MAHOMET ENCOURAGES BREEDING 87 



back shall be a seat of honour, and thy belly of 

 riches, and every grain of barley given to thee 

 shall purchase indulgence for the sinner," while 

 in another place he declares that " every grain of 

 barley given to a horse is entered by God in the 

 Register of Good Works." 



He describes in an interesting way the horse 

 of the Archangel Gabriel, to which the name 

 Haizum was given, also Dhuldul, the peerless 

 steed of his son-in-law, AH, and his own milk- 

 white mule, Fadda. All this is the more remark- 

 able when we bear in mind that in the centuries 

 that preceded Mahomet's birth the Arab race 

 was practically a nonentity in so far as the con- 

 tinual struggles for supremacy in Egypt and in 

 Western Asia were concerned, when the great 

 Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Median, 

 Roman and Macedonian tribes fought with such 

 dogged determination and proved each in turn 

 more or less victorious. 



Yet it is more than likely some of our 

 leading historians pronounce positively upon this 

 point that if in the years just before Mahomet's 

 birth the tribes had not become possessed of a 

 staunch race of horses, and devoted much time to 

 perfecting themselves in horsemanship in the true 

 meaning of the term, Islam would have remained 

 unchanged instead of almost revolutionising the 

 world in the way it did. 



Small wonder, therefore, that Mahomet was en- 



