208 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



the season of scarcity. But it does not follow that all parts of 

 Arabia have always been so unfitted for wild Equidae. We have 

 seen above (p. 202) that in Strabo's time the region south of 

 Nabataea possessed wild animals in abundance — camels, asses, 

 gazelles^ and some other cervine species, as well as large carni- 

 vorae, such as lions, leopards, and wolves, the two former of 

 which depend for subsistence on a good supply of herbivores, 

 whilst all three must have Avater to drink. It would thus 

 appear that the climate has altered considerably since the 

 Christian era, and the movements northwards in later times of 

 the Anazah and Shammar tribes seem probably due in the 

 main to the failure of pasturage in Najd. Mr Blunt thinks that 

 "we may be content with accepting the usual belief that Arabia 

 was one of the countries where the horse was originally found 

 in his wild state, and where he was first caught and tamed," 

 yet he urges that it was " not in the peninsula of Arabia, where 

 water is only to be had from wells, that the original stock can 

 have been found, but rather in Mesopotamia and the great 

 pastoral districts bordering the Euphrates, where water is 

 abundant and pasture perennial. Here the wild horse must 

 have been originally captured (just as in the present day the 

 wahash or wild ass is captured), and taken thence by man to 

 people the peninsula^." 



But this assumes that the Arabs had the horse at a very 

 early period, a view totally disproved by history, as we have 

 just seen ; it has also been shown that the horse does not appear 

 in Babylonian records till about 1500 B.C., and it has just been 

 made clear that the best horses of Bab} Ionia and Mesopotamia 

 under both Assyrian and Persian empires were very different 

 from the Kohl breed of modern Arabia. 



On the other hand Major-General Tweedie^ whilst agreeing 

 with Mr Blunt that " Arabia as at present known can never 

 have supported wild horses," holds that " at an early time the 



1 Lady Anue Blunt (Pih/rimage to Kejd, Vol. i. pp. 223-4) saw in the 

 garden of the Emir Muhammad-ibn-Eashid at Hail in Jebel Shammar in Najd, 

 two kinds of gazelles, one variety being more brown than the other, and a 

 couple of ibexes with immense heads. 



- Blunt, The Bedouin Tribes, Vol. ii. pp. 245-6. 



3 Op. cit. , p. 74. 



