This fragment (photo) is from an 800-year-old pottery chess set discovered in the historic region of Nishapur and now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The pieces are made of glazed pottery and plain earthenware, and unlike modern chess pieces, they have simple, abstract, and symbolic forms. The colors used are a combination of turquoise green on one side and grayish brown on the other; designed not only to distinguish groups, but also to follow the native aesthetics of the Seljuk period.
The creation of such a set is a sign of the spread of chess in Iran after the Tazyan invasion; a period when Nishapur was considered one of the important scientific, cultural, and artistic centers of the Islamic world. The abstract form of the pieces, especially the king, queen, rook, and knight, shows that Iranian artists paid more attention to the meaning and position of each piece in the game than to realistic representation. In addition to its historical value, this chess is a reflection of the Iranian cultural understanding of entertainment, thought, and art in the Middle Ages.
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