This post is part of an ongoing series of posts on the Arab horses and other horse breeds in medieval equestrian treatises in the Arabic language. I have been discussing the subject with Hylke Hettema on various social media. I don’t like how social media platforms classify and archive discussions, so I am transferring it here. An earlier post from August 2019 had pointed to early mentions of “the Asil Arab horse” or “al-faras al-arabi al-asil” in the Nasiri book which is from 1333 CE. A second post recorded mentions, in the same book, of “the breeding of Arab horses” or “nitaaj al-khuyul al-arabiyyat“. Recently Hylke posted this short passage from a later treatise, Muhammad Musa al-Damiri‘s “Kit?b Hay?t al-Hayaw?n al-Kubra” which is from 1372 CE. This zoological treatise was translated to English in 1906 and is more commonly known as the “Life of Animals”: “wal-khaylu naw’aan: hajin wa ‘atiq, fal-‘atiqu min al-khayli ma abawaahu ‘arabiyyaan wal-hajinu alladhi abuhu ‘arabi wa ummuhu ‘ajamiyyah, wal-muqrif […] ‘aksuhu, wa kadhalika fi bani Aadam“ Hylke’s translation from Arabic to English is very good, and an edited version of it follows: Horses are of two kinds: hajin and ‘atiq; the ‘atiq among horses is…