A Horseman’s World: Sex and Gender in Ottoman Equine Culture

Abstract

Horses played a key role in configuring elite Muslim masculinity in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Social, legal, and ideological traditions coincided in such a way as to cast horsemanship as elite, Muslim and male. Ottoman masculinity emerged as a function of the characteristics of equine bodies in general – their size, majesty, and power. And yet, it also emerged as a function of the particular characteristics of the male horse, both actual and perceived, with consequences for the lives of humans and horses alike.