Asil Arab horses in the Nasiri book,1333 CE
This afternoon, I spent a good two hours with Hylke Hettema combing through her online version of al-Kitab al-Nasiri (The Complete Guide to the Professions of Veterinary Medicine and Horse Breeding, Called “The Nasiri Book”). This is the equestrian treatise which Nicolas Perron famously translated and published between 1852 and 1860 under “Le Naceri, la perfection des deux arts”. The book was written in 1333 CE by Abu Bark ibn Badr al-Din ibn al-Munthir al-Bitar, Master of Horses, for his boss, Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. Hylke and I were looking for an early mention of the word “asil” as applied to horses. We found several mentions, and made several other interesting discoveries and inferences. There is material for ten articles!
One of the clearest mentions of the term “asil” as applied to horses occurs in the fifth chapter of the first book (page 8 in the link of Hylke):
wa amma idha kaana al-fahlu asilan, wa-kaanat bihi ‘aahah kal-jardi wa-al-‘awari wa-al-kardi, fa inna haadhihi la tu’addi.
Perron renders this sentence in French as follows (page 37 in the Gallica copy): “Mais si l’étalon, de race pure, est atteint de quelque maladie occasionnelle, si par exemple, il est glabre ou il est borgne, ou s’il est kerd, c’est a dire s’il a le pas étroit et vacillant, ces défectuosités ne se communiquent pas aux produits, ne sont pas contagieuses.”
My own, quick translation from the Arabic: “If the stallion were from a good origin (asil), and suffered from blemishes […], these are not passed on.”
Another clear mention of asil occurs in the ninth chapter of the first book (page 31 of 175 in the link above):
wa amma al-faras al-‘arabi al-asil fa-la yuqarribuhu al-jann abadan wa-la yarkabuhu […]
Here we find Arab and asil side by side. My translation: “As to the Arab horse that is asil, the djinns never approach him, neither do they ride him.”
From these and other similar references, one concludes that the term asil was applied to horses as early as 1333 CE. It does not appear to have been a common way to refer to horses, in the Nasiri book, however. A much more common term this book uses to refer to horses from a good, ancient origin, was ‘atiq. Still, the use of the term asil for horses was known in medieval fourtheenth century Cairo.
Were there any references to terms to describe half breeds? Or concepts similar to Kadish?
Yes, plenty: kadish and birdhawn are all over the place.
How interesting! Thank you, Edouard and Hylke, for your work on this!
Edouard, do you know of an online source (for reading) or a way someone can purchase a hard copy of the “Nasiri book” in Arabic? I have a good friend here who now has an asil horse and would love to read the original. Thanks
Hi Anita: check here: https://wdl.org/en/item/17603/view/1/6/
I am not sure “asil” means pure, as Perron translated. It certainly literally means: “with a [good] origin”.
id say “With a known lineage”
@ Anita: the Nasiri book is for sale in Cairo, Egypt as a study book! It has been published for veterinary studies in 2 volumes (2002, Academy of research and technology) Most bookstores in Egypt will be able to locate a copy for your friend.
The discussion of what ‘asil’ means has always been interesting to me. Decades ago, when I first became closely involved with Arabians, I was taught (as I think many are) that the term applies to “being pure” (or iterations thereof). But, many years ago (and I’m racking my brain trying to remember who the discussion was with), was told that the definition should be reframed to think of it as ‘being known’ and not ‘being pure’.
So, the above comments are very interesting…since both schools of thought are represented.
Beth: It’s really literally having an origin, and a good origin is implied here. It is not about purity of blood, although they tend to go together, since a way of ascertaining “purity” is usually by going back to the origins and seeing if there is something impure there.
For example: I recently told my cousins that I wanted to pull together a collection of essays, poems and memories about my late mother into a book, and self-publish it. One of them replied (in Arabic): “Edouard, I applaud you, you are asil”. What she meant is: “you are your mother’s son; you don’t forget your origin/root.”
I’m glad it is now proven that the term had nothing to do with orientalism because this is what I believed. I tend to agree it didn’t start with the Bedouin, but it’s still originating from within the Arab World. The expression doesn’t sound like how the Bedouin describe things as the Bedouin dialect has very special phonetics and morphology distinctive from the other Arabic dialects. However, the Bedouins in modern centuries used the word Asayel, a Bedouin plural form of the word Asil. “Asayel” sounds very Bedouin. The non-Bedouin would use the word “Asilah” for plural. So were Asil or Asayel the start of the expression, one cannot tell which came first especially with the Bedouin traditions of the medieval period being largely undocumented. I wonder if Al-Rasuli had any mention of the terms Asil/Asayel.
Hi Yasser, if course orientalists were not the first ones to use the word, it is an Arabic word after all. I think Hylke’s point was this was a word that meant “of good origins” that was not often used by Arab people to refer to their horses (these preferred ‘atiq, etc), but that European emphasis on purity of blood in the XIXth century made Europeans borrow it from Arabs to refer to Arabian horses, and made Arabs use it more in response, to mean “pure”.
I think that “al-damm al-naqi” or “al-damm al-safi” is not an Arab concept, but a Western concept.
Really interesting discussion – thank you!
Thanks Edouard. Yes it’s an Arabic word but some propositions suggest the word was coined in the 19th century to reflect a Western introduced concept of purity and nobility. I agree that purity of blood as a general concept is more emphasised in the European cultures especially in human genealogy. But the Asil/Atiq/Erab terms strongly imply the same meaning when it comes to horses. The evidence for this are antonym words Hajin/Muqref/Kadish which explicitly mean stain in blood. The use of these terms as mutullay exclusive opposites of Asil/Atiq leaves no room for assuming that Asil only means of old origin rather than of old AND pure blood in our context. That doesn’t negate that the word Asil has different indications in the daily use depending on the context.