In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia

by C. J. Wills

The horses had been carefully dry-rubbed and clothed, the nammads, or felt coverings, drawn over their necks, for it was chilly, and the beds of “pane” laid for them.

The Persians use no straw for making beds for their horses, as it is too valuable; but they utilise the dung, which is carefully dried in the sun and then stored, as bedding; this is very dry, clean, and soft, and quite without smell. When thus dried, it is called “pane.” It is laid a foot deep all round the standing of the horse, and the edges carefully smoothed (as a gardener in England smooths his flower-beds) by the grooms.

The horses, well aware that it is feeding-time, and having been watered some ten minutes before (they had been walked about for half-an-hour to cool them on arrival—a thing a Persian never omits), now commenced neighing, playfully biting and letting out at each other as far as their heel-ropes would permit. Pierson’s head-groom measured out in handfuls the allowance of barley for each beast, and it was poured into a nosebag filled with “kah,” or chaff, and then affixed to the animal’s head, that not a grain might be lost. When we had seen this done, and noticed that each horse fed well, we left, our place being taken by the head-servant, who stayed till the barley was eaten; for in those days we could not trust our grooms, who would always steal the barley if they could.

Oats are not used in Persia, though there are many salt-marshes in the country where they would grow well. Barley is the only food for horses, the allowance being from seven to ten pounds of barley for the animal’s two feeds; generally seven pounds are not exceeded. (It must be remembered that the general run of animals is much smaller than that of English horses, fourteen hands being the usual height, and fifteen being an unusually large beast.) This allowance is divided into two feeds, five pounds at night and two in the morning. This, with as much as he chooses to consume of wheat or barley straw, broken in pieces two inches long (“kah”), is all the animal has from one end of the year to the other; no hay is given, but for a month the horse is put on an entire diet of young green barley-grass, of which he will eat two hundred and fifty pounds a day. Prior to being put on this diet, which is termed full grass, he has a larger and larger proportion administered with his chaff; this mixture is called “teleet.”

The barley-grass is cut by the grooms, by tearing handfuls of it against a curved toothed sickle fixed upright in a piece of wood, and is given from two to four inches long. As the horse is given “teleet,” his grain is diminished, and, when he is on full grass, stopped altogether; as he gets more and more grass, his teeth get blunt, and do not break the grain, and on leaving off grass his barley has to be soaked.

A horse on grass cannot do any serious work, and the gentlest canter will put him in a lather. Of course it is very difficult to march a horse when on grass, and in Persia it can only be had in the spring; and unless he is going from a country where the season is early to one where it is late, the animal has to do without grass altogether, or even to march on “teleet”—a very dangerous thing, as he will often break down. The Persians are very fond of seeing their horses fat, particularly the townsmen, so that these latter will keep their beasts on entire grass for two months, and on “teleet” seven months in the year, giving clover, too, mixed with the “kah,” when they can get it. The result is an animal bursting with fat, very irritable and restive, but who can do no work.

To old horses “nawallah,” or balls of dough made of barley flour and water, are given; the animals take to this, which is the usual camel food, and will look fat and work well when they have not a tooth in their heads.

During the only grape season that I was in Hamadan, the fruit was so cheap that we put our horses on a diet of it for a week. Hasseens, or earthen pans of tile, were affixed to the wall in the mangers, and the horses grew extremely fat on a diet of grapes alone.

Persian horses, like Persian women, age early; possibly they are ridden too young; the two-year-old is often put to hard work, and an animal of nine is an old horse.