Site Review - Alphonso X Book of Games
Mark Weeks
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.ht
ml 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
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.