The average height was found to be under fourteen hands; and though great care was taken to obtain and preserve pure strains of blood, in the matter of feeding and grooming, gross negligence seemed to be the rule, even in the royal stud. The stables were mere open yards, in which the animals stood, each tethered to a manger. No shelter was provided, but each horse was protected by a heavy rug. They wore no headstalls, being fastened solely with ropes or chains about the fetlocks. No regular exercise was given them, their food was almost exclusively dry barley, and their appearance generally was far different from what Europeans would naturally expect of the finest stable of horses in the “horse peninsula.”
The travellers also enlighten us, on the subject of horses, in other directions. Except in the north, horses were found to be exceedingly rare. It is possible to travel vast distances without meeting a single horse, or even crossing a horse-track; on the whole journey across the Nefûd, and on to the Euphrates, they scarcely saw a horse, apart from the stables of the rich and great in the cities. The horse is a luxury to be afforded only by people of wealth or position. Journeys and raids and wars are all made on camels; the Sheykhs who have horses, when going to war save them to mount at the moment of actual engagement with the enemy. It was considered a great boast by a Nejd tribe of Bedouins that they could mount one hundred horsemen; while the Muteyr tribe, reputed to be the greatest breeders of thoroughbred stock in Central Arabia, would be expected to muster not more than four hundred mares.
Mohammed-ibn-Rashid recruited his stables by compelling the Sheykhs of tributary tribes to sell him their best animals, an improvement on some of his predecessors, who kept their studs up to the proper mark becoming Arab royalty by making raids against the tribes for the purpose of bringing in celebrated mares, waiving the matter of payment.
In the spring the horses of the Emir’s stables are distributed among the neighboring Bedouins to be pastured on the Nefûd, which at that period affords excellent grazing. Had the visitors seen the herd after a month on the Nefûd, they would likely have carried away a much more favorable impression. During the winter quartering the colts seemed to fare even worse than their dams and sires, from the following:
“Besides the full-grown animals, Ibn Rashid’s yards contain thirty or forty foals and yearlings, beautiful little creatures, but terribly starved and miserable. Foals bred in the desert are poor enough, but those in town have a positively sickly appearance. Tied all day long by the foot, they seem to have quite lost heart, and show none of the playfulness of their age. Their tameness, like that of the ‘fowl and the brute,’ is shocking to see.”
The contrast between the actual treatment of these royal animals and the following Arab recipe for rearing a colt is sufficiently striking:
“During the first month of his life let him be content with his mother’s milk; it will be sufficient for him. Then, during five months, add to this natural supply goats’ milk, as much as he will drink. For six months more give him the milk of camels, and besides a measure of wheat steeped in water for a quarter of an hour and served in a nose-bag. At a year old the colt will have done with milk; he must be fed on wheat and grass, the wheat dry from a nose-bag, the grass green, if there is any.
“At two years old he must work or he will be worthless. Feed him now, like a full-grown horse, on barley; but in summer let him also have gruel daily at mid-day. Make the gruel thus: Take a double-handful of flour and mix it in water well with your hands till the water seems like milk, then strain it, leaving the dregs of the flour, and give what is liquid to the colt to drink.
“Be careful, from the hour he is born, to let him stand in the sun; shade hurts horses; but let him have water in plenty when the day is hot. The colt must now be mounted and taken by his owner everywhere with him, so that he shall see everything and learn courage. He must be kept constantly in exercise, and never remain long at his manger. He should be taken on a journey, for the work will fortify his limbs. At three years old he should be trained to gallop; then, if he be true blood, he will not be left behind. Yalla!”
Lady Blunt thinks this represents a traditional practice of rearing colts in Arabia since the days of the Prophet Mohammet.