Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 165 



were no good horses except those of the sheikh and his 

 followers. The Bedouin, in the Hijaz, are very poor in horses, 

 a few sheikhs only having an}'^, but those near Mediueh have 

 more. Upton shows that the statement that wild horses are 

 found in the deserts is completely fallacious \ 



There is but one breed of the true Arabian — that termed 

 Kohl, so called from kohl, antimony, because the skin not only 

 on the face but all over the body has the blue-black tint of the 

 human skin when dyed with that mineral, so largely used by 

 Eastern women to enhance their charms. From kohl come the 

 derivatives kheilan and keheilet, the generic names for the horse 

 and mare of this breed respectively. Mr Blunt '^ gives the same 

 derivation for the name of the breed, only he explains it as 

 arising from " the black marks which certain Arabian horses 

 have round their eyes " ; marks which give them the appearance 

 of being painted with kohl, after the fashion of the Arabian 

 women, an explanation rejected by Major-General Tweedie^, 

 who refers the name to the fact that " in this breed, especially 

 in white and grey horses, the skin is characterised by a dark 

 blue tinge which appears through the hairy covering." 



All existing true-bred 'Arabs,' i.e., horses of the Kohl 

 breed, are descended from one or more of the strains kno^vn 

 as Al Khamseh, The Five. But the origin of the ' Five ' it 

 is not so easy to determine. According to a cominon Arab 

 statement they are the five stocks descended from five out 

 of the seven mares owned by Muhammad, on which the Prophet 

 and his first four successors — Abubekr, Omar, Atman, and Ali — 

 fled from Mecca to Medineh on the night of the Hejira, and 

 which were specially blessed by their master. This, however, 

 seems to be nothing more than a late invention of townsmen, 

 for Upton* states that in the desert he never heard of Muham- 

 mad's mares, nor was his name ever mentioned in any way as 

 connected with the Arabian horse. 



Another story fashionable amongst the Arab horse-dealers 

 of Bussorah and Bombay is that all pure -bred Arabs are 

 descended from certain mares of King Solomon, who, being 



1 Op. cit. p. 27.S. 2 xhe Bedouin Tribes, etc., pp. 266-7. 



^ The Arabian Horse, p. 233. "» Op. cit., p. 280. 



