The Horse In Human History: Islam's Horses of the Desert

The fifth installment in Pita Kelekna’s Cambridge University Press This Side of the Pond blog series on the subject of her upcoming book, The Horse In Human History has been posted!

Among the topics covered in this post are: the Arabian Horse and its superiority over the dromedary for “commanding the strategic overland trade routes between the Indian ocean and the Mediterranean;” the spread of Islam across Asia; paper manufacture, wootz steel; and the concept of zero.

These inventions ushered in the great age of Islamic learning. Employing Arabic as the universal language of communication, philosophers and scientists from the borders of China to the Atlantic pursued knowledge in diverse disciplines and engaged in an exchange of ideas unprecedented in earlier civilizations. Everywhere there was high mobility and efficient communication. Horse-sped, scientific knowledge diffused rapidly over large segments of the educated elites, across different regions of the Islamic world and beyond – as Jewish, and Christian scholars translated Arabic works into Latin.