Rook (chess)
A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. The piece was called the tower, marquess and comes; the term castle is considered incorrect, or old-fashioned. Each player starts the game with two rooks, one on each of the corner squares on their own side of the board; the white rooks start on squares a1 and h1, while the black rooks start on a8 and h8. The rook moves vertically, through any number of unoccupied squares; as with captures by other pieces, the rook captures by occupying the square on which the enemy piece sits. The rook participates, with the king, in a special move called castling. In general, rooks are stronger than bishops or knights and are considered greater in value than either of those pieces by nearly two pawns but less valuable than two minor pieces by a pawn. Two rooks are considered to be worth more than a queen. Winning a rook for a bishop or knight is referred to as winning the exchange. Rooks and queens are called heavy pieces or major pieces, as opposed to bishops and knights, the minor pieces.
In the opening, the rooks are blocked in by other pieces and cannot participate in the game. In that position, the rooks support each other, can more move to occupy and control the most favorable files. A common strategic goal is to place a rook on a half-open file. From this position, the rook is unexposed to risk but can exert control on every square on the file. If one file is important, a player might advance one rook on it position the other rook behind – doubling the rooks. A rook on the seventh rank is very powerful, as it threatens the opponent's unadvanced pawns and hems in the enemy king. A rook on the seventh rank is considered sufficient compensation for a pawn. In the diagrammed position from a game between Lev Polugaevsky and Larry Evans, the rook on the seventh rank enables White to draw, despite being a pawn down. Two rooks on the seventh rank are enough to force victory, or at least a draw by perpetual check. Rooks are most powerful towards the end of a game, when they can move unobstructed by pawns and control large numbers of squares.
They are somewhat clumsy at restraining enemy pawns from advancing towards promotion, unless they can occupy the file behind the advancing pawn. As well, a rook best supports a friendly pawn towards promotion from behind it on the same file. In a position with a rook and one or two minor pieces versus two rooks in addition to pawns, other pieces – Lev Alburt advises that the player with the single rook should avoid exchanging the rook for one of his opponent's rooks; the rook is a powerful piece to deliver checkmate. Below are a few examples of rook checkmates. In the medieval shatranj, the rook symbolized a chariot; the Persian word rukh means chariot, the corresponding piece in the original Indian version chaturanga has the name ratha, in modern times it's known as हाथी to hindi speaking players, while east Asian chess games such as xiangqi and shogi have names meaning chariot for the same piece. Persian war chariots were armored, carrying a driver and at least one ranged-weapon bearer, such as an archer.
The sides of the chariot were built to resemble fortified stone work, giving the impression of small, mobile buildings, causing terror on the battlefield. In the West, the rook is universally represented as a crenellated turret. One possible explanation is that when the game was imported to Italy, the Persian rukh became the Italian word rocca, from there spread in the rest of Europe. Another possible explanation is that rooks represent siege towers – the piece is called torre in Italian and Spanish. In Hungarian it is bástya and in Hebrew language it is called צריח. Another possibility is that, as chess moved to Europe long after chariot warfare had been abandoned, a different symbol was needed to represent the rook's concept of feudal power, as such the Europeans adopted a castle to represent a lord and his feudal power, further supported by the name for the rook, the "marquess", named after a nobleperson; the chariot was sometimes represented as a silhouette, a square with two points above representing the horse's heads, which may have been seen to resemble a building with arrowports to the medieval imagination.
An exception is seen in the British Museum's collection of the medieval Lewis chess pieces in which the rooks appear as stern warders or wild-eyed Berserker warriors. Rooks are similar in appearance to small castles, as a result a rook is sometimes called a "castle"; this usage was common in the past but today it is if used in chess literature or among players, except in the expression "castling". In some languages the rook is called a ship: Thai เรือ, Arm
Chaturanga
Chaturanga, or catur for short, is an ancient Indian strategy game, theorized to be the common ancestor of the board games chess, sittuyin, makruk and janggi. Chaturanga developed in the Gupta Empire, India around the 6th century AD. In the 7th century, it was adopted as chatrang in Sassanid Persia, which in turn was the form of chess brought to late-medieval Europe; the exact rules of chaturanga are unknown. Chess historians suppose. In particular, there is uncertainty as to the moves of the Gaja. Sanskrit caturaṅga is a bahuvrihi compound, meaning "having four limbs or parts" and in epic poetry meaning "army"; the name comes from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata, referring to four divisions of an army, namely elephantry, chariotry and infantry. An ancient battle formation, akshauhini, is like the setup of chaturanga. Chaturanga was played on an 8×8 uncheckered board, called ashtāpada, the name of a game; the board sometimes had special markings. These marks were drawn on the board only by tradition.
