The Arabian horse is a breed of horse with a reputation for intelligence, spirit, and stamina. With a distinctive head shape and high tail carriage, the Arabian is one of the most easily recognizable horse breeds in the world. It is one of the oldest horse breeds, with archaeological evidence of horses that resemble modern Arabians dating back 4,500 years, says Wikipedia.
The Arabian developed in a desert climate and was prized by the nomadic Bedouin people, often being brought inside the family tent for shelter and protection.
The Arabian horse prototype may have been domesticated by the people of the Arabian peninsula known today as the Bedouin, sometime after they learned to use the camel, approximately 4,000-5,000 years ago.[63][64] However, other scholars, noting that horses were common in the Fertile Crescent but rare in the Arabian peninsula prior to the rise of Islam, theorize that the breed as it is known today only developed in large numbers when the conversion of the Persians to Islam in the 7th century A.D. brought knowledge of horse breeding and horsemanship to the Bedouin.[65]
Muslim invasions were not the only way Arabians reached Europe. During the Crusades, beginning in 1095, European armies invaded Palestine and many knights returned home with Arabian horses as spoils of war. As the knights and the heavy, armored war horses who carried them obsolete, Arabian horses and their descendants were used to develop faster, agile light cavalry horses that were used in warfare into the 20th century.[63][84] Probably the earliest horses with Arabian bloodlines to enter Europe came indirectly, through Spain and France. Others would have arrived with returning Crusaders.[81] Under the Ottoman Empire, Arabian horses often were sold, traded, or given as diplomatic gifts to Europeans and, later, to Americans.[63]
Note the Latin equus, "horse," and the word equestrian.
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