Shatranj

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Shatranj, the Arabic and Persian precurser of Western Chess and one successor of the ancient Indian strategy game Chaturanga. Chaturanga developed in the Gupta Empire during the 6th century CE and was adopted as Shatranj in Sasanian Empire in the 7th century. In computer chess, due to extensions of the Chess Engine Communication Protocol, XBoard and WinBoard support Shatranj with Elephants and General instead of Bishop and Queen.

=Pieces=
 * Shāh (King)
 * Fers or Wazīr (General) - moves one square diagonally, often represented by a Queen symbol
 * Rukh (Rook)
 * Pīl or Alfil (Elephant) - a (2,2) Leaper, often represented by a Bishop symbol
 * Faras or Asb (Knight)
 * Baidaq (Pawn)

=Rules=
 * No castling
 * No double pawn push, promotion to Fers only
 * Stalemate counts as a win
 * Two bare Kings count as a draw
 * One Bare King counts as a win, provided the other King cannot be bared on the very next move
 * The initial setup (array) is similar to Orthodox Chess, with Elephants replacing Bishops and Generals replacing Queens, but Shāh on the d-file.

=Engines=
 * ChessV
 * Dabbaba
 * Fairy-Max
 * Nebiyu
 * Pulsar
 * Rival
 * Sjaak (Glebbeek)
 * Zillions of Games

=See also=
 * Shatranj (toolkit) by Sam Tannous

=Forum Posts=
 * Any WB Shatranj engines out there? by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, July 31, 2008
 * Shartranj! by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, August 14, 2008
 * Shatranj perfts by Paul Byrne, CCC, February 24, 2012 » Perft
 * Chess variant tournament: Shatranj by Ola Mikael Hansson, CCC, February 24, 2013

=External Links=
 * Shatranj from Wikipedia
 * Shatranj by Hans L. Bodlaender from The Chess Variant Pages
 * Abu Bakr bin Yahya al-Suli from Wikipedia
 * Al-Suli's Diamond


 * ICC Help: shatranj (Wild 28)
 * Shatranj from BoardGameGeek
 * Shatranj, the medieval Arabian Chess by Jean-Louis Cazaux
 * The Time of Shatranj and the Aliyat by Miguel Villa
 * Chess Engine Communication Protocol - 8. Commands from xboard to the engine - variant shatranj

=References=

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