One topic that keeps popping up on this blog is the culturally-rooted Arab notion of authenticity and purity in Arabian horses: the notion of an ‘asil’ Arabian. I have been trying to look at this notion from a number of different lenses, and have written about it on several occasions (click here for one such instance). I find myself continuing to grapple with this notion and my thinking about it keeps evolving. One way to understand this notion of an asil Arabian is to look at some of conceptually related notions, in particular the notions of ‘hajin’ and ‘kadish’. This entry focuses on ‘hajin’, and leaves the altogether different notion of ‘kadish’ for a later time. Understanding what ‘hajin’ means may help to better understand the notion of asil. So what’s a ‘hajin’ horse, according to Bedouins and other Middle Eastern Arabs involved in Arabian horse breeding? Simply put, a hajin (pronounce it hah-JEEN) is a horse of foreign, non-Arab blood, such as the English Thoroughbred, Kurdish, Turkmen or Barb horses. There is also an Arabic verb for this notion of hajin: Hajjana. ‘Hajjana al-khayl’, when speaking of a person, is the deliberate act of mixing or interbreeding one’s asil…