The 2023 FIDE World Chess Championship currently being held in Astana, Kazakhstan, will be historic for many reasons. Most notably, it will be the first since 2013 in which the champion will not be Norway’s Magnus Carlsen.

Carlsen, who has held the title since 2013, declined to defend his title this year. Chess is truly a global sport. The 1980s pop song “One Night in Bangkok” popularized the idea of the major sports tournaments taking place in international capitols.

This year’s event in Kazakhstan follows the 2021 hosting of the championship in the United Emirates. This is the first time ever the championship has been held back-to-back in Muslim-majority countries. 

Since the end of the Cold War, three other Muslim-majority countries — Libya, Iran and Indonesia — have hosted the FIDE World Chess Championship. In 2004, Uzbekistan’s Rustam Kasimdzhanov became the first Muslim to win a world chess championship. Despite the fact that hundreds of Muslim players have been ranked by FIDE over the years, the game remains controversial, with many mainstream Sunni and Shia scholars disapproving of chess.

Chess is not mentioned in the Quran, but some scholars have validated “hadiths,” or prophetic sayings, that declare prohibitions on chess. However, others have argued such language may refer to a gambling form of chess or potentially a premodern variant of the game.

The top Saudi Islamic scholar in Saudi Arabia has criticized chess in the past because it can, in his words, “create enemies … (and) make the poor man rich and the rich man poor,” said Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, in a recorded clip. In the clip, the scholars also describes chess in this manner: “It is a waste of time and an opportunity to squander money, and it causes enmity and hatred between people.”

Saudi Arabia’s largest chess federation, a full member of the international FIDE chess association, responded to the controversy with an open letter in 2016. Yet, the game has continued to develop in Saudi Arabia, under the reforms launched by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has opened the country up to new investment and cultural opportunities with chess now welcomed in the country.

Liverpool soccer star Mohammed Saleh’ interest in the game has sparked much interest in the game among his fans. Conversely, when Indian Cricket star Mohammad Kaif posted a photo of himself teaching chess to his son in 2017, many social media users claimed the game was “haram,” or forbidden in Islam.

Those who attacked Kaif may be unfamiliar with some of the game’s recent history in South Asia. Writing in The Times of India, writer Chidanand Rajghatta recalled the story of Malik Mir Sultan Khan. Khan, a former stable boy, conquered the British chess world with three victories at the British Open and become Asia’s first unofficial champion. Khan’s talent had been cultivated by Malik Umar Hayat Khan, a British army officer and honorary aide-de-camp to several British royals. Another of Khan’s servants who has entered history as “Miss Fatima” won the British Women's Chess Championship at Hastings in 1933 and gave instruction on the game to Queen Mary, the wife of King George V. The trio are from what is today part of Pakistan.

Chess continues to be an act of anti-colonial resistance for some Muslims today. The game remains popular with China’s Uyghur Muslim population due to the game’s strong links to the Muslim world. In that vein, chess is preferred to Chinese games such as xiangqi and mahjong. Chess also remains popular at Uyghur-American events as well. 

Bishop’s corner 

Chess was first introduced to the Arab-Islamic world by the Muslim conquest of Persia in 633 A.D. Whether chess was developed in Persia, Central Asia or India remains unclear, with most evidence pointing to Indian origins. The English phrase checkmate may in fact be a corruption of the Arabic phrase “shah moat” or “the shah is dead.” Over the centuries it was condemned at times by both Muslim and Christian rulers.

One of the earliest Muslim chess players found in the historical record is Sa’id ibn Jubayr, who died in 714 A.D. Born of African heritage in Iraq, he escaped slavery to become one of the earliest and most important Quran scholars.

Later in life, ibn Jubayr was arrested in a failed rebellion against al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the Umayyad governor of Iraq. To pass the time in jail, he took up chess. Soon he was able to play others prisoners blindfolded, though one assumes that few of his fellow prisoners matched his intellectual credentials. Ibn Jubayr not only inspired later Sunni and Shia scholars, he helped popularize blind chess.

