THE ORIGINS OF THE ARAB HORSE

©Lesley Skipper

The Arab horse has long been the subject of controversy, and one old chestnut regularly tossed back into the fire concerns the breed's origins.  Did the Arab horse descend from indigenous wild stock, as the bedu maintained, or was it a later importation?  And if the latter, was the horse introduced to the Arabian peninsula before or after the beginning of the Christian era?

            Until the nineteenth century relatively few people concerned themselves with the exact geographical origins of the different breeds of horse.  Before Darwin's evolutionary theories properly took root, people such as Captain Roger Upton assumed that horses, like other species, had simply been created in the regions in which they were found.  But as the century progressed, archaeological finds as well as the work of palaeontologists began to present a different picture.  In particular, the work of American palaeontologist Othniel C Marsh established that the genus we   now know as Equus started off as a relatively small, dog-like mammal, and evolved via many mutations and pathways, into the different equid species we know today –among them, Equus caballus.  From this primitive horse the different types of domestic horse developed according to terrain and climate, helped along by selective breeding following domestication.  So where and at what point did the Arab horse begin to emerge from this primitive type?

Hyracotherium: the earliest ancestor of the horse.

Professor Ridgeway's argument for a Libyan origin for the Arab horse (in The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse, 1905) founders because he based it on a number of false assumptions, both about Arab horses and about horses in general.  Nor are arguments for a Mesopotamian origin for the Arab horse especially convincing, given the "Araby" look of the horses shown on Egyptian frescoes from c. 11th century BC onwards (see revised chronology, below), as opposed to the much coarser type depicted on Assyrian bas-reliefs of several centuries later!

Egyptian fresco depicting Ramesses II driving his chariot team

            Lady Wentworth was a firm believer in the origin of the Arab horse within the Arabian peninsula.   Following Lydekker, who deduced a separate origin for the Arab horse because of skeletal differences such as the number of ribs and lumbar vertebrae, she proposed - with a fine disregard for the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature - that the Arab horse formed a separate species, Equus arabicus.  Attractive as this idea is, it will not do.  Despite differences in conformation, all horse breeds, however ancient, belong to the species Equus caballus; any genetic variations are so minute that they cannot be separated into different species, or even sub-species. 

            Lady Wentworth's ideas were also coloured by her dismissal of the processes of evolution (for her spirited discussion of this, see The Authentic Arabian Horse and The World's Best Horse.  Unfortunately for her hypothesis regarding the origins of the Arab horse, her anti-evolution arguments simply do not stand up to critical examination.  She made the classic error of confusing evolution itself with theories about the workings of natural selection. She also made the (understandable) breeder's mistake of comparing evolutionary timescales with those necessary for artificial selection; and some of her statements about the fossil records are wildly inaccurate.

              However, this does not mean we should disregard Lady Wentworth's arguments regarding the historical development of the Arab horse.  As we shall see, these have at least as sound a basis as any arguments to the contrary.  They are based on bedawin tribal traditions that have no connection with the Islamic legends usually cited today, but stretch far back beyond the dawn of Islam, or even of Christianity.

            The Greek historian and geographer Strabo's assertion that in the 1st century B.C. there were no horses in the Arabian peninsula is usually accepted as evidence that the Arab horse per se did not exist before the Christian era.  But Strabo never visited the peninsula, and relied largely for his information on reports from merchants who travelled to the various sea ports along the Red Sea and Gulf coasts, trading mainly with Arabia Felix (Yemen).  Even taking into account the prejudice of educated Europeans against oral tradition, it is difficult to see why the evidence of bedawin tribal tradition should be discarded in favour of second or even third hand evidence from people who in some cases may have had only the sketchiest idea of the interior and its people.

            Bedawin tradition has often been dismissed because of the supposed unreliability of oral history.  But the fact that something is written down does not of itself guarantee accuracy; as any historian knows, even facts that can be readily checked are frequently given inaccurately in written histories, most often through carelessness, sometimes because of deliberate falsification.  Oral traditions, on the other hand, are often maintained with scrupulous attention to detail in the telling, lest something valuable be lost: this is particularly so with nomad tribes, who more than most need such continuity.  Certainly oral traditions can be misleading, as Ranulph Fiennes discovered when he searched for the lost city of Ubar in the deserts of Oman; but that does not render them all invalid.  T.E. Lawrence was convinced that such traditions always contained a kernel of truth.  Bedawin oral tradition may therefore be legitimately regarded as being at least as accurate a historical record as anything written down by scribes.

            Another reason why this tradition was dismissed until recently was  because, it was said, wild horses could never have survived in the desert regions of the interior. But the bedawin pre-Islamic tradition regarding this was very strong.  Lady Anne Blunt records a conversation with her stud manager at Sheykh Obeyd, a bedawin of the Muteyr tribe: '....the other day in talking over Nejd, he [Mutlak] said "but it was not like what it is now, it had rains in plenty, and rivers of running water - long ago - that was not at the age of Suleyman (Solomon) about whom talk the Turks but in that of the primitive ancient people. There were giraffes in the Hamad in those days." '

            We now know from the evidence of geological surveys and satellite pictures that there were indeed "rains in plenty and rivers of running water" in central Arabia; and the remains of a type of giraffe have been found in that area.  Moreover, recent excavations have revealed that at least two species of wild horse died out in the Arabian peninsula about 10,000 years ago; so it is entirely possible that the primitive ancestors of the bedu did in fact capture and domesticate wild horses.  During the last decade extensive studies have been made of ancient rock drawings and paintings all over the peninsula, many of which include figures of horses, and which appear to date to a period well before the Christian era.

