Furusiyya

Furūsiyya (فروسية; also transliterated as furūsīyah) is the historical Arabic term for equestrian martial exercise. Furūsiyya “Knighthood” is a martial tradition dating back to Pre-Islamic Arabia The term is a derivation of faras (فرس) "horse", and in Modern Standard Arabic means "equestrianism" in general. The term for "horseman" or "cavalier" ("knight") is fāris (فارس), which is also the origin of the Spanish rank of alférez. The Perso-Arabic term for "Furūsiyya literature" is faras-nāma or asb-nāma. Faras-nāma is also described as a small encyclopedia about horses. 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 ἱππιατρός. 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"). 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. 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. By this time, the discipline of furusiyya becomes increasingly detached from its origins in Byzantine veterinary medicine and more focussed on military arts.