Sheikh Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi

Chess

Sheikh Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi (may Allah protect him) mentioned in a lecture delivered in Burton on Trent (2009, UK) about a philosopher who had made the game of chess. 

The king asked him what his reward should be. He said that he wanted one grain for the first square two grains for the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth and so on, doubling until square 64. 

When they tried to work it out they realised that there was not enough grain in the kingdom! 

In the book Science and Islam Ehsan Masood p.49 (not a book that I recommend) he states that the exact amount was reached by Al-Biruni as 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains or 18.5 million trillion grains!

Sheikh Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi (may Allah protect him) mentioned that this was like our rewards beginning small and ending in an unfathomable amount.