Furusiyya

Furūsiyya ( فروسية) is the historical Arabic term for knightly martial exercise during the Middle Ages, during the Crusades and Mamluk period in particular, especially concerned with the martial arts and equestrianism of the Golden Age of Islam. The body of Arabo-Persian "Furūsiyya literature" includes the genre Faras-nāma, which is an encyclopedic compilation of facts relating to horses.

It was a concept and noble art that included the arts of war and hunting, equestrianism, tactics and strategy, and certain games like chess. This art was practiced throughout the Muslim world, and saw its greatest achievement in Mamluk Egypt during the 14th century. It was part of a larger regional phenomenon of Western Eurasia that included European knighthood of the time.

The term is a derivation of faras (a horse), and in modern Standard Arabic means "equestrianism" in general. The term for "horseman" or "knight" is fāris, which is also the origin of the Spanish rank of Alférez.

The three basic categories of furūsiyya are horsemanship (including veterinary aspects of proper care for the horse, the proper riding techniques), archery, and charging with the lance. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya adds swordsmanship as a fourth discipline in his treatise Al-Furūsiyya (ca. 1350).

In a narrow sense of the term, furūsiyya literature comprises works by professional military writers with a Mamluk background or close ties to the Mamluk establishment. These treatises often quote pre-Mamluk works on military strategy. Some of these works were versified for didactic purposes. The best known of these versified treatises is the one by Taybugha al-Baklamishi al-Yunani ("the Greek"), who in ca. 1368 wrote the poem al-tullab fi ma'rifat ramy al-nushshab.

However, furūsiyya also appears to have retained a wider meaning of "the continuing ethos of manly endeavor of early Islam", comparable to the contemporary European notion of chivalry. Islamic furussiya and European chivalry has both influenced each other as a means of a warrior code for the knights of both cultures.

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