It is sad to contemplate the present debased and semi-barbarous condition of the descendants of a great people who for centuries stood first among all the nations of the earth in commercial enterprise, in learning, and in the arts. The banishment of the Saracens from Spain in the beginning of the seventeenth century of our era was in fact the banishment of the descendants of the Phœnicians who first colonized Spain. The architectural structures which they left behind them, and which for their marvelous beauty have challenged the admiration of the world, were not the work of nomads and barbarians. They were the flashes of the old Phœnician taste and genius as exemplified by the descendants of the men whom Hiram sent to construct and decorate the buildings of Solomon. The Alhambra and some other structures in Spain are all that we have to remind us of the genius, and grandeur of Phœnicia. Whatever may have been the character and attainments of the descendants of the colonists at the time, the change from idolatry to Islamism was a bad one. Wherever, throughout the world, the teachings of the “Prophet” have been accepted, whole nations have become intolerant, murderous and brutalized, and the modern Phœnicians are no exception. They have now lost their identity in the follies and crimes of Islamism and we can have no sympathy for them.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ARABIAN HORSE.
The Arabian, the horse of romance—The horse naturally foreign to Arabia— Superiority of the camel for all Arabian needs—Scarcity of horses in Arabia in Mohammed’s time—Various preposterous traditions of Arab horsemanship—The Prophet’s mythical mares—Mohammed not in any sense a horseman—Early English Arabians—the Markham Arabian—The alleged Royal Mares—The Darley Arabian—The Godolphin Arabian—The Prince of Wales’ Arabian race horses—Mr. Blunt’s pilgrimage to the Euphrates—His purchases of so-called Arabians—Deyr as a great horse market where everything is thoroughbred—Failure of Mr. Blunt’s experiments—Various Arabian horses brought to America—Horses sent to our Presidents—Disastrous experiments of A. Keene Richards—Tendency of Arab romancing from Ben Hur.
Admiration always leads to exaggeration. This is true in most of the relations of life, but in our admiration of the horse it becomes greatly intensified, so greatly indeed that in magnifying his excellent qualities we find ourselves telling downright falsehoods about him before we know it. This “amiable weakness,” as we might call it, is true of our everyday life and our everyday horses; but when we come to the horse that is the universal ideal of perfection, everybody seems to lay aside all the restraints of truth in extolling the superiority of his qualities. The “Arabian horse” is the ideal horse of all the world. He is the “gold standard” in all horsedom, with the one important distinction that the one is real and the other is mythical. Not one so-called horseman in a million ever saw a genuine Arabian horse, nor any of the descendants of one; and in all the discussions of the past three hundred and fifty years it has never been shown in a single instance that a horse from Arabia, with an authenticated pedigree and tracing as such, has ever been of any value, either as a race horse or as a progenitor of race horses. The superior qualities of “the Arabian horse,” like the superior qualities of “The Arabian Nights,” are purely works of the imagination. There is just as much truth in the stories of Sindbad the Sailor and Aladdin’s Lamp as there is in most of the literature relating to the Arabian horse.
I am fully satisfied that these views of the Arabian horse will not meet with a ready acceptance by the vast majority of the horsemen of this or any other country, but my reasons for presenting them will become apparent as the discussion progresses. They smash too many idols and dispel too many chimeras of the brain to be readily accepted. It takes the average man a long time to get clear of the prejudices in which he was born, and the first question that will be asked by the doubter is, “Why could not Arabia have supported a race of indigenous wild horses, as well as any other country?” Because the horse, wild or tame, has never learned to dig a well forty feet deep, nor to draw water after it is dug. Neither has he learned to lay up a store in time of plenty against a time of famine. The horse could not live in Arabia without the care of man. And, second, “Why were all the civilized and semi-civilized nations west of Asia supplied with horses a thousand years before Arabia, when so near the original habitat of the horse?” It is the first law of our nature to supply ourselves with what we need. The camel always has been a necessity to the Arab, not only to carry him and his burdens, but to furnish nourishment and sustenance to him and his family. The camel is adapted to the country and the country to the camel, and no other created animal can fill that place. He is, literally, “the ship of the desert.” The horse in Arabia is a luxury that can be indulged in only by the rich; hence his ownership is practically restricted to the chiefs of tribes. He is never used except for display and war. Palgrave, in speaking specially of the Nejd tribe, says: “A horse is by no means an article of everyday possession, or of ordinary or working use. No genuine Arab would ever dream of mounting his horse for a mere peaceful journey, whether for a short or a long distance.”
