The Horse in Arabia and the Arabian Horse: Origins, Myths and Realities

Abstract

International audiencePublishing an issue devoted to the horse in Arabia and in Arabian culture stems from the discovery of equid statues on the Neolithic site of al‑Maqar (Saudi Arabia) in 2010. This discovery was prematurely presented as the earliest testimony of horse breeding and horse riding. It was dated to 7,300–6,700 BC —i.e. 3,500 years before the first evidence of horse domestication known so far. It has stirred up controversy about the ongoing issue of horse domestication, against a background of ideological debate. It has also been an indication to the critical place given to horsemanship and horse breeding in the Arabian Peninsula.Gathering contributions on the topic of the horse in Arabia and the place of the Arabian horse in the medieval Islamic world allows us to draw an overview of the current knowledge about the issue of the introduction of the horse to Arabia (see Robin and Antonini), of the origin of the Arabian breed (see Olsen), of the significance and contribution of Arabian rock art (see Robin and Antonini, Olsen), of the role of the horse in Rasulid diplomacy (see Mahoney) and in Mamlūk culture (see Berriah, Carayon), of the emergence of the myth of the Arabian horse in the 19th‑century Arabian Peninsula (see Pouillon), and on the specific issue of horse armour from the late pre‑Islamic period to the Ottoman empire (see Nicolle).This introduction is an opportunity to present the setting of these contributions from specific viewpoints:• The al‑Maqar case: an ideological historical reconstitution• The domestication of the horse: the state of the art• The introduction of the horse in Arabia: the state of the art• The horse in the Islamic period• The myth of the Arabian hors

Iconographic and archaeometric studies on the rock art at Musayqira, Al‐Quwaiyah Governorate, central Saudi Arabia

“…Horses were introduced in Arabia in the first millennium BCE, but remained a relative rarity in the pre‐Islamic period (Olsen, 2017; Schiettecatte & Zouache, 2017). In Arabian rock art, depictions of horses with riders are common in hunting and fighting scenes, beginning in the Iron Age, but predominantly in the Islamic Period.…”

Rock art survey in the ancient oasis of Salūt (northern Sultanate of Oman): a variegated iconographic record

“…80–82), there is no evidence for actual horses to have been domesticated before the first millennium BC, with more solid data available only around the turn of the Christian Era (Schiettecatte & Zouache, 2017: 27). The full domestication of horses and the relevant role that they came to play within the local society is witnessed, in that period, by spouts in the shape of horse protomes to be applied on bronze bowls and bronze bowls with elaborated carvings from Mleiha, Ed‐Dur and coeval sites (for a recent summary of iconographic sources, see Schiettecatte & Zouache, 2017: table 2) and by the discovery of horse burials at Mleiha (Uerpmann, 1999). Different is the case of the camel: while the consensus is now on its domestication at the beginning of the local Iron Age (e.g.…”

The art of rock relief in ancient Arabia: new evidence from the Jawf Province

“…Donkeys were definitely being used in the second half of the fourth millennium BC in Egypt, the southern Levant and Mesopotamia (Vila 2014: 433–34), although the domestication of the horse in the Near East occurred during the second millennium BC. Horses were most probably introduced in Arabia in the second half of the first millennium BC (Schiettecatte & Zouache 2017), and remains of equids have been found only in early first-century AD contexts at Dûmat al-Jandal (Monchot 2016).…”