            Lady Anne Blunt - whose exhaustive researches form the kernel of her daughter Lady Wentworth's book, The Authentic Arabian Horse - was convinced of the truth of bedawin traditions regarding the capture and taming of wild horses, from which the modern Arab horse descended.  She records in her journal her excitement on discovering a place in Arabia called Coa - ' - why it should not be the Coa of Solomon there seems no reason, as it is in the most horse breeding part of Arabia.'  She is referring of course to the passage in the Bible (Kings I, ch.10, v.28 ) which tells how King Solomon traded in horses, buying them from a place called Coa (according to the Vulgate; it is not mentioned in the King James authorised version).  This place-name is usually rendered in modern translations as Cilicia (modern south-east Turkey), since Coa, Kue or Quwe was an earlier name of that province, in Roman times renowned for the excellence of its horses.  However there is a problem here.  The same biblical passage records that Solomon sold horses to the kings of the Hittites.  But Kue (then called Kizzuwatna) was in the heart of the Hittite empire; why would Solomon buy horses from a Hittite province in order to sell them to the Hittite kings, who could presumably have sent for them any time they wanted?  Unfortunately, the whole passage is so confused in the original that it would be unwise to place too much reliance on it.  But it does seem reasonable that Kue could just as easily be the Coa (or Quwe) of Arabia - situated in the area occupied by some of the greatest horse breeding tribes.

            In any case, it has frequently been argued that the Old Testament is not history, but simply a collection of allegorical tales.  But how true is this?  The usual reply is that, until the rise of the Assyrian empire, there is simply no corroborating evidence from other cultures to confirm the existence of figures such as King Solomon; no evidence from Egyptian contemporary records that the Hebrew sojourn in Egypt, and the Exodus, ever occurred.  However this is only so if we accept the conventional Egyptian chronology, which has been used as the guide for the general chronology of the ancient Near and Middle Eastern world.  The accuracy of this chronology (long in doubt) has been challenged numerous times, most notoriously by the maverick polymath Immanuel Velikovsky.    More recent - and persuasive, albeit still very controversial - is David Rohl's scholarly realignment (in his book, A Test of Time, Century, 1995) of Hebrew and Egyptian chronology, and his identification of such Biblical figures as Joseph, David and Solomon in contemporary records.  Rohl's revised chronology differs from Velikovsky's in many respects, but like Velikovsky he assigns the Exodus not to the reign of the great pharaoh Ramesses II, but to that of a little-known 13th dynasty pharaoh, Dudimose - which according to Rohl's revised chronology places the Exodus in the mid 15th century BC (this puts Ramesses II in the second half of the 10th century).

            This is relevant because it helps us to identify the Hyksos, a people of obscure origin who invaded Egypt during the 13th Dynasty, ruling in the Nile delta for over 100 years, and who are generally credited with introducing the horse to Egypt.  Rohl (like Velikovsky) believes that they were none other than the Amalekites, a fierce tribe from the deserts of Arabia, whom the Hebrews encountered on their journey out of Egypt.

            The Hyksos - called by the Egyptians Amu - became known to history as the "shepherd-kings" through the writings of Manetho, an Egyptian annalist of about 300 B.C.  Later (European) scholars insisted that the term "shepherd-kings" was incorrect, because the Egyptian phrase hekau khasut (corrupted to "Hyksos") meant simply "princes of foreign countries".  But Velikovsky argued convincingly that the Hyksos were indeed "shepherd-kings", mentioned in Psalms 78:49 among the plagues of Egypt.  A linguist among many other things, he maintained that the phrase which refers to the sending of "evil angels" makes no theological or grammatical sense until one realises that it is an error in copying: with grammar corrected, the phrase reads "invasion of king-shepherds".  His and Rohl's identification of the Hyksos with the Amalekites ties in with medieval Arabian historical accounts of the Amalekites' conquest of Egypt and Syria.

            In 1994  excavations made by Ali Hassan at Tell el Kebir uncovered equid remains, which he dated to the 13th dynasty.  Rohl argues from this that horses were already well established in Egypt by the mid 15th century BC.  But this does not mean that it was not the Hyksos who introduced horses, since they did not invade all at once, but established settlements of varying sizes over a number of generations.  By the time the Hyksos  arrived in force, they already had a considerable foothold in Egypt.

            Of course none of this proves either that the Hyksos did introduce horses to Egypt, or that, even if they did, these were Arab horses.  But certainly they were a horse oriented people, as is attested by descriptions of them from the lands which they invaded. If the Hyksos were indeed the Amalekites, this is surely compelling evidence that the horse was an important part of ancient bedawin life.

            What do we have, then, to establish the ancient status of the horse in Arabia?  We have bedawin oral tradition; we have fossil evidence of wild horses; there are rock drawings, and finally the possibility that it was invading Arabian tribes who introduced the horse into Egypt. 

            None of these is sufficient on its own; but taken together they do offer a considerable amount of evidence to support the contention that the original home of the Arab horse was indeed the Arabian peninsula itself, and that it derived from the wild horses found there.  We shall probably never know for certain, but then we know far less about the ancient world than archaeologists would have us believe.  There are many gaps in the records; absence of evidence is not, therefore, necessarily evidence of absence.  Against all probability Ranulph Fiennes found in the deserts of Oman what may well be the lost city of Ubar; who knows what future excavations in Arabia may reveal?

Origins of the Arabian Horse II: Professor Ridgeway and Lady Wentworth

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