6i6 ASIATIC AND NORTH AFRICAN HORSES. 



87) enumerates the nations (including the Libyans) that 

 suppUed cavalry to Xerxes' host, but the Arabs furnished 

 only a camel corps. Agatharchides (cited by Strabo) 

 describes the Arabs as camel keepers " (Ridgeway). There 

 is no foundation for the tradition that Solomon sent horses 

 to Arabia, and that the pure-bred Arab is descended from 

 mares which belonged to Muhammad. It appears that 

 horse breeding did not become common in Arabia until 

 after the time of Muhammad (571-632 a.d.). Tweedie 

 agrees with Burckhardt (1784--1817) that Arabia is not 

 very rich in horses, owing to the narrowly limited extent 

 of the pasture grounds in that country. It appears most 

 probable that the Arab horse originally came from 

 Mongolia. 



We learn from General Tweedie that although 

 the Arabs pay great attention to preserving purity of 

 blood in their horses, they have no written pedigrees of 

 their animals, because they are illiterate. They apply 

 the general term, Kuhailan, to their pure-bred horses 

 in a manner somewhat similar to our use of the word, 

 " thorough-bred." We read in The Arabian Horse^ that 

 the parent trunk of Kuhailan, has produced four great 

 branches (Saklavi, U'Baiyan, Hamdani, and Hadban) ; 

 and that they, and it, are known in Arabic as Al Kamsa 

 (The Five). In India (among the Muhammadans) and 

 Persia, the Arabic word, asil (well-born, genuine), is often 

 applied to a pure-bred Arab (Kuhailan). The word 

 kadish (common-bred) "is so current among Arabs 

 that Niebuhr, and after him other writers, make Kochlani 

 {Kuhailan) and Kadeschi (kadish) their two leading sub- 

 divisions of the Arabian breed. If we understand by the 

 two terms no more than asil and less than asil, respectively, 

 we shall have a useful enough rough classification. But 

 Kadeschi must not be mistaken for a strain name. The 

 kadish is merely the pariah of horse-flesh " {Tweedie). 



Palgrave {Encyclopcedia Britannica) tries to make out 

 that pure-bred Najdi horses are not exported. Tweedie 



