166 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



a great lover of horses, was one day so absorbed in his stud 

 that he forgot to say his prayers. Stung by remorse for this 

 omission he turned loose his horses all over the country, where- 

 upon six of the best mares were selected by six individuals, 

 and kept for breeding purposes. Major-General Tweedie 1 has 

 shown that this is a mere modern perversion of a passage in 

 one of Muhammad's homilies, in which the Prophet, to admonish 

 his hearers, brought in a fragment narrating how once upon 

 a time the great and pious King Solomon, absorbed in admira- 

 tion of his mares, omitted his evening prayer, and afterwards, 

 when his conscience pricked him, sacrificed his four-footed 

 idols. 



The other tradition, and that held by all the Bedouin tribes, 

 is that the Five families in Al Khamseh are all descended from 

 one particular mare, called Keheilet Ajuz, " the Mare of the 

 Old Woman 2 ." Tweedie writes 3 that "during a long residence 

 in El I'rak and on many journeys we have made constant 

 inquiry on this subject from the Bedouin. One undeviating 

 answer has been given on two points : first, that every noble 

 strain in the Arabian desert goes back to the Ku-hai-la of the 

 old woman ; and further, that it does so through one or other 

 of the lines which constitute AL KHAM-SA." The birth of the 

 Keheilet Ajuz was on this wise. An Arab flying before his 

 foes made a short halt, whereupon his mare gave birth to a 

 filly foal. Forced to press on he abandoned the foal. When 

 he once more stopped to rest his mare, to his surprise the 

 foal soon made its appearance, having stoutly followed her 

 mother's tracks. He placed the foal in charge of an old woman, 

 who reared her, and hence arose her name. 



Some have supposed that the names of the five different 

 strains are merely the invention of modern horse-dealers to 

 impose on the credulity of Englishmen in India. " It is 

 difficult to give more than a guess," says Mr Blunt, "as to 

 the antiquity of the names now in use. The five breeds 

 known as the Khamsa are not possessed by the tribes of 

 Northern Africa ; and it is therefore probable, that at the 



1 Op. cit., pp. 227-8. 2 Upton, op. cit., p. 280. 



3 Op. cit., p. 234. 



