Nora Aljabr On Breaking Boundaries, Reviving Traditions, And Galloping Into History

Meet Nora Aljabr, the Saudi Sephora Voices campaign star who is championing female empowerment while bringing a lost art back to life…

It’s a breathtaking sight of majesty that encompasses beauty and tradition but also strength and power in equal measures. And it’s not something you see every day: a woman in full-length traditional Saudi dress, complete with ornate face covering, mounting a stunning Arabian steed and then galloping at speed, releasing the reigns to shoot with the bow and arrow that she’s just removed from her belt. In fact, it’s a sight that was almost confined to history books, fables and memories until Nora Aljabr recently became the Kingdom’s first certified mounted archery trainer. Passionate about the traditions of the sport and how integral horseback archery was to the region, she is now teaching others about the art that dates back to antiquity.

“When I first started archery, I realised it had a history that we should revive. It’s something deeper than just a sport,” she explains over Zoom, a few weeks after her cover shoot. “It connected with something inside me and I started doing it not just for the sake of sports but for tradition, history and also religion.”

Nora, who was born, raised and still lives in Dammam, fell into mounted archery almost by accident a few years ago. Her first love had always simply been horse riding. “It started when I was nine-years-old, my parents used to take me to the beach where there were multiple activities such as kites, surfing, camel rides but also horses. I used to tell my dad how much I wanted to ride the horses,” she laughs. “Once I tried it, I spent every weekend there, then eventually when I was 12, my mother rewarded my enthusiasm and took me me to a riding school to learn the basics.”

At 15, her parents bought her two horses to ride at the family farm. “It was just me versus those horses because there was nobody else interested in my family,” she recalls. “It was a bit hard to deal with them as horses are very sensitive animals. I just used to ride and fall off a lot.” But that wasn’t to put her off. “It developed something inside me; strength, courage and confidence. I never developed fear from the number of times I fell. I just kept on riding, riding, riding.”

The family sold the horses when Aljabr moved to the UAE in 2010 to study Finance and Economics at Sharjah University, but she found a stables near her home in Mirdif, Dubai to fine-tune her skills and become a competent rider. She now had a fresh desire: “I used to watch endless videos of horseback riders who rode in the desert but I couldn’t find that in the UAE at the time.”

She would have to wait until her return to Saudi Arabia to make that dream come true, but first she had other obstacles to face. “I went back in 2015 but it was actually a culture shock because I had got used to living in the UAE for five years.”

Nora was forced to think outside the box in terms of work and in 2016 set up a gym in the basement of her family home and opened a fitness centre where she could train local women and tourists alike. But her mind was always on riding and, in 2020, she finally found a desert riding place near Dammam. “It was amazing, I really felt that connection, I felt freedom.” The excitement and joy is still present in her voice years later. “After my ride, the man there asked me if I’d like to try an archery lesson, and I fell in love with it. He then told me to try horseback archery.”

“I never developed fear from the number of times I fell off. I just kept on riding, riding, riding”

Nora was a natural and a few weeks later she purchased her own horse so she could concentrate on the sport. She also started to engage with the history of mounted archery. “There were only a few people in Saudi Arabia, let’s say five, that used to do this traditional archery specifically, not the Olympic archery, and I met one of those rare people,” remembers Nora. “And he was a reader, had old books, and he shared this one book with me which was first written around 1,000 years ago. It was about Arab archery, how to manufacture bows and arrows, and the different areas of archery including horseback archery.” It was seminal. “That’s when I started trying to visualise the past, how they used to ride the horses, how they dressed, and I thought about how I could connect to that past. I started doing it through clothing, starting to wear the traditional women’s outfits while I did the horseback archery.”

Nora was particularly interested in the way Saudi women through the ages had engaged with both horses and the mounted sports she was practicing. “Women used to learn archery, sword techniques and spear techniques and it’s possible that a few were also fighters, but they mostly used to learn for either hunting, fun, or for self defence. Generally they didn’t go to war,” she explains. “And the Arabian horses were seen as part of the family. A lot of poetry describes the relationship between men and women and their horses: the love used to be so deep that they sometimes would feed their horses before they fed their own children.”