Chess historian H. J. R. Murray conjectured that the ashtāpada was used for some old race-type dice game similar to chowka bhara, in which the marks had meaning. An early reference to an ancient Indian board game is sometimes attributed to Subandhu in his Vasavadatta, dated between the 5th and 7th centuries AD: The time of the rains played its game with frogs for pieces yellow and green in colour, as if mottled by lac, leapt up on the black field squares; the colours are not those of the two camps, but mean that the frogs have two colours and green. Banabhatta's Harsha Charitha contains the earliest reference to the name chaturanga: Under this monarch, only the bees quarrelled to collect the dew. While there is little doubt that ashtâpada is the gameboard of 8×8 squares, the double meaning of chaturanga, as the four-folded army, may be controversial. There is a probability; the game was first introduced to the West in Thomas Hyde's De ludis orientalibus libri duo, published in 1694. Subsequently, translations of Sanskrit accounts of the game were published by Sir William Jones.
In Arabic, most of the terminology of chess is derived directly from chaturanga: Modern chess itself is called shatranj in Arabic, the bishop is called the elephant. The initial position is as shown. White moves first; the objective in chaturanga, the same as modern chess, is to checkmate the opponent's Raja. Raja: moves one step in any direction, the same as the king in chess. There is no castling in chaturanga. Mantri. Ratha: moves the same as a rook in chess- whereby the rook moves horizontally or vertically, through any number of unoccupied squares. Gaja: three different moves are described in ancient literature: Two squares in any diagonal direction, jumping over the first square, as the alfil in shatranj; this is a fairy chess piece, a -leaper. The same move is used for the boat in a four-player version of chaturangam; the elephant in xiangqi has the same move, but without jumping. One step forward or one step in any diagonal direction; the same move is used for the khon in makruk and the sin in sittuyin, as well as for the silver general in shogi.
The move was described c. 1030 by Biruni in his book India. Two squares in any orthogonal direction, jumping over the first square. A piece with such a move is called a dabbābah in some chess variants; the move was described by the Arabic chess master al-Adli c. 840 in his chess work. The German historian Johannes Kohtz suggests, that this was the earliest move of the Ratha. Ashva: moves the same as a knight in chess. Padàti or Bhata. Al-Adli mentions two further differences: Stalemate was a win for a stalemated player; this rule appeared again in some medieval chess variants in England c. 1600. According to some sources, there was no stalemate; the player, first to bare the opponent's king wins. In shatranj this is a win, but only if the opponent cannot bare the player's king on his next turn. Chess in early literature Liubo – An ancient Chinese board game played by two players Origins of chess Davidson, Henry. A Short History of Chess. McKay. ISBN 0-679-14550-8. Falkener, Edward. Games Ancient and Oriental and How to Play Them.
Dover Publications Inc. ISBN 0-486-20739-0. Hooper, David; the Oxford Companion to Chess. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280049-3. Murray, H. J. R.. A History of Chess. ISBN 0-936317-01-9. Parlett, David; the Oxford History of Board Games. ISBN 0-19-212998-8. Pritchard, D. B.. The En
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae; the horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BC, their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses; these feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, colors, breeds and behavior. Horses' anatomy enables them to make use of speed to escape predators and they have a well-developed sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response.
Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, with younger horses tending to sleep more than adults. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for 11 months, a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training in harness between the ages of two and four, they reach full adult development by age five, have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years. Horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited "hot bloods" with speed and endurance. There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, developed for many different uses. Horses and humans interact in a wide variety of sport competitions and non-competitive recreational pursuits, as well as in working activities such as police work, agriculture and therapy. Horses were used in warfare, from which a wide variety of riding and driving techniques developed, using many different styles of equipment and methods of control.
