God took a handful of the South Wind… by Katherine Roberts



An Arabian horse in the desert. Antoine-Jean Gros, c. 1810 in the public domain

 …and from it formed a horse, saying: "I create thee, O Arabian! To thy forelock I bind victory in battle, on thy back I set a rich spoil, and a treasure in thy loins. I establish thee as one of the glories of the earth. I give thee flight without wings."

These famous words from Bedouin legend bring the horse prancing into time. And since the main reason I write historical fiction is because it contains horses rather than cars, I thought it fitting to write my first post about their place in history.

My personal definition of history is any society that uses horse power. That gives me quite a lot of years to plunder… from the first time someone climbed on a horse’s back (or, even earlier than this, harnessed up a horse to a chariot) right through to World War One, in which horses were still used in battle, as dramatised recently by Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse. I know horses did not vanish entirely after that. The police still use them for crowd control, and you can find working horses in other parts of the world. But you can write a book set in contemporary times without mentioning a single horse, whereas if you tried writing something set in the 18th century without so much as a horse-drawn carriage this would seem rather strange. I actually wonder if there will be horses around in 100 years’ time, or if they will be as much a myth to our descendants as the Bedouin legend is to us. Already, they have vanished from my locality, the riding school I remember as child being replaced by smart barn conversions for second home owners - I find this a bit sad.

So I must plunge back in time to find my horses. And since I am also a fantasy author (I write fantasy for the horses, too!), I’m never happier than when I can mix magic, history and horses in the same story, which I managed to do in several of my Seven Fabulous Wonders books, although by the time I reached the building of the pyramids I had lost the horses. For my next book, I journeyed forward a bit to 300BC and had enormous fun writing “I am the Great Horse”, telling the story of Alexander the Great from the horse’s mouth. There isn’t as much fantasy in the pages of that one as you will find in my other books, but I still managed to squeeze in a magical “horse bond” between Alexander, Bucephalas and his groom Charmeia, also a few amazon warriors, and several ghosts (both human and horse!)

A few years ago, I proposed a novel about the first ridden horse and drew this timeline to show how horses entered history (it's not very neat – I don’t do neat when I am in a creative mood – but if you click on the picture to enlarge it, I hope you can see how it might inspire a story.)

What I find interesting about this sketch is that there are two distinct strands:
1. Historical - where the first horses (a small, tough, wiry breed) lived on the plains of central Asia and were tamed, probably in the Bronze Age, by the ancestors of Genghis Khan.
2. Mythical - where God takes a handful of the South Wind and creates the beautiful Arabian, which (so the story goes) he then gifts to Abraham’s son Ishmael, who has been driven out into the desert to start his own tribe.

The historical strand is based on archaeology, not terribly interesting to a fantasy muse, which might be why that book never got written... it eventually mutated into a book about Genghis Khan, which never got published. But if you want to read a beautiful historical novel about the steppe horses, then try I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade by by Diane Wilson, a young adult novel set in the time of Kubilai Khan.

The Bedouin legend is much more romantic, and appeals to me as a fantasy author because it has a spiritual/magical basis. I even started writing that book. My publisher didn’t like the idea, however, so it is only half a manuscript at the moment. Should I finish it? Even I can see it would not be an obvious best-seller. On the other hand, it contains my three passions so might make a half decent story… one day.

In the meantime, which strand of my diagram is right? History or myth? The Arabian (and all our modern breeds) have two fewer chromosomes than the wild Przewalski's steppe horse. What happened to those two chromosomes? Did the Przewalski horse mutate at some stage? Was the Arabian the result of selective breeding and environment on the early steppe horse? Or a completely different type of horse altogether, perhaps the horse of the desert mentioned in the Bedouin legend? The Arabian is undoubtedly more beautiful than its northern cousin, and nobody seeing the two side by side could possibly mistake them for the same animal:



Arabian





Przewalski's horse



As with so much historical research, it seems we need to look in more than one place to root out the true origins of the horse. I turned to the Bible, certain I'd find at least a couple on Noah's Ark. But no, horses are not mentioned that far back. Donkeys, yes... but donkeys are a different animal. (A challenge for you: where is the first mention of the horse in the Bible?)

From my reading of Genesis, it would appear that myth and history agree, and somewhere between 2,000BC (the approximate date of Abraham) and 1,500BC could indeed be about right for when the horse first entered into partnership with man and gave us “flight without wings.” Which means my period for historical novels lies anywhere between 2000BC and the First World War… hmmm... better get back to the writing!

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