I thoroughly enjoyed reading — and learned a lot from — the short article presenting the ninth century CE treatise of Ibn Akhi Hizam al-Khuttali’s “Book of Horses and Hippiatry” (Kitab al-Khayl wa al-Baytara, its most commonly used Arabic name). This 2021 article by Jamal Hossaini-Hilali and Abdelkrim El Kasri follows their French translation in 2018 of Ibn Akhi Hizam al-Khuttali’s treatise, based on three of the surviving Arabic manuscripts. Prof. Hossaini-Hilali informs us that Ibn Akhi Hizam was master of the horses (i.e., stud manager, in today’s parlance) for the sixteenth Abbasid Caliph al-Mu’tadid (892-902 CE) in Bagdad, then the economic, scientific and cultural center of the world. His paternal uncle, Hizam (“Ibn Akhi Hizam” means the “son of the brother of Hizam”), was master of the horses for the eighth Abbassid Caliph al-Mu’tasim (833-842 CE), while his father, the senior al-Khuttali, was the head veterinarian for the tenth Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawwakil (847-861 CE). Horse husbandry and management were clearly a family affair in their case. The first part of his treatise, a lexicographical compendium of names for horse body parts, teeth, colors, markings, behaviors, qualities, etc., draws heavily on Abu ‘Ubaydah (d. 826 CE) Book of the Horse,…
Over the past couple of years, I have been working on several projects with likeminded friends and preservation breeders from around the world. These projects seek to complete and expand the original mission of DOW, which has always been to raise awareness about the true Arabian horse, its people, history and heritage, in a way that builds bridges between the East and the West. One of these projects is my sire line project. It first germinated in my head some years ago, when a quick survey made me realize that there were only 10 asil sire lines left in the West. Since then a few more were added, thanks to importations from Syria. Sire lines can vanish particularly quickly. Once a few stallions from one sire line become fashionable, everybody uses them, then more people use their sons, horses from other sire lines don’t get as much of a chance, and disappear within two or three generations. This is what is currently happening in the general (ie, non-asil) Arabian horse population, with Marwan Al Shaqab and WH Justice, both from the Saklawi I sire line through Nazeer, dominating the breed. Within the sub-population of the asil Arabians, the Saklawi I…
Arabic language Facebook pages concerned with historical photographs of the Arab world, its populations, and its culture occasionally turn up photos of Bedouin Arabian horses. Below is one example: The text under the photo is in Ottoman Turkish, a language I don’t read, but close enough to Arabic for me to make up that the mare was a Kuhaylah, aged 7 years old, 148 cm tall, color “coral grey” (marjan gri, if I am reading it correctly), and that she was gifted to a senior Ottoman official (perhaps the Sultan himself) by Far’un al-Yaqut, one of the leaders of the Bedouin tribe of al-Fatlah. The Fatlah are one of the main branches of large Bedouin tribe of Dulaym, whose territory lies in the Lower Euphrates valley, in and around the Bedouin cities of Hit, Fallujah and Ramadi. The Dulaym, themselves a branch of the larger pre-Islamic tribe of Zubayd (to which the Jubur and the Juhaysh also belong) have a reputation of bravery and fierceness in battle. Although the tribe was largely settled from early on, the leaders of the Dulaym were considered by the shaykhs of nomadic Bedouin tribes such as the Shammar, the ‘Anazah, the Dhafir, etc., as…
Laszlo Kiraly’s Hungarian magazine Lovas Nemzet is holding its 2024 photo competition. Participate if you can.
The latest edition of Swift Runners, the refreshing and much welcome monthly newsletter launched by Denise Hearst, Betty Finke, Scott Benjamin and a few others features a reprint of an earlier article by Charles and Jeanne Craver, Wisdom from the Breeding Shed. It deserves to be read and reread far and wide.