Nora had become a skilled mounted archer and incredibly knowledgable about the sport and its history, so decided to visit Istanbul to get certified as a horseback archer and trainer at the prominent Mamluk Academy. But she wasn’t satisfied with that qualification – she wanted to teach people in Saudi Arabia with a verification from within the Kingdom, but it was a certification that didn’t exist… yet. “I spoke with the Saudi Equestrian Federation and there was a course to be a horseback archery judge which I did.” But it would take another three months of conversation before the trainer course she really wanted would became available. “I headed to Riyadh for the week-long course where I met all the old horseback archers in Saudi Arabia. We were around eight people, and I was the only woman. We all graduated as certified horseback archery trainers from the Ministry of Sports in Saudi Arabia and from the Saudi Equestrian Federation.”

Nora was the first to graduate the new course and also the only woman, something that may have been impossible just a few years earlier. “It feels so powerful, so amazing, because it was hard for me to get this certification to happen, there were no horseback archery schools already and there was a lack of information available,” she admits. “Some people think it was so easy to reach this point but I faced a lot of obstacles along the way, I fell down a lot, but I stood up and kept going because this is more than sport – it’s our history. And not only for Arabs, but for everyone doing archery around the world.”

“Women used to learn archery, sword and spear techniques – mostly for hunting, fun, or self-defence”

And did she face any specific obstacles because she’s a woman? “No, no, we don’t have this anymore in Saudi Arabia. They’re supporting women in a very wide way,” she assures. “In fact, if they have two options with the same level of certification, they will definitely choose the woman!”

Nora also qualified as a tent-pegging trainer, another ancient mounted sport that involves charging at a tent peg in the ground and attempting to uproot it with a lance, spear or sword. Part of the course requited her to compete locally. “I was the only lady and there was no audience, it was a bit intense,” she remembers, not that it stopped her from being one of the top performers. “After that I also went to Jordan for the Ladies World Cup in tent pegging. It was the first participation of the Saudi team and we got a great score.”

Nora’s main focus now is spreading her knowledge and skills at her own training centre – set up in a government-provided space that also houses a variety of other equestrian sports. “I have had 20 horseback archers in total graduate from my school. I’m so proud of them because they have the same mentality as me that they’re doing it for the love of the history not just the sport,” she smiles. “This certification means I now have the opportunity to spread this awareness among other women too, we have more women doing tent pegging and we even have four or five ladies who have become certified trainers, but with horseback archery I’m still the only certified female trainer.”

Putting the lost art back in the headlines has made Nora somewhat of a regional celebrity, and this month she adds Sephora Voices campaigner, which highlights women’s empowerment, to her list of accolades. “The nature of my job means I don’t require too much make-up but I centre my skincare routine around sunblock, a little bit of make-up and eyeliner,” she shares. “I’m all about celebrating inner beauty and strength. I don’t want people to focus on the way I look, I want people to focus on my skills. I’m also sending a message to show ladies that you can show your beauty not only through your face and body but through your skills, strength and power.”

Nora’s words and indeed actions certainly do make her the embodiment of female empowerment. But what does she think about the more Western narrative of Saudi women, that maybe doesn’t lean into this so much? “I always tell people that Saudi women have always been powerful, they’ve always been skilled, but they didn’t have the opportunity to show this. And once we got the opportunity to show who we are, we started quickly seeing Saudi ladies in different fields such as sports, beauty, science and medicine,” she says. Nora is seen by many Saudi women as a role model and she has a message for all women. “Find that thing that you want to do that gives you strength and power and do it. If you haven’t found it yet just keep looking. Or maybe you did find it but now want to try something else… just go and find it again!”

Photographer: Buthaynah Alharthi. Styling: Laura Jane Brown. Editor in Chief: Olivia Phillips. Make-Up: Kasia Domanska. All Beauty: Sephora Middle East. Senior Producer: Steff Hawker. Styling Assistant: Merhan Raafat.

From Harper’s Bazaar Saudi’s Winter 2023 issue