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Shatranj Kamil I. Large shatranj variant with new piece: camel. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The Persian poet Firdausi, in his epic history of Iran, the Shah-nameh, or Book of Kings, gives a story of the invention of chess, and the form invented has these same pieces on the same ten-square board, but the camels are placed between the elephants and the horses, on the C and H files, and the pawns are so clearly described as standing before and behind the pieces that I wonder whether he meant each player had twenty pawns, arranged on his first and third ranks, with the pieces on his second rank.