Please take a look at this guide for a visual introduction to some of the builds of each strain.
Purebred (asil) Arabian horses can all be traced back to several main strains (rasan). They are listed here in order of build and distiguishing features with Hamdani being the most "masculine" or strength-focused build and Muniqi being the most "feminine" or speed-focused build.
Of the rasan listed here, 5 are referred to as Al Khamsa (literally "the five") which legend has it, stem from the five favourite mares owned by the prophet Muhammad. These five rasan are the Hamdani, Hadban, Abayyan, Saqlawi and Kuhaylan. Dahman and Muniqi are more recent strains, though this is a bit of a misnomer as horses of the Dahman strain have been traced to Northern Yemen from middle to late 1200 AD, which is still an extremely long time ago.
Strains usually start as a marbat (substrain) before becoming popular or distinctive enough to become a full rasan. Other lesser known strains include Shuwayman
