Chess was the Candy Crush of ancient times, seen as a dangerous time suck

The game we associate with geniuses today was once seen as a waste of time

This article is based on on Episode 7 of the Pessimists Archive Podcast

A new form of entertainment emerged, a viral sensation accessible to the masses, a hit app made of atoms not bits. Some called it a distraction from more serious ends, others said it was anti-social and even blasphemous. Its name? Shatranj, the game we know today as chess.

Chess is endowed with the kind of unquestioned reverence reserved for those things that have been around for millennia. If a child plays chess for hours on end, they’re treated as clever and intellectual. The same could not be said for a computer game. Why? Because what is old is familiar, and what is familiar isn’t a threat. But chess wasn’t always familiar—it was once strange and new. And when chess took hold in a new place, it often came up against fierce backlash.

An early form of chess, known aschatrang, was brought to Persia in 644 CE when the region was conquered by the armies of Umar bin al-Khatta. Not long after, the game was denounced: the son-in-law of Muhammad, having been declared Caliph, called chess un-Islamic. He thought imagery used in the game was “craven” and that it encouraged gambling.

A few decades later, chess was prohibited in Japan by the Emperor Jito. And it didn’t stop there. In 1005, the game was is banned in Egypt, with sets even being burned. Cardinal Damiani of Ostin prohibited chess playing by his clergy in 1061. Why? He felt it was taking too much time away from doing God’s work. (Damiani even complained to the pope.) In 1125, John Zonares of the Eastern Orthodox church declared chess a kind of debauchery and banned it. In 1195, Rabbi Maimonides called it a sin. King Louis the 9th of France prohibited the game in 1254, calling it ‘useless’ and ‘boring’. In 1380, Oxford University’s founder, William of Wickham, did the same.

In our age, chess remains controversial in parts of the Middle East, where it first took hold and was first prohibited. The Taliban banned chess in 2001, calling it a distraction from prayers and potentially a form of gambling. While chess is accepted and encouraged by most today, things came full circle in 2016, when Saudi Arabia banned chess, calling it a waste of time.

Chess isn’t new anymore, so what explains more modern opposition? David Shenk, author of The Immortal Game, a history of chess, says:

“At some point human beings came upon this idea that they were not merely dependent on fate, on luck, and on their fate as decided by gods and by all these people outside of their control.”

This dynamic was a threat to the powerful religions like Islam and Catholicism, as well as dictators like King Louis IX of France. They didn’t want people to be intellectually empowered. Shenk argues that chess made people realize something:

“They had these powerful minds and…their intellect could be this tremendous tool to make their lives better.”

Shenk sees chess as a tool for thinking, one of the earliest ‘votes for technologies.’ When you look at modern religious and authoritarian reactions to chess (and computers), this all makes perfect sense. It isn’t only new things the status quo rejects, but empowering things. See also: the printing press, the internet, and bitcoin.

This article was based on on Episode 7 of the Pessimists Archive Podcast: