CHAPTER V 



Mahomet encourages horse-breeding — Procopius ; a misstate- 

 ment — Early allusion to horse races — Figures of horses cut on 

 cliffs — Roland and his horse, Veillantiff — Orelia, Roderick's 

 charger — Trebizond, Alfana ; Odin's mythical horse, Sleipnir — 

 Horse fighting in Iceland — Some horses of mythology : Pegasus, 

 Selene, Xanthos, Balios, Cyllaros, Arion, Reksh — Arab pedigrees 

 traced through dams — Influence of the horse upon history — 

 Courage of Julius Caesar's horses 



/ I V HE coming of Mahomet, who announced 

 A himself prophet about the year 611 a.d., 

 marks an epoch in the history of nations, and it 

 serves also as a landmark, if one may express it 

 so, in the horse's progress in its bearing upon the 

 world's history. 



At intervals throughout the Koran, which 

 Mahomet compiled probably about 610, we come 

 upon direct allusions to the horse in the part it 

 played at that time in the growth of what must be 

 termed civilisation. Probably Mahomet realised 

 more fully than any of his contemporaries how 

 indispensable to the human race the horse had by 

 this time become, for in one passage in the Koran 

 he puts a strange utterance into the mouth of the 

 Almighty, whom he represents as apostrophising 

 the horse, telling it that it shall be "for man a 

 source of happiness and wealth," adding, "thy 



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