The horse in the Islamic culture

The horse in the Islamic culture

The horse in the early Islamic warfare

What seems obvious is that just before the advent of Islam, the horse was seen as a powerful tool for combat and a marker of social status in the whole Middle East. It was obviously the case in the Byzantine and the Sasanid Empires, as well as in central Asia, where the horse was for a long time an important source of economic and political power. The contribution of Robin and Antonini in this issue shows that a quite similar situation prevailed in Arabia: it became quite common to mount a horse in Southern Arabia from the fourth century onwards, whereas possessing a horse allowed to be integrated into the dominant class in the Hejaz before the emergence of Islam64.
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Robin and Antonini also recall that the number of cavalrymen in pre‑Islamic South‑Arabian warfare was never important: the highest number mentioned in the sources is three hundred cavalrymen. It is likely that the number of horsemen involved in warfare was not higher in the other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Should we underplay, then, the role played by cavalry in warfare? In fact, the sources seem too sparse to determine with certainty their effectiveness on the battlefield. It should also be noticed that contrary to popular belief, the number of horsemen was no longer the key metric of military effectiveness in late Antique and medieval warfare. In particular, horsemen were never the most numerous soldiers involved in medieval battles. On the contrary, they formed an elite of highly esteemed fighters whose primary asset was mobility, whereas their charge was seen as the key tactic and decisive moment of most battles.
In fact, the role played by the horse in Arabian early Islamic warfare is still poorly known. It is true that despite the revivification that followed its sceptical turn during the seventies, the historiography of early Islam largely remains in construction. In particular, subsequent studies dealing with the early Arab and Islamic conquests leave many questions unanswered. It is also true that archaeological sources are missing, and written sources are not always reliable. Nicolle outlines, in this issue, that no medieval equine skeleton or horse armour have been excavated in Arabia. Scholars can rely on epigraphy as well as on numerous rock paintings and engravings, from which thousands are dated to the Islamic era. However, these valuable sources of information still need to be comprehensively compared by military historians with post‑Islamic narratives.
Obviously, much of the material preserved in written sources is not so easy to use. Whether they were written by Muslims or not, the earliest texts are rather elusive and subjective. Arabic pre‑ and early Islamic poetry, which had been often disqualified as fabricated by Abbasid authors, is now generally acknowledged as useful. Certainly, it is only preserved by much later authors, and could not be used without caution by historians. However, when properly contextualized, it helps to reflect the variety of Arabian pre‑Islamic societies, and provides reliable information on various topics, including warfare. The earliest Islamic narratives have been even more criticized by historians for being “replete with confusion and improbability”, especially when relating battles. They generally emphasized that these narratives emerged only from the mid‑eighth century. The most sceptical scholars even completely rejected them as too poorly informative, and only useful to understand the ideology that they reflect. Very recently, Shoshan still recalled that they present numerous tropes aiming to highlight the superiority of early Muslim armies.
One of the tropes often carried by Islamic narratives is that these armies strongly relied on light Bedouin cavalry which provided Muslims a greater mobility than the one of their enemies. However, it is now clearly acknowledged by most scholars that cavalry was not prominent in armies whose core consisted of infantrymen who, moreover, played a major role during battles. As we have seen, that does not mean that cavalry played no role in battles nor was completely ineffective. The importance of light cavalry, which have been involved in Arabian warfare for a long time, can scarcely be denied. This seems, however, less clear regarding horsemen who were more heavily equipped. Before the advent of Islam, the heavy cavalry was certainly not unknown in Arabia, or at least in some parts of Arabia. After all, there is no reason to think that the Peninsula, which has maintained military relationships with Byzantine and Sasanian armies for a long time, remained completely alienated from the secular process that led all the Middle East to adopt medium‑ or heavy armoured cavalry. Moreover, Nicolle, in this issue, suggests that horse armour was associated with Pre‑Islamic Oman and Yemen, which were, in his words, “under Sasanian Iranian domination”.
