"It does appear why Rabiah was selected from the sons of Nazar, his father. 

 He would appear to have been third, or perhaps the fourth, son, rather than the 

 eldest born, but he and his brethren were fourth in descent from Adnan (the 

 ancestor up to whom descents are usually traced). But had the allotment not 

 been made to Rabiah, but to Aijad, the eldest son of Nazar, instead, the horses 

 would have been carried by him to Erack, to which country, or district, Aijad be- 

 took himself with his family. Likewise if no consignment by law had been made, 

 and Modar, the second son and direct ancestor of the Koraish and of Mohammed, 

 had inherited them, solely or conjointly with his brothers, the horses might prob- 

 ably have descended to the Koraish at Mekka, on the one hand, but in such a re- 

 stricted locality and in a district incapable of supporting any number of horses 

 the especial selection would have dwindled away, and would probably have be- 

 come very degenerate; it might, on the other hand, have been dispersed to various 

 districts by the numerous tribes and families which came from Kias Aylon 

 — the other son of Modar mentioned in history — to Erack, to the banks of the Tigris 

 at Mosul and to the north of Syria. But to have entailed them upon Rabiah was 

 a fortunate or wise step, for no other conclusion can be arrived at but that the horses 

 descended from Rabiah throvxgh his son Asad to his grandson Anazeh, whose race 

 inhabited Khaibar and afterward spread all over the pastures of Central Arabia 

 (Najd), which race possesses the best horses. Thus by a most fortuitous arrangement 

 the select breed formed by a selection from the original and universal pure breed of 

 Arabis, the Kuhl race, or a portion of it, or a still more definite selection from it, 

 has been preserved and handed down to the present day by that great and pecu- 

 liarly exclusive people, the great Anazeh race. 



"Whether the era of Keheilet Ajuz was before or since the days of Rabiah, 

 and if before whether the horses inherited by Rabiah were solely from her, I can- 

 not say. But it certainly appears to me that a special selection of horses does 

 exist in the Anazeh tribes, and their tenacity and persistency in keeping it pure 

 and select is shown by their refusing to acknowledge or to return to any strain 

 which has departed from them into other hands. 



"The Keheilan blood among the Anazeh tribes seems to proceed from them to 

 other tribes, and thus the Anazeh horse influences and afifects all other strains (more 

 or less) which there may be inside or outside of 'Al-Khamseh,' but never returns to 

 the Anazeh. 



"The term 'Al-Khamseh' (The Five) has reference only, I consider, to the five 

 original mares of the Arab patriarch Salaman; it embraces all authentic lines of 

 descent from 'The Five,' but does not infer that there are necessarily five families, 

 or only five, at the present day. I think there is not any attempt on the part of the 

 Bedouin, such as the Anazeh, to retain five families only as representatives of the 

 original five, or indeed to limit the number of families or strains in 'Al-Khamseh.' 

 These are very numerous, and when any such have established a well-merited rep- 

 utation, and especially when other strains have sprung from them in turn, it appears 

 to me that such often become the leading families. On the other hand, I think it 

 is quite possible that a name or family might cease to have a place in 'Al-Khamseh' 

 under some circumstances, i. e., it might cease to be considered worthy by the Anazeh. 



"The blood of the five original mares collectively may have come down through 

 five sources, bearing different names (original or otherwise), not that lines from the 

 original mares were kept distinct from each other otherwise than in name, from 

 the custom of calling the offspring after the family of the dam; or from the period 

 of the Keheilet Ajuz it may have been preserved, as some suppose, through that 

 one source. 



"The accompanying chart may make the matter more clear; the roll of names 

 which follows is a tolerably complete one of the families and strains considered and 

 said to be in 'Al-Khamseh'— of many there is no doubt — and is so arranged as to 



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