Many products are derived from horses, including meat, hide, hair and pharmaceuticals extracted from the urine of pregnant mares. Humans provide domesticated horses with food and shelter, as well as attention from specialists such as veterinarians and farriers. Specific terms and specialized language are used to describe equine anatomy, different life stages and breeds. Depending on breed and environment, the modern domestic horse has a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years. Uncommonly, a few animals live into their 40s and beyond; the oldest verifiable record was "Old Billy", a 19th-century horse that lived to the age of 62. In modern times, Sugar Puff, listed in Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living pony, died in 2007 at age 56. Regardless of a horse or pony's actual birth date, for most competition purposes a year is added to its age each January 1 of each year in the Northern Hemisphere and each August 1 in the Southern Hemisphere; the exception is in endurance riding, where the minimum age to compete is based on the animal's actual calendar age.
The following terminology is used to describe horses of various ages: Foal: A foal of either sex less than one year old. A nursing foal is sometimes called a suckling and a foal, weaned is called a weanling. Most domesticated foals are weaned at five to seven months of age, although foals can be weaned at four months with no adverse physical effects. Yearling: A horse of either sex, between one and two years old. Colt: A male horse under the age of four. A common terminology error is to call any young horse a "colt", when the term only refers to young male horses. Filly: A female horse under the age of four. Mare: A female horse four years old and older. Stallion: A non-castrated male horse four years old and older; the term "horse" is sometimes used colloquially to refer to a stallion. Gelding: A castrated male horse of any age. In horse racing, these definitions may differ: For example, in the British Isles, Thoroughbred horse racing defines colts and fillies as less than five years old. However, Australian Thoroughbred racing defines fillies as less than four years old.
The height of horses is measured at the highest point of the withers. This point is used because it is a stable point of the anatomy, unlike the head or neck, which move up and down in relation to the body of the horse. In English-speaking countries, the height of horses is stated in units of hands and inches: one hand is equal to 4 inches; the height is expressed as the number of full hands, followed by a point the number of additional inches, ending with the abbreviation "h" or "hh". Thus, a horse described; the size of horses varies by breed, but is influenced by nutrition. Light riding horses range in height from 14 to 16 hands and can weigh from 380 to 550 kilograms. Larger riding horses start at about 15.2 hands and are as tall as 17 hands, weighing from 500 to 600 kilograms. Heavy or draft horses are at least 16 hands (64 inches, 16
Bishop (chess)
A bishop is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen; the starting squares are c1 and f1 for White's bishops, c8 and f8 for Black's bishops. The bishop is limited to diagonal movement. Bishops, like all other pieces except the knight, cannot jump over other pieces. A bishop captures by occupying the square; the bishops may be differentiated according to which wing they begin on, i.e. the king's bishop and queen's bishop. As a consequence of its diagonal movement, each bishop always remains on either the white or black squares, so it is common to refer to them as light-squared or dark-squared bishops. A rook is worth about two pawns more than a bishop; the bishop has access to only half of the squares on the board, whereas all squares of the board are accessible to the rook. On an empty board, a rook always attacks fourteen squares, whereas a bishop attacks no more than thirteen and sometimes as few as seven, depending on how near it is to the center.
A king and rook can force checkmate against a lone king, while a king and bishop cannot. In general bishops are equal in strength to knights, but depending on the game situation either may have a distinct advantage. Less experienced players tend to underrate the bishop compared to the knight because the knight can reach all squares and is more adept at forking. More experienced players understand the power of the bishop. Bishops gain in relative strength towards the endgame as more pieces are captured and more open lines become available on which they can operate. A bishop can influence both wings whereas a knight is less capable of doing so. In an open endgame, a pair of bishops is decidedly superior to either a bishop and a knight, or two knights. A player possessing a pair of bishops has a strategic weapon in the form of a long-term threat to trade down to an advantageous endgame. Two bishops and king can force checkmate against a lone king. A bishop and knight can with far greater difficulty than two bishops.
In certain positions a bishop can by itself lose a move. The bishop is capable of pinning a piece, while the knight can do neither. A bishop can in some situations hinder a knight from moving. In these situations, the bishop is said to be "dominating" the knight. On the other hand, in the opening and middlegame a bishop may be hemmed in by pawns of both players, thus be inferior to a knight which can jump over them. A knight check cannot be blocked but a bishop check can. Furthermore, on a crowded board a knight has many tactical opportunities to fork two enemy pieces. A bishop can fork. One such example occurs in the position illustrated, which arises from the Ruy Lopez: 1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 b5 6. Bb3 Be7?! 7.d4 d6 8.c3 Bg4 9.h3!? Bxf3 10. Qxf3 exd4 11. Qg3 g6 12. Bh6! In the middlegame, a player with only one bishop should place friendly pawns on squares of the color that the bishop cannot move to; this allows the player to control squares of both colors, allows the bishop to move among the pawns, helps fix enemy pawns on squares on which they can be attacked by the bishop.