The armoured cavalry seems to have gradually become more important in Islamic armies during the seventh century. Narratives clearly distinguish the light or unarmoured cavalry (mujarrada) and the heavy one, which is referred to by the word mujaffafa. This word is somewhat problematic, because it is also sometimes used in texts written in the Abbasid era to refer to warriors who should be precisely characterized as armoured. However, it is used in most cases for a horse wearing a tijfāf, a term which probably originally referred to a soft and seemingly coloured or embroided caparison/armour, and perhaps, according to Nicolle, “to a method of construction employing felt”. Then, it eventually came to refer to all kind of horse armours. For instance, the eleventh‑century scholar al‑Ḥumaydī (d. 488/1095) asserts that it means “all things that fully cover [the horse] in warfare”. As for the lexicographer Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), he claims that the tijfāf could even be made of iron: “Al‑tijfāf and al‑tajfāf: what was put down on the horse from iron or other [material] in warfare”.
45In any event, textual evidence corroborates the pictorial material studied by Nicolle: contrary to a still widely common view, the horse armour was not unknown in the early Middle Eastern armies. It is likely that its use gradually increased from the generalization of the heavy cavalry after the Abbasid took power in Baghdad and reformed the army under the influence of Iranian and central Asiatic traditions. After this reform, the Middle Eastern Islamic armies largely relied on horsemen, whether they were born free or military slaves. The warrior dynasties that ruled the Middle East from the fragmentation of the Abbasid Empire in the tenth–eleventh century onward were also strongly associated with the horse. It is worth noting with Mahoney, in this issue, that when he deals with the arrival of the Rasūlid in Yemen in the early thirteenth century, the chronicler al‑Kharazjī also emphasizes the major role played by the horse in the creation and preservation of the new dynasty.
⦁ Islamic mythology
The horse did not only play a significant role in the military and political fields. At the same time that the horse was erected as a decisive tool in warfare and the symbol of the dominant military class, Muslim scholars incorporated it into Islamic mythology. By doing so, they relied on Arabic pre‑Islamic practices: from the earliest times, the horse was featured in Arabian myths and legends, which were at least partially incorporated into Islamic belief. Pre‑Islamic poetry, in which the horse was a common subject, was one of their main source of inspiration. In particular, hunting on horseback, which is also documented by epigraphic and pictographic evidence, was a major motif for the chivalric tribal poets, whose ethos of physical toughness, martial prowess, generosity, and selflessness, was conveyed in qaṣīda‑s that strongly inspired Islamic poets and literati. The horse symbolized the physical features as well as moral values embodied by the figure of the Jāhilī chivalric poet, who gradually became the archetypal model for the Muslim fāris (pl. fursān or fawāris)86. Speed, prowess, strength and aggressiveness, arrogance and haughtiness, virility, pride and nobility, characterized the animal as well as its mighty rider. Thus, the muʿārada (“poetic contest”) in describing the horse (waṣf al‑khayl) between the “two poetic giants” Imruʾ al‑Qays (d. ca. 550) and his opponent ʿAlqama (d. after mid‑6th c.) allowed the winner, ʿAlqama, to be celebrated with the laqab (“honorific title”) al‑Faḥl, which means “stallion” as well as “master poet”.
47It is worth noting that the trilateral root KH/Y/R, which formed the most common Arabic word used by Islamic authors to refer to the horse (khayl), conveys some of these features and values, or that the widespread use, in the Islamic era, to give proper names to horses, dated back to the earliest times. In Yemen, according to the Rasūlid sultan al‑Malik al‑Ashraf ʿUmar b. Yūsuf (r. 694–6/1295–6), the kings of Ḥimyar gave names to their horses. However, they were unknown to him:
“As for the ancient Ḥimyarite kings of Yemen (al‑tatābiʿa min mulūk Ḥimyar bi‑l‑Yaman), the name of their horses did not come to our knowledge. However, it comes in their annals and histories (fī akhbārihim wa tawārīkhihim) that they had a great number of horses.
[…]
Then, the first name of a horse of a Yemeni king that became renowned was “Ḥayzūm”. He was the horse (faras) of Mahdī b. ʿAlī b. Mahdī, the one whose father attacked the Abyssinians (al‑Ḥabasha) in Zabīd, and who is from ashāʿir related to Qaḥṭān. The history of his attack is renowned, and he ruled Yemen. This Mahdī is his son”.
[…]
‘Al‑Dhayyāl’ was [the name of] the horse [ridden by] Ibn al‑Ṣulayḥī the day when he was killed in the attack during the famous battle between him and the Abyssians.
