[QUOTE=tkhawk;3732682]
I am more fascinated by history. That the Bedouins were such a male dominated society and yet they choose mares for battle .
The Spanish on the other hand(this is from what I read and have no direct experience) used only stallions or maybe geldings? From what I read mares were never used in battle.
In India there is one state which is very famous for horses and for war on horseback. Most of the stories you hear is about stallions, not mares…
I am just interested in horse history. Mostly why a certain region picked mares and another stallions. Could it be the type of warfare? In India and Spain(again no personal experience), they had huge armies and horses were just part of the army. In India you had horses, infantry, cavalry, elephants etc. I am sure Spain must have had huge armies/navies etc.
But the Arabs were mostly nomadic and they were more raids and withdrawals. In the middle ages , they did build huge armies and conquered Spain and ruled there, but after that they kind of slunk back to the deserts and were nomads.
Just curiosity -if mares serve better in one form of warfare or stallions in more organized ones -just a curiosity for me about the preferance for one type of horse (I am sure there were armies where it did not matter)-but among ones who overwhelmingly preferred one type-I would love to know the reason…[/QUOTE]
In the Iberian world the stallion is for riding and the mare for breeding. Geldings are virtually unknown. We visited Brazil in 2003 and the only mares routinely ridden were those in training for inspection or in preparation for shows or other competitions. The stallions we rode on a regular basis were very well trained but required a rider not a passenger.
Recently I had our stallion in training with a man whose basic instruction was from the Alter Real stud in Portugal. He does not geld his stallions unless they have a serious physical or mental defect. He turns his stallions out together. There are “scraps” but they are mostly posturing with limited physical contact. There is a lot of “horseplay” with lots of physical contact. The difference is easy to see once you see it a few times.
Mongols liked geldings, Arabs liked mares, Iberians like(d) stallions (as did Xenophon and Aboriginal Americans, the latter learning from the Iberians). Each made their pick based upon the needs of their society.
Those picks would also affect the breed. Selection of breeding stock would re-inforce the natural tendencies of the animals selected.
I’m not sure the sheer size of an army would have a necessary impact on type of horse selected. All armies, no matter how big, are based upon a tactical unit that can be quite small. The Mongol base unit was ten riders. Each rider had 4-6 horses. It increased by a factor of 10, up to the a “division” of 10,000. It was a very well organized army with an efficient supply system. This leads to military truism that “amatuers study tactics; professionals study logistics.” 
IIRC the number of pure Arabian horses in the Islamic armies was relatively small. The great horse breeding areas of North Africa were Mauritania and Libya. At the time of the Islamic expansion these were not deserts as we see them today but more fertile, savannah-like environments. Did not Solomon get his horses from Libya? The basis of the Iberian horse is far more the Barb horse from Mauritania than the Arabian horse.
There is one case where mares are regularly ridden in the Iberian world, and that’s if women choose to ride. In that society a high born woman might ride but it was not so common. And if she rode it would be a mare. Even today this pattern seems to be followed (at least in Brazil). A man on a mare, unless he’s a trainer, will get an “eyebrow.” A women on a stallion will get two “eyebrows.” A common word in Spanish and Portuguese for “horsewoman” is “amazona” and it has nothing to do with the river. :lol:
Again I highly recommend the works of Dr. Bennett and Lt. Col. DiMarco.
G.
The hair is unruffled.
