Al Adli quiz problem

This problem comes from an ancient Persian text Kitab ash-sharanj (the book of chess) and the author ad-Adli was known at his time (around 836 AC) as one of the best player of the Persian/Turkish area. His book was known as one of the first attempt of chess deep analysis and consisted of 5 levels.

White to move and checkmate in 3 moves.

Have fun

Artistic.

Great puzzle, thanks

I didn't even know modern chess had been developed at that point in history! Great puzzle!

Those dates can't be correct, unless he meant AD maybe, but even then I don't think chess was around.

Oxford Companion:

The Earliest evidence of a recognisable form of chess, CHATURANGA, is around AD 600. Before that, all is speculation.

nice

Sorry I made a writing error the date was intended around 840 AC not BC.

But even this way believe me it's a huge amount of time (1169 years from now).

Think about this for a moment

gameboy has more or less 15 years

monopoli  around 75

soccer and baseball about 150

chess (not chaturanga wich is much much earlier) 1400 years.

Pretty good isn't it?   Chess.... the "immortal game"

It is realy great

Elegant!

Nice.

So it seems I was wrong in my original comment, but you would think chess was a real work in progress back then. Was it really so similar to chess as it is played now? Usually someone from the 1700s or something is credited with the first recorded chess ideas (perhaps a book or problem), so this still seems fishy.

The puzzle is elegant though.

Back then castling didn't exist, the Queen and Bishops had different moves, and Pawns had no two-step (or en-passent). But this puzzle doesn't involve any of those factors.