3 The Alphonse Manuscript 8 7 Abu Zachariya Jahja Ben Ibrahim Al-Hakim 9 4 The New Chess: Lucena and Ruy Lopez 1 0 0 Postscript 110 4 Chess and Jewish Literature: the Post-Renaissance Period 120 The Anonymous Treatise The Delight of Kings 1 2 0 Chess and Morals: Some Further Views 1 4 3 Two Stories from the Ma'aseh Book 1 5 6 Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing’sNathan the Wise 1 5 9 Zevi Uri Rubinstein 1 6 6 Léon Hollaenderski: Délices royales 1 76 Jacob Eichenbaum: The Struggle 1 8 3 Chronological Table 197 Bibliography 2 0 4 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Overview Surveying the history of chess over the past century and a half, it is impossible to overlook either the successes of Jewish chessplayers or their contribution to the game’s extensive literature. What is less well understood is the Jewish role in earlier phases of chess history. To assist in clarifying that role is the aim of the present dissertation. Chapter 2 will take us back to the earliest documentary records of the game. It will focus on the question whether Jews were familiar with chess in the era of the Talmud. The task will be to examine a number of partly enigmatic talmudic passages referring to games, and to decide whether these games can be understood as a form of chess. I shall review the controversy surrounding the issue and draw independent conclusions from it. These textual enigmas involve fundamental questions about when and where chess originated. A widespread view is that chess could not be mentioned in the Talmud, since it only arrived in the areas of Jewish settlement after the Talmud was completed. According to this view, chess was ‘invented’ in India and only travelled westwards to Persia in the sixth century. Recently, this hypothesis on the origin of the game has been called into question. In critically examining it, I shall weigh it against alternative hypotheses which permit and invite us to read the relevant passages in the Talmud as references to chess. Chapter 3 deals with an epoch of notable developments in chess history -- the period when the game was introduced into Europe by the Arab conquerors of Spain. The contribution made to chess and its literature by Spanish Jews will be viewed in the light of their intellectual and cultural pre-eminence. The availability of their talents to both Mohammedan and Christian governments, and their consequent role (particularly as translators) in the transfer of knowledge between Arab and Christian worlds, will be seen as the context in which the Jews furthered the dissemination of chess. The specific texts through - 5 - which this argument is presented are in part unpublished or little known, and some are translated into English here for the first time. In some cases, the mention of chess is incidental — the playing of chess figures as an object of moral judgement, or the game supplies an analogy illustrating a didactic point. In other cases chess itself is the central theme, a subject of analysis or celebration in poetry or prose. Chapter 4 continues the story into the sixteenth century and beyond. The material here comes from various parts of Europe, and again is varied in character. It includes practical, technical treatises for the chessplayer; references to chess in legal and moral arguments, partly derived from unpublished manuscripts; evocations of the game in verse; and anecdotal material expressive of attitudes to chess and the status accorded to it. My survey terminates in the mid-nineteenth century, since from that period onwards, the ground has been covered at some length by previous writers. Of the sources I have used, there is one that must be singled out for special discussion. This is the treatise De Ludis Orientalibus, written in Latin by Sir Thomas Hyde (1636-1702) and published in 1694. This has long been recognized as the first study of chess history to be based on authentic scholarship. All subsequent chess historians of any note are indebted to it,^ yet I believe that the material and insights it offers have yet to be ^ In his monumental work A History of Chess (Oxford, 1913), p. 841, H.J.R.Murray calls Hyde’s book 'the first really scientific contribution to the history of chess’. On pp. 19-21 below, we shall see that the other ‘standard’ chess history - Antonius van der Linde, Geschichte und Litteratur des Schachspiels (Berlin, 1874) - also makes extensive use of Hyde’s material.