The Arabian Checkmate

In the Arabian checkmate, the knight and the rook team up to trap the opposing king on a corner of the board. The rook sits on a square adjacent to the king both to prevent escape along the diagonal and to deliver checkmate while the knight sits two squares away diagonally from the king to prevent escape on the square next to the king and to protect the rook.

In addition to being among the most common mating patterns, the Arabian mate is also an important topic in the context of the history of chess for being mentioned in an ancient Arabic manuscript dating from the 8th century. The pattern is also derived from an older form of chess in which the knight and the rook were the two most powerful pieces in the game, before chess had migrated to Europe and the queen given its current powers of movement.

In the following game, my opponent moved his King the wrong way and allowed an Arabian Checkmate.

One of my favorite Arabian Checkmates was played by World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz in the following Game:

Here is another example, this time from the great blindfold player George Koltanowski:

What examples of this checkmate have you seen or played?