This morning I stumbled upon an erudite and thoroughly researched paper by Dr. Shihab al-Sarraf of the International Center of Furusiyyah [Horsemanship] Studies on “Mamluk Furusiyyah Literature and Its Antecedents”, published at the University of Chicago’s Mamluk Studies Review, VIII-1-2004. It is the most comprehensive review to date of the Islamic literature on horses and horsemanship from early to late medieval times. The following passage in this paper sparked my interest: “The main body of Arab philological works on horses was written in Iraq during the period from the latter half of the second/eighth century to the end of the first half of the fourth/tenth century. These works included both comprehensive and specific treatises. Of the former type, commonly titled Kitab al-Khayl, more than twenty treatises were written, all deemed lost except four. These are Kitab al-Khayl by Abu ‘Ubaydah Ma‘mar ibn al-Muthanná (d. 209/824); Kitab al-Khayl by al-Asma‘i (d. 216/831); Kitab al-Khayl by Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman Muhammad al-‘Utbi (d. 228/842), and Kitab al-Khayl by Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur (d. 280/893). The last two treatises are still in manuscript and the fate of their extant copies, presumably kept in a private collection, is uncertain. In any case, the basic and unmatched contributions in this domain remain the above first…