Interdictions of Chess
Al Hakem Biamri Llah, or Abu Ali Mansur, sixth Khalif of the dynasty of the Fatimites or Obeydites of Egypt, 996-1021, according to some authorities interdicted chess. Mr. Harkness in Notes to Living Chess implies that he had some put to death for playing it. Sprenger, Gayangoz, and Forbes do not mention or confirm this, besides, though this Khalif did not much regard the Koran, kept dancing-women and singers, indulged in all sorts of frivolous pastimes, and was very much addicted to drinking, as well as cruelty and tyranny, he was not a bigot. The more famous Al Mansur (962-1002), the celebrated General and Minister of Hisham II, tenth Sultan of Cordova, of the dynasty of Ummeyah, was more likely to have issued such a mandate, for we read “in order to gain popularity with the ignorant multitude, and to court the favour of the ulemas of Cordova, and other strict men, who were averse to the cultivation of philosophical sciences, Al Mansur commanded a search to be made in Al Hakem’s library, when all works treating on ethics, dialectics, metaphysics, and astronomy, were either burnt in the squares of the city, or thrown into the wells and cisterns of the palace. The only books suffered to remain in the splendid library, founded by Al Hakem, II (fourth of Cordova, 822-852, the enlightened humane and just Rahman, II) were those on rhetoric, grammar, history, medicine, arithmetic, and other sciences, considered lawful.”
Any scholar found indulging in any of the prescribed studies, was immediately arraigned before a Court composed of kadhis and ulemas, and, if convicted, his books were burnt, and himself sent to prison.
I can find no other notice of a ruler or Khalif likely to have forbidden chess, but in 1254 Lewis, IX, in France, is recorded to have interdicted the game.