In this first article in a series about Arabia’s extinct fauna,
the author reviews our knowledge of the onager that once excited
the interest of Arabian poets and provided food for generations
of Arabia’s inhabitants.
The onager was a gregarious animal of the dry grassy plains and
the Old Testament described its habitat precisely as “the steppe
for his home and the salt land for his dwelling” (Job 39:6). It
was found in Palestine and the countries surrounding it for over
2000 years after the events of the Old Testament, but had almost
disappeared by the middle of the nineteenth century. A few lived
on in Iraq and southeast Jordan until early this century, but
now these are gone as well. Its speed and ability to withstand
the worst conditions of the Hammad and Nafud deserts left its
numbers unaffected despite the intensive hunting by successive
cultures in the area. It was the coming of firearms and automobiles
that tipped the scale against it.
The name onager comes from the Greek onagros or wild ass. Many
of the early writers assumed that the onager Equus hemionus was
the wild ancestor from which the donkey Equus asinus was domesticated
but E. asinus is believed to have an entirely African not Asian
ancestry. In Arabic the onager is known as al-himar, al-wahshi,
al fara’ and al-‘ir, the latter name used for the domestic ass
as well.
Early Arabian Descriptions
Al-Shammakh b. Dirar al-Dhubyani was a poet who was born before
the rise of Islam (Jahiliyyah) and died after its event. He lived
in Najd and specialised in describing the onager. It is estimated
that 172 verses or about 43% of his descriptive poetry dealt with
the animal and the hunters who stalked it. Such a body of work
was probably an indication of the abundance of the onager in the
poet’s home territory which included the northern, central and
western regions of today’s Saudi Arabia.
Al-Dhubyani’s language and style were elegant and his description
of the onager’s external features was precise. He also analysed
their inner feelings by describing their anxiety, fear, jealousy
and anger as well as their journeys in the desert in search of
water, pastures and refuge. It was as if he was describing his
own feelings and chronicling his own journeys. He noted that their
legs and hooves were strong and made a powerful impact on the
ground, dislodging stones and causing them to tumble away. The
poet also described the onagers in the safety of their highland
refuge, resting, grooming each other and moving their necks as
if they were spears in the ground swayed by the breeze.
The scholar Al-Jahiz lived in the 3rd century AH (9th century
AD), and was author of the most famous Arab study of zoology,
“The Book of Animals”. He claimed that onagers lived longer than
domestic asses and that he did not know of any domestic ass that
lived longer than the famous black donkey that was owned by Abi-Siyarah,
an agent of Ibn Khalid al-‘Adwani. That animal was said to have
lived for 40 years.
In the late 8th century AH (14th century AD) Kamal al-Din al-Damari
wrote a popular Muslim treatise “The Great Book on the Life of
Animals”. In it he relates an account attributed to Ibn Khalkan,
claiming that an onager was believed to have lived 200 years or
more. The story claims that a group of soldiers passed by a desolate
area where they hunted down a number of onagers. They then slaughtered
(cut the throat to let the blood drain) one of these onagers and
cooked it in the accustomed manner. However, its meat remained
tough, so they cooked it for a whole day longer, but it remained
as tough as ever. Out of curiosity the soldiers examined the head
of the roasting onager. On one of its ears they found a black
mark or brand in Kufi script. Ibn Khalkan claimed to have seen
the brand himself and that it was that of Bahram Jur, a Persian
king who lived long before the time of the Prophet, and who made
a practice of branding animals he caught while hunting and then
setting them free. Ibn Khalkan concluded that only God knows how
old that onager really was.
Al-Damiri also mentions that in the wilderness area of the Jabal
al-Mudakhan (smoky mountain) in Syria, so called because of the
perpetual fog around it, that onagers lived for more than 800
years! He also mentions one specific location where onagers were
to be found: a wilderness area (jurud) near a village in the vicinity
of Damascus, Syria, where onagers were so plentiful that they
could hardly be counted.
