Next Tuesday, the King Abdulaziz Public Library in Riyadh will launch a specialized exhibition on horses and horsemanship entitled “Origins of the Horse,” held to mark Founding Day. The exhibition will feature a large collection of the Library’s rare historical holdings in this field.

The exhibition will be held at the Library’s Khurais Road branch and will continue until the end of August 2026. It features extensive collections from the Library’s holdings on horses and horsemanship, 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 aspect of heritage. It established a specialized Equestrian Center containing more than 12,000 diverse materials, including some of the most important 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, whose compilation was commissioned by Abbas Pasha in 1848, is particularly significant for its content and documentation. It provides detailed accounts of horses among the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, both Bedouin and settled communities. The precious manuscript records the names of purebred horses, their studs, breeds, owners, breeders, and traders who were keen to acquire and purchase them, along with valuable historical information.

The Library is also displaying the illuminated illustrated book “The Eastern Horses,” one of its rare holdings, by Waclaw Rzewuski. It was published in 1821 in Arabic and French.

The book is considered one of the earliest Western studies of Arabian horses. It contains more than 400 images depicting desert culture, musical instruments, and the care and breeding of Arabian horses, in addition to rare photographs, maps, and old and modern manuscripts.

In addition, the exhibition features a large collection of rare photographs of horses taken by British Princess Alice during her visit to Saudi Arabia in 1938. The exhibition also includes rare international works and drawings about horses, including the sketchbook of Ahmed Kamal Pasha and works by the English Orientalist who discovered the world-famous tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt.

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

On another note, the Library is displaying photographs of its Equestrian Center, a collection of Islamic coins, Islamic art miniatures depicting horses from the Library’s holdings, as well as paintings, artworks, and short films documenting horses and horsemanship.