Riders to the fore of aristocracy

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Horsemen mount up for history

Historian Abbés Zouache delivered the final lecture of the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah’s 24th cultural season on the topic of ‘Furusiyya: Birth and spread of an aristocratic culture in the medieval Middle East’, at the Yarmouk Cultural Centre on Monday evening.

Abbés Zouache is a specialist in the history of the medieval Middle East, as well as in Arabic codicology. A permanent Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), he is the current Director of the French Center for Archaeology and Social Sciences, a regional research centre based in Kuwait conducting research in the Arabian Peninsula as a whole.

Bader Al Baijan, Head of the DAI Steering Committee in introducing the speaker stated, “Welcome to the final lecture of the 24th cultural season of the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah. As the Holy Month of Ramadan approaches and the Christian Holy Season has been completed, the DAI sends its congratulations and good wishes to all of you. Every year, I look forward to Ramadan and we hope that this month will bring you many blessings.” He added that several decades ago, a late German scholar had introduced the audience of DAI to the concept of Furusiyya, and this lecture will return to this theme.

In his illuminating lecture, Zouache shared that while Furusiyya is often associated with equestrian arts, it was linked with everything related to warfare, from hunting to mounted martial games and recipes for Greek fire, as it is shown by the great number of preserved Furusiyya treatise. The treatises show that the Furusiyya was a culture, born in the early Middle Ages with the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate, and inspired by Arab, Greek, Sassanid and Central Asiatic traditions. In his talk, he presented these manuscripts to describe a culture that spread all over the medieval Middle East, that was gradually disseminated in various forms, especially in the Arabian Peninsula.

Zouache stated while everyone has his own idea of what the concept of Furusiyya entails, it came as quite a surprise to him, as a scholar, when he decided to work on this topic. He deems it to be a relatively neglected topic of research for a very long time. He shared that the topic began to only attract more researchers after the Second World War such as David Alexander and Shihab al-Sarraf and a beautiful exhibition was dedicated on ‘L’art des chevaliers en pays d’islam — Collection de la Furusiyya art foundation,’ at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. 

Despite these works, Zouache points out, Furusiyya had not been studied as a historical or cultural phenomenon because many major texts concerning it had not been published. This, he shared, explains why it is still often seen as an equestrian art which is to some extent true but in the course of his lecture, showed how it was a much broader phenomenon which belonged to the art of war. 

“In my opinion, Furusiyya was a complex phenomenon whose control and implications were huge in the Middle Ages as it became a defining element of culture of the military aristocracies that ruled the Middle East from the 8th Century to the early 16th Century”, he stated.  

He noted that it was impossible for him to describe all aspects of Furusiyya, in particular its artistic one. Therefore, he confined his talk to tracing the rise and spread of Furusiyya, relying on unpublished works in chronological progression. 

First, he highlighted a few political and military landmarks  to note the importance of the increasing orientalisation of the Islamic caliphate at the end of the Umayyad dynasty and mainly after the foundation of the Abbasid empire in the 1750. This orientalisation was mainly caused by the recruitment of new servants of the regime, civilians who had Persian culture but who also came from more distant central Asian limits. 

“If we consider that the army had been reformed by the Abbasid caliphs from the late 8th Century onwards, the army was no longer organized on tribal basis. A little later on, under the influence of central Asian practices, the army integrated many military slaves. This kind of army spread throughout the Islamic east”, he informed.

He added that, at the same time, the caliphate in Baghdad broke into principalities, new dynasties were established by free born warriors or by former military slaves. These dynasties set up new political systems and over the centuries, the militarization process increased, and occurred at all levels of the Islamic society.  “It is not easy to trace the birth of Furusiyya as Arabic lexicographers provide little details while defining the term. They only allow us to assert that it was derived from the root for ‘horse’ and associated Furusiyya for the knowledge and expertise related to horses.”

Furusiyya, in the larger sense, began to be referred to the concept of equitation in European languages and some scholars soon linked horse-riding to ideas of chivalry. He pointed out the rarity that Arab scholars referred to a pre-Islamic chivalric spirit because the word Furusiyya was not used in older sources. “To my knowledge, when they spoke about bravery, courage, generosity, strength, honor, and other virtues of the Arab, pre-Islamic poets did not refer to Furusiyya.”  Ethical and chivalrous virtues for Furusiyya later were expressed by other words, he revealed.

“One can speak of a pre-Islamic and early-Islamic Furusiyya and from the 9th Century however, Arab authors linked it to the imaginary and to the values and practices of the legendary Arab fawaris. In reality, Furusiyya was born more than a century before. What appears clearly is that the word Furusiyya became common in Arabic from the 8th Century”, he said.  

When the Abbasid orientalised the caliphate and reorganized the army, the word Furusiyya was used to refer to the skills and the qualities of the fursan, fawaris meaning alternatively rider, horseman or knight and member of a social elite.  In this text, fursan, referred to the skilled men, using up to date horseback-riding and all the knowledge related to horse breeding and horse caring. It seems to refer to men for whom the horse was an animated and living tool. 

In related sources, Zouache notes, few references can be found that refer to the concept of Furusiyya as an aristocratic culture in Abbasid Iraq influenced by the Sassanid and Khorasani nobility. 

