In original version of chess, there is no female soldier on board as battles were fought with armies which exclusively had only male soldiers. What we now call , Queen, used to be Wazir(commander of the army), person with most power and responsible for offence and defence.
Most armies in Indian subcontinent used to have horses, camels and elephants and their gender was not of importance.
No female warriors? Lemme think... Boudica, Gozen Tomo, Joan of Arc...
@the_chess_zebra Cool you know Boudica, I found not many heard of her. @schaakbord2015: chess.com is een wereldwijd online platform.. Als je je vraag in het Engels formuleert, hebben meer mensen kans om mee te doen. Misschien kan Google Translate je helpen? De vraag was overigens ook niet zo spannend, of een paard een hengst of een merrie was. Ik had zelf niet echt de neiging om erover na te denken. Misschien komt dat nog.
Thanks for your reaction everyone. But So far I'm still in doubt. Stallion or mare?
Hi Bas, let me try to be on topic this time. I think the first thing you should know, is that a horse is a herd animal, that by nature is lightly to flight by the sight of danger. As a rider, I can tell you this is the first thing you will learn. One could ask oneself, why take a horse into battle in the first place. As this behavior is not different for mares and stallions, this line of reasoning won't get us any further. Scientifically we could introduce history and investigate battles and such. But still I don't see how that would help us in finding the answer. So we might best take our resort to biology! Then I found the answer is, that it may depend on the chess set you use. If you closely examine the horse from your chess set, you will see the is, that in most cases the piece has only a pedestal with the horse from neck up on it. Too bad, no glance on genital information. However, the neck does tell us something about the gender too! Stallions have a thicker neck (on average). I find this rather compelling evidence, that this will give us some indication. I've looked at some popular chess sets (like staunton) and as the neck ends on the pedestal, making it rather thick, I would conclude this horse is representing a stallion.
Hence. If you want to know what horse you have: look at the neck of the horse. Is it thick and muscular, most likely it will be a stallion, otherwise a mare.
kind regards, Mark
It depends on the playing style. If it's jumping all over the board aggressively and prematurely for no sensible reason, it's probably a young stallion.
@mhtopper Thx for your great remarks. So the knight probably rides a stallion!
Here's an excerpt from a Wikipedia page about horses in medieval Europe.
"Stallions were often used as war horses in Europe due to their natural aggression and hot-blooded tendencies. A 13th-century work describes destriers "biting and kicking" on the battlefield,[39] and, in the heat of battle, war horses were often seen fighting each other.[40] However, the use of mares by European warriors cannot be discounted from literary references.[41] Mares were the preferred war horse of the Moors.[10] They also were preferred by the Mongols.[42]"
One thought struck me a few days ago and just can't let it go. It is utterly unimportant and rather philosopjical, but I want to pop the question anyway.
Is the horse on the board, on which the knight is riding, a stallion or a mare?
Chess is a game mostly played by men. And only one piece on the board is exclusively female: the queen. In sight of genderequality and the promotion of chess among girls and women, wouldn't it be great to officiallydeclare the horse on the chessboard a mare? Yes, the horse is a knight, but that refers to the man riding it, and he is not part of the Stauton piece on the board. Hence we're stuck with a horse, calling it a knight and leaving the question of the animal's gender in the middle.
Any idea's, comments?