Knights of the
Wind The Ancient Art Of Arabian Horsemanship Lives Again Story and Photos by Guy A. Sibilla
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Arabian Horse Times • February 2008
Knights of the
Wind The Ancient Art Of Arabian Horsemanship Lives Again Story and Photos by Guy A. Sibilla
“They are the daughters of the wind,” says Said Huneidi as he relates the Bedouin creation myth of the Arabian horse. He removes his glasses and leans forward to emphasize a point. “The legend is that a fierce wind came from the south storming across the land and from this heat and swirling sand, the Arabian horse was born.” He pauses for a moment. “Because of this birth they are able to run faster than the wind itself.” Arabian Horse Times • February 2008
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Knights Of The Wind Every aspect of Said’s life is related to his Arabian horses. His home is styled after a Mamluk desert palace in the Jordan Sahara known as Q’asr Amra. It is also home to the Royal Institute of Arabian Horsemanship. King Abdullah, Jordan’s reigning monarch, recognized the institute founded by Said. The school’s mission is to teach those cavalry skills that allowed the Mamluks (13th– 16th c.), to rise from a slave class to rule an empire that extended over much of the Arab world. The Mamluk dynasty was built upon a military force whose cornerstone was the Arabian horse. Their style of combat cavalry was known as furrisiya. Said is a romantic born in a time when economics and global politics overshadow the ancient Arabian ideals of honor, discipline, and loyalty. He is passionate about breathing life back into those lost traditions. The furrisiya style of combat developed out of the conflict between the Roman and Persian empires. The use of the sword (Roman), the lance (Indian) and the bow and arrow (Persian) were refined by the Mamluks during their rule over Egypt and the region that now embraces, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. Furrisiya reflects to some extent the training and discipline of the Samurai of ancient Japan. Like the warriors of the Orient, these Arabian cavalry soldiers were fiercely devoted to their leaders, highly educated in multi-disciplines, and revered for their devotion as defenders of their empire. All of this was built upon the nearly mystical relationship between the warriors and their Arabian mounts. Said owns about a dozen and a half horses. He confesses he is still searching for that special one, although he is particularly fond of a mare from Andalusia. The Spanish lines tend to be hot-blooded. “I need a horse that has both fire and ice,” he explains. “My horse needs to know that when we gallop, we gallop at top speed and when I signal to stop, immediately we must stop! In combat, any hesitation in either direction could mean the death of the rider.” His artwork
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Knights Of The Wind
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Knights Of The Wind at his home reflects his abiding belief in the pivotal role an exceptional horse can play on a battlefield. In the main hallway there is an enormous rendering (8’ by 12’) of Delacroix’s “Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha.” He motions for me to follow him over to the painting as if he is a docent at the Musee du Petit-Palais in Paris: “In this painting, Delacroix has captured what we call ‘the moment of equality,’ where the only outcome in the next instant will be the death of one rider or the other.” We gaze in silence while studying the intensity on the faces of the riders and their mounts engaged in a life and death struggle. “In the end, the balance for victory rested with the stronger Arabian,” explains Said, who is still focused on the drama frozen forever on canvas. For Said and much of the equestrian world, there is something that sets the Arabian breed apart from all of the others. However, Said is not looking for what he calls “the perfect Arabian form.” Although he recognizes the elegant balance in the shape of the Arabian, he wants more: “I want a working horse—one that knows what I am thinking and can execute a maneuver out of pure instinct.” The maneuvers he refers to are written in ancient Arabian texts. Said’s library reflects the breadth of his interests: military and cultural history, philosophy, art, religion, and poetry. He displays copies of actual texts written over half a millennium ago. “Only 120 of these manuals are left in existence,” he tells me as my eyes run over one of the pages written in the artistic lettering that is the Persian language. These texts are Said’s window into his proud Arabian past. He is so driven for historical authenticity in every aspect of furrisiya that Said has sought out and recruited the help of anthropologists. With the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old, he shows me page after page of handdrawn sketches of harnesses, clothing, and weapons that depict a historically accurate furrisiya warrior in full battle dress. At the Royal Institute of Arabian Horsemanship these are the emblems of membership. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to face such a fiercely talented and armed mounted adversary. Then Said disclosed that he had arranged for one of his colleagues, Abu Omar, to ride for me in full battle dress to demonstrate the majesty and power of a furrisiya warrior. Long ago, the men that served in the cavalry were not just savage fighters. If accepted into the
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Knights Of The Wind military to become a furrisiya warrior, the regimen of study included religion, logistics, engineering, as well as military tactics. The success of the Mamluk Dynasty is directly attributed to these highly educated, extremely motivated military leaders. On retirement, their skills often led them to civic careers in politics or law. The Arabian military prowess was depicted in the Hollywood epic film “Kingdom of Heaven.” Perhaps the most famous Arabian military leader, Salah El Den Al Ayoubi (Saladin), was schooled in this honored tradition. The Crusaders eventually
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Knights Of The Wind yielded the Holy Land in the face of Salah El Den’s army. To this day, he is so revered that droves of admirers (as well as tourists) visit his tomb, which is adjacent to the grand Ummayad Mosque within the walls of the old city in Damascus, Syria. The old texts that remain and the poetry of Arabian writers, such as Antar Ben Shadad, often describe the relationship between rider and horse as nothing short of mystical. Yet, the discipline that created this “oneness” between man and Arabian began to fade away in the 16th century and then disappeared altogether nearly 200 years ago. Said believes there are two primary reasons for this decline in furrisiya.
