Alexander’s Arabian: Noble Steed or Fantastic Beast?

Abstract

ArabicusThis chapter will examine and comment on the meaning of the phrase equum Arabicum in the Augustinian's Account, a document which forms part of the foundation accounts of the Priory of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. 1 Originally intended to be part of Foundation Account B (the twelfth-century version of the foundation account of St Andrews), only one eighteenth-century copy of the manuscript of the Augustinian's Account (AA) has survived 2 (A. A. M. Duncan states that this 1708 edition contains "some manifest errors" 3 ).Professor Donna Landry suggests that it may be the first record of an importation of an Arab horse not only into Scotland, but into Britain, and that the imports may have started centuries earlier.4 The use of the term equus Arabicus to describe an example of the Arabian, or Arab, breed of horse will be discussed later.In this chapter, I will present evidence for alternative interpretations of the term, placing it within the context of the St Andrews Foundation 1 For the details of these accounts see Simon Taylor, "Appendix One, The St Andrews Foundation Account" and "Appendix Two, The Augustinian's Account," in Medieval St Andrews, Church, Cult, City, ed.Michael Brown and Katie Stevenson (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017), 345-379.For a Latin as well as an English version see Simon Taylor, "Appendix 1, The St Andrews Foundation Account B and The Augustinian's Account," The Place-names of Fife Volume Three, St Andrews and the East Neuk ed.

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