Mahdī b. ʿAlī’s horse bore the name given by Islamic tradition to the one of Angel Gabriel’s (Jibrīl) horse. Prophet David (Dāwūd) and his son Solomon (Sulaymān) were also said to have given proper names to their horses, as ancient Bedouins poets did. At the battle of Uḥud (3/625), Muḥammad was said to have ridden a horse named “Sakb”, a name that especially refers to a “continuous rain”, and that was given to different horses by various Muslim rulers throughout the Middle Age, such as Rasūlid Sultan al‑Malik al‑Muʾayyad Dāwūd (r. 696–721/1296–1322).
Many names given by pre‑Islamic poets to their horses conveyed the same meaning. They are preserved in their qaṣīda‑s, as well as in the several “books on horses” (kutub al‑khayl) written by Islamic authors throughout the Middle Ages, and dealing with Arabian horses from different points of view, such as lexicography, genealogy, literature, husbandry…. These books, which as other books were part of the larger furūsiyya genre, seem to have influenced some of the 19th century’s European travellers who, such as the Blunts and Rzewuski, endeavoured “to seek pure Arabian horses”, integrated the horse in Islamic mythology. The horse became one of the symbols of Islam. He was greatly praised not only because the Muslims considered that they “owed their victorious expansion to that animal”, but also, as it is explained by Ibn al‑Kalbī (d. 204 or 206/819 or 821), because Muḥammad then the believers followed the footsteps of the pre‑Islamic Bedouins.
50As it is emphasized by Berriah in this issue, the praising of the horse, and especially the Arabian one, pervades the Koran and the hadith, and all texts that would be referred to as the roots of Islamic jurisprudence. Anecdotes, legends and traditions of various origins inextricably linked Islam to an animal depicted as combining both supernatural and earthly power. For instance, the Prophet Ismāʿīl (Ishmael), who in Islamic tradition in particular was said to have helped his father Abraham to rebuild the Kaʿba, was also supposedly the first individual to have ridden horses. It was also often mentioned that all the Arabian horses descended from one steed named Zād al‑rākib, and given to the tribe of Azd by Sulaymān b. Dāwūd (Solomon), who was said to be so fond of his horses that he forgot his religious duties. In addition, Muslim authors gave various versions of a tradition crediting Allah with the creation of the horse from the wind. Some of them outlined that it was a south and dry wind, which blew from the Kaʿba. Others argued that the angel Jibrīl (Gabriel) held the wind in his hands before its creation. As for al‑Burāq, the flying beast ridden by the Prophet Muḥammad during his ascension to heaven (al‑Mirʾāj), a hadith transmitted by al‑Ṭabarī (d. 310/909) described him as a winged horse. However, he was generally defined in early Islamic texts as “a white beast, smaller than a mule and larger than a donkey (dābba abyaḍ dūn al‑baghl wa fawq al‑ḥimār)”.
The Arabian horse: champion of the faith
Therefore, it made sense for Muslim jurists who codified Islamic law from the mid‑eighth century to strongly connect the horse with Jihad. They especially stated that it should receive shares in the plunder: two parts of the fourth‑fifths share for Ibn Mālik, al‑Shāfiʿī, or Ibn Ḥanbal, and one for Abū Ḥanīfa111. They also emphasized the role played by the horse in protecting the Muslim frontiers, as did the Rasūlid historian al‑Kharazjī regarding the Rasūlid Yemeni state.
It is worth noting that classical Islamic jurists often needed to clarify which horse breed they were talking about, probably because like the Arabs during the so‑called Jāhiliyya, Prophet Muḥammad was said to have preferred pedigree horses. Most of them distinguished the purebred Arabian horse from the mixed‑bred one. One of the main questions they asked was what percentage of the spoil should be given to each breed. The Shāfiʿī jurist al‑Māwardī (d. 450/1058) summarizes some of their disagreement in his “Commentary” (Sharḥ) of the Shāfiʿī legal system:
“Salmān b. Rabīʿa and al‑Awzāʿī said: the noble horse (al‑khayl al‑ʿitāq) should be given a share whereas the mixed‑breed birdhawn should not be given one. [Henceforth], its rider (fāris) should [only] be given a share, [such as] the foot soldier (rājil).