Such a bishop is referred to as a "good" bishop. Conversely, a bishop, impeded by friendly pawns is referred to as a "bad bishop"; the black light-squared bishop in the French Defense is a notorious example of this concept. However, a "bad" bishop need not always be a weakness if it is outside its own pawn chains. In addition, having a "bad" bishop may be advantageous in an opposite-colored bishops endgame. If the bad bishop is passively placed, it may serve a useful defensive function. Although the black pawns obstruct the white bishop on e2, it has many more attacking possibilities, thus is a good bishop vis-à-vis Black's bad bishop. Black resigned after another ten moves. A bishop may be fianchettoed, for example after moving the g2 pawn to g3 and the bishop on f1 to g2; this can form a strong defense for the castled king on g1 and the bishop can exert strong pressure on the long diagonal. A fianchettoed bishop should not be given up since the resulting holes in the pawn formation may prove to be serious weaknesses if the king has castled on that side of the board.
There are nonetheless some modern opening lines where a fianchettoed bishop is given up for a knight in order to double the opponent's pawns, for example 1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3. Nc3 c5 4.d5 Bxc3+!? 5.bxc3 f5, a sharp line originated by Roman Dzindzichashvili. Giving up a fianchettoed queen bishop for a knight is less problematic. For example, in Karpov–Browne, San Antonio 1972, after 1.c4 c5 2.b3 Nf6 3. Bb2 g6?!, Karpov gave up his fianchettoed bishop with 4. Bxf6! exf6 5. Nc3, doubling Black's pawns and giving him a hole on d5. An endgame in which each player has only one bishop, one controlling the dark squares and the other the light, will result in a draw if one player has a pawn or sometimes two more than the other; the players tend to gain control of squares of opposite colors, a deadlock results. In endgames with same-colored bish
Staunton chess set
The Staunton chess set is composed of a particular style of chess pieces used to play the game of chess. According to the rules of chess, this style is to be used for competitions; the journalist Nathaniel Cooke is credited with the design, they are named after the English chess master Howard Staunton. The first 500 sets were hand numbered by Staunton; this style of set was first made available by Jaques of London in 1849, they became the standard. They have been used around the world since; the increased interest in the game of chess in international play during the late 18th century and early 19th century, brought about a renewed demand for a more universal model for chess pieces. The variety and styles of the conventional form, begun in the 15th century, had expanded tremendously by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Conventional types popular during the period included the English Barleycorn chess set, the St. George chess set, the French Regence chess set and the central European. Most pieces were tall tipped and cumbersome during play, but their major disadvantage was the similarity of the pieces within a set.
A player's unfamiliarity with an opponent's set could alter the outcome of a game. By the early decades of the 19th century, it was all too clear that there was a great need for a chess set with pieces that were easy to use and universally recognized by chess players of diverse backgrounds; the solution, first released in 1849 by the purveyors of fine games, John Jaques of London and games manufacturers, of Hatton Garden, London England, was to become known as the Staunton chess set after Howard Staunton, the chess player and writer, considered the strongest player in the world from 1843 to 1851. Although Nathaniel Cooke has long been credited with the design, it may have been conceived by his brother-in-law and owner of the firm, John Jaques. One theory of the development of the set is that Mr. Cooke had used prestigious architectural concepts, familiar to an expanding class of educated and prosperous gentry. London architects influenced by the culture of Greece and the culture of ancient Rome, were designing prestigious buildings in the neoclassical style.
The appearance of the new chessmen was based on this style and the pieces were symbols of "respectable" Victorian society: a distinguished bishop's mitre, a queen's coronet and king's crown, a knight carved as a stallion's head from the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, a castle streamlined into clean classical lines, projecting an aura of strength and security. The form of the pawns was based on the Freemasons' Square and Compasses. There were practical innovations: for the first time a crown emblem was stamped onto a rook and knight of each side, to identify their positioning on to the king's side of the board; the reason for this is that in descriptive chess notation, the rooks and knights were designated by being the "queen's knight", the "king's rook", etc. Another possibility is that Jaques, a master turner, had been experimenting with a design that would not only be accepted by players, but could be produced at a reasonable cost. In the end, he most borrowed and synthesized elements from sets available to create a new design that used universally recognizable symbols atop conventional stems and bases.