Abu Yahya Zakariyya al-Qazwini, in his encyclopaedic work, “The
Wonders of Creation”, written in the early 8th century AH (14th
century AD), discussed the onager. He said that wild onagers look
very much alike. He also claimed that the male will rip off a
young foal’s testicles to prevent him competing for his mares
when he matures. Thus, when a mare goes into labour she finds
a secluded place to have her young, fearing that the stallion
would castrate her male offspring. When the hooves of the foal
harden and he is able to run, the mare will take him back to the
herd. Al-Damiri adds that she may even break his leg to immobilise
and keep him in one place so he would not roam and encounter the
stallion. She then nurses and suckles the foal so that when the
leg heals and is well again, the foal would be old and strong
enough to escape from his father.
It should be noted that the aggressive behaviour of wild equid
stallions and their habit of killing young not sired by them is
documented in recent studies of their behaviour. Thus the preceding
descriptions of onager stallions castrating young male foals may
have been a mistaken interpretation of their attempts to actually
kill them.
Stories and accounts of domestic equids being turned loose and
becoming feral, abound in Arabia and, regardless of their accuracy,
have become part of the folklore of the region. According to al-Damiri
the Akhdari named after al-Akhdar (a stallion, some writers say
it was a horse, others an ass) that once belonged to the Persian
Shah Kisr Ardashir, reverted to the wild and mated with the wild
onagers. It is said to have been the founder of this breed that
is considered to be the most beautiful and longest lived of the
onagers. Day mentions that the Shaleib tribe, as well as other
tribes in Arabia, used to release their domestic asses to be impregnated
by the onagers. An implication of that practice may mean that
certain characteristics of the onager may still be found in some
domestic asses today.
A number of different kinds of onager or wild ass were described
the Arabs and it is not clear which ones were pure onagers and
which were crosses with the domestic asses. The names encountered
most frequently are al-Akhdari, al-Akhtab, al-Aqmar, al-Adkhan
and al-Atabi.
Hunted Onagers
From earliest times the onager was regarded as a game animal rather
than as a potential beast of burden. Bas-reliefs uncovered at
the capital of ancient Assyria, Nineveh, depict the hunting expeditions
of King Ashurbanipal around 650 BC, and one slab in particular
shows two of the king’s servants lasooing an onager. They must
have been especially skilful and lucky huntsmen because this boastful
carving shows the rest of the asses escaping and outdistancing
their pursuers with ease. The humbler inhabitants of the region
were less chivalrous, for they were hunting for the pot and concentrated
on taking the young onagers in the spring foaling season.
Onagers were probably hunted for their meat from the time man
first inhabited the different regions of the Middle East. Xenophon,
who lived from about 434-355 BC was an Athenian soldier, historian
and writer who spent a number of years in the Middle East. He
reported that the onager was killed for its meat which was said
to be of more delicate flavour than deer.
In 1905 the English excavator of Nineveh, Sir Austen Layard, reported
that the Bedouin “bring the foals up with milk in their tents…They
are of a light fawn colour, almost pink. The Arabs still eat their
flesh”. Eating the flesh of the wild ass is permitted (halal)
to Muslims because it was considered to be a game animal. The
meat of the domestic ass was forbidden as was that of the horse.
The onager’s instinct was to escape by running at great speed
to the open plains when chased by horsemen who were usually armed
with bows and arrows. They were also pursued by the same breed
of heavy dogs that were developed in Mesopotamia for use against
lions, and these hunting methods were still being practised in
Syria until about the beginning of the Christian era.
Al-Nuwayri states that the most common hunting methods during
his time (8/14th century) were birds of prey or hunting dogs to
chase the onager, metal spikes in their path to cripple them,
bows and arrows and spears to kill them.