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal said: a mixed‑breed birdhawn (al‑birdhawn al‑hajīn) should be given the half share of the noble Arabian [horse] (al‑ʿarabī al‑ʿatīq). Henceforth, the rider (fāris) of the birdhawn should be given two shares whereas the rider of the noble Arabian horse should be given three shares”.
Then, al‑Māwardī relies on the authority of a companion of the Prophet Muḥammad, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al‑ʿĀṣ, who expresses a less exclusive view by transmitting a hadith praising the horse. The “Commentary” sometimes echoes the Shuʿūbiyya call for extending equality to all Muslims, whether they were Arabs or not:
“By using the word “al‑khayl”, [the Prophet] embraced all breed. Indeed, the noble [Arabian] horses (ʿitāq al‑khayl) are faster and forestaller and the birdhawn‑s are the best in turning around and attack (akarr) and in firmness. Each of them has [advantages] that the other is lacking, so they complete each other. In addition, [it is true that] noble horses are Arab (purebred), and the birdhawn‑s (mix‑bred) non‑Arab (aʿājim). There is no distinction between the Arab and the non‑Arab horsemen, so the same is true regarding the horse. There should be no distinction between the strong (shadīd) and the weak (ḍaʿīf) one; the same goes, moreover, for the one who precedes (al‑sābiq) and the one who is late (al‑mutaʾakhkhir)”.
Such discussions did not affect the image of the idealistic Jihad fighter associated with the Arabian horse. Berriah shows, in this issue, that it was still perceived as a symbol of the Jihad in the Mamlūk sultanate, probably because he was considered as the symbol of triumphant Islam in the seventh century. From Berriah’s point of view, the warriors who held the power lacked legitimacy because they were non‑Arabs of slave origins. They liked to claim that they were the heirs of the first Arab warriors who had expanded and defended Islam riding beautiful Arabian horses. Those horses were strongly associated, in the Mamlūk imaginary, with their riders. According to Berriah: “it was in the framework of the legitimacy of their power as well as by their ability to fight for Jihad that the figure of the Arabian horse seems to have been included in their warrior ideology”.
A passion for a luxury item
It should also be borne in mind that the Mamlūks, were they rulers or members of the military elite, had also developed a real passion for Arabian horses, as apparently had many of their predecessors in the Middle East. Indeed, narratives regularly describe Caliphs, Sultans, amirs and even, sometimes, civilian dignitaries, mounting on, gifting or expressing their admiration for purebred Arabian horses, which, for instance, were classified by the Baghdadi Hanafi jurist al‑Simnānī (d. 493/1100) at the highest level of the equine hierarchy. In Arabia, some Rasūlid Sultans or the late medieval Sharīf‑s of Mekka were also said, explicitly or implicitly, to have loved or admired Arabian horses, as did the European travellers of the 19th century studied by Pouillon in this issue. Al‑Malik al‑Ashraf ʿUmar (r. 694–6/1295–6) bred “noble horses” that were especially renowned for their beauty and their speed. As for the Mamlūk Sultan al‑Nāṣir Muḥammad (d. 741/1341), he was so fond of Arabian horses that he was said to have spent up to 100,000 dinars for a sole mare. His “arabomania” led him to build a stud where they were carefully bred and trained, especially for race courses or other horse competitions that sometimes involved Bedouins, for instance, near al‑Buḥayra, in the Egyptian Delta, in 1263. According to al‑Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442), al‑Nāṣir Muḥammad was the first sultan to raise the office of Amīr ākhūr to a prominent position. This functionary was in charge of horses and other animals in the sultan’s stable s, where Kuttāb al‑isṭabl(“stable secretaries”) especially recorded all details regarding the breeding, the purchasing, and the gifting of horses.
