The history of castling in chess.
Castling is a move in chess. It consists of moving the king two squares toward a rook on the same rank and then moving the rook to the square that the king passed over.
You knew castling, but did you know how castling appears? If you want to know it, in that short blog, I'll help you understand more about the history of the castling.
Castling has its roots in the "king's leap". There were two forms of the leap: the king can move like a knight, or the king can move two squares on its first move. The knight's move can be used soon to move the king to a safe place or later in the game to escape a threat. The second form of the king's leap was played in Europe in the 13th century.
Many various forms of castling appeared during the 15th and 16th centuries. This is also the time when the queen and the bishop can move like today.
The rule of castling has differences depending on the time and place. Examples: In medieval England, Spain, and France, if no capture was made and the king was not in check and did not move over check, the white king can jump to c1, c2, d3, e3, f3, or g1, (the black king might move analogously).
In Lombardy, the white king can jump to a2, b1, or h1, (the black king might move analogously).
<Castling under medieval rules. The symbol color corresponds to the king color. Circles represent English, Spanish, French, and Lombardy movement; crosses represent Lombardy movement only.>
The current version of the castle was conceived in France in 1620 and in England in 1640. It is used to combine rook moves and king moves in a single move.
In the 1811 edition of Johann Allgaier's chess treatise, he introduced the 0-0 notation. He distinguishes between 0-0r (right) and 0-0l (left).
<Johann Allgaier>
In 1837, Aaron Alexandre introduced the 0-0-0 notation for the queen's side casting.
<Aaron Alexandre>
The practice was adopted in the first edition (1843) of the influential Handbuch_des_Schachspiels and soon became standard
And that is the history of castling in chess.
Thanks for your reading.
