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Under Christianity, the shapes of the pieces, originally Islamic nonrepresentational changed. Carved images of men and animals reappeared. The shape of the rook, originally a rectangular block with a V-shaped cut in the top, changed; the two top parts separated by the split tended to get long and hang over, and in some old pictures look like horses' heads. The split top of the piece now called the bishop was interpreted as a bishop's mitre or a fool's cap.

By the mid-12th century, the pieces of the chess set were depicted as kings, queens, bishops, knights and men at arms .Chessmen made of ivory began to appear in North-West Europe , and ornate pieces of traditional knight warriors were used as early as the mid 13th century.The initially nondescript pawn had now found association with thepedes,pedinus,or the footman , which symbolized both infantry and loyal domestic service.

The game, as played during the early Middle Ages, was slow, with many games lasting for days^[Some variations in rules began to change the shape of the game by 1300 AD.A notable, but initially unpopular, change was the ability of the pawn to move two places in the first move instead of one.

In Europe some of the pieces gradually got new names:

• "queen", because it starts beside the king.
• "bishop", because its two points looked like a bishop's mitre .

The queen and bishop remained relatively weak until between 1475 AD and 1500 AD, in either Spain, Portugal, France or Italy, the queen's and bishop's modern moves started and spread, making chess close to its modern form. This form of chess got such names as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess".This led to much more value being attached to the previously minor tactic of pawn promotion . Checkmate became easier and games could now be won in fewer moves.These new rules quickly spread throughout Western Europe and inSpain,with the exception of the rules about stalemate, which were finalized in the early 19th century.The modern move of the queen may have started as an extension of its older ability to once move two squares with jump, diagonally or straight. Marilyn Yalom says that the new move of the queen started in Spain.

In some areas (e.g. Russia ), the queen could also move like a knight.

A poem Caïssa published in 1527 led to the chess rook being often renamed as "castle", and the modern shape of the rook chess piece.

An Italian player, Gioacchino Greco , regarded as one of the first true professionals of the game, authored an analysis of a number of composed games that illustrated two differing approaches to chess.This influential work went to some extent in popularizing chess and demonstrated the many theories regarding game play and tactics.

The first full work dealing with the various winning combinations was written by François-André Danican Philidor of France, regarded as the best chess player in the world for nearly 50 years, and published in the 18th century.He wrote and publishedL'Analyse des échecs(The Analysis of Chess), an influential work which appeared in more than 100 editions.

Writings about the theory of how to play chess began to appear in the 15th century. The oldest surviving printed chess book,Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez(Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess) by Spanish churchman Luis Ramirez de Lucena was published in Salamanca in 1497Lucena and later masters like Portuguese Pedro Damiano ,Italians Giovanni Leonardo Di Bona ,Giulio Cesare Polerio and Gioachino Greco or Spanish bishop Ruy López de Segura developed elements of openings and started to analyze simple endgames . In the 18th century the center of European chess life moved from the Southern European countries to France . The two most important French masters were François-André Danican Philidor , a musician by profession, who discovered the importance of pawns for chess strategy, and later Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais who won a famous series of matches with the Irish master Alexander McDonnell in 1834.Centers of chess life in this period were coffee houses in big European cities like Café de la Régence in Paris and Simpson's Divan in London.

As the 19th century progressed, chess organization developed quickly. Many chess clubs , chess books and chess journals appeared. There were correspondence matches between cities; for example the London Chess Club played against the Edinburgh Chess Club in 1824. Chess problems became a regular part of 19th century newspapers; Bernhard Horwitz , Josef Kling and Samuel Loyd composed some of the most influential problems. In 1843, von der Lasa published his and Bilguer'sHandbuch des Schachspiels (Handbook of Chess), the first comprehensive manual of chess theory.

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The Karnamak-i Ardeshir-i Papakan , a Pahlavi epical treatise about the founder of the Sassanid Persian Empire , mentions the game ofchatrangas one of the accomplishments of the legendary hero, Ardashir I , founder of the Empire.The oldest recorded game in chess history is a 10th-century game played between a historian from Baghdad and a pupil.

A manuscript explaining the rules of the game called "Matikan-i-chatrang" (the book of chess) in Middle Persian or Pahlavi still exists.

