Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

General is obviously a wrong translation for ferz. Original name of this
peace was 'Farzin' (that in europe spelled it 'ferz' or 'ferse') and
'Vazir' (that also spell 'Vizier'). Farzin is a persian word that
commonly precieved meaning is 'Minister' or probably 'Prime minister'
but as murray mentioned and I discussed in my comment to ferz article in
your site, this is not totally true. original meaning of farzin is wiseman.
altough there is a strong relation beetween wisemanship and role of
ministers in history. main chracteristic of persian and Islamic prime
minister was extensive Knowledge and a king must elect most wisest men for
his prime minister. this reflected in many tale, folk and storys. 'Vazir'
is an arabic word that means 'Minister' or even 'Prime minister'. there
is a rationlaity for name of 'General', in time of war 'Prime minister'
is present and act as a general but this is not his name and no one call it
General.

there is many source that translate this peace fers or vizier. if you want
to translate it, Minister or even prime minister is true. 

another wrong name in this article is 'Knight'. name of this peace in
both persian and arabic literature was a word that means horse, as sanskrit
name of peace in chaturanga and name of peace in modern chess in most
regions in asia. in europe shatranj horse changed to chess knight. I think
this transition is for giving humanistic personality to chess peaces, this
change also happend for elefant that replace with bishop and other names.

We should not confuse 'European' with 'English'. In no other language I know the Bishop is actually called after a clerical person. In German is is 'Laufer' (runner), in Dutch 'Loper' (walker) or 'Raadsheer' (adviser, counselor), in French 'Fou' (fool, jester), in Spanish 'Alfil' (so they retained the Arabic word for elephant, despite the fact that the piece moves differently).

Similarly the name of the Knight piece in many languages has nothing to do with a knight. In German it is 'Springer' (leaper), in Dutch 'Paard' (horse), in Spanish 'Caballo' (horse).

All in all, Chess pieces have pretty exceptional or weird names in English, if you compare it with the rest of the World. But I suppose any language has the right to name the pieces like they want. There is no need for litteral translation. The name Lance for this Shogi piece is a much better name than the litteral translaton of the Japanese 'Incense Chariot'. (And I don't think it would be progress to refer to a Bishop as 'Angle Mover' either, there.)

As to the Ferz, it is interesting to note that in Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) the common name for this piece is Adviser (the alternatve name, '(Palace) Guard', no doubt being inspired by the unique feature of Xiangqi of the Palace board zone to which this piece is restricted). It is sometimes also called 'Mandarin', which I guess in Chinese culture is some kind of Advisor to the emperor. The Elephants there are also often referred to as Ministers. Confusingly enough, in English, the word 'minister' can also refer to a clergiman, as well as to a statesman.

In Shogi all pieces with King-like moves are called 'generals' (includingthe King itself, which is the 'Jade General').

you should consider that walker, Shooter, raunner, jester and bishop all
are humanistic personas. 

my discussion is against using 'General'. If english name for this peace
before changing piece move was general, this name is certainly correct but
if thay named it ferz or another name you should use it. I'm not able to
find any english authoritative sources of chess history.

The issue of Xiang Qi actual strengthens Mohsen's case for not calling the Ferz a 'General', as General is the name generally used for another piece in that game. The Ferz represents a kind of adviser in both games, so why call it something that doesn't mean a kind of adviser?
	The Shogi analogy doesn't work at all. The names of the King, Rook, and Bishop pieces in European languages are regularly used in the context of FIDE Chess, so it is natural for Europeans to use these names even when playing Shogi - and even devise new European names for the rest of the pieces. My own Chatelaine, Helm, Point, Primate, and Wing are the most comprehensive list of such names. Incidentally one player's King in Shogi is called 'King's general' and the other 'Jewelled general', the latter without specifying a particular kind of jewel.
	Calling the Ferz a General simply doesn't compare. The Ferz is this context not an piece exotic to players alreadsy familiar with FIDE Chess, bit the precursor of the FIDE Queen. As far as I am aware it was only ever known in Europe either as Ferz or some variant spelling, or by the local names now used by the modern Queen.
	One small point about real-life bishops: they are certainly not 'Humanistic' in the religious sense, quite the reverse!

