Arabian horses have always been highly respected by the East and the West, Westerners even use "active north wind, powerful south wind, high-speed east wind and wise west wind" to describe the Arabian horse that runs as if it is in the air, and the kings of the Middle East also like the Arabian horse, and the Arabian horse even appears in the royal palace of the Yuan Dynasty. But as soon as they reached the battlefield, the Arabian horses became peace warriors, the Arab Empire conquered Spain with the Pak horses, and the Mamluk warriors against the Mongols needed to import Mawarima and Kati Awama from India, and they both threw the Arabian horses aside. Cavalry in the Middle East also particularly liked the French Persh horse, believing that this kind of pulling/especially capable of doing farm work was the best war horse.
There is no natural chasm between the pulling horse and the riding horse, there is no situation where the horse cannot charge the battle, and the famous Lusita Norma of the Iberian Peninsula is both a famous four-wheeled carriage and a famous riding horse, and is the favorite of Portuguese cavalry and bullfighters. Therefore, in the Middle Ages, horses with strong load-bearing ability and both speed and endurance were the best horses, and horses with only speed and endurance advantages were not good battlefield horses.
The Arabian horse does not have the ability to bear weight, the average weight of the Arabian horse is 418 kg (this is still the result of modern optimization, the medieval Arabian horse is generally much lighter), the maximum load capacity of the horse is 20% of its weight, generally about 15%, that is to say, the Arab horse can carry a maximum of 80 kg. We know that a strong man must have about 70 kilograms, plus more than a dozen kilograms of armor and several kilograms of weapons and equipment, and if the Arabian horse wants to pull the warrior to run all over the ground, it is obviously "impossible for the concubine to do it".
Between speed and armament, the ancient warriors of course chose to arm their weights, because their main business was to charge the battlefield. In the equestrian competitions of the ancient Olympic Games, speed was not the first, there were imitations of cavalry fighting, there were also races of heavily armored soldiers jumping off and running on the carriage, horses that could pull strong men to run all over the obstacle course were the champions, and even mules won the top BMW. Therefore, when the Arabs went to Spain, they chose the Perbma, which was ten centimeters taller, heavier and better fed.
As the most powerful warriors in the Middle East in the Middle Ages, the Mamluks were carefully selected from the pagan slaves of the Caucasus and the steppes of southern Russia, and their size was not small, and seventy kilograms was estimated to be standard. The mamluk warriors were also very heavily equipped, the most elite Mamluk cavalry used large pieces of metal armor similar to the Byzantine cavalry overlapping heavy armor, war horses also imitated the Byzantine army to use horse armor, they were called "Casakia Guards"; Mamluk warriors also used Byzantine riding spears, nail hammers and famous machetes and swords. Therefore, the Mamluk cavalry chose the 1.55 m tall Mawali horse and the 1.5 or more height Kati Awa horse body, they also have good weight bearing capacity, can be used as a horse, with the Mamluk cavalry charge is a piece of cake. But the size and weight of these two horses were still not as good as the Frankish knights' Persh horses, so the Mamluk warriors were still very hungry for imports.
Medieval horses had to strike a perfect balance in weight, speed, and endurance, and The Arab horse, which could not carry a heavy load, either carried the dignitaries in a parade in costume, or became a stallion to improve various other horses, and generally did not let it go to battle (rarely, there are also cases).