HORSES OF ANCIENT ARABIA 193 



I venture, therefore, respectfully to think that the 

 authorities I have quoted in this chapter tend to 

 show alike the antiquity and the purity of the breed, 

 and that it is the breed now and always heretofore 

 used and valued in Arabia. 



We know how he is valued in Arabia even to the 

 present day. We know how he was valued 3,000 

 years ago, when Job wrote, and when the early 

 Hebrew prophets complained that he was more 

 valued than the God of Israel. In the intermediate 

 time, early in our era, the pure breed was valued 

 quite as much, for we read that Abu-Obeidah, 

 Commander-in-Chief of Omar, who was the second 

 Caliph, after the Battle of Yermouk, which over- 

 threw the Roman power and decided the fate of 

 Syria, awarded a double portion of spoil ' to those 

 who had true Arabian horses.' Even thus early, 

 A.D. 623, the pure Arabian was distinguished and 

 specialized, and was valued beyond other breeds in 

 all Eastern countries. 



An impure breed could never have maintained its 

 essential sameness and characteristics so uniformly 

 for so many thousands of years as the Arab has 

 done, nor would men of all nations have so uniformly 

 and so universally praised an animal which was not of 

 surpassing excellence. If he pass away by human 

 folly, then, as General Tweedie says, you will never 

 see his like again. 



When I think of the history and the triumphs and 

 the intellectual grandeur of the x^rabs, I know not 



13 



