Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 201 



tribes do not appear ever to have employed them in early 

 times. This difference between the Tartars and the Arabs was 

 probably due to the fact that whilst wild camels were found 

 both in Upper Asia and Arabia, the horse, though indigenous 

 in the former region, was not a native of the latter. 



The reader will probably be startled by this last statement, 

 inasmuch as it has hitherto been generally held that Arabia 

 is the original, and not merely the adoptive, mother of the 

 famous steeds that bear her name. But the testimony of 

 the great geographers, Eratosthenes (flor. B.C. 300) and Strabo 

 (flor. A.D. 1), would of itself be sufficient to put it beyond all 

 doubt that the Arabs did not breed, or even possess, horses 

 until after the beginning of the Christian era. 



Strabo 1 , who embodied and supplemented from other sources 

 the information collected by his great predecessor, gives the 

 following account of Arabia in general : " The first people next 

 after the Syrians and the Jews who occupy this region are 

 husbandmen. Next to them comes a barren and sandy tract, 

 producing a few palms, the acanthus, and the tamarisk ; water 

 is obtained from dug wells, as in Gedrosia. It is inhabited 

 by Arab tent-dwellers, who breed camels. The extreme parts 

 towards the south and opposite to Ethiopia are watered by 

 summer showers, and are sown twice, like the land in India. 

 Its rivers are exhausted in watering plains and in running into 

 lakes. The fertility of the country is very great, and there is 

 in particular an abundant supply of honey. With the exception 

 of horses, mules and swine, there are numerous herds of cattle, 

 and there are all sorts of birds except geese and domestic fowl. 

 Four principal tribes occupy this great territory the Minaei 

 the parts towards the Red Sea; the Sabaeans (whose chief 

 city is Mariaba); the Cattabaneis, whose territory extends to 

 the Straits and the passage across the Arabian Gulf; and the 

 Chatramotitae, the furthest of these nations towards the East. 

 Their city is Sabata." This description of itself is sufficient 

 to show that no horse-breeding was carried on in any part of 

 Arabia Felix at the time of Christ. But Strabo gives more 

 detailed accounts of the various territories of this vast region. 



1 768. 



