Sarmatian horses

[Michael Kerr]

Hi, I have just finished a book "The Endurance Horse" by Ann Hyland who also wrote "Equus The Horse in the Roman World". In this book she stated that the (I presume she is talking about the Roxolani as she keeps referring to the Sarmatian Cavalry on Trajan's Column" that Sarmatian horses were not mere steppe ponies but had the tough blood of Ferghana thoroughbreds running in their veins. The Chinese called these horses the "Blood Sweating Horses of Ferghana." apparently because parasites gorge on the horses blood to such an extent that it appears as if the horse is sweating blood. Legend has it that they were descended from the horses left behind by Alexander the Great. They were noted for their speed and endurance. Also one other query I have is how would a fully armoured Roxolani heavy cavalryman mount his horse? Not my quotes but Ann Hyland's. According to Wikipedia there is another theory about the "sweating blood" that small subcutaneous blood vessels burst as the horses sustained a long hard gallop. Just after other opinions.

[Vindex]

I'm not at my own computer but the quick answer is you can train a horse to kneel or even lie down so you can mount.

Not sure about the other part of your post - question or merely an observation?

As the Sarmationas are known to have been billeted around Ribchester, and they were reknowned horsebreeders, it may be possible that the Dales pony came from their horse's blood lines. This is something I have yet to investigate fully (on a VERY long to do list) but it may be possible to trace the DNA.

http://www.roman-britain.org/military/alaisar.htm

[Michael Kerr]

I have an old book by Peter Connolly called the Cavalryman (very well illustrated) and on mounting and dismounting of horses where he says that the ancient writers placed great emphasis on training troopers to vault into the saddle. At first they practised on a wooden horse and the men without armour or weapons and he states that he had done it himself but becomes difficult when trying to mount from either side or when wearing armour. It would be difficult on a 4 horned Roman saddle. But he goes on to state that Arrian claims that a properly trained rider can vault into the saddle with full kit and with the horse at the canter.
The other part about Ferghana horses was only a question as I myself am no expert so I suppose I was just putting it out there for people's thoughts.
What you said about getting horses to kneel makes sense though (pre stirrups)

[Vindex]

I have an old book by Peter Connolly called the Cavalryman (very well illustrated) and on mounting and dismounting of horses where he says that the ancient writers placed great emphasis on training troopers to vault into the saddle. At first they practised on a wooden horse and the men without armour or weapons and he states that he had done it himself but becomes difficult when trying to mount from either side or when wearing armour. It would be difficult on a 4 horned Roman saddle. But he goes on to state that Arrian claims that a properly trained rider can vault into the saddle with full kit and with the horse at the canter.
The other part about Ferghana horses was only a question as I myself am no expert so I suppose I was just putting it out there for people's thoughts.
What you said about getting horses to kneel makes sense though (pre stirrups)

You can swing yourself into the saddle in relatively flexible armour (ie mail) and some of the mounted members of the Forum will endorse this. I have done it in extremis out hunting with horses that just wont stand still when others are moving around (up to 17hh but that's when I was MUCH younger and fitter!) The four horned saddles provide a challenge but they also give you something to hang on to or hook a leg on as necessary.

Of course it is possible to vault onto a horse at pace (canter) but I haven't done that for a considerable amount of time and certainly not whilst wearing mailand carrying a sword/lance and/or shield. It depends what Arrian meant by full kit as I doubt a cataphract could do this!

[Michael Kerr]

I haven't got a scanner but I found a lo-res drawing by Peter Connolly of a roman cavalryman using a vaulting horse. I had to photoshop it a bit because it was very small.

[attachment=6263]vaultinghorse.jpg[/attachment]

Yes, that's certainly PC's image and I have a photograph somewhere of him doing it himself on a wooden horse as a demo for the Pricess Royal (article from the 1980s).

A picture can paint a thousand words and all that, but the actuality is in being able to do it physically.

Horses are not static things and they have four legs which are remarkably like the wheels on a supermarket trolley...they can go in four different directions at once!

You can do this on a real horse once it will stand still. You can do it on a moving horse...and when I get my mail shirt ( in the lap of the gods and Indian craftsmen) I'll be trying to do this myself with various saddle designs.

The thing you have to take into count is scale and size - how tall is the man? How tall is the horse? Getting that amount of jump and swing in a human body requires the strength of a gymnast...and gymnasts don't wear mail...but you get more power and jump from the horse when it moves forward.

