Jul 25, Anne rated it it was amazing. I first read this book back in my teens when my interest in the Arabian horse began. It is an excellent history of the breed, especially showing many of the progenitors of the breed.
They Drink the Wind | Science | Smithsonian
Jun 30, Lisa James rated it it was amazing Shelves: Jul 22, Lynden Rodriguez rated it it was amazing Shelves: Although I don't think this book was intended for children, it still can fit the bill. It is full of adventure. Carl Raswan went in search of the perfect horse, and this is his story. Apr 27, Andy rated it it was amazing Shelves: I need to read this. My grandfather stayed with the author and his family for sometime in the s. View all 3 comments.
Jul 23, Jan Priddy rated it really liked it Recommends it for: As a child and even now I was passionate about horses. I would have loved this book when I was nine or ten or fourteen or twenty. Other than the battle scene, a dead horse, and an amputation, it seems more like a YA book. Details are neglected, but only sexually linked details, it seemed to me. A vulture hangs around a foaling mare and this was likely in hope of eating the afterbirth, but this is not in the text.
- Elections 2012: Abstention ou complicité ? (French Edition).
- Join Kobo & start eReading today.
- See a Problem?.
- Cancer: Diagnosis and Conventional Treatments (Cancer: the Complete Recovery Guide Series Book 2).
A stallion goes AWL after a mare in heat, but, again, this is never stated in s As a child and even now I was passionate about horses. A stallion goes AWL after a mare in heat, but, again, this is never stated in so many words or even really suggested. As a result, I have mixed feelings about this memoir. The narrative tension depends largely on a revelation that I saw coming at the beginning, and because of this, perhaps, the photos are only vaguely captioned. Grass was scarce, and hay-making was first unknown and later seen as an activity for weaklings, so the horses were fed on dates, barley, and milk — sheep's milk when it was in season, camel's milk when it was not.
A horse destined to be a war mare was fed almost exclusively on milk, to aid in muscle development.
See a Problem?
Arabian horses naturally have little fear of people, but a filly would be handled from birth and cared for by the women of the tribe. Young horses cannot be ridden, because their spines are still too fragile to carry a rider's weight — but among Bedouins, it was common to place a child on the filly's back at 18 months, so that both the horse and the child would learn the art of riding together.
The horse was then returned to pasture until it was two years old, when it was accustomed to the saddle and bridle , and at three years, it could carry an adult. The horse's natural strength, endurance, and bravery helped it run for days across the desert, then stand steady against archers and spears, only to turn and carry its rider and his loot back to their far-off tent, but there was still plenty for it to learn before it could become one of A war horse must respond well to signals given purely through the rider's weight distribution and legs, because his hands were often occupied with weapons — and because his bridle had no throat-latch, so that it pulled off easily if an enemy grabbed it, preventing capture.
Until the reins were picked up, they stood absolutely still, whether their rider was on or off — or even out of sight. Other exercises included galloping from a standstill and stopping in an instant from a full gallop, wheeling when the rider fired a gun, jumping, and sprinting. A behaviour perhaps more difficult to teach a mare than a stallion was rearing on the hind legs and kicking and biting at an opponent, but this was vital not only in battle, but to make stolen camels run back toward the raiding party's camp.
Many of these and a few added tricks were developed further for the mounted displays and tournaments known as the fantasia 14 , with many manoeuvres similar to those performed by the Lippizaners at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.
A horse trained for fantasia could kneel, walk on its hind legs, and leap in the air with all four feet at once while its rider threw his weapon in the air and caught it again with seeming ease. While stallions were bought and sold, and traded with neighbouring tribes, few mares changed hands unless they were captured in battle or given as exceedingly generous gifts. Unless, of course, they failed at their training, or worse yet, were the wrong colour The cowboy saying may go 'a good horse is any colour', but among Arabs, a horse's colour and markings were important indicators of its later performance , influenced by superstition, tradition, and religion.
Much like the large jibbah , which was said to benefit the horse not through mere increased sinus capacity but because it held the blessings of Allah, specific colours and markings were selectively bred for. Sometimes, horses were referred to not by the colour of their coats, but by the colours they ought to have based on their characteristics, which makes tracing family trees somewhat confusing! The Arabs preferred their horses dark, and in one of the four main colours they distinguished: Mohammed himself is quoted as saying that 'when Arabian horses gather and run together, the chestnut will be the leader', and advises that when choosing a new horse, 'the best is the attentive, black, five-year-old; the next best is the five-year-old with three stockings and no white on the off forefoot.
If it is not black, dark brown will do. The horse colours not now found in purebreds were likely lost during the long centuries of selective breeding. A pied horse was merely considered laughable as he was 'the brother of the cow'. Light chestnuts or palominos, a colour called Zfar el Jehudi the 'yellow of the Jew' 15 were known as 'Ghagari', meaning 'Gypsies'. Duns were described as 'green' or 'wolf-coloured'.
Both were said to bring ill luck to their riders. A grey roan was called a 'sea of blood', and it was said that his rider would never overtake another, but would inevitably be defeated in battle and taken prisoner. Chestnuts were valued for their alleged speed, and, because they were the Prophet's favourite, were desirable to those wishing to prove themselves good Moslems.
However, it was the bay that was considered 'the pearl of all horses', being the hardiest and calmest. In Remarks on Horsemanship , Emir Abd-el-Kader says that 'if a man tells you a horse jumped down a precipice without injury, then ask if he was a bay, and if they answer yes - believe him'.