When we consider the immeasurable superiority of the camel to the horse in meeting the wants and necessities of the Arab, we will not be surprised at the immense herds of the former and the small numbers of the latter that are bred and reared in that country. A camel can go four days without water, and under stress, it is said, a good one can cover the distance of two hundred miles in twenty-four hours. The camel and the country are suited to each other, while the horse is an exotic, and has no part in any industrial interest except raiding and robbery. My attention was first called to this unexpected smallness in the numbers of Arabian horses in the seventh century, two hundred and sixty years after the introduction of the original stock from Cappadocia. The flight of Mohammed from his enemies in Mecca to Medina took place A.D. 622. There, setting up as a Prophet, and as holding communications with Heaven, he soon gathered around him a number who believed in his divine inspiration. Understanding the habits and instincts of his followers, he soon found he must give them something to do. He called them about him, mounted a camel, and at their head he was successful in plundering two or three caravans, which greatly enraged his old enemies at Mecca. Whether the anger of his enemies was kindled anew because some of the plunder belonged in Mecca, or whether he merely deprived the Meccans of the opportunity of doing the plundering themselves, the historian fails to make clear. Whichever may have been the underlying reason, it led to war. In the first campaign of the Meccans and in the first battle fought, they far outnumbered the followers of the Prophet. There were some camels in Mohammed’s train, but no horses. He did not lead the battle himself, but remained in his tent and promised his followers that all who fell in battle would be forthwith admitted into Paradise. They believed the promise, as millions and millions have believed it since; it inspired them with a recklessness of life, and they were completely victorious. The result of this victory was the capture of one hundred and fifteen camels and fourteen horses, besides the entire camp of the enemy. In the battle of the next year (A.D. 625) between the same parties, the forces were much increased on both sides. Sir William Muir, the historian, informs us that Mohammed had but two horses in his army, one of which he mounted himself and took command of his forces. This battle was not decisive. In subsequent raids he captured many enemies and traded his female captives for horses with the surrounding tribes, so far as he was able to obtain them. The next year he had an army of three thousand men and thirty-six horses, while the enemy had an army of three thousand men, of whom two hundred were cavalry, but there was no fighting. The fame of Mohammed as a successful and relentless pillager and destroyer had now spread far and wide, and as a means of escape the chiefs of the larger portion of the tribes of Arabia hastened to tender their allegiance and obey his commands. From this forward, therefore, we must consider Mohammed as the representative of the whole of Arabia, in both its religious and military power. The next year his old enemies, the citizens of Mecca, surrendered the sacred city to him without a blow, and thus Islamism became a mighty power in the world.
It is evident from many sources other than the history of Mohammed that horses have always been a very sparse production in Arabia. Burckhardt, the famous traveler in the East, journeyed very extensively in Arabia about 1814, and he gives the result of his observations on this point of numbers as follows: “In all the journey from Mecca to Medina, between the mountains and the sea, a distance of at least two hundred and sixty miles, I do not believe that two hundred horses could be found, and the same proportion of numbers may be remarked all along the Red Sea.” This is in strict conformity with the observations of other writers, the reasons for which have already been given.
Time out of mind, everybody has heard of the insuperable difficulty of prevailing upon an Arab to part with his genuine, high-caste mare for either love or money. He will expatiate, as the story goes, upon “the beauty and graces of his mare as the light of his household and the joy and playmate of his children, and above all as she is royally bred he cannot, as a good Moslem, disobey the injunctions of the Prophet not to sell such mares, but to keep them forever that their descendants may enrich the children of the faithful to all generations.” If you ask him more particularly about her lines of descent, he will give you fifty or a hundred generations and land you safely on the name of the particular one of the five mares of the Prophet from which she is descended. To illustrate the sham of all this Major Upton’s experience, in purchasing horses in Arabia for the East India service, may be cited. It is evident the major understands his dealers and they understand him. He says: “In the desert we never heard of Mohammed’s mares, nor was his name ever mentioned in any way as connected with the Arabian horse.” He says there is no restriction nor difficulty in buying as many mares as you want, in any part of Arabia. This disposes of the tricky pretenses of the Arab horse dealer when he is negotiating a sale to a man without Arabian experience.