Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 207 



placed upon a camel. From her descended a special strain 

 of blood, known as the Benat-el-Ahwaj, or "daughters of the 

 crooked," and this was the first distinction made by the Bedouins 

 among their horses. The Benat-el-Ahwaj, or Ahwaj, as it is 

 more commonly called, may therefore be considered the oldest 

 breed known. "I have never heard of it in the Arabian 

 deserts, but the Emir assures me that it exists under that 

 name in the Sahara, and that the breeds now recognised in 

 Arabia are but ramifications of this original stock." Blunt ^ 

 concludes that the Keheilans were " an early sub-breed of the 

 Ahwaj, receiving their name from the black marks 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. Or indeed Keheilan may be merely a 

 new name for the Ahwaj, used first as an epithet, but after- 

 wards superseding the older name in Arabia. Abd-el-Kader 

 told Blunt that the five mares of Solomon so often mentioned 

 by Arab townsmen were Benat-el-Ahwaj, purchased by Solomon 

 from the Ishmaelites, and that one of them, the most celebrated, 

 was given by him to the Sheikh of Uzd, in which tribe her 

 descendants are still said to be found. She was called Zad-el- 

 Musefir, " Food for the Traveller," on account of her being fast 

 enough to overtake the gazelle. 



The fact that the Emir Abd-el-Kader believed that the 

 original stock of the Ahwaj still survives in North Africa, when 

 taken in conjunction with the further fact that the five great 

 strains of the Kohl breed are unknown in that region, will 

 be found of considerable significance at a later stage in our 

 inquiry. 



Mr Blunt ^ and Major-General Tweedie^ are agreed in the 

 opinion that the peninsula of Arabia, " as at present known, can 

 never have supported wild horses," on the ground that, as water 

 cannot be obtained from pools, but must be drawai from dug 

 wells, and as the pastures are burnt up during part of the year, 

 horses would inevitably perish of thirst and hunger, unless man 

 drew water for them from deep wells and stored ujd fodder for 



1 The Bedouin Tribes, etc., Vol. ii. p. 267. - Op. cit., Vol. ii. p. 245. 



* Op. cit., pp. 7-8. 



