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King Alphonso X
An 18" by 24" poster, suitable for framing.

Ideal for a kid's room, a school, a library, a club meeting room, or anywhere you would like to see diverse cultures playing chess and living together in harmony.

Add a note requesting it, and the artist will dedicate your poster with a personal message.

The founder of MegaChess came upon the ancient woodcarving below of what appeared to be a Christian monk playing chess with a Moslem Moor.

Given what he read in the paper that day about the Middle East, an image of such cultural harmony seemed refreshing. A bit of research revealed that in 1283, King Alphonso X the Wise of Spain commissioned a watercolor painting of a leader of the Muslim Moors playing chess with a local Christian leader. Brought by the Moors to Spain, the game later had a cross affixed to the king as part of the cultural convergence. King Alphonso saw chess as a natural way to extend friendships first made in quiet intellectual contemplation. After some initial strife, hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence followed where Spain became a model of different cultures and world views living together in friendship, Christian and Moslem, as well as their large Jewish community.

Of course King Alphonso used more than just chess to build bridges. He produced the world's first encyclopedia, a compendium of all that was known by the three cultures living in his kingdom.

MegaChess commissioned renowned historical researcher and painter Maria Radnoti to look into the details and to paint the result, which is the poster.

The time line begins in the first millennium B.C. when Jews first came to the Iberian Peninsula (now Spain) with the Phoenician traders. When the Visigoths arrived in 412 and booted the Romans, they found sizeable Jewish cities. With the spread of Christianity from the north and the Moslem invasion of the Moors from the south starting in 712, the Iberian peninsula was partitioned and primed to become yet another killing field of the Middle Ages. Except for one man.

King Alphonso X lived between 1221 and 1284 and was crowned the king of Leon and Castile in 1252. He was also a brilliant scholar and came to be known as Alphonso the Wise (Alphonso El Sabio). He was also a chess player.

After some initial strife, the time of King Alphonso came to be known as the Golden Age of medieval Spain. This was a time and place of unprecedented religious freedom when most of the rest of the world was torn by religious wars that normally ended with the righteous victors slaughtering the evil men, women, and children of the other side.

King Alphonso promoted tolerance in many ways, but he is remembered best for doing so through books. In his day, books were primitive, each made by hand over many months. But they were a revolutionary new communication tool, a new way for people to understand one another. Curiously, we geeks can view it as the arrival of the internet of his day.

King Alphonso dispatched writers (rare specialists of that day) to the camps and communities of the Christians, Jews, and Moors with a mission. They were to collect and record the history, philosophy, culture, theology, politics, and all the wisdom among the three groups.

As the projects unfolded, the leaders of each of the groups saw an opportunity to capture what had always been lost through word of mouth. They saw the magnificence of their heritage, and then the surprise, they saw the other books of the other two groups. They read the words and saw the pictures of another rich human experience. They saw similarities. They understood all they shared.

King Alphonso left us his "General Chronicle of Spain" and his "Great and General History". Eventually, he pulled the books together into a collection that would become the world's first encyclopedia. In our twisted view, we feel he was also the world's first webmaster.

One of the books was the Book of Games (Libro de los Juegos), commissioned between 1251 and 1282. Its 98 vellum pages, bound in sheepskin, includes 150 color drawings. The manuscript covers chess, as well as dice, backgammon, morris, and several 4-player games that have largely disappeared. It is one of the first masterpieces of European literature written in a colloquial language, and is housed at the monastery library of St. Lorenze del Escorial, about 50 miles northwest of Madrid. Note that this was before the printing press so every letter and picture is by hand. If we find a complete English translation, we'll put the link here.

King Alphonso would invite the leaders of warring factions to come to his castle and negotiate their differences over a chess game. It was known as a game of kings, a game of military strategy. Legend has it that on at least one occasion, a point of contention was decided by a chess game instead of a battle.

By the time the Golden Age was underway, Jews were prominent advisors to Arab leaders. They were the financiers who helped the viziers run Toledo, Seville, and Grar, the greatest cities of their country. Generations of Spaniards knew of religious persecution only as a sad fact of foreign life. For over 200 years, foreign nations throughout Europe and the Middle East looked to the Kingdom of Castille as a home to learning, a place of enlightenment.

In her painting of the royal court, Ms. Radnoti pulls together the spirit of toleration that was the legacy of King Alphonso.

1. Court guard
2. Queen Yolanda, the Hungarian wife of Alphonso. Curiously, the founder of MegaChess is a Hungarian.
3. King Alphonso X
4. Court guard
5. Bishop of Paris, a notable court visitor.
6. Moorish soldier
7. Jewish scholar
8. Lady in waiting
9. Lady in waiting
10. Court jester
11. Medieval knight
12. Sephardic musicians
13. Toledo Cathedral
14. Regional chess players
15. Christian soldier
16. Original chess set of the time of Alphonso
17. Moorish soldier