Fawaz al-Rajab passed away last week. The news of his passing saddened me greatly, perhaps because he was directly connected to my family’s story with horses. Fawaz was one of Syria’s very last hassanah, (in Arabic حصانة, “men of horses”). Part merchants, part experts, part brokers, part stallion handlers, but never breeders nor owners, the hassanah lived for and from the horses. They were one’s first point of contact when buying, selling or inquiring about a horse. They knew the landscape like nobody else. Abu Hussein Khattab and Abd al-Qadir Hammami were the main hassanah of Aleppo. Uqlah al-Hanshul and Najm al-Himmayri were the main two for Deyr al-Zor. They all passed. Today, with the rise of direct advertising, social media, and specialty magazines, there is no room for the hassanah anymore. The profession is a thing of the past. Fawaz was the main such “man of horses” for the Syrian city of Homs from the 1960s to the 2010s. He took over his father’s business. In 1976, my father, then newly engaged to my mother, made his first visit to her family in Homs. He asked his future in-laws where he could see horses around the city. My uncle…
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