The Horse Healer (60 page)

The History

The historical background I make use of in novelizing the life of the albéitar Diego de Malagón is not at all by mere chance. The narration begins in 1195, at the defeat of Castile in Alarcos, and ends in 1212 with the Battle of the Navas of Tolosa. Seventeen years that, besides signifying an important chapter in the life of a person, reflect, in this case, episodes with their own particular charm and with enormous importance for the history of Spain.

The Battle of the Navas of Tolosa marked the before and after in the conquest of Al-Andalus. It was one of the first pitched battles in an age when complex military formations were unusual, and raids and skirmishes were more common.

At the dawn of the thirteenth century, the map of Spain was divided into six territories: the five Christian kingdoms of Aragon, Navarre, Castile, León, and Portugal, and to the south, in constant combat, Al-Andalus under the control of the Almohads.

Of all the Christian kings, it was the personality of Alfonso VIII of Castile that most inspired me when I delved into his biography. Over a reign of more than fifty years, he enacted the dream long cherished by his ancestors, the reconquest of Al-Andalus, and he was thereby the first to achieve the unification of all the northern Christian kingdoms. Alfonso VIII was a great strategist and brought significant economic benefits to the territories under his control. He knew how to surround himself with men of enormous talent who helped to achieve a powerful Castile: a kingdom of free men and a land of opportunity for all those who were not of noble birth.

The historical context of the novel has helped me to reflect on the circumstances and events that made the dream of the Castilian king a reality. All the events that accompany the life and journeys of Diego of Malagón are historical, as well as the places where the various subplots play out.

In some cases it was not easy to document the lives of some of the persons who appear in the novel; this was the case with the king of Navarre, for example. With him, I experienced great difficulties in reconstructing his trajectory, and there were moments when it seemed to me that history had wished to forget him. His anomalous relationship with the Almohad princess and his long residence in African lands coincided with his loss of the city of Vitoria and the territory of Guipúzcoa, an absence that must have been misunderstood at the time by his subjects and by historians later on.

Another similar case was the exceptional life of the fifth lord of Biscay, Don Diego López de Haro. His story was exceptional. He went from royal ensign, and thus the firmest supporter the Castilian monarch had, to his worst nightmare. Due to family problems and difficulties in his territories, Don Diego asked to renounce his Castilian subjecthood, and King Alfonso chased him over half of Spain until he found him holed up in the spectacular fortress of the city of Estella-Lizarra. According to contemporary chronicles, the thickness of its walls and the height of its defenses were so impressive that the building was impenetrable, as well as being the most beautiful that had been constructed in the Christian kingdoms that make up present-day Spain. The king of Castile laid siege for months outside its walls, together with the monarch from León, but never managed to exact defeat and eventually abandoned this enterprise. Sadly there remain only vestiges of this magnificent structure, but the ruins can be visited today.

Years later, the episode in which Diego López de Haro facilitates the flight from the battlefront of King Pedro II of Aragon did indeed take place. Afterward, the lord of Biscay joined the court of León, at that time opposed to Castile, and reaped great privileges therefrom. Later he would return to the Castilian court, their former disagreements forgiven, and would help combat the caliph al-Nasir in the Battle of the Navas. In his testament, King Alfonso VIII honors his name and recognizes his services to the crown, naming his the most loyal of all his men.

There existed a Castilian traitor, a sworn enemy of Alfonso VIII, who allied himself with the Almohad caliphs to fight against the Christians, though his name was not Pedro de Mora. He was known as “the Castilian” and his name was Pedro Fernández de Castro, son of one of the most noble bloodlines of Castile and León, the Castros, a family with exceptional territorial sway and enormous influence with the court. Though I admit his personality inspired me to create Don Pedro de Mora, I have tried not to confuse fact and fiction and have added a particular little touch of wickedness to my character.

With my modest contribution, I have introduced real names into the plot to make the events and actions in which these men participated more comprehensible and also to render homage to the bravery and commitment they showed to the noble ideals of the Reconquest. For the sake of truth, however, I have also tried to reflect the disagreements that divided the different kingdoms, the territorial struggles that brought them into conflict, and the clashes and failures that came one after the other until at last their forces were united in that monumental fight that came to be called the Battle of the Navas of Tolosa.

To re-create the events that took place around that famous battle, I have relied on numerous relatively recent works, but especially on the writings of one of its participants: the archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, in his Latin chronicle of the kings of Castile.

The Profession of Veterinarian in the Middle Ages

With far more passion than any other objective, I have tried to make this book into an homage to my own profession, to the thousands and thousands of men and women who practiced it across the centuries, who were called by numerous names:
hippiatrus
,
veterinarius
,
albéitar
,
farrier
,
horseleech
, and now,
veterinarian
. I honestly believe that, besides being the most beautiful of professions, it constitutes a professional corps that has always lived in service of the common good, by concerning itself with the care of animals.

Though for many modern readers, their only relation with the veterinarian profession concerns the care provided for our pets, it is in fact an ancient profession, of enormous importance given the vital role that work animals, and especially horses, played in men's lives.

The first document that mentions the work of the veterinarian and, specifically, the prices charged for the extraction of a tooth and other services appears in Babylon, in the famous code of Hammurabi (around 1800 b.c.). In the biblical city of Ugarit, there have also been discovered tablets bearing fragments of a long treatise laying out the assorted ways of curing certain illnesses of horses, and it attributes its authority to a stable master of the king of Ugarit.

In ancient Egypt, priests possessed great knowledge of the healing of animals, and wisdom was considered to possess great sacred value, given the importance of animal figures in the Egyptian religious system. In the Ebers Papyrus (1500 b.c.), treatments and remedies for the cure of oral abscesses and gingivitis in horses are discussed.

