King Abdulaziz Public Library in Riyadh will launch a specialized exhibition on horses and equestrianism next Tuesday, February 24, 2026, titled “Origins of the Horse”, as part of the Kingdom’s celebrations of Founding Day.

The exhibition features a large collection of the library’s rare historical holdings related to horses and equestrianism.

The exhibition will be held at the library’s Khurais Road branch and will continue until the end of August 2026.

The exhibition showcases extensive collections from the library’s holdings on horses and equestrianism, including manuscripts, rare items, photographs, documents, Islamic miniatures, historical publications, and illustrated books.

Since its establishment 40 years ago, the library has devoted considerable attention to this authentic area of heritage. It established a dedicated Equestrian Center that houses more than 12,000 diverse items, including some of the most prominent and rarest Arabic and foreign books on horses.

The exhibition includes some of the library’s most important holdings, including the Abbas Pasha I Manuscript. This manuscript, which a scholarly delegation commissioned by Abbas Pasha began compiling in 1848, is highly significant for its subject matter and content. It provides detailed and documented accounts of horses among the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, including both Bedouin and settled communities. The valuable manuscript records the names of purebred horses, their breeding establishments, bloodlines, owners, breeders, and traders who were keen to purchase and preserve them, along with other historical information.

The library is also displaying the illuminated illustrated book “The Oriental Horses”, one of its rare holdings, by Wacław Rzewuski, published in 1821 in both Arabic and French. The book is considered one of the earliest Western studies of Arabian horses. It contains more than 400 illustrations depicting desert culture, musical instruments, and the care and breeding of Arabian horses, as well as rare photographs, maps, and ancient and modern manuscripts.

In addition, the exhibition presents a large collection of rare photographs of horses taken by the British Princess Alice during her visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1938. The exhibition also features internationally significant rare works and drawings related to horses, including the drawing book of Ahmed Kamal Pasha and works by the English Orientalist who famously discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt.

The exhibition also includes Ibn Bishr’s accounts of horses during the First and Second Saudi States in his manuscript “Unwan al-Majd fi Tarikh Najd” (The Title of Glory in the History of Najd), the “Equestrianism” encyclopedia, and bibliographic studies regarded as the first printed statistical work on horses and equestrianism in the world. It also displays the book “Purebred Arabian Horses,” translated from Russian.

The library will also showcase photographs of its Equestrian Center, a collection of Islamic coins, Islamic art miniatures depicting horses from the library’s holdings, as well as paintings, visual artworks, and short films featuring horses and equestrianism