If it moves backwards, well...that's messy! :wink:

[Alanus]

Hello, Michael

I hate to put a damper on Ann Hyland's statements, but it is far more likely that the Sarmatian horse extended from the "Heavenly Horse," rather than the "Blood-sweating" breed from Ferghana as developed by the Yu-chi (the Kushans or Torcarians). The body of Sarmatians that moved northwest to finally arrive in the pages of Tacitus were the Wusun/Alans. They lived in the Ili Valley, just east of Ferghana. They traded their horses to the Han court for noble Chinese women. Emperor Wu-Di called this breed the "Heavenly Horse" because it came from a valley just below the Tien Shan, aka the "Heavenly Mountains." (see Sima Quan, Vol. II) We can trace the breed, as well as the Blood-sweaters, to large warhorses (15 hand or more) buried in the Altai kurgans by the Saka, a close predecessor of the Alans.

What we do know, is that the Sarmatian horse was nothing like the shaggy little ponies used by the Monguls. I think modern Kazack horses are descendents from this magnificent breed. ;-)

[attachment=6433]heavenlyhorse025.JPG[/attachment]
Above: the Heavenly horse from a Chinese rock carving.


Here is a photo of the Ili Valley today, still a beautiful place, with the Tien Shan rising in the background.
[attachment=6435]ilirivervalley.jpg[/attachment]

:-)

[Vindex]

These are modern Dales stallions (all spruced up for the show ring too) but you can see the quality of them. I'd LOVE to trace the DNA of these, although this breed had to be "rescued" as the numbers declined between the two wars in the UK.

The last of these (the black one I hope!) are the traditional view of Dales ponies, but there are still the lighter varieties about. Sadly as with most "breed standards" they kill off anything which they think non standard and so are guilty of manipulating the natural breeding of these fine ponies.

The photos came from here http://dalespony.org/

[attachment=6437]Penmire20Dudley.png[/attachment]
[attachment=6436]AK2.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=6438]Tarbarl-Matthew.jpg[/attachment]

PS - Alan, you can put as many dampers on Ann Hyland as you like as far as I am concerned ;-)

And what a fantastic valley! Almost as good as the Derbyshire Dales!!

[Sean Manning]

My colleague Carolyn Willikes' forthcoming PhD thesis will address many of these issues of types of horses in the ancient world.

You can swing yourself into the saddle in relatively flexible armour (ie mail) and some of the mounted members of the Forum will endorse this. I have done it in extremis out hunting with horses that just wont stand still when others are moving around (up to 17hh but that's when I was MUCH younger and fitter!) The four horned saddles provide a challenge but they also give you something to hang on to or hook a leg on as necessary.

Not just flexible armour: I am pretty sure that a life of Boucicault tells us that he practiced vaulting into the saddle in full armour. In the late 14th century that was a suit of articulated plate over a suit of mail. Weak or lazy cavalrymen could have their groom make a "step" with their hands, as Xenophon describes, but Xenophon expected a good horseman to be able to vault onto his horse's back while wearing a bronze helmet and cuirass.

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus wrote:

I hate to put a damper on Ann Hyland's statements, but it is far more likely that the Sarmatian horse extended from the "Heavenly Horse," rather than the "Blood-sweating" breed from Ferghana as developed by the Yu-chi (the Kushans or Torcarians). The body of Sarmatians that moved northwest to finally arrive in the pages of Tacitus were the Wusun/Alans. They lived in the Ili Valley, just east of Ferghana. They traded their horses to the Han court for noble Chinese women. Emperor Wu-Di called this breed the "Heavenly Horse" because it came from a valley just below the Tien Shan, aka the "Heavenly Mountains." (see Sima Quan, Vol. II) We can trace the breed, as well as the Blood-sweaters, to large warhorses (15 hand or more) buried in the Altai kurgans by the Saka, a close predecessor of the Alans.

Hi Alanus, I borrowed the book off a friend and although the book is about "modern day" endurance events she had a few pages at the beginning of her book about the history of endurance horses. I read in the biography of Hadrian by Anthony Everitt that Hadrian's favourite horse "Borysthenes" was a gift from "Roxalani king Rasparaganus" after signing a treaty with Hadrian after Hadrian increased subsidy to Roxalani to keep the peace. The horse was killed in 122 ad in Gaul on a boar hunt and Hadrian wrote a Eulogy for the horse: see below.

Borysthenes Alanus,
the swift horse of Caesar,
who was accustomed to fly
through the sea and the marshes
and the Etruscan mounds,
while pursuing Pannonian boars, not one boar
dared him to harm
with his white tooth:
the saliva from his mouth
scattered even the meanest tail,
as it is custom to happen.
But killed on a day in his youth,
his healthy, invulnerable body
has been buried here in the field.
Anyway thanks for answering and in future I will be careful about what Hyland says.
Thanks for the two wonderful photos as well.

