Command the medieval army where the counsellor creeps one square and the elephant leaps just two — mate the Shah or strip it bare.
Shatranj is the medieval form of chess from which the modern game descends, played on the same 8×8 board but with slower, shorter-range pieces. The rook and knight move as you'd expect, but the counsellor and elephant are far weaker, so games turn on patient manoeuvring rather than long-range power.
Shatranj is the medieval game from which modern chess directly descends — yet it was never invented by any one person. It grew out of chaturanga, played in northern India by around the 6th century. The name means “four divisions”, after the four arms of an Indian army — infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots — which survive on the board today as the pawn, the knight (Faras), the Alfil (elephant) and the Rukh (rook, once a chariot).
From India the game passed to Sasanian Persia, where it was called chatrang. After the Arab conquest of the 7th century it became shatranj — Arabic has no “ch” or hard “g” sound — and it was across the Arabic-speaking world that it truly flourished. In the Baghdad of the Abbasid caliphs, ninth- and tenth-century masters such as al-Adli and the celebrated as-Suli wrote the first books of strategy, mapped out opening formations, and composed the elegant endgame puzzles known as mansubat. To “play like as-Suli” became a proverb for sublime skill.
With the Fers (counsellor) and Alfil (elephant) so weak — one creeping a single diagonal step, the other leaping exactly two — games were slow, subtle contests of manoeuvre, and a hard-won material lead was often enough to win by baring the enemy Shah. A famous legend credits the game to a sage named Sissa, who asked his king for one grain of wheat on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on across all 64 — a reward that quietly outgrows every harvest on earth. It is a fine story, not real history.
When shatranj reached medieval Europe through Spain, Sicily and the Islamic world, its pieces were slowly granted greater powers. Around the 15th century the feeble Fers became the all-conquering Queen, the Alfil became the long-range Bishop, and the pawn gained its two-square opening step — turning the patient old game into the fast modern chess we know today.
Shatranj is the historical chess of the medieval Islamic world, the direct ancestor of the modern game. This is an original, free browser build of the public-domain game, complete with a computer opponent — no download or sign-up.