A Note on Ethiopian Chess
By Professor Richard K. P. Pankhurst
Ethiopia deserves an horourable place in the great history of chess which appears to have been traditionally popular in court circles and among the nobility. The game was known in Amharic as Sentherej, a name borrowed from the Arabs who called it Shatranj, a corruption of the Persian Chatrang, itself derived from the Sanskrit chaturanga.
In the early sixteenth
century the Emperor Lebna Dengel (1508-1540) is said to have played chess as
well as cards with the Venetian artist Gregorio or Hieronimo Bicini, as was
related by the Ethiopian ecclesiastic, Brother Thomas of Ganget, in his
conversations with the Italian Alessandro Zorzi.[i]
Sahle Sellassie, the
early nineteenth century King of Shoa, was another notable chess player. The French
travellers Comkes and Tamisier, who visited Ethiopia in 1835-37, relate that he
used to play in the evening with one of his courtiers, who, they allege, always
took care to allow his master to win. [ii]
Sahle Sellassie's
habit of playing chess is also referred to in Gabre Sellassie's chronicle of
the reign of Menelik II where it is stated that the latter sovereign declared
that his ancestor had prophecied the establishment of Addis Ababa while he was
at play, sitting under a tree in the Filwoha area. [iii]
A quarter of a century earlier the British traveller Henry Salt, writing of his visit to Tigre in 1809-10, says that Řaz Walde Sellassie, the ruler of that province, was a great chess man. He points out, however, that the game then played in Ethiopia “differed more from ours than we at first supposed.” Ethiopian chess in fact was the old game as it had existed in other parts of the world before the changes which occurred in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In the olden days
there was no Queen, instead there was a piece called farz or firz,
also known as farzan, farzin and farzie, signifying a “counsellor,”
“minister” or “general.” The name was subsequently Latinized into farzie
or fercia, and rendered into French as fierce or fiege,
after which it is supposed to have been called vierge, or 'virgin,' and
is thought by extension to have become a woman and hence à Queen. Another
theory was that as the pawn was promoted on reaching the eighth square to
become a farz, this piece was conceived of like the dame in draughts,
and for this reason became known as a Queen. The farz traditionally moved only
one square diagonally and was consequently the weakest piece on the board, the
Queen's present immense power only being acquired in the middle of the
fifteenth century. [iv]
Salt suggests that in
early nineteenth century Ethiopia the game was still more or less played as of
old for he says: “the Queen moves diagonally, and only one square at a time.”
He adds that “the Castles either have not the same power in the European games,
or the players do not make use of them so frequently, nor do they seem to value
a Castle as much as a Knight.”
The Emperor Theodore's
friend and adviser, Walter Plowden, [v] who wrote half a century
later, has left a more detailed account of the game as he saw it played in the
middle of the nineteenth century. He says that the chessboard, which had of
course 64 squares as in Europe, was generally made of a piece of red cloth with
squares marked out by strips of ivory black sewn at equal distances. This fact
would suggest that the game, or at least the type of chessboard, was introduced
after the thirteenth century because before that time the board is said to have
been of only one colour. The chessmen, Plowden continues, were made of ivory,
hippopotamus tusk or horn. Those of ivory or hippopotamus tusk were ponderous
and massive," while those of horn were much lighter. All, however, were
simply made, without ornament or fancy work, their differences “being just
sufficient to mark the distinction of the pieces."
Describing the powers
and arrangements of the pieces he explains that the derr or Castles,
stood at each corner of the board and moved exactly like Castles in other
countries. Next to them, as elsewhere, stood the Knights who corresponded exactly
to Knights as he knew them. Next to them came the pheel, or Bishop. This
term was borrowed from the Arabic fil, a variant of the Persian pil, the
word for elephant. According to Plowden this piece moved obliquely, like an
ordinary Bishop, but could only advance over three squares including its own;
it could not stop at the King's second square, even if vacant; it could,
however, pass over any interposing piece on that square or any other.
Turning to the centre
of the pieces Plowden states that the King, or Negus, had the same power as in
Europe but was placed slightly differently, the two Kings facing each other
exactly instead of being on different colours. The furz (or counsellor
above described) stood next to the King. He confirms that it had only the very
limited power of moving one square in any direction, and could only take
obliquely. The pawns, or medaks, were moved, he said, as in Europe and
there was no obligation to take them. On reaching the eighth square they
acquired the powers of a furz as was the case, as we have seen, in the
old game.
Discussing the
technique of the game, Plowden says, that it started in a “a singular manner”
and one which often enabled the good player to gain a decisive advantage. Both
parties, he says, moved as many pieces as they could lay their hands on,
presumably not in alternate order but simultaneously, until the first pawn was
taken. Though at this stage of the game a stranger might sup- pose there was
great confusion the player in fact keenly watched the moves of his opponent,
and changed his tactics accordingly, frequently withdrawing the moves he had
already made and substituting others so as to be in the most favourable
position at the moment of the first take whether his own or his adversary's.
After the first piece was taken the game proceeded more or less as in Europe. The convention was that the move was not
considered settled until the player had placed the piece on the square and
removed his hands from it.
Another distinctive feature of Ethiopian chess
was that all forms of checkmate were not considered equally honourable.
Checkmate by Castles or Knights we are told was “considered unworthy of the
merest tyro," that is to say these pieces, though assisting in throwing
the net round the enemy, were supposed not to deal the fatal stroke though the
use of the Knight was “just endurable." Checkmate with a single Bishop was
“tolerably good,” but with two was applauded. Mating with one, two, or
especially three or four pawns was considered the ne plus ultra of the game.
Checkmate was considered particularly meritorious if the adversary had not been
denuded of all his superior pieces, and in fact it was “almost necessary to
leave him with two,” for it was customary for him when reduced to one, say
Bishop or Knight, to start counting his moves, it being expected that the King
should be mated before he had made seven moves with that piece. This piece
more- over, could not be taken as the game was considered drawn as soon as one
side had lost all its capital pieces without having been checkmated.
Obstruction by the last of these pieces frequently made it impossible to finish
the game in the time allowed or obliged the player to "give an ignominious
mate” with a Castle of Knight which was hailed almost as a triumph by the foe.”
A good player, therefore, found it advisable to leave his adversary two good
pieces, such as a Castle and Bishop or Castle and Knight, for if he left him a furz
and Bishop, for example, he would probably be forced to take one in self-defence.
Plowden sums up the Ethiopian games he had seen by saying that they were
"less brilliant and more tedious” than those played according to the
reformed rules then employed in Europe. There was, however, ample scope for
developing the powers of the players, and showing the difference in their
abilities. The great point is in the skillful arrangement of your pawns at the
commencement, and a careful defence of them during the game, as it is generally
by their moves that you hamper the adversary's King, as to be enabled to select
the ground on which to give him mate.”
Source: Ethiopia
observer. v.5 1961, pp. 94-96
[ii] E. Combes and M. Tamisier, Voyage en Abyssinie, 1838, Vol. III, p.17.
[iii] Guebre Sellassie, Chronique du Regne de Menelik II, 1930.
[iv] George Viscount Valentia, Voyages and Travels. 1811, Vol. Vol. III, p. 233; p. 111
[v] W.C. Plowden, Travels in Abyssinia, 1868, pp. 149-51.
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