Mohsen's ''English authoritative sources of Chess history'' are still led by 100-year-old Murray 'A History of Chess'. That is unfortunate because Murray's style is not fluid. Yet the other chess historians do not deserve mention on the same level because of far less content than Murray's. How about etymology of ''King'' through Persia or Arabia? 
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=20318.
Also HORSE is already prevalent English name for the chess piece hippogonally jumping.  In English there ought to be non-humanistic names for all six chess pieces.  Metals could be used, or animals, or birds. Here is a chart of equivalences: 
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18698. Metals have Pawn-Silver, Horse-Iron, Bishop-Mercury, King-Tin, Queen-Copper, Tower-Lead.    Then player promotes his Silver to Copper, rather than Iron Horse, and starts with cornered Leads, who move orthogonally. There is correspondence to Gilmanesque organization in Silver obviously being one Shogi-style pawn-type, and like Tin King, who may be imagined tinpot dictator or 'Wizard of Oz' tinman aspiring for a heart. Just ''Tin'' impartially takes the sting out of it all. Tin check.

because i didnn't play a lot.

A poorish game by modern standards, especially due to the alfil pieces, but modern chess is indebted to this historic early version of it.

Here's a 10x10 Shatranj-style variant with 4 Kings per side:

4 Kings Quasi-Shatranj

I knew the rules of Shatranj for a few years but had never attempted an actual game. But these days I'm again delving into historic Chess variants. My primary goal is to find a few sample games of Shatranj which would hopefully let me understand why the game was appreciated (for me it is just impossible to play it: I fill lost when I open it in Zillions, I don't know where to go, what short term goals to pursue).

While searching for sample games, I discovered the astonishing lack of historic recorded games of Shatranj. I found but two, dating back to the Xth century. It turns out that apparently Shatranj was never played from the initial setup. Players would agree on a standartized position -- which could be called an opening in modern terms -- and would use it as actual setup. I found sixteen examples of such openings but without an analysis of their strengths and weakness it is still difficult to use them. One can still admire their poetic names.

In my opinion, we see Shatranj as a poor, uninteresting game just because we don't know enough about it. It would be so nice if somebody could provide us with the analysis of As-Suli, mentioned by George Duke back in 2008 in the first comment to this page. Perhaps more knowledge of the actual way this game was played would allow us to better appreciate it, since initial setup, piece movement and winning conditions don't seem to be enough?

General moves like queen in the Interactive diagram

Oops, I wrote the Q in the move field, instead of the id field, where I had intended it. Thanks for spotting this!

Is anyone interested in making an SVG piece set out of the Chess Alfonso-X font? I would like to use them in a redesign of this page with a diagram looking something like this, which I just did in Ultimate Paint, as well as with pieces images.

Alternately, is there anything that would be more authentic for Shatranj?

In making the diagram below, I discovered a quick and easy method for making bitmap piece images. By printing the black pieces in outline, I can get pieces like the white ones in the diagram, which are anti-aliased to the piece color inside and to a neutral background color (#808080) outside. So, I've already made and uploaded a set of GIFs to use.

I tried making some SVGs from the Alfonso-X font. Is there somewhere to upload them here?

While signed in, go to your personal information page and select Upload or Manage Files from the Edit menu. If it hasn't yet been programmed to accept svg files, put them into a zip file and upload that. I'll then move them to an appropriate location.

Alfonso X was king of Castile from 1252 to 1284. The sentence saying he was king in the 1300s should be corrected.

Thanks for the correction. I suppose I was thinking 13th century and then misapplied the number 13.

here it is

A wide variety of piece themes is available as SVG from the PyChess project at github:

https://github.com/pychess/pychess/tree/master/pieces

AlfonsoX is also amongest those.

Since there are two sets of svg images of the Alfonso-X pieces, I downloaded both and compared them. The PyChess files were much larger, and they wouldn't display in Edge or load in Inkscape. The other images came in both black and white, but I needed only the white pieces. But these didn't have a fill color, which would have made recoloring them impossible. I fixed that by loading each one into Inkscape and adding a fill color in the appropriate places. Finally, I had to manually edit some to correct an error that had crept up in using Inkscape. Now that that's all done, I have a set of SVG images for the Alfonso-X set that work with Game Courier or the Diagram Designer and can be recolored. Thanks for the help.

It looks like I didn't edit them perfectly. The background color is bleeding through in parts of each piece image.