Thread by @FIDE_chess

Today is #WorldBookDay! It has often been said that there have been more books published on chess than all other sports combined. While this statement should be taken with a grain of salt, a fair estimation is that more than 100,000 chess books have been published.

The first comprehensive book dealing with chess was the Kitab ash-shatranj (Book of the chess), written in Arabic by Al-Adli ar Rumi around the year 850. The original is long lost, but we know of it through later works that preserved some of its texts and chess problems.

The "Book of Games" commissioned by Spanish King Alfonso X, contains the earliest European treatise on chess as well as being the oldest document on European tables games. It was finished in 1283, and it is kept in El Escorial, a few kilometres north of Madrid #WorldBookDay

Not far from there, in Salamanca, a copy of Lucena’s book is kept at the Historical Library of the University. Published in 1497, this is the oldest surviving document on “modern chess”, with the game being played with the current rules, exactly as we know it today.

With the invention of the mechanical print in Europe, it was often the case that whenever a new printer was built, chess books were often among the first ones to come out, along with the bible. In fact, the second book ever printed in English was a chess book! #WorldBookDay

"The Game of Chess" was the second book ever printed in the English language, in 1474. It was a translation of "De Ludo Scachorum", originally written in Italian around 1280, that spread all over Europe through a French translation made in 1347. #WorldBookDay

[For those wondering, the first book in English ever printed, was The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, also printed by Claxton from a French translation, and also in 1474. Caxton printed almost 100 books, and of these 20 were translations from French or Dutch into English.]

"The Game of Chess" is a series of sermons metaphorically using chess to depict the relationships between a King and the various estates of his Kingdom. The author decided to include the complete rules of chess to make the metaphor accessible to all readers.