The chess historian H. J. R. Murray wrote: ‘A Dresden manuscript of the end of the fourteenth century gives a half-tour without solution and sets as a wager game a tour over a board of 4 by 4 squares’ and: ‘The sixteenth century Persian manuscript on chess in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society makes some remarks on the tour, and promises to give tours on the whole board and on boards of 4 by 8 and 4 by 4 squares, which are lost owing to the fragmentary condition of the manuscript. The author boasts a little, for the tour on the 4 by 4 board is an impossibility.’
In A History of Chess (1913) Murray gives reasons for believing this Persian manuscript may be due to Ala’addin Tabrizi, the leading player at the court of Timur (1336 – 1405). A translation by Duncan Forbes (1860) is subtly different, referring to ‘one quarter of the board’ rather than a 4 by 4 board. The wording is critical, since a closed tour is possible on one particular non-rectangular quarter-board.