Black horses, known to the Arabs as el Dum , were considered mounts worthy of a king or prince and excellent for show - except that they had a bad temper, especially if they were 'without moon and stars', that is, with no white hairs on them. The Bedouins claimed that black horses feared stony ground, and warned 'do not ride a black horse to war, for when the sun shines hot and water is short he will not be able to endure and will leave his rider in the power of the enemy'.
A white 16 horse was also considered fit for a prince, and should be 'like a silk flag without bare patches, and with a black ring about his eye'. However, it, too, suffers from the heat, and must not be ridden into battle, because it could be seen from afar and would warn the enemy of your approach. Grey horses were popular especially if they were 'dappled dark grey like the shade of the wild pigeon - like the stones of the river', with a lighter grey head. Most valued as a battle mare, however, was the 'bloody-shouldered' horse. This was a special kind of flea-bitten 17 grey with lots of colour on the shoulders, so it looked like it had been sprayed with blood.
According to Bedouin legend, a warrior once rode his grey mare into battle, and was mortally wounded. She carried him back on a three-day journey to his family's tent, and when his body was lifted from her saddle, her withers were found to be stained red with his blood. The stain did not fade, and her next foal was also born with red-sprinkled shoulders.
Arabian Horses - Drinkers of the Wind
Horses bearing this mark were considered especially loyal to their masters. As the above story illustrates, it wasn't just the overall colour of the horse that determined its value — as so often, the devil is in the detail, and every little speck and mark was closely scrutinised before a horse was chosen.
Whether white stockings on the legs were a good or a bad omen depended on their number and location. Two in the back were considered lucky, especially if accompanied by one white foreleg, as were one hind and one fore on opposite sides. Two stockings only on the forelegs were very bad, while four stockings were worst of all. Of the markings on a horse's face, a star was considered the most lucky, followed by a stripe or blaze that reached down to the lip, which meant his master would always have milk.
A bald-faced horse — one with a wide white mark on its forehead, extending over the eyes — was bad luck; if the horse also had four white feet, it was said to carry its own shroud with it. Riding a horse with a white mark on its body before the saddle was considered a foolish thing to do, for it would invariably lead to death in battle. The very worst omen, however, was 'a horse with a white stripe that did not reach his lip, along with a white off-fore. Whoever saw him prayed to Allah to be spared from the evil that accompanied such a horse. He was like an hour's poison, that slew in sixty minutes.
But even the way the hair grew on the horse's body was significant. As anyone who's ever groomed a horse knows, the hair doesn't always lie flat. In some spots, like the point where the hips join the flanks, it's a geometrical impossibility , at others, it grows in a little whorl circular pattern for no apparent reason. Traditionally, Arabian horses have 40 different points where they might have whorls, of which twelve are significant. For example, a whorl under the mane, on the side of the neck is called 'the finger of the Prophet' and means that the master will die safe in his own bed, and as a good Moslem.
Others had a negative impact on the perceived value of the horse; while a whorl on the rump beside the tail brought 'trouble, misery and famine', the 'whorl of theft', found on the fetlocks 18 , meant that 'day and night the horse says: Grant that I may be stolen or my master die". But throughout history, Arabian horses were usually gifts fit for a king.
In the 10th Century BC, King Solomon is said to have received a purebred mare of the Arabian type from the Queen of Sheeba, and gifted another, the stallion Zad el-Raheb , 'Gift to the Rider', to a Bedouin tribe — an extraordinary stallion that could outrun any zebra, gazelle, or ostrich, so his rider would never return from the hunt hungry.
But it was not until the rise of Islam in the 7th Century, and the newly-minted Moslems' use of the horse as a tool of conquest and war that the Arabian really came into its own. Mounted on these fast, agile, and hardy animals, the Arab warriors exploded out of the desert and had soon conquered much of the known world, including the Middle East and North Africa, sweeping through the Mediterranean countries to Spain and going east as far as China.
When the European Crusaders started their own invasion of the Orient late in the 11th Century, they returned not only with such exciting things as knowledge of medicine and astronomy, the concept of the zero , and pockets , but also brought with them the fine horses of their enemy, so different from their own heavy chargers.
Poland began building its Arabian breeding stocks through more peaceful means, acquiring them on the Amber Road, a trade route that lead from the Baltic through Europe and the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and Northern Africa — though some the Polish and Hungarian stock was also captured in war, when their combined armies defeated the invading Ottomans at Vienna in At first, these small, light horses were likely only used as coursers, but with the invention of gunpowder and firearms in the 16th Century, the nature and purpose of cavalry changed fundamentally.
The large, stocky horses of Europe were relegated to the cart and the plough, and smaller, faster horses were sought for use as military mounts. Of course, there weren't enough of the coveted Arabians to go around, but what better way to improve your native horses than to cross them with an Arab stallion? Exceptionally fine horses were sent from the Ottoman Empire to European rulers as part of the exchange of gifts that helped to cement diplomatic ties.
Three of these — the Byerley Turk imported , the Darley Arabian , and the Godolphin Arabian — formed the foundation of a new breed when they were crossed with English horses to create the Thoroughbred. At Al-Marah, located in the desert of Tucson, Arizona, halfway around the globe from the sands of Arabia, author Jennifer Lee Carrell learns in a single afternoon what makes Arabians different from all other horses: Subscribe or Give a Gift.
Humans Reached the Roof of the World 40, Years. Learning to Speak Latino. Science Age of Humans. A New Treatment for Blindness. America's Most Revolutionary Artist. At the Smithsonian Visit. Looking at Artists Looking at Themselves.