Somalis and Horses
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Somalis historically didnt like larger horses. They wanted something small and low maintenance. I wouldn't say theyre even medium. Theyre outright small, not even large enough to be considered horses but ponies. Minimum height to be a horse is 4'10 at the shoulder. Avg somali pony is 4'6. Internationally speaking, arabian horses are considered small horses. a Medium is about 5'4.
I read about Somali ponies being crossed with other horses in Kenya, and I've attached it here. and they said that Somali ponies were extremely receptive and that the first generations of mixes were already great racers. However, I think theres an issue with this way of thinking and its centered on appealing to standards that are not original to ourselves. Instead of undoing centuries and centuries of Somalis breeding for small, fast, agile, low maintenance ponies so that theyre more like other horses, why dont we breed the best somali ponies and make the best damn ponies on the planet?? Have something unique and beautiful in its own right. Ive seen some magnificient ones on tiktok as of late.
Maximizing Somali ponies > Breeding them out so theyre like other breeds
Heres an Cadaan lauding the pure endurance of Somali ponies. 9 days marching and only drinking water twice and they were fine. Wallahi our ancestors were cooking. Everything is pushed towards endurance. Arabs treated their horses like babies and took so much care in feeding them.
higher quality image. also the quality of being hard on your horses was because Burton was with the Samaroon and attributed Samaroon custom with all somalis. later explorers said this wasnt universal. they are categorically ponies, as ponies are simply all equus caballus below 4'10 as a breed standard. which the vast vast majority of somali ponies are. and their endurance and survivalibilty was exceptional, ive shown a reference to it above.
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Also heres something amazing. According to ibn Khaldun, the poem of the pre Islamic arab King Imru al Qays where he mentions Horse riding Barbars is of Somali ponies/horses. The short tail mentioned here is important because its a practice arabs did to easily differentiate between their breed and other breeds. And ive read of Somali horses being sold and their tail being cut by arabs.
Heres the poem:
Here is the writing from Ibn Khaldun attributing the poem of the barbars to us
Heres the poem:
Here is the writing from Ibn Khaldun attributing the poem of the barbars to us
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For logistical reasons, somali ponies are ideal in warfare. Similar to mongol horses in that they have a strict grazing/water only diet, are pony sized, exceptional endurance. It allowed them to build the largest land based empire in the world.
Mounted Somalis used to have two javelins, a smaller one for throwing and a longer one for close combat. Imagine if we instead adopted horse archery. We would have unstoppable.
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Aren’t mongol horses oriental types like the famous akhal-teke? Stepp people from central Asia had the finest breeds. The akhal is related to the Arabian
Turkoman horse - Wikipedia
Akhal-Teke - Wikipedia
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The Ahkal teke is so beautiful wowAren’t mongol horses oriental types like the famous akhal-teke? Stepp people from central Asia had the finest breeds. The akhal is related to the Arabian
Turkoman horse - Wikipedia
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Akhal-Teke - Wikipedia
They're Turkic nomad horses. But they require a great diet of eggs, butter, barley/grain, mutton fat. Nothing like Mongol horses.
Somalis didnt do mounted archery for the same reasons Ethiopians didn't. Somalis either didnt have stirupps (the part you put your feet that connects to the saddle) or used the Big Toe stirrups just like them. By that I mean the stirrup was a leather loop that could only accommodate 1 toe and not the whole foot. You cannot aim without good stirrups that can hold your weight. To be able to aim a bow effectively on horseback, you have to stand up a little bit on your stirrups and keep yourself balanced and level while your horse gallops using your thigh muscles to absorb the shock of the horse galloping.
Heres a description of the somali saddle and stirrups.
Here is an Ethiopian horseman using the same sort of toe stirrups that we used. These small and weak stirrups would never allow for this sort of maneuver. They were just there to make riding more comfortable so aiming effectively like mongolians would never happen.
Another reason is because somalis didnt use composite bows like mongolians. We used self-bows (one solid piece of wood) like western Europeans did. To have a bow as powerful as a mongolian composite bow, they need to be huge like these Somali bows, and thats just too awkward to deal with on a horse. Thats why we dont hear about English horse archers they moved from bows like us to guns without developing a horse archer culture
Btw you may find images of somali horseriders with whole foot stirrups online, such as Risalder Major Musa, but these arent native. For him it was given to him by the British.
Somali ponies can get a metallic sheen like that too. in fact if you shorten the legs, tail, neck, and shorten its face it would look like a somali pony.
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Yes i agree but its just a fantasy tbh. Imagine Geeljires training from the ages of 4 with a composite bow on horseback.
There isn't anything awkward about it, it's average for horse archers trained at a young age to use bows with 120lb draw weight. Some Mongols even had 160 lb draw weight bows.
BTW the reason europeans did not have horse archers is because its not easy to train them. You need to train from childhood in both horseback and archery. Whose gonna pay the peasants to do this?
Unlike nomads who all trained themselves. Forgot about men, there were armies of female Scythian horse archers. The nomads had a far smaller population than settled civilizations, but they were basically all warriors and could field just as many men if not more, that were experts in archery and horseriding due to their nomadic backgrounds.
Also the geography of England is different to the Steppe. In flat open grasslands, mounted archers reign supreme but in England it's not as beneficial.
Sxb those are toe stirrups look closely
Illustrations like these are useless. Many ahistoric things are added to them. Illustrations are useful when its a drawn by an explorer who saw something as a firsthand account and uses it to explain what hes seeing. These paintings are simply reliefs which draws the reader in and gives them a break from boring blocks of text. Look at this example of how nonsensical they can get:
The sultan of Geledis stirrups could have been native or could have been purchased from others. Regardless it was not common.
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