Sultan Khan (chess player)

This article is about the South Asian chess player. For other uses, see Sultan Khan (disambiguation).

Sultan Khan
CountryBritish India (1903–1947)
Pakistan (1947–1966)
Born1903
Mitha Tiwana, Punjab, British India (today Khushab District, Pakistan)
Died25 April 1966(1966-04-25) (aged 62–63)
Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan
TitleHonorary Grandmaster (posthumous, 2024)

Sultan Khan (Punjabi and Urdu: میاں سلطان خان, 1903 – 25 April 1966; often given the erroneous honorific Mir Sultan Khan or Mir Malik Sultan Khan[1]) was a chess player from British India,[2][3][4] and later a citizen of Pakistan, who was the strongest Asian player of the early 1930s. The son of a Muslim landlord and preacher, Khan travelled with Colonel Nawab Sir Umar Hayat Khan (Sir Umar), to Britain, where he took the chess world by storm. In an international chess career of less than five years (1929–33), he won the British Championship three times in four attempts (1929, 1932, 1933), and had tournament and match results that placed him among the top ten players in the world. Sir Umar then brought him back to his homeland, where he gave up chess and returned to cultivate his ancestral farmlands in the area which became Pakistan. He lived there before dying in his sixties in the city of Sargodha. David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld have called him "perhaps the greatest natural player of modern times".[5] In 2024 FIDE posthumously awarded him the title of Honorary Grandmaster.[6]

  1. ^ King, Daniel (8 April 2020). Sultan Khan: The Indian Servant Who Became Chess Champion of the British Empire. New In Chess. ISBN 978-90-5691-876-7. Sultan Khan is often accorded two other names, Mir Malik, but these are honorific. Mir is akin to addressing someone as 'sir'
  2. ^ "How 'Sultan' of Indian chess won over Brits, beat Capablanca". How ‘Sultan’ of Indian chess won over Brits, beat Capablanca - The Times of India. Times of India. 21 April 2020. Archived from the original on 11 August 2021. Retrieved 11 August 2021. He was born in Pakistan's side of the Punjab and died there as a Pakistan citizen due to tuberculosis in 1966.
  3. ^ Dr Atiyab Sultan and Ather Sultan (17 May 2020). "CHESS: THE WRATH OF KHAN". CHESS: THE WRATH OF KHAN - Newspaper - DAWN.COM. DAWN News. Archived from the original on 25 July 2021. Retrieved 11 August 2021. Formally speaking, he was a British subject from 1903-1947 and then a proud Pakistani citizen till his demise in 1966. As such, he is a Pakistani asset and deserves an honourable mention in the sporting history of the country.
  4. ^ Dr Atiyab Sultan (30 April 2020). "' Sultan Khan by Daniel King'- A granddaughter's review". ' Sultan Khan by Daniel King'- A granddaughter's review - Chess.com. chess.com. Archived from the original on 11 August 2021. Retrieved 11 August 2021. Formally speaking, Sultan Khan was a British subject for the first 44 years of his life (1903-47) and then a very proud Pakistani citizen from 1947 till his demise in 1966. He had no connection with the country that is now India other than for transit during travel or to play tournament matches, something that he also did in England, Czech republic, Switzerland, etc. That does not make him a citizen of these countries any more than it makes him an Indian. Moreover, given the tense political realities of the region, King should have been careful and sensitive before proclaiming him as such, as he has denied a dead man his conscious decision of statehood. Khan chose to be resident in Pakistan and contrary to King's assertion that he offered no political opinions, Khan was a patriot and believed firmly in Pakistan, a homeland created for South Asia's Muslim population in 1947.
  5. ^ David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess (2nd ed. 1992), Oxford University Press, p. 402. ISBN 0-19-866164-9.
  6. ^ Rehman, Zia Ur (2 February 2024). "Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar receives an award conferred upon Late Mir Sultan Khan, a Chess player, posthumously from the President of International Chess Federation Mr. Arkady Dvorkovich and President Asian Chess Federation Mr. Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan". Retrieved 2 February 2024.