From: "World Chess Championship", INTERNET:newsletter@mark-weeks.com Date: 00/05/02, 12:11 Re: Chess History on the Web (2000 no.9) The next review, continuing the second pass through the Chess History bookmarks, is for the 'Alphonso X Book of Games' by Christian J. Hartmann. The main page is at address... http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Gorge/3154/ ...If you've seen the drawings of people in medieval costumes on either side of a chess board, where the white & black pieces are on the left & right rather than on the top & bottom, you may have wondered what those drawings meant. This site places those drawings in their historical context. An AltaVista search on '(Christian NEAR Hartmann) AND chess', returns many references on the 'Hist-games mailing list archive' at... http://www.pbm.com/%7Elindahl/hist-games/archive/ ...In a message on the Chess History discussion group dated 1999-09-22, Hartmann wrote, 'I must admit that I haven't worked on these pages for over half a year now. I stopped working on this project to wait for some essential articles on Alfonso's book to arrive via inter-library loan -- and since I'm still waiting, probably in vain, I haven't finished these pages.' The structure of Hartmann's site is simpler than most of the sites that we've looked at in past reviews. The primary page is the [Table of Contents]. Each link on that page opens up to an image from the Book of Games. The main page says little more about the book than, 'Alphonso X's Book of Games is an invaluable source of information on games of the past.' Since an introduction -- the importance of the book or something about the author -- would be useful, I went offline to get some background information. (1) 'The Oxford Companion to Chess' by David Hooper & Kenneth Whyld has a section on the 'Alfonso manuscript' which says, 'An important historical source of information about chess and other indoor diversions, this beautifully illustrated manuscript of 98 leaves was completed in 1283 by order of Alfonso the Wise (1221-84), King of Castile and Leon 1251-84. The first of the seven parts (ff. 1-64b) is devoted wholly to chess, and contains 103 problems both Arabic and European. The fourth part (ff. 81a-85b) contains 14 fairy problems, and descriptions of several unorthodox games, including forms of Great Chess and Must-capture Chess.' (2) 'History of Chess' by Jerzy Gizycki (edited by B.H. Wood) says, 'Another manuscript, by the Spanish king, Alfonso the Wise in 1283, was the greatest work on chess and other games in any European language the Middle Ages have left us. It is particularly important as a link between Arabian and European chess literature. It contains 150 miniatures in colour, based on Persian originals, providing a valuable picture of mediaeval customs, costume and interior design. [...] It is in the library at the Escorial.' Knowing nothing about 'the Escorial', I decided to find out more. The Babelfish service at AltaVista translated 'Escorial' as 'Dump' which is not too flattering and even less enlightening. An AltaVista search on 'Escorial AND chess' returned mostly Spanish language pages, but a page titled 'The Art History Imagebase' at... http://www.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/classes/ah111/imagebank.html ...told me 'Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera. El Escorial, Madrid. 1563-84. architecture. Spanish', which I understood to be information about its construction. It also linked to a photo of the building. Another page mentioned the 'monastery of San Lorenzo el Real, El Escorial'. I refined my search to 'Escorial AND monastery' and quickly found... http://travel.roughguides.com/content/2618/index.htm ...which is a page from a travel guide describing 'El Escorial' -- 'Planned by Philip II as a monastery and mausoleum, it was a place from which he boasted he could "rule the world with two inches of paper"'. Feeling less ignorant than I had felt a few minutes earlier, I stopped here, even though I hadn't understand the comment about 'two inches of paper'. Returning to Hartmann's main page, there are a few links to other pages on the site. The [Table of Contents] mimics the structure described in 'The Oxford Companion to Chess' and has almost 50 links to images from the book. The image for 'Problem No. 90' shows two pages side by side, giving a good idea about the overall look of the book. The page describing 'the chess-board and pieces are being made' contains further links to the rules of the game at the time the book was compiled. [Bibliography] has about 20 offline references. [Links] is a list of miscellaneous links submitted by visitors through [Post a link]. 'Other Alphonso information online' has three relevant Web links plus a link to the creator of the site at MacGregor Historic Games. I decided to look for more Web pages related to the topic. A search on 'alfonso AND chess' found far more pages than a search on 'alphonso AND chess'. Some pages even have both spellings of the name. The pages cover a diverse set of topics related to Alphonso's work. A few of the more interesting are listed here. 1) http://www.vgesa.com/vgeman01i.html by Vicent García Editores, Valencia, Spain again mentions that the 'codex may be found in the Escorial Monastery.' The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary at www.m-w.com/home.htm informed me that a codex is 'a manuscript book especially of Scripture, classics, or ancient annals'. 2) http://www.szachy.pl/czcionki/alfonso.html, among other pages, pictures the Alfonso X chess font, which is designed from the pieces as they are displayed in the book. 3) Several pages:- - http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,5751+1+5675,00.html - http://geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2679/alfons10_english.htm - http://www.dnaco.net/~arundel/alfonso.html - http://www.encyclopedia.com/articles/00332.html provide biographies of Alfonso X as well as the other kings Alfonso. 4) http://www.dean.sbc.edu/ingber.html, in an essay on 'Multiculturalism Gone Wrong: Spain in the Renaissance' mentions Alfonso's importance to the Renaissance. 5) http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Corridor/2164/alphonso/alphonsox.html copies 16 Hartmann images on a single page. 6) http://members.it.tripod.de/catur/singmast/4.htm places the book in the context of 'Mathematical Games'. 7) Many pages deal with the coexistence of the major religions in 13th century Spain:- - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/8192/moors.html - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8636/Convivencia.html - http://www.umich.edu/~proflame/texts/mirror/3cultur.html - http://faculty.washington.edu/petersen/alfonso/alfonsox.htm - http://www.hottopos.com/collat3/11concha.htm Returning to the Hartmann site, there are a few technical problems with the [Table of Contents]. 'Alphonse is dictating the book' has a link for [Book of Chess], but this gives an error message 'Whoops! We can't find your page!'. The links for the [Book of Dice] & [Book of Tables] on the same page work properly. In 'Problem No. 87: King and queen and two watchers', the link for [Illustration Sources] produces the same error message. The image for 'The chess-board and pieces are being made' is out of proportion because the dimensions given in the page source do not match the dimensions of the image; 'Problem No. 27: Chess in the shop of a money changer' has a similar problem. In 'Problem No. 7: Two Arabs at play', the image is broken, because the link is not an image, but a directory listing. 'Problem No. 28: In a turner’s shop' is also broken but is marked 'Illustration needed'. 'Problem No. 8: Two nobles' & 'Problem No. 14: Five nobles' both use the same image, while 'Problem No. 19: Three Arab ladies, one playing lute' looks as though the image has been corrupted. These are not serious problems and I sincerely hope that Hartmann continues to build the page once he has received his inter-library loan! There are not many Web pages which show so clearly how chess has meshed with the history of a particular culture. Bye for now, Mark Weeks