Arabian Horse Times • February 2008
First, the cavalry and military became two separate entities. Second, the armor makers, skilled in the craft of fashioning sword blades, all but vanished. As evidence of the rarity of that kind of workmanship, Said showed me a sword crafted with an elegantly and distinctively Persian curved blade and confessed it was made for him by a master in Japan. The Mamluks, whose dynasty stretched across three centuries, were the last Arabians to employ the tactics of warfare known as furrisiya. When their dynasty ended, so did centuries of instruction of a unique riding discipline. However, Said Huneidi’s Royal Institute is passionate in its commitment to breathing new life into this lost art.
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Knights Of The Wind He knows also that his effort may revive the magical relationship that once existed between the Arabian horse and its warrior-citizen rider. For Said, the cavalry was a discipline that took the elements of weaponry, an animal, riding skills, and the rider’s personal valor and melded them into a unified force. The Arabian was not just an extension of the rider but a part of a single, cohesive fighting element. It isn’t just the technical aspects of this lost art that drives Said, it is the philosophy of it. “The power of these warriors was created by the flow of energy up from the ground, through the horse, into the sword arm, out to the blade and then back down into the earth.” At the Royal Institute, riders learn the art of Arabian horsemanship. It is anything but a riding school. Although fashioning a polished furrisiya warrior out of an untrained man might have begun with education, clearly it ended with his riding skills. He was placed on a path of instruction with his horse that would last nine years. While instruction in the use of the lance and the sword was given to all, Said explained that in the eighth year of study, the recruits were given a bow and sleeve of five arrows. Without any instruction, they were told to ride at a full gallop and strike a stationary target. If they missed two of the five arrows, they would be released from the cavalry to become an ordinary soldier. “Why the bow?” Said asked rhetorically. “Handling the bow comes from the heart.
came as no surprise that each name for his Arabians resonates with the particular personality of each horse. Aviador is the flyer. Batar is the cutting edge of the sword. Salil is the sound one sword makes when it clashes with another. Mughira is the attacker. Adiea is the long runner. Aslan is the lion. Bisaterih is the flying carpet. Just saying their names makes you understand how rich and profound the Arabian culture is. On the morning of the riding demonstration, I approached the field with some apprehension. “You have to trust the horse sometimes even more than yourself,” Said advised as I placed myself, camera in hand, a few feet from where a charging, 1,200-pound Arabian was going to gallop. Abu Omar was cantering on Aviador to warm up her muscles and to get her used to his weight and touch. Usually Said exercises Aviador regularly to keep her fit, but neither horse nor rider had performed these maneuvers together for months due to Said’s injury. “I will stand behind you, here!” declared Said, carrying a long pole to protect me in case something went awry. A few minutes later I found myself barely five feet from Abu Omar as he sped past me at a full gallop. At this point I was more concerned with the lance he held to his right side than being trampled to death. However, what surprised me most by being that close to a blazing, half-ton animal carrying a fully-armed cavalry soldier was not the thunderous sound, it was the feel of the earth. The soil shook and dust flew three
“The Arabians are so intelligent,” Said continues, “that when I work with a horse four or five times a day for two weeks, by that time the horse knows the maneuver and will never forget it.” Human beings, he opines, tend to forget quickly and lose any mastery over a particular task as time goes on. “Horse don’t,” he declares. When it comes to working with his horses, no detail is insignificant. Said recalls one instance when he changed the bit on a particular horse. When he tried to execute a precision maneuver they had worked on for weeks, his mount simply didn’t respond as Said had expected. “I learned a valuable lesson that day,” he confessed. “With a warhorse, never ever change even the slightest thing. So much of what the horse knows is based on their familiarity with the equipment as much as it is with the rider and the weapons.” His fractured, but healing, right leg proved his point. When Said speaks of his Arabians, his words are filled with the richness of a Persian poet. So, it
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Knights Of The Wind feet into the air as Aviador’s powerful hooves pounded the ground rhythmically. At these speeds and with these instruments of death, serious injury from a mishap to Abu Omar, Aviador or me for that matter, was possible. Still, 500 years ago, if Abu Omar had been bearing down on me in warfare, there was no doubt in my mind what the result would have been. As a fighting unit, they were majestic in a completely terrifying sort of way. For Said Huneidi his Arabians are in the words of an Arabic proverb, “God’s gift to man.” They are that. Yet, for Said Huneidi, as well as the members of the Royal Institute of Arabian Horsemanship, the Arabians are much more. They are wondrous creatures of the very wind itself.
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