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. Born from the Indian chaturanga around the 6th century, it passed into Persia — the name is the Persian form — and then through the Arab world into Europe.
It is recognisably chess with two very different pieces. The ferz, standing where the queen now does, moved only one square diagonally, and the alfil, the bishop's ancestor, jumped exactly two diagonally and could reach only an eighth of the board. Games were therefore slow, and the literature that grew around it reflects that: the mansubat, composed endgame problems, are some of the earliest recorded chess puzzles.
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.