How medieval chess created a space in which players – regardless of race – could engage as equals

In the medieval European imagination, racial difference was often highly polarised. Black people were perceived either as exotic status symbols – including saints and wealthy rulers such as the Queen of Sheba – or as subjugated figures, considered inferior to white Christians.

Yet, as my research demonstrates, the game of chess offered an alternative lens, creating a space in which players – regardless of their skin colour – could engage as equals.

Evidence from the Libro de Axedrez, Dados e Tablas (Book of Chess, Dice and Tables), a gaming manual completed for King Alfonso the Wise in Seville in 1283, reinforced my idea. The manuscript contains 103 chess problems, each of which is accompanied by text revealing the winner and an image. These illustrations show a wide array of figures, ranging from Jewish men to Muslim women. They include Asian, white and Black players.

One of its most striking illustrations shows a Black and a pale-skinned player facing each other across a chessboard. The latter has a shaved head, showing that he is a learned cleric. Yet, despite this signifier of intelligence, the text reveals that the Black player will win. In the “game of logic”, the triumph will be achieved by demonstrating superior strategic skills. The player’s mental prowess matters above all. As the Libro de Axedrez reasons, chess is an embodiment of wisdom, and those who study it become able to conquer others.

Another image in the manuscript shows five Black people framing the chessboard. In western medieval visual culture, scenes with only Black figures are rare and typically have negative connotations. However, this particular image envisions them in a highly intellectualised setting and in a seemingly amicable atmosphere.

While chess did not eradicate the dominant social norms when it came to race, it did empower players to challenge them within its own ludic realm.

The representation of chess as an encounter between people of different skin colour was not limited to Europe. The Shahnama, an epic poem narrating the history of the Iranians from creation to the Islamic conquest, recounts the game’s introduction to Iran.

According to the Shahnama, an unnamed Indian king sent an embassy to the Sassanian king with a chessboard accompanied by a challenge: figure out the rules or pay tribute. Fortunately, the king’s advisor, Būzurjmihr, succeeded. A 14th-century copy of the epic places this scene in a late medieval Mongol setting. Here, the paler Būzurjmihr is contrasted by the Indian envoy’s darker skin colour.

It has been argued by scholars that the latter’s dark skin and “baggy clothes” were meant to underscore his defeat. However, I believe some clues suggest otherwise. His “baggy” tunic is sumptuously adorned with gilding, in contrast to the simple blue robe of Būzurjmihr, despite him being the highest-ranking diplomat of the court. His darker skin certainly reflects his foreign origins but hardly makes him a negative character. He is, in fact, a champion of the Indian rajah, who transmits the game of logic and is presented as a guardian of much-coveted Indian knowledge.

The chess pieces themselves

In addition to representations of chess contests, medieval perceptions of race can also be studied via chess through investigating the playing pieces.

Chess spread across Afro-Eurasia from sixth-century India to the rest of the known world. Chess is a game of war, and the figures are meant to represent soldiers. Yet, as the game travelled, the form of the figures kept changing, reflecting the societies that produced them.

For example, a long-haired chess king made in Mansura or Multan (modern-day Pakistan) in the ninth or tenth century reflects ideals of Indian kingship. The famous Lewis Chessmen meanwhile, discovered in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides but probably carved in Norway, are often perceived as the most emblematic representatives of a medieval chess set. Yet, in this light, they are only a relatively late and geographically peripheral testimony of a longstanding tradition.

Medieval chess was not as black and white as the modern game. Some chessboards were white and red, or blue and gold. Nonetheless, the chequered squares, and the figures themselves, were differentiated through contrasting colouring. This allowed people to project ideas of skin colour and racial perceptions onto the game.

A 13th-century poem describes how chess pieces “are the people of this world, who are drawn out of one bag, like a mother’s womb, and are positioned in various places of this world”. Therefore the pieces could become representations of the different peoples of the globe. But the outcome of their encounters on the board was still decided by the rules of logic, not their skin colour. In this way chess embodied a “just world”, in which intellect, instead of religion or race, mattered the most.

Krisztina Ilko has previously received funding from The British Academy.