Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 177 



mare easily and effectually. He rides on a pad of cotton 

 fastened on the mare's back by a surcingle, and uses no stirrup. 

 The Bedouin does not know how to tell a horse's age by the 

 teeth, and still less of any dealer's trick in the way of false 

 markings^" 



Major-General Tweedie^ has gone carefully into the question 

 of the colours of Arab horses and the Arab terms for colour. In 

 England, he writes, "an antiquated idea lingers that the authentic 

 Arab must be grey. When the eminent Assyriologist, Sir H. C. 

 Rawlinson, exhibited in 1864 a bay Arabian stated to have a 

 pedigree of four hundred years, London actually rejected him 

 on the score of his being a bay, and not a grey. This illusion 

 is sanctioned by Palgrave, who says in his article in the Ency- 

 clopaedia Britannica ' that dark bay never occurs in the genuine 

 Nejdee.' If by dark bay he meant dark brown, or quasi- 

 black, the statement might be received subject to qualification. 

 But every Arab prizes dark bay, as understood by horsemen. 

 In the old rhapsodies about horses by desert riders the bay 

 colour is set above every other. In one such passage the 

 descriptive epithet used is Ah-mar. Perhaps ah-mar includes 

 chestnut. Ah-mar may mean bright bay, but unquestionably 

 the ancient Arabic word ku-mait, which Im-ru'l Kais uses, 

 signifies dark bay. Ku-mait is explained as ' the dark red hue 

 verging towards black of the fresh ripe date.' Col. Hamilton 

 Smith describes the Arabian breed as one of great admixture, 

 and this view is illustrated by the diversity of its colours. At 

 the same time this diversity has its limit. Thus the dun 

 colour is most unusual in Arabian horses. Sooty blacks prevail 

 in the vulgar stock of the pastoral and agricultural Kurds 

 round Kar-kuk and Mosul. There are however many different 

 classes of black horses, and those of the Kurds can have no 

 real relationship with those of the black Arabians, one of which 

 was taken by Youatt as a model. Not half a dozen Artibians 

 of this colour have made foot-prints on the turf in India. 

 Occasionally we hear of a noble black, which is the boast of the 

 Ae-ni-za (Anazah), but such of the colour as come our way too 



1 Op. cit., Vol. II. pp. 258-9. 

 ^ The Arabian Horse, pp. 260-1. 



R. H. 12 



