Fūrusiyya military exercise

This illustrated double page comes from a sixteenth-century Egyptian collection of several treatises relating to the military arts. The volume initially belonged to the collection of eastern manuscripts of Melchisedech Thévenot (1620–1692), the French physician, writer, diplomat, and librarian of King Louis XIV[1]. It was sold to the Royal Library in 1712, along with the rest of his collection.

The page’s space is dominated by the drawing of a circular carousel flanked by two smaller circles, around which turn two Mamluk horsemen with lances, dressed in long robes (kibr) and high bonnets in red fur (zamt), mounted on two richly harnessed horses with henna-coloured hooves.

The work is part of a literary production that was very widespread in Islamic civilization, relating to the field of the fūrusiyya. This Arabic term relates to all the theoretical and practical knowledge of a range of specialities: horse riding, the veterinary arts, games (polo, boxing, hockey, chess, etc.), and the military arts (handling weapons, etc.). The concept was introduced in the Abbasid era in the second half of the eight century, in the princely context; the areas covered in the fūrusiyya were essential for the education of pretenders to the caliphal throne. The fūrusiyya became an institution of the state from the foundation of Baghdad under al-Mansūr (reigned 754–775). It was during this era that Ibn Akhī Hizām, commander of the professional army of Khurasan, in the service of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil, wrote the first of theses treatises (Kitāb al-fūrusiyya wa-l baytara) comprising two parts: one dealing with the hippology of equitation and the veterinary arts, and the second consecrated to military equitation, arms, archery, and polo.

The Mamlūk period (1258–1517) is a very well documented period in this field. The treatise of Hizām was copied many times, and this kind of literature became very common, particularly through the production of works for the education of the public, which this manuscript is part of.

Although written during the Ottoman domination of Egypt, this collection is part of the  Mamlūk tradition. The horsemen represented are dressed in the clothes reserved for the military cast of the Burji Mamlūks, who held power in Egypt and Syria between 1382 and 1517, until their defeat by the Turks. The style adopted is very sombre: black ink drawings, colour reserved for certain details like the harnesses of the horses, the hooves coloured in henna, and the horsemen’s bonnets. This simplicity ties in with the documentary and pedagogical purposes of the illustration.

The exercise illustrates how to handle a lance, which with handling the mace (to which the Mamlūks brought their  contribution) was one of the fūrusiyya’s two specialities. It is probably an illustration of a parade, which, according to sources, often occurred during spectacles in which various teams faced each other in simulated combat. After the conquest of Egypt by the armies of Selim 1 (reigned 1512–1520), the traditional fūrusiyya treatises were translated into Turkish. The Ottoman sultans rapidly adopted the institution, and the arts of the fūrusiyya were taught by the Egyptian masters[2].

These public demonstrations of the equestrian arts evoke the phenomenon of carrousels,  equestrian demonstrations that began in the Italian courts in the sixteenth century and then spread to other European courts[3].

[3] In France, the first carrousel was held at the Hôtel Bourgogne in Paris in 1605; the royal carrousel of Versailles was created in 1680.