The German Chess Theorists
Dr. A. Van der Linde’s great work (Berlin, 1874), following Weber, Berlin, 1872, Der Lasa and others, containing 1,118 pages, 540 diagrams, 4,098 names, and 2,500 catalogue items.
In Linde’s book, no less than 500 of the 540 diagrams are on the eight times eight square board, with the 32 pieces used in Modern Chess (i.e., examples of the game with positions or problems thereat as we understand it).
It is also curious as affecting Linde’s consistency, that Al Suli and Adali, whose problems he gives at chess as we now play it, were dead before the time he assigns for the first knowledge of the same. His own pet authority, Masudi, 890-959, gives the story of Al Suli’s chess, to which nothing could be compared without declaring it to be any other game (pages 58 and 59).