[Alanus]

Michael!

What a great find you made. This really-- historically-- puts these horses into perspective, the Roxolani/Rohksalani being the first wave of Alans to reach Roman cultural perimeters.

Moi!

The middle horse depicted in your post is what the Goths called a "white-spotted" horse, the spots actually on a gray background. This color of gelding was held in high regard by the Goths, and they most-likely received their view from neighboring Sarmatians, perhaps the Taifali. The white-spotted horse is also prevelent in the Andalusian breed. Years ago, someone on RAT claimed the Andalusian came from Africa. I think it was the other way around: the Vandals and Alans settled in Spain, quite likely in Vandalusia, and then brought the breed to Africa in the 429 invasion. If this is so, then the Andalusians would extend directly from the Saka and Ili Valley horses of the Wusun/Alans.

Thanks so much for the info on King Rasparaganus. It would be great to know what his name actually meant. "Aspar" denoted "horseman" in Northeastern Iranian, the language of the Alans. :-)

The most auspicious horse to the steppe tribes was the "qash-ca-i," having a diamond marking on its forehead. :cheer:

[koechlyruestow]

How to vault on and off a horse when wearing armour, see M. Junkelmann Die Reiter Roms III Abb. 104-9 (and if you are interested in ancient horsemanship, buy the whole series, full of good stuff)

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus wrote:

Thanks so much for the info on King Rasparaganus. It would be great to know what his name actually meant. "Aspar" denoted "horseman" in Northeastern Iranian, the language of the Alans.

Anthony Everitt says Hadrian increased the subsidy which had been ongoing since the time of Trajan and granted Rasparaganus Roman citizenship and he assumes "most favoured nation" status for the Roxalani. He took the name Publius Aelius Rasparaganus. Apparently Borysthenes was named after the river Borysthenes(today's Dnieper) which flowed through the land of the Alani. He goes on to say that Hadrian loved hunting and acquired the services of an Iazyges prisoner of war a certain Mastor, who was a skilled huntsman, as his groom who remained in Hadrian's service for the rest of his (Hadrian's) life. So I assume Hadrian got a taste of "steppe style hunting."

[Alanus]

Hello, Michael

One wonders what "steppe hunting" for sport entailed. According to Wolfram, and perhaps other historians, the steppe tribes passed falconry to the Goths. So, I suppose Hadrian and his Iazyage "man" could have gone falconing upon horseback. Of course, there were more than men out there riding. :whistle:

Here's a Greek version of an Amazon rider...


[attachment=6446]amazons010.JPG[/attachment]


And a modern steppe reenactor in Kazkhstan:


[attachment=6447]traditionalmongoliannobledress.jpg[/attachment]


I think the photos might be dedicated to Moi! mile:

[Michael Kerr]

Hi, this seems the right thread for my question, unlike the Roman cavalry Sauramatae/Sarmatians were not professional soldiers who spent a lot of time training and honing their riding skills as their lifestyle meant they were pretty busy.
They were professional in the fact that being a mainly pastoral society they lived a major part of their lives on the back of a horse and I am sure that great hunts and fighting off raiders required a lot of team work in working with horses and weapons and man for man I am sure they were superior than the Romans in horsemanship. But how did they find time to train and work as a group. I was thinking that maybe organized team horse sports helped. I have read that Polo originated either in Persia or Central Asia (originally called "Pulu" a Tibetan word for ball) and in ancient times it was a bit more rough and tumble with no holds barred than the genteel game we know now. It was a game for nobles and teams played for valuable prizes. However I have read about Buzkashi which is the Afghan national sport but could have originated in Central Asia where teams of horsemen, sometimes quite large fight over a goat's carcass. Winning at Buzkashi brought a lot of prestige to the winners and was a good way for tribes to "feel out the opposition" and assert their superiority without bloodshed. Teams could work in unison to isolate opposition riders and block others from getting to the carcass although modern riders have the advantage of stirrups compared to ancient riders but it must have improved riding skills over time. One point about the game struck me in that Buzkashi horses were specially trained to stop when a rider came off and stay with downed rider till he remounted his horse which in a real fight would be a handy. Just wondering if anyone else knows more about these horse games and are there examples of others? I have posted an image to show how rough it could be.


[attachment=6987]picbuzkashi.jpg[/attachment]

Regards
Michael Kerr

[Lyceum]

I think I've mentioned Buzkashi or buzkash before here, there are several variants and similar games from all over the sameish area. I know the Punjab and Rajasthan still has crap loads of variations/similar games. Unfortunately they're not much studied though you might find some stuff in old Victorian journals.

Also this sport can be dangerous, but pathanwali as a concept tends to mean that players look after one another.