Al-Qazwini explains that onagers have the habit of staying together
and not separating from each other, thus making it easier to hunt
them down. If a hunter hides in a place where the path narrows,
and allows a few asses to pass, he can then appear in full view
of them and shoot as many as he pleases because the remainder
will not turn and flee to safety, but follow the others blindly.
Their amazing speed when running from danger was a well known
fact to the Arabs, and mentioned in the Koran when describing
the retreat of unbelievers “as if they were asses fleeing before
a lion”, Sura 74, Verse 50.
Domestication Attempts
For a long time the onager was thought to be untameable and this
has resulted in some confusion about the draft animals used in
ancient Mesopotamia. Further scrutiny of the illustration from
the royal cemetery at Ur (c. 2500 BC) has shown that the Sumerians
used onagers for drawing four-wheeled chariots; the apparently
tufted tail is obvious (in fact the tail is short haired for much
of its length), and the identification has been further confirmed
by a study of the bones from tell Asmar. Unfortunately there is
no way of knowing whether they were ever fully domesticated, or
just onagers being taken with lassoes, presumably for use alive,
as is illustrated in a scene from the Palace of Ashurbanipal mentioned
above.
Onagers were bridled quite differently from horses, with nose-rings
when not working and a strap tied around the muzzle when harnessed
up. This suggests that their use for draft purposes was based
on previous experience with oxen rather than in imitation of horses
in nearby countries, where in any case, it is doubtful if horse
were yet in use. When the horse arrived in Mesopotamia, early
in the second millennium BC, there was little point in carrying
on with the onager. The horse was bigger and stronger, as well
as much more amenable, and the horse-bit gave the driver, in his
two-wheeled chariot, far better control than he ever exercised
over the onager.
The wild ass features mostly in the poetical and prophetic books
of the Old Testament where it is usually spoken of as wild and
untameable. In Jeremiah 2:24, Jehovah calls Judah “a wild ass
used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure”.
In Genesis 16:12 Hagar is promised that her son Ishmael will be
a “wild ass of a man, his hand against every man”.
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Final Days
In 1625 the Italian traveller Della Valle described a captive
“wild ass or little onager” in Basra, southern Iraq. By 1850 the
onager was becoming scarce in the Syrian desert (Badiat al-Sham)
and in Palestine, but according to the Englishman Canon Tristram,
was still common in Mesopotamia and could be seen in the summer
travelling in great white herds as far as the Armenian mountains.
The first real threat to the onager’s survival came with World
War I when, with the Arab advance towards Damascus, the whole
area was overrun with heavily armed Turks, Bedouin and British
troops, and the automobile began to replace the camel and train
in opening up the deserts. In 1930 according to the German zoologist,
T.Aharoni, “the movements of Bedouin troops during the Great War
and the more recent incursions of some tribes, have pushed back
these extraordinary shy, freedom-loving creatures into the heart
of the desert. They appear so sporadically now that most Bedouin
tribes have not seen them at all in recent years”. Most likely
the onager was already extinct by that time.
As far as the records show the last wild Syrian onager was shot
in 1927 as it came down for water at the Al Ghams oasis not far
from Lake Azraq in the Sirhan depression of north Arabia. This
lava-bed district seems to have been one of the last three pockets
of survival for the wild ass. The other two similar areas were
the Jebel al-Druze in southern Syria and the Jebel al-Sinjar on
the Iraqi-Syrian border. It was from the Iraqi-Syrian border region
that the Schonbruun Zoo received a specimen that was still alive
as late as 1928. It may have been the last pure-bred Syrian onager
in the world, although some writers continue to express the hope
that some onagers may still be hiding out in the desert fastness
of Saudi Arabia or Oman, possibly with the Arabian ostrich which
was known to keep them company. In 1937 Otto Antonius wrote what
may be the true epitaph of the Syrian onager “it could not resist
the power of modern guns in the hands of nomads, and its speed,
great as it may have been, was not sufficient always to escape
from the velocity of the modern motor car”.