In the 11th century Shahnameh ,Ferdowsi describes a Raja visiting from India who re-enacts the past battles on the chessboard.

One day an ambassador from the king of Hind arrived at the Persian court of Chosroes , and after an oriental exchange of courtesies, the ambassador produced rich presents from his sovereign and amongst them was an elaborate board with curiously carved pieces of ebony and ivory. He then issued a challenge:

"Oh great king, fetch your wise men and let them solve the mysteries of this game. If they succeed my master the king of Hind will pay tribute as an overlord, but if they fail it will be proof that the Persians are of lower intellect and we shall demand tribute from Iran."

The courtiers were shown the board, and after a day and a night in deep thought one of them, Bozorgmehr , solved the mystery and was richly rewarded by his delighted sovereign.

( Edward Lasker suggested that Bozorgmehr likely found the rules by bribing the Indian envoys.)

TheShahnamehgoes on to offer an apocryphal account of the origins of the game of chess in the story of Talhand and Gav, two half-brothers who vie for the throne of Hind (India). They meet in battle and Talhand dies on his elephant without a wound. Believing that Gav had killed Talhand, their mother is distraught. Gav tells his mother that Talhand did not die by the hands of him or his men, but she does not understand how this could be. So the sages of the court invent the game of chess, detailing the pieces and how they move, to show the mother of the princes how the battle unfolded and how Talhand died of fatigue when surrounded by his enemies.The poem uses the Persian term "Shāh māt" (check mate) to describe the fate of Talhand.

The philosopher and theologist Al-Ghazali mentions chess in The Alchemy of Happiness (c. 1100). He uses it as a specific example of a habit that may cloud a person's good disposition :

Indeed, a person who has become habituated to gaming with pigeons, playing chess, or gambling, so that it becomes second-nature to him, will give all the comforts of the world and all that he has for those (pursuits) and cannot keep away from them.

The appearance of the chess pieces had altered greatly since the times of chaturanga, with ornate pieces and chess pieces depicting animals giving way to abstract shapes.This is because of a Muslim ban on the game’s lifelike pieces, as they were said to have brought upon images of idolatry.The Islamic sets of later centuries followed a pattern which assigned names and abstract shapes to the chess pieces, as Islam forbids depiction of animals and human beings in art.These pieces were usually made of simple clay and carved stone.

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As a strategy board game played in China , chess is believed to have been derived from the Indian chaturanga.Chaturanga was transformed into the game xiangqi where the pieces are placed on the intersection of the lines of the board rather than within the squares.The object of the Chinese variation is similar to chaturanga, i.e. to render helpless the opponent's king, known as "general" on one side and "governor" on the other.Chinese chess also borrows elements from the game of Go , which was played in China since at least the 6th century BC. Owing to the influence of Go, Chinese chess is played on the intersections of the lines on the board, rather than in the squares. The game of Xianqi is also unique in that the middle rank represents a river, and is not divided into squares.Chinese chess pieces are usually flat and resemble those used in checkers , with pieces differentiated by writing their names on the flat surface.

A prominent variant of chess in East Asia is the game of shogi , transmitted from India to China and Korea before finally reaching Japan .The three distinguishing features of shogi are:

1. The captured pieces may be reused by the captor and played as a part of the captor's forces.
2. Pawns capture as they move, one square straight ahead.
   
3. The board is 9×9, with a second golden general (shogi name for the queen) on the other side of the king.

Shatranj made its way via the expanding Islamic Arabian empire to Europe .It also spread to the Byzantine empire , where it was calledzatrikion. Chess appeared in Southern Europe during the end of the first millennium, often introduced to new lands by conquering armies, such as the Norman Conquest of England .Chess remained largely unpopular in Northern Europe but started gaining popularity as soon as figure pieces were introduced.

In the 14th century,Timur played an enlarged variation of the game which is commonly referred to as Tamerlane Chess . This complex game involved each pawn having a particular purpose, as well as additional pieces.

The sides are conventionally called White and Black. But, in earlier European chess writings, the sides were often called Red and Black because those were the commonly available colors of ink when handwriting drawing a chess game layout. In such layouts, each piece was represented by its name, often abbreviated (e.g. "ch'r" for French "chevalier" = "knight").

