Almost one thousand years before Tamerlane's time, the earliest known form of chess, Chaturanga, was developed in India. It soon traveled to ancient Persia and with a few minor modifications became known as Chatrang. After the Arab conquest of Persia in the mid 7th Century, the game spread quickly throughout the Muslim world. The Arabic people often held a morbid view towards the nation of India, and considered them to be inferior, unintelligent people.  
      From this philosophy came the tendency for them to rewrite history, often erroneously claiming that chess was invented by the Arabic people rather than in India. As one unknown 15th Century author put it: "...so that all men may know that the people of India are not the inventors of Chess, for they have not in them sufficient knowledge and wisdom to have done so, and they never had." With this in mind, the Arabic people began devising increasingly large and complicated chess variations, cultivating the idea that the larger games of chess were the original forms, and that the people of India subsequently reduced the game to a simpler 8 x 8 squared board. At some point during the creation of these enlarged and complex chess variants, probably in the early 14th Century, Tamerlane Chess was born.   
       The game was lost for centuries until a Persian 15th or 16th century manuscript was discovered, which outlined the rules to Tamerlane Chess. Some chess historians speculate that the author may have been ash-Shatranji [Ali the Chess Player], a celebrated chess player at Tamerlane's court. The manuscript now resides at the Royal Asiatc Society, in London, cataloged as Manuscript 211.