He shared that Caliph al Mahdi was educated from birth according to the Furusiyya principles. Al-Mahdi was also well known as an expert archer and a skilled hunter. He wasn’t the only one involved in hunting. Almost all Abbasid caliphs used to hunt in one form or another. As it has been outlined by some scholars, Furusiyya consisted in military, playful and prestigious practices which became according to al-Gahiz in the 9th Century as very important because, ‘None of the Abbasids get power without having fully mastered Furusiyya arts.’

These arts were especially practiced in maidans built by the Abbasids, therefore it is more likely that the orientalisation of the caliphate led the Abbasid family and their close circle, mainly their military relatives to adopt such practices of the Sassanian and Central Asian military aristocracy and to initiate their children to the skillful and entertaining side of horse-riding, the wielding of arms and close-combat techniques, foot or horse archery. Teaching was not limited to oral transmission and substantial literature from the Sassanid times was devoted to the art of war.

Some scholars believed that Furusiyya was a state institution and preceded military Fursiyya which originated within the Abbasid army new focus on military training. “This option, according to me, is quite interesting because it provides a direct link to some of the dimensions of Furusiyya. However we have to bear in mind that this is a reconstruction hypothesis as none of these expressions are used in medieval texts”, Zouache stated.  

He pointed out that a great number of treatises dedicated to Furusiyya were written between the second half of the 8th Century and the 10th Century. They were written for the Caliphs or their relatives, some of them were general themed and were devoted to all aspects of war.  Other texts were more specialized and dedicated to only one of these arts. He presented examples of the same such as the work of Ibn Ahi Hizam, who became an army commander of the Abbasids and was born in Baghdad at the beginning of the 8th Century, wrote the oldest surviving treaty on military training and the care of horses: kitab al-furusiyya wa-I-baytara. 

“These treatises and to a larger extent Furusiyya, spread in the Middle East at a time when the Abbasid dynasty had fragmented into several governorships. The military elites played a major role in this spread but we can’t understate the importance of civilians,” he stated. The social and political actors at court but also members of the civilian and religious elite shared the practice that Frusiyya purported and the values that it embodied and defended. 

Another factor to consider, he noted, is their religious tonality which grew over centuries. These texts were written for Muslims and included developments about jihad. Famous religious scholars would express great patience for Furusiyya arts, in particular for archery. 

Furusiyya spread in the whole Middle East and Egypt in particular. In the 11th Century, sources suggest that Furusiyya fell into disuse probably owing to disruptions of the coast by the Turkish invasions. Very few Furusiyya treatises were written but the culture did not disappear entirely. From the middle of the 12th Century, new treatises were written in the near east, especially in Syria and Egypt and these military treatises often quoted Abbasid texts as well as contained original information. 

From the end of the 12th Century, Furusiyya saw a revival. The culture flourished under the Mamluks who could find in Furusiyya the appropriate values that allowed them to be part of a long history that went back to the Abbasid caliphs. While the texts give little information about the Ayyubid Furusiyya although it was certainly a key element of the representations of sultans and emirs. Moreover, Muslim historians sometimes emphasized that the areas covered in Furusiyya were essential for the education of the sons. They also described great hunting parties and the polo game is often reported for the Ayyubid court. The Ayyubids also built maidans for horse exercises and entertainment and it is well known that Saladin al Ayyubi is reported to have ordered his own Mamluk to build a maidan and pavilion in Cairo in the al husseiniya quarter. His successors continued this, as stated by other sources. 

It was after the Ayyubids, that the Mamluks highlighted Furusiyya as never before and it became a defining part of their identity. Mamluk sultans and emirs sustained and stimulated the writing of Furusiyya treatises. Most Mamluk treatises followed the Abbasid pattern, they were general or specialized, their authors usually used and sometimes quotes Abbasid authors but Mamluk treatises differed in several ways as shown by their organization and vocabulary used. “It seems that some texts may have been written for ordinary mamluks. However, most of them have been written at the request of a sultan or emir”, Zouache shared.  

From the 14th Century, the Mamluk aristocracy commissioned some Turkish translations or compilation of Arabic treatises. Another feature of the Mamluk period is that they wrote a great number treatises. As guardians of the Sunni orthodoxy, the Mamluks had to become the armed wing of Islam. So their training must first be religious. It was a unique communication tool for the Mamluk sultans and aristocracy especially in Egypt. “Several sources allow us to know the Mamluk training in the barracks of the citadel of Cairo. The maidans were focal points for military exercises or for playing different sports such as polo, qabaq or birgas. These exercises and games became a regular part of Mamluk public representation”, he stated.

The maidan was not only an area dedicated to military exercises and games, but it became an essential urban space in Cairo and a place of privilege for the Mamluk court life. Different public manifestations were organized on the maidans and the towns. Regarding military riding and performances, military men were the only actors. Civilians couldn’t take part in these performances. However, Zouache believes, that even though Mamluks, who saw themselves as the only holders of Furusiyya, never succeeded in completely forbidding horse riding or the Furusiyya arts to the civilians.

Story by Cinatra Alvares
Arab Times Staff

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