Chess
the most purely intellectual of CHESTER been much disputed; this much may now be considered as certain, that, under the Sanskrit name of Chaturanga, a game, essentially the same as modern Chess, was played in Hindustan nearly 5,000 years ago. From Hindustan, Chess spread into Persia and thence into Arabia. The Arabs, it would appear, in the 8th century, introduced the game into Spain and the rest of western Europe; and in England Chess-play seems to have been known prior to the Norman Conquest. Into Constantinople, and probably some other cities of eastern Europe, the game may have been imported from Persia at a period earlier than its Moorish conveyance into Spain.