Indeed, it is often mentioned in medieval Arabic sources that horse gift played a significant role in political, diplomatic, and social communication. In particular, they often describe a ruler giving (or receiving from) one or several Arabian horses to a peer, to soldiers whose loyalty had to be thanked or ensured, as well as to individuals who had to be honoured. Sometimes, this applies not only to the ruler himself, but also to high‑ranking Mamlūk‑s, and even to civilian dignitaries. The examples dealing with the Rasūlid and Mamlūk states quoted, in this issue, by Berriah, Carayon, and Mahoney, can be paralleled by several examples referring to other Islamic dynasties, in which Arabian horses were also generally referred to as highly appreciated gifts. Here again, narratives suggest that the Arabian horse maintained his reputation in most of the medieval Islamic countries. The horse which lineage was recognized as especially noble was even considered as a most luxurious item.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that Arabian horses are regularly depicted in narratives as a source of great profit for their breeders and their sellers, especially the Bedouin tribes. Vallet’s works, as well as Mahoney’s paper, in this issue, outline that in Arabia, Rasūlid Sultans were careful in controlling the horse economy, especially by taxation and limiting of their purchase to specific places. Even if further studies are needed to provide greater insight into the breed and the horse trade in the medieval Islamic world, some evidence gathered by medievalists suggest that the horse economy was always an important issue for rulers and merchants. Regional or international trade can sometimes be identified, especially regarding the Arabian horse, which, for instance, could be sold at a higher price by the Bedouins to the Mamlūk sultans. Moreover, the trade of purebred Arabian horses in South Arabia, which is rather well documented, has been sufficiently studied. Sources allow to state that from the twelfth century, large numbers of horses were exported from Yemen to India. A real “equine trade revolution” can be identified in the Indian Ocean at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, which involved, in Vallet’s word, “innovative and significant monetary and technological resources”. Indeed, according to him:
“Significativement, c’est aussi entre le xiie et le xiiie siècle que se met en place un système d’exportation à grande échelle des purs sangs arabes en direction de l’Inde. Les conquêtes de Shihāb al‑Dīn al‑Ghūrī (1173–1206) à la fin du xiie siècle, marquant l’établissement d’un puissant sultanat turc autour de Delhi, et les luttes continuelles entre les grandes principautés hindoues qui se partageaient le reste du subcontinent semblent avoir nourri une forte demande en chevaux venus d’Arabie, en particulier dans le sud de l’Inde qui accédait difficilement aux marchés de l’Asie intérieure. Selon l’historien persan Vaṣṣāf (m. 1323), 10 000 chevaux étaient ainsi exportés depuis le Golfe chaque année vers le Coromandel (actuel Tamil Nadu), vers la région de Cambay et d’autres ports de l’Inde occidentale à l’époque de l’atabeg salghūride Abū Bakr du Fārs dans les années 1220, un chiffre sans doute exagéré. L’île de Qays, au sommet de sa puissance sous la férule marchande des Ṭībī à la fin du xiiie siècle, exportait chaque année 1 400 chevaux de ses haras particuliers et faisait élever d’autres chevaux sur la côte arabe du Golfe, à al‑Qaṭīf, al‑Aḥsāʾ, Baḥrayn et Qalhāt, à destination du royaume du Coromandel. Plusieurs centaines de chevaux étaient aussi transportés depuis Aden vers les ports du Malabar, à la suite d’une foire qui se tenait chaque année au mois d’août, sous la protection du sultan rasūlide du Yémen. De tels chiffres furent sans doute rarement dépassés au cours des xive et xve siècles, alors que l’autorité du sultanat de Delhi s’était étendue à la quasi‑totalité du subcontinent, mais le contrôle du commerce maritime des chevaux restait encore, à l’arrivée des Portugais, un enjeu majeur dans l’océan indien”.
Furūsiyya
Of course, the military, political, and social impact of the horse in the Islamic era should not be exaggerated. However, there is no doubt that to some extent, it shaped Islamic societies as no other animal did in the Middle Age. Moreover, the horse was central to furūsiyya, a word that seems to have only appeared in Arabic in the 8th century and deriving from the Arabic root F/R/S, which formed both terms faras (“horse”) and fāris (“cavalrymen” or, in certain circumstances and contexts, “knight”). Probably born in Iraq at the turn of the 8th–9th century under the influence of central‑Asiatic, Sasanid, Greek, and Arab traditions, while horsemen began to play a major role in Islamic armies before gradually taking power, furūsiyya consisted in secular and religious beliefs, chivalric values, as well as military, playful and prestigious practices. This culture was especially transmitted in books dealing in full or partially with all topics related to horses (hippology, farriery, veterinary medicine, genealogy, riding…), as well as with the theory and practice of warfare. Many furūsiyya treatises, among which Ibn Akhī Ḥizām’s (3th/9th c.) Kitāb al‑furūsiyya wa‑l‑bayṭara was soon seen as the ultimate model, were written in Iraq in the 9th–10th centuries, then in the whole Middle East, especially in Syria and in Egypt in the Mamlūk era (13th–16th c.).
