Arabian Mate

The usual story about this mate is older-sounding than the evidence supports. Wikipedia's checkmate-pattern article describes the position, a rook adjacent to the cornered king with a knight two squares away diagonally protecting the rook, and states that it is mentioned in an ancient Arabic manuscript dating from the eighth century CE. Wiktionary directly challenges that claim: it says the name is possibly given because the pattern was also possible in shatranj, and that according to various sources the mate is described in an eighth-century Arabic manuscript, but this claim could not be substantiated. Wiktionary offers instead a verifiable alternative, noting that the pattern does appear as a solution to a position presented in an anonymous Arabic-language manuscript that was copied in 1257, though the original source of that material is unknown. The name therefore points to the shatranj tradition, in which both rook and knight moved as they do in modern chess, rather than to a datable coinage. No coiner and no first modern use of the English name were found.

First documented: n.a. — the widely repeated 8th-century claim is described by Wiktionary as unsubstantiated; the earliest verifiable appearance it cites is an anonymous Arabic manuscript copied in 1257 — Anonymous Arabic-language manuscript copied in 1257, per Wiktionary; the 8th-century manuscript claim is repeated by Wikipedia but flagged as unsubstantiated by Wiktionary