Moreover, the pieces were compact, well balanced and weighted to provide a useful understandable playing set. It may have been a combination of both theories with the synergy of Mr. Cooke the entrepreneur and Mr. Jaques the artisan. Chess books from 1820 on were using in diagrams icons of chess pieces similar in many respects to the Staunton chessmen, including a recent change from arched crown to coronet for the queen; this shows that the Staunton design may have been taken from these diagrams likely picked up by a printer. The ebony and boxwood sets were weighted with lead to provide added stability and the underside of each piece was covered with felt, allowing the pieces to slide across the board; some ivory sets were made from African ivory. The king sizes ranged from 3½ to 4½ inches and the sets came in a papier-mâché case, each one bearing a facsimile of Staunton's signature under the lid; the Staunton pieces broadly resemble columns with a wide molded base. Knights feature the sculpted neck of a horse.
Kings, the tallest pieces, top the column with a stylised closed crown topped with a cross pattée. Queens are smaller than kings, feature a coronet topped with a tiny ball. Rooks bishops a Western-style mitre. Pawns are topped by a plain ball. Pieces representing human characters have a flat disk separating the body from the head design. Jaques approached his brother-in-law for advice. At the Patent Office, on March 1, 1849, Nathaniel Cooke, 198 Strand, England, registered an Ornamental Design for a set of Chess-Men, under the Ornamental Designs Act of 1842. At that date, there was no provision for articles of ivory. Mr. Cooke was the editor for the Illustrated London News where Howard Staunton published chess articles, he convinced the champion to endorse the chess set. The advertisement written by Mr. Staunton published as follows: A set of Chessmen, of a pattern combining elegance and solidity to a degree hitherto unknown, has appeared under the auspices of the celebrated player Mr. STAUNTON.
A guiding prin
Fairy chess piece
A fairy chess piece, variant chess piece, unorthodox chess piece, or heterodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess but incorporated into certain chess variants and some chess problems. Fairy pieces vary in the way; because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, the same piece can have different names, different pieces the same name in various contexts. All are symbolised as inverted or rotated icons of the standard pieces in diagrams, the meanings of these "wildcards" must be defined in each context separately. Pieces invented for use in chess variants rather than problems sometimes instead have special icons designed for them, but with some exceptions, many of these are not used beyond the individual games they were invented for. Today's chess exists because of variations someone made to the rules of an earlier version of the game. For example, the queen we use today was once able to move only a single square in a diagonal direction, the piece was referred to as a ferz.
Today, this piece still starts next to the king, but has gained new movement and became today's queen. Thus, the ferz is now considered a non-standard chess piece. Chess enthusiasts still like to try variations of the rules and in the way pieces move. Pieces which move differently from today's standard rules are called "variant" or "fairy" chess pieces. Fairy chess pieces fall into one of three classes, although some are hybrids. Compound pieces combine the movement powers of two or more different pieces. An -leaper is a piece that moves by a fixed type of vector between its starting and destination squares. One of the coordinates of the vector'start square – arrival square' must have an absolute value m and the other one an absolute value n. A leaper captures by occupying the square. For instance, the knight is the -leaper, it is convenient to classify all fixed-distance moves as leaps, including moves to adjacent squares, because this allows all normal moves to be placed in two categories without the need to create a third category for the king and pawn.
The leaper's move cannot be blocked. Leapers are effective forking pieces; the check of a leaper cannot be parried by interposing. All orthodox chessmen except the pawn are either leapers or riders, although the rook does'hop' over its own king when it castles. In shatranj, a Persian forerunner to chess, the predecessors of the bishop and queen were leapers: the alfil is a -leaper, the ferz a -leaper; the wazir is a -leaper. The king of standard chess combines the wazir; the dabbaba is a -leaper. The alibaba combines alfil, while the squirrel can move to any square 2 units away. The'level-3' leapers are the threeleaper, camel and tripper; the giraffe is a level-4 leaper. An amphibian is a combined leaper with a larger range than any of its components, such as the frog, a --leaper. A rider is a piece that moves an unlimited distance in one direction, provided there are no pieces in the way. There are three riders in orthodox chess: the rook is a -rider. Sliders are a special case of riders. All of the riders in orthodox chess are examples of sliders.