The social value attached to the game – seen as a prestigious pastime associated with nobility and high culture – is clear from the expensive and exquisitely made chessboards of the medieval era.The popularity of chess in the Western courtly society peaked between the 12th and the 15th centuries.The game found mention in the vernacular and Latin language literature throughout Europe, and many works were written on or about chess between the 12th and the 15th centuries..Chess terms, likecheck,were used by authors as a metaphor for various situations.Chess was soon incorporated into the knightly style of life in Europe. Chess also became a subject of art during this period, with caskets and pendants decorated in various chess forms. Queen Margaret of England 's green and red chess sets – made of jasper and crystal – symbolized chess's position in royal art treasures.Kings Henry I ,Henry II and Richard I of England were chess patrons.Other monarchs who gained similar status were Alfonso X of Castile and Ivan IV of Russia .

Saint Peter Damian denounced the bishop of Florence in 1061 for playing chess even when aware of its evil effects on the society.The bishop of Florence defended himself by declaring that chess involved skill and was therefore "unlike other games," and similar arguments followed in the coming centuries.Two incidents in 13th century London involving men of Essex resorting to violence resulting in death as an outcome of playing chess further caused sensation and alarm.The growing popularity of the game – now associated with revelry and violence – alarmed the Church.

The practice of playing chess for money became so widespread during the 13th century that Louis IX of France issued an ordinance against gambling in 1254.This ordinance turned out to be unenforceable and was largely neglected by the common public, and even the courtly society, which continued to enjoy the now prohibited chess tournaments uninterrupted.

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The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called chaturanga , which flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest known game to have two essential features found in all later chess variations—different pieces having different powers (which was not the case with checkers and Go ), and victory depending on the fate of one piece, the king of modern chess.The original chess board was mathematically revolutionary, as reported by the infamous Wheat and chessboard problem . A common theory is that India’s development of the board, and chess, was likely due to India’s mathematical enlightenment involving the creation of the number zero. Other game pieces (speculatively called "chess pieces") uncovered in archaeological findings are considered as coming from other, distantly related board games, which may have had boards of 100 squares or more. Findings in the Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (2600–1500 BCE) sites of the Indus Valley Civilization show the prevalence of a board game that resembles chess.

Chess was designed for an ashtāpada (Sanskrit for "having eight feet", i.e. an 8×8 squared board), which may have been used earlier for a backgammon -type race game (perhaps related to a dice-driven race game still played in south India where the track starts at the middle of a side and spirals into the center).Ashtāpada, the uncheckered 8×8 board served as the main board for playing chaturanga .Other Indian boards included the 10×10Dasapadaand the 9×9Saturankam.Traditional Indian chessboards often have X markings on some or all of squares a1 a4 a5 a8 d1 d4 d5 d8 e1 e4 e5 e8 h1 h4 h5 h8: these may have been "safe squares" where capturing was not allowed in a dice-driven backgammon-type race game played on the ashtāpada before chess was invented.

The Cox-Forbes theory , proposed in the late 18th century by Hiram Cox , and later developed by Duncan Forbes , asserted that the four-handed game chaturaji was the original form of chaturanga.The theory is no longer considered tenable.

In Sanskrit , "chaturanga" literally means "having four limbs (or parts)" and in epic poetry often means "army" (the four parts are elephants, chariots, horsemen, foot soldiers).The name came from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata .The game chaturanga was a battle-simulation gamewhich rendered Indian military strategy of the time.

Some people formerly played chess using a die to decide which piece to move. There was an unproven theory that chess started as this dice-chess and that the gambling and dice aspects of the game were removed because of Hindu religious objections.

Scholars in areas to which the game subsequently spread, for example the Arab Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī , detailed the Indian use of chess as a tool for military strategy ,mathematics ,gambling and even its vague association with astronomy .Mas'ūdī notes thativoryin India was chiefly used for the production of chess and backgammon pieces, and asserts that the game was introduced to Persia from India, along with the book Kelileh va Demneh ,during the reign of emperor Nushirwan .

In some variants, a win was by checkmate, or by stalemate , or by "bare king" (taking all of an opponent's pieces except the king).

In some parts of India the pieces in the places of the rook, knight and bishop were renamed by words meaning (in this order) Boat, Horse, and Elephant, or Elephant, Horse, and Camel, but keeping the same moves.