Furusiyya

Late Mamluk-era manuscript on training with the lance (The David Collection Inv. nr. 19/2001, c. 1500).

Illustration from a late Ottoman copy of Tuhfat ül-farisin fi ahval-i huyul il-mucahidin, a Turkish version of a furusiyya treatise, by Ahmed 'Ata Tayyarzade (written 1854–55).

Furusiyya literature, the Arabic literary tradition of veterinary medicine (hippiatry) and horsemanship, much like in the case of human medicine, was adopted wholesale from Byzantine Greek sources in the 9th to 10th centuries. In the case of furusiyya, the immediate source is the Byzantine compilation on veterinary medicine known as Hippiatrica (5th or 6th century); the very word for "horse doctor" in Arabic, bayṭar, is a loan of Greek ἱππιατρός hippiatros.[3]

The first known such treatise in Arabic is due to Ibn Akhī Ḥizām (ابن أخي حزام‎), an Abbasid-era commander and stable master to caliph Al-Muʿtadid (r. 892–902), author of Kitāb al-Furūsiyya wa 'l-Bayṭara ("Book of Horsemanship and Hippiatry").[4] Ibn al-Nadim in the late 10th century records the availability in Baghdad of several treatises on horses and veterinary medicine attributed to Greek authors.[5]

The discipline reaches its peak in Mamluk Egypt during the 14th century. In a narrow sense of the term, furūsiyya literature comprises works by professional military writers with a Mamluk background or close ties to the Mamluk establishment. These treatises often quote pre-Mamluk works on military strategy. Some of the works were versified for didactic purposes. The best known versified treatise is the one by Taybugha al-Baklamishi al-Yunani ("the Greek"), who in c. 1368 wrote the poem al-tullab fi ma'rifat ramy al-nushshab.[6] By this time, the discipline of furusiyya becomes increasingly detached from its origins in Byzantine veterinary medicine and more focussed on military arts.

The three basic categories of furūsiyya are horsemanship (including veterinary aspects of proper care for the horse, the proper riding techniques), archery, and charging with the lance. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya adds swordsmanship as a fourth discipline in his treatise Al-Furūsiyya ( 1350).[7]

Persian faras-nāma which can be dated with confidence are extant only from about the mid-14th century, but the tradition survives longer in Persia, throughout the Safavid era. One treatise by ʿAbd-Allāh Ṣafī, known as the Bahmanī faras-nāma (written in 1407/8) is said to preserve a chapter from an otherwise lost 12th-century (Ghaznavid-era) text.[2] There is a candidate for another treatise of this age, extant in a single manuscript: the treatise attributed to one Moḥammad b. Moḥammad b. Zangī, also known as Qayyem Nehāvandī, has been tentatively dated as originating in the 12th century.[2] Some of the Persian treatises are translations from the Arabic. One short work, attributed to Aristotle, is a Persian translation from the Arabic.[8] There are supposedly also treatises translated into Persian from Hindustani or Sanskrit. These include the Faras-nāma-ye hāšemī by Zayn-al-ʿĀbedīn Ḥosaynī Hašemī (written 1520), and the Toḥfat al-ṣadr by Ṣadr-al-Dīn Moḥammad Khan b. Zebardast Khan (written 1722/3).[2] Texts thought to have been originally written in Persian include the Asb-nāma by Moḥammad b. Moḥammad Wāseʿī (written 1365/6; Tehran, Ketāb-ḵāna-ye Malek MS no. 5754). A partial listing of known Persian faras-nāma literature was published by Gordfarāmarzī (1987).[9]

The following is a list of known Furusiyyah treatises (after al-Sarraf 2004, al-Nashīrī 2007).[10]

Some of the early treatises (9th to 10th centuries) are not extant and only known from references by later authors: Al-Asma'i, Kitāb al-khayl (خيل "horse"), Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 894 / AH 281) Al-sabq wa al-ramī, Al-Ṭabarānī (d. 971 / AH 360) Faḍl al-ramī, Al-Qarrāb (d. 1038 / AH 429), Faḍā'il al-ramī.

Faris, by January Suchodolski (1836).

The term furūsiyya, much like its parallel chivalry in the West, also appears to have developed a wider meaning of "martial ethos". Arabic furusiyya and European chivalry has both influenced each other as a means of a warrior code for the knights of both cultures.[18][19]

The term fāris (فارس) for "horseman" consequently adopted qualities comparable to the Western knight or chevalier ("cavalier"). This could include free men (such as Usama ibn Munqidh), or unfree professional warriors, like ghulams and mamluks). The Mamluk-era soldier was trained in the use of various weapons such as the sword, spear, lance, javelin, club, bow and arrows and tabarzin or axe (hence Mamluk bodyguards known as tabardariyya), as well as wrestling.[20]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Furusiyya.

• Hippiatrica
• Shalihotra Samhita
• Bem cavalgar
• History of veterinary medicine
• Horses in the Middle Ages
• Horses in warfare
• Aswaran
• Futuwwa

• Ayalon, David (1961). Notes on the Furusiyya Exercises and Games in the Mamluk Sultanate, Scripta Hierosolymitana, 9
• Bashir, Mohamed (2008). The arts of the Muslim knight; the Furusiyya Art Foundation collection. Skira. ISBN 978-88-7624-877-1
• Haarmann, Ulrich (1998), "The late triumph of the Persian bow: critical voices on the Mamluk monopoly on weaponry", The Mamluks in Egyptian politics and society, Cambridge University Press, pp. 174–187, ISBN 978-0-521-59115-7
• Nicolle, David (1999). Arms & Armour of the Crusading Era 1050–1350, Islam, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Greenhill Books. ISBN 978-1-85367-369-6
• al-Sarraf, Shibab (2004), "Mamluk Furūsīyah Literature and Its Antecedents" (PDF), Mamlūk Studies Review, 8 (1): 141–201, ISSN 1086-170X
• Housni Alkhateeb Shehada, Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam (2012).
• Waterson, James (2007). The Knights of Islam: The Wars of the Mamluks. Greenhill Books. ISBN 978-1-85367-734-2

Look up فروسية in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Mamluk Bibliography Online
• Qatar Digital Library