800 years old Arabic chess treatise "opening"

Looks like in the very old times each player could place the pieces as he/she liked, before starting. 

This eight centuries old chess treatise from 1257 AD mentions several initial distributions. This is one of them (from page 32):

Cool. You've read the whole book?

Not the whole book, I just translated some of the problems (my mother tongue is Spanish). It's mostly out of curiosity, since some important rules have changed throughout the centuries and many problems are no longer useful. E.g. at those times bishops (i.e. elephants) could jump over other pieces just like knights. A few problems are still interesting though, like finals not involving those movements.

You can download the whole book from this link.

This is not new but it's interesting all the same: the game was created in India, traveled through Persia before arriving in the Arabic speaking world and then Europe, keeping many traces of that long journey, although the elephants became bishops (in Spanish we still call them alfiles) the prime minister, vizier or firzan became a queen and so on.

I see. The book is interesting tho.

Also the Rook comes from Persian word (Rokh). and Bishop is (Fil) or (Pil) which as you said means Elephant. And Queen is (Vazir) which has the same meaning.

Thank you for the link. It's for almost 8 centuries ago.

One of the problems: manuscript caption and computer analysis:

Automated analysis deems 4.Nf5+Kh8 a blunder on blacks' side, but it wasn't on XIII century, when bishops could jump like knights.