However, all medieval Middle Eastern societies were concerned with furūsiyya, including the Arabian Peninsula’s ones. Indeed, even if Arabian furūsiyya has been rather neglected by scholars, it appears that what Ibn Qayyim al‑Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) called al‑furūsiyya al‑khayliyya (“the furūsiyya of the horse”) was especially vibrant in different periods. Books centered on horses and veterinarianism were especially copied and written in Rasūlid Yemen (626–858/1228–1454), as well as in the Hejaz. Thus, Ibn Akhī Ḥizām’s Kitāb al‑furūsiyya wa‑l‑bayṭara was rewritten in a book preserved in a manuscript (Ayasofya Library MS. No 3705) copied by a certain Ibn Abī Quṭayra for the second Rasūlid sultan al‑Muẓaffar Yūsuf al‑Saʿīd (r. 647–94/1249–95). A few years later, his son and immediate successor, Sultan al‑Malik al‑Ashraf ʿUmar b. Yūsuf (r. 694–6/1295–6), himself wrote a book on horses and veterinary medicine entitled al‑Mughnī fī al‑bayṭara, which he presented as “a compendium (mukhtaṣar)” relying on his own knowledge and that of the best Yemeni “learned men” on horses. As for the fifth Rasūlid sultan al‑Malik al‑Mujāhid ʿAlī b. Dāwūd (r. 721–64/1322–63), he also wrote a furūsiyya treatise entitled al‑Aqwāl al‑kāfiyya wa fuṣūl al‑shāfiyya fī al‑khayl. Largely based on previous works, it also deals, among various topics, with the names of the Yemeni sovereigns’ horses, or their breeding at their court. More than two centuries later, Meccan Shaykh ʿAbd al‑Qādir al‑Fākihī (d. 982/1574) dedicated to the Ḥasanid Sharif of Mecca the Kitāb Manāhij al‑surūr wa‑l‑rashād fī al‑ramī wa‑l‑sibāq wa‑l‑ṣayd wa‑l‑Jihād, which contains chapters on Jihad, the early Islamic military expeditions against the infidels, horses, camels and other animals, archery, bow and other weapons, and hunting. Such treatises rarely provide specific examples of persons who were renowned for mastering furūsiyya arts. However, narratives are sometimes more accurate, showing, for instance, that as early as the 4th/10th century, a prominent South Arabian figure such as the first Zaydī Imam was described as mastering furūsiyya arts, as well as were, long after, sultans or high‑ranked militaries of the Rasūlid state.
Similarly, no specific studies have been devoted to the practice, in medieval Arabia, of horse games and military exercises, as well as to the official manifestations during which festive activities such as horse races or parades were organized. Muslim scholars generally outline that horseracing was appreciated in Arabia well before Islam, and that the Prophet Muḥammad permitted race for stake with horses, as well as, according to some of them, with camels and arrows. After the advent of Islam, horse racing was perhaps always and everywhere, as sustained by Rosenthal, “the most important and best organized activity of this kind”. Even if other horse games, and especially polo, seem to have been the preferred practice of the Abbasid Caliphs then Kurdish and Turkish sultans and amirs who ruled the Middle East, the interest for horse racing never disappeared. It was practiced in race courses such as those, which would become famous in all the Islamic Middle East, of Raqqa (Syria) and Samarra (Iraq). In Arabia, the interest of the elite in horse racing most probably continued throughout the Middle Ages, as it is shown, for example, by the chapters on sibāq al‑khayl of al‑Fākihī’s the Kitāb Manāhij al‑surūr.
As for celebrations, it should be noticed that narratives sometimes relate those which were held in the Rasūlid Yemen, especially the ceremonial horse parades organized for special occasions such as the circumcision of Sultan al‑Ashraf Ismāʿīl’s son in Ṣafar 795/December 1392. Ceremonial events held in extensive open spaces are also reported in Yemen under the Ṭāhirid dynasty (858–923/1454–1517). It is worth noting that they echo the numerous public events held in the maydān‑s of Syria or Cairo at the same time, which are well‑documented in Syrian and Egyptian chronicles whose authors describe the splendour of horses mounted by warriors admired by civilians. Then, various horse games were performed, as it was probably regularly done in Yemen, and more generally in Arabia, but a systematic study of narratives is needed to justify this assumption.
