Al-Damiri (1372) on Atiq and Hajin horses
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 that whose two parents are Arab, and the hajin is that whose father is Arab and whose mother is foreign, and the muqrif […] is the opposite, and the same among the sons of Adam (humans).
That excerpt provides an early connection between “Arab” and ‘atiq. It also shows the relationship between “foreign” (‘ajami) and hajin. This is particularly important because of the concept of hajin applying to humans as well: the son of an Arab man and say, a Persian woman is a hajin. In fact the concept of hajin may well have originated with humans and been applied to horses after, as Hylke argues here.
Now, if Arab + Arab = ‘atiq and Arab + Foreign = ‘hajin/muqrif, then unless my logic is flawed, the implication is that Arab + Arab = Arab and that therefore ‘atiq + hajin = hajin, indefinitely so. This would support the notion that a one-time introduction of a hajin into a lineage suffices to make the descendance irreversibly hajin.
Of course, there could be an additional outcome where Arab + foreign = also Arab.