Fortunately for the encyclopaedia writer
of 1727, and the poet Pope, their articles have escaped his
notice. We naturally try to discover what Bretspiel and
Nerdspiel was, according to Linde's own notions, and when they
ceased and chess began, both chess and Nerdspiel had been heard
of and were terms used before Al Masudi and Ibn Khallekun wrote.
Why does not Linde attempt to explain why Harun, Walid, Razi,
Al Suli, the Khalifs, and others up to the Shahnama poem,
Anna Comnena and Aben Ezra call it chess, and nothing else,
and again we ask how can he reconcile his own author,
Masudi's statement that Al Suli's chess was declared more
beautiful than all in the Caliph's garden (he died in 946), with
his own statement that chess was first known in Arabia, in 954.
------
Dr. A. VAN DER LINDE
The whole tenor of such reasoning as can be found in Linde's
stupendous work, seems to rest on subtle distinctions as to the
precise accuracy of the word chess, rather than to valid
argument to the effect that no game resembling it ever existed
before the time he fixes, yet his diagrams of the Tschaturanga
which comes Vol.
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