Riders and sliders can create both skewers. One popular fairy chess rider is the nightrider, which can make an unlimited number of knight moves in any direction; the names of riders are obtained by taking the name of its base leaper and adding the suffix "rider". For example, the zebrarider is a -rider. A hopper is a piece; the hurdle can be any piece of any color. Unless it can jump over a piece, a hopper cannot move. Note that hoppers capture by taking the piece on the destination square, not by taking the hurdle; the exceptions are locusts. They are sometimes considered a type of hopper. There are no hoppers in Western chess. In xiangqi, the cannon captures as a hopper; the grasshopper moves along the same lines as a queen, hopping over another piece and landing on the square beyond it. Compound pieces combine the powers of two or more pieces; the archbishop and amazon are three popular compound pieces, combining the powers of minor orthodox chess pieces. When one of the combined pieces is a knight, the compound may be called a knighted piece.
The archbishop and amazon are the knighted bishop, knighted rook, knighted queen respectively. When one of the combined pieces is a king, the compound may be called a crowned piece; the crowned knight combines the knight with the king's moves. The dragon king of shogi is a crowned rook. Marine pieces are compound pieces consisting of a locust in the same directions. Marine pieces have names e.g. nereide, mermaid, or poseidon. Some classes of pieces come from a certain game, will have common characteristics. Examples are the pieces from a Chinese game similar to chess; the most common are the leo, pao
Knight
A knight is a man granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch, bishop or other political or religious leader for service to the monarch or a Christian church in a military capacity. In Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors. During the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior. A knight was a vassal who served as an elite fighter, a bodyguard or a mercenary for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings; the lords trusted the knights. Knighthood in the Middle Ages was linked with horsemanship from its origins in the 12th century until its final flowering as a fashion among the high nobility in the Duchy of Burgundy in the 15th century; this linkage is reflected in the etymology of chivalry and related terms. The special prestige accorded to mounted warriors in Christendom finds a parallel in the furusiyya in the Muslim world, the Greek hippeis and Roman eques of classical antiquity.
In the late medieval period, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete, but the titles remained in many nations. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, the Matter of Britain, relating to the legend of King Arthur and his Round Table. Today, a number of orders of knighthood continue to exist in Christian Churches, as well as in several Christian countries and their former territories, such as the Roman Catholic Order of the Holy Sepulchre and Order of Malta, the Protestant Order of Saint John, as well as the English Order of the Garter, the Swedish Royal Order of the Seraphim, the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav; each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is granted by a head of state, monarch, or prelate to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement, as in the British honours system for service to the Church or country.
The modern female equivalent in the United Kingdom is Dame. The word knight, from Old English cniht, is a cognate of the German word Knecht; this meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages. Middle High German had the phrase guoter kneht, which meant knight; the meaning of cniht changed over time from its original meaning of "boy" to "household retainer". Ælfric's homily of St. Swithun describes a mounted retainer as a cniht. While cnihtas might have fought alongside their lords, their role as household servants features more prominently in the Anglo-Saxon texts. In several Anglo-Saxon wills cnihtas are left either money or lands. In his will, King Æthelstan leaves his cniht, eight hides of land. A rādcniht, "riding-servant", was a servant on horseback. A narrowing of the generic meaning "servant" to "military follower of a king or other superior" is visible by 1100; the specific military sense of a knight as a mounted warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years' War.
The verb "to knight" appears around 1300. An Equestrian was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire; this class is translated as "knight". In the Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin caballus, sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish caballos. From caballus arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the English cavalier: Italian cavaliere, Spanish caballero, French chevalier, Portuguese cavaleiro, Romanian cavaler; the Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English rider: German Ritter, Dutch and Scandinavian ridder. These words are derived from Germanic rīdan, "to ride", in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root reidh-. In ancient Rome there was a knightly class Ordo Equestris; some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, some armies, such as those of the Ostrogoths, were cavalry.
However, it was the Franks who fielded armies composed of large masses of infantry, with an infantry elite, the comitatus, which rode to battle on horseback rather than marching on foot. When the armies of the Frankish ruler Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad Arab invasion at the Battle of Tours in 732, the Frankish forces were still infantry armies, with elites riding to battle but dismounting to fight. In the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or miles in Latin; the first knights appeared during the reign of Charlemagne in the 8th century. As the Carolingian Age progressed, the Franks were on the attack, larger numbers of warriors took to their horses to ride with the Emperor in his wide-ranging campaigns of conquest. At about this time the Franks remained on horseback to fight on the battlefield as true cavalry rather than mounted in