Other early Muslim scholars also mastered blind chess as well, including Muhammad bin Sirin (died 728 A.D) and Hisham bin Urwa (died 765 A.D). Urwa’s granddaughters also apparently became talented chess players. The first recorded game of blind chess in Europe took place in Florence in 1266 A.D.

In the court of the Abbasid caliphate, chess was a game of showmanship as much as strategy, and it attracted large crowds. Players were expected to goad each other. One chess puzzle written by al-Suli before he died in 946 A.D would not be solved until the mid-1980s.

Muslims spread the game to North Africa and into Europe through Sicily and Spain, Europe’s two entrepôt for importing Muslim ideas into Christian Europe. The Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (763-809 A.D), who is featured in the tales of 1,001 Arabian Nights, did his part, sending the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I an ornate chess set as a gift.

Soon Muslim religious authorities began to take skeptical views of chess. Islamic scholars reading of ibn Jubayr’s chess playing centuries later dismissed it as a political act. They argued that by participating in the religiously frowned-upon act of chess playing, he was seeking to make himself ineligible to serve as a judge under al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. Why the governor would offer a position to a man who had rebelled against him was left unanswered.

In order to clean up the game’s image in the Islamic world, many boards offered abstract versions of the pieces so the pieces could not be used as idols. Yet the new simple pieces also made the game more affordable to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Despite efforts to ban the game, later Muslim rulers also enjoyed playing chess. Tamerlane (1336-1405 A.D) for example, played and potentially even invented a larger version of “Tamerlane chess.” His version featured a larger board and additional pieces, including a war machine and a camel. Although it — like much of Tamerlane’s empire — did not survive his death, thanks to the internet and a rare manuscript saved by the Royal Asiatic Society, the game has a small following today and even a club dedicated to the game in Jamestown, New York.

A political pawn

When the Taliban banned chess in 1996, it was only the latest in a long line of failed government prohibitions. The first efforts to ban chess date to 680 A.D, when the Byzantine Church banned the game. Al-Hakim, the Fatimid ruler of Egypt, banned chess in 1005 A.D and ordered all chess sets be burned. The game was introduced to Western Europe via Iberian Muslims, though it soon proved controversial. King Louis IX forbade the game in France in 1254.

The link between chess and gambling has never completely gone away. Neither has the game’s popularity. Within Sunni religious thought, the Hannbali school that predominates in Saudi Arabia has long taken a hostile view of chess. The Hanafi school — the most commonly adhered to in the Sunni world — is also hostile to chess. Other Sunni schools of thought take less critical views. The Maliki madhab school of thought frowns on chess as a potential distraction from religious observances but is otherwise tolerant of the game.

“If someone plays it occasionally — while not gambling — in the privacy of his home with his family, he is excused, as there is no reason to consider it as haram,” wrote ibn Abd Al-Barr (978-1071), an important scholar and Islamic magistrate in Lisbon.

The Shafi scholar al-Nawawi (1277 A.D) agreed with the Maliki view that chess could be played as long as it did not interfere with religious prayers. Other Shafi scholars building on al-Nawawi and others came to view chess as a useful game for sharpening the mind and for military training.

In the Shia, world views on chess also remain diffuse. The Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the most influential faith leaders within the Twelver Shia, maintains the game is forbidden. The Iranian revolution in 1979 resulted in a prohibition on the game that was overturned in a 1988 by Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, who called for moderation in playing the game but also praised the skills in developed.

Today, Iran is a chess superpower. Last year two of Iran’s chess champions drew attention to moves they made away from the 64-square chess board. Sara Khadem, an Iranian chess prodigy, moved to Spain last year so she could compete without the headscarf made compulsory by Iran. Conversely, in December of that same year, another Iranian chess star forfeited a match rather than compete against an Israeli player.

Weather praised or prohibited, chess in the Islamic world still has moves to make.

Joseph Hammond is a former Fulbright fellow and journalist who has reported extensively from Africa, Eurasia and the Middle East.