In the ancient culture of China, there also exist references to this profession. In the very old book of Zuo Zhuan, the manner of determining the age and health of horses by an examination of their teeth is described. There are also written references to the benefits of acupuncture in horses, by General Bo Le in the year 659 b.c.

The greatest step forward in the discipline is to be found in ancient Greece. Hippocrates, Pelagonius, Aristotle, and other wise men compiled the better part of antique wisdom in their books, and their own experience as well, to identify and resolve certain infirmities that plagued animals and, above all, horses. In Greece, those who possessed the necessary knowledge were called
hippiatros
(horse doctor) or
ktiniatros
(cattle doctor).

The veterinary profession gained military importance in the Roman Empire, when the
veterinarii
were entrusted with the care of horses in the
veterinaria
: spaces reserved especially for them on the Roman battlefields.

Cavalry was then, and has continued to be, an essential part of armies' battle strategy, and therefore the wisdom of veterinarians became, for some civilizations, a matter of state policy.

Throughout this novel, there are countless occasions when the term
albéitar
is employed. From the first inspiration I had as to how the life of Diego de Malagón would unfold, I knew I wanted him to be an albéitar. With that decision, I have attempted to give due recognition to the importance of that figure in the history of veterinary medicine not only in Spain, but throughout the world.

The diffusion of the term
albéitar
throughout the Christian kingdoms of medieval Europe is an outgrowth of Spain's influence and has an obvious Arabian origin. It arises with Al-Andalus and was in common use until well into the nineteenth century. The term is common throughout all the kingdoms of Visigoth Hispania in the Middle Ages and became a source of great prestige as a result of the skillful techniques the albéitars possessed and the effectiveness of their interventions. The term reached as far as the Basque country, though it only later penetrated Catalonia and Aragon, where functions similar to those of the albéitar were practiced by what were then known as
menescales
in Catalonia and as
mariscales
in the rest of the empire. They soon formed guilds and brotherhoods in Catalonia and Aragon to teach the profession; those of Barcelona were of particular note.

This profession has its roots as well in the blacksmiths' forges, as blacksmiths also often performed some of the common jobs of albéitars and were the forebears of a more ordered and broader discipline.

The rapid diffusion of the albéitar's art during the medieval era is owed to the admiration felt by the monarchs and noblemen of Christendom for Arabian culture, which had been nourished by the wisdom of Byzantium, the repository of Greek wisdom. An example of this can be found in the
Partidas
of Alfonso X, the Wise.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the origin of the word
albéitar
is Arabic. In fact, today countries where that language is spoken today refer to the veterinarian as “al-baitar” and to his profession of “baitara.”

Horses

I love horses. I consider them the animals that have served man most loyally throughout the course of history. In
The Horse Healer
, they have a special role, particularly in the case of the mare Sabba. Her breed, the Arabian, carries the bloodline found in the majority of the horses living in the world today. The Spanish and Lusitano, the purebred English, and the quarter horse all owe the better part of their genes to the Arabian. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful breeds that exists today.

The importance and great value horses had in the Middle Ages meant that the greater part of the efforts and research of the veterinary profession was devoted to them. The exercise of veterinary science was divided into two rather different activities, which could almost be called specialties: the military branch, largely the responsibility of the aforementioned
mariscales
and
menescales
, and the civilian, which was largely the domain of the albéitars. Moving forward to the twelfth or thirteenth century, it is necessary to recall that not all people had the means to own a horse, and that it was an extremely valuable asset. They were used for work in the fields, were for many the sole means of transport, and served as a weapon in an age when there were very few periods of peace.

One of the oldest books I have been able to consult on the albéitar's craft is
Lo libre dels cavayls
, a Catalan version of another manuscript written in the twelfth century, by an unknown author considered to be of Castilian origin. Many of the technical references that pop up in the novel have their origin in this work, as well as in others that were published in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, somewhat later than the adventures of Diego de Malagón.

There were many books in that era that dealt with the illnesses of horses, many in the context of treatises on agronomy. One shouldn't forget that manuals of chivalry also included references on the cures for various common horse illnesses as well as simple recommendations for how horses should be kept. From the fifteenth century on, the treatises on the albéitar's art begin to multiply and to be found in universities throughout Europe. Apprenticeship becomes institutionalized and there comes to be an official exam for those who wish to practice the profession in the age of the Catholic monarchs, when they instituted the Royal Tribunal of Protoalbeitarato.

The Yeguada de Las Marismas existed just as I have referred to it in the novel; for its size, and for the quality of animals it contained, it must have been a marvel. I have tried to express in words the feelings I imagine a person might have had, confronting a spectacle of such proportions in that day and age. Even today a few specimens can still be seen running free in the marshlands close to the lovely village of El Rocío, a temple to the glory of the horse and a unique place for these animals that have lent such great and disinterested service to humanity.

Relations between Characters, by Order of Appearance

Diego de Malagón:
Young albéitar's apprentice.

Pedro de Mora:
Traitor to the king of Castile, ambassador and collaborator of the Almohad caliphs.

Kabirma:
Horse trader in Toledo.

Fatima:
Daughter of Kabirma.

Sajjad:
Galib's stable keeper.

Galib:
Albéitar in Toledo, exiled from Al-Andalus by the Almohads.

Benazir:
Wife of Galib and daughter of the Persian ambassador in Seville.

Najla:
Daughter of Caliph Yusuf and sister of al-Nasir.

Marcos de Burgos:
Friend of Diego.