Arabian horse in Arabia
The physical characteristics of the Arabian breed —dished nose, large eyes, high arched bearing of the tail— adapted to the arid environment, and its temperament meeting the requirements of warfare, races and ceremonials —speed, hardiness, stamina—, have been much emphasized. The breed arouses pride. Beyond the question of horse domestication, the issue of the origins of the Arabian breed remains a sensitive one in the Peninsula, where the will to keep the purity of the race is a reality and gives way to groundless historical reconstructions claiming its paternity.
The claim of an Arabian origin finds some justification in the medieval tradition. Mamlūk furūsiyya treatises dealing with hippiatry distinguished lineages of Arabian horses named after their geographical provenance (Hejaz, Najd, Yemen, Bilād al‑Shām, Jezirah, Iraq), the noblest according to Ibn al‑Mundhir being the Ḥijāzī. In the late 19th century, these traditions might have deluded the travellers in central Arabia, whose prime mover has often been the search for pure Arabian horses. F. Pouillon, in this issue, goes over this topic and shows the close relation between the European recognition of an Arabian race —at a time the concept applied to both horses and men— and its political implications. He also underlines that eventually, these explorers recognized how limited the presence of Arabian horses in Arabia was, for the simple reason that its harsh environment does not make the presence of large numbers sustainable.
The rarity of the Arabian horse in Arabia does not prevent a regional origin of the breed. Undeniably, it acquired its peculiar features through human and natural selection within a desert environment. However, archaeological evidence does not make Arabia the best candidate.
Olsen, in this issue, shows that the horse petroglyphs in North Arabia depict most of the characteristics of the Arabian breed. Their association with Thamudic inscriptions provides a terminus post quem for their carving to the first half of the 1st millennium BC. As already mentioned, there is no evidence of horses in Arabia before this date and one hardly believes that the long selection process leading to the breed happened locally.
Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of a “proto‑Arabian” breed along the Nile. Although there is no definite proof for a Northeastern African origin, this hypothesis remains the most convincing. Some significant pieces of evidence are the horse buried in a wooden coffin at Deir el‑Bahari (Thebes‑West), c. 1500–1465 BC, which had only five lumbar vertebrae as is frequent with the modern Arabian breed, and the Buhen horse (Sudan), which bore a close resemblance to the modern Arabian breed in a slightly earlier context. Besides, horses showing features of the later Arabian horse are depicted in wall paintings of Egyptian tombs from the XVIII. Dynasty (c. 1550–1298 BC) e.g. that of Nebamun at Thebes.
The hypothesis of the Egyptian origin is reinforced by the analysis of the realistic representations of breeds on the neo‑Assyrian reliefs, where four different races were recognized: the first resembles the central Asian Akhal‑Teke; the second is a Caspian type breed, offered as a tribute by the Medes and the Elamites; the third breed, a wild hunted one in Elam, is identified as an onager (Equus hemionus) or Asiatic wild horse (Equus ferus przewalskii) and the last breed is described as the Kushite horse. The latter, with a compact body, long thin legs, a full mane falling to the side of the neck, shows many features of the modern Arabian breed. The Egyptian origin and natural absence from Assyria of this kind of horse is explicitly mentioned in the account of the campaigns of Sargon II (722–705 BC) to the Egyptian border. The most ancient representations were carved on the reliefs of the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh.
Therefore, it is very likely that Arabian‑like horses carved on the rock in Northern Arabia in the 1st millennium BC were introduced from either Egypt through Southern Levant or from Mesopotamia. This breed could be the one buried in Mleiha (UAE) by the end of the 1st millennium BC, and the one that led through selection to the Arabian horse praised in the furūsiyyatreaties.
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As the reader might have noted, with regard to the horse in Arabia and the Arabian horse, many issues are still to be addressed. These gaps in our current knowledge stimulate the discussion. They bear the risk of shifting from a scientific discourse to an ideological one, particularly in such a region as the Arabian Peninsula, where the subject is closely linked to local pride and identity. This makes it necessary to stand back and consider the data as they are. In this respect, we hope that this issue will come up to the readers’ expectations.

Source : Reference