“Je ne trouvai point en eux ces formes que je m’attendais à retrouver
dans la patrie de Zeid el Kheil.”—GUARMANI.
Nejd horses—Their rarity—Ibn Saoud’s stud—The stables at Haïl—Some notes
of individual mares—The points of a Nejd head—The tribes in the Nefûds
and their horses—Meaning of the term “Nejdi”—Recipe for training.
A CHAPTER on the horses we saw at Haïl has been promised, and may as well
be given here.
Ibn Rashid’s stud is now the most celebrated in Arabia, and has taken the
place in public estimation of that stud of Feysul ibn Saoud’s which Mr.
Palgrave saw sixteen years ago at Riad, and which he described in the
picturesque paragraphs which have since been constantly quoted. The
cause of this transference of supremacy from Aared to Jebel Shammar, lies
in the political changes which have occurred since 1865, and which have
taken the leadership of Central Arabia out of the hands of the Ibn Saouds
and put it into those of the Emirs of Haïl.
Mohammed ibn Rashid is now not only the most powerful of Bedouin sheykhs,
but the richest prince in Arabia; and as such has better means than any
other of acquiring the best horses of Nejd, nor have these been neglected
by him.
The possession of thoroughbred mares is always among the Arabs a symbol
of power; and with the loss of their supreme position in Nejd, the Ibn
Saouds have lost their command of the market, and their stud has been
allowed to dwindle. The quarrels of the two brothers, Abdallah and
Saoud, sons of Feysul, on their father’s death, their alternate victories
and flights from the capital, and the ruin wrought on them both by the
Turks, broke up an establishment which depended on wealth and security
for its maintenance; and at the present moment, if common report speaks
true, hardly a twentieth part of the old stud remains at Riad. The rest
have passed into other hands.
That Feysul’s stud in its day was the best in Arabia is probable, and it
may be that no collection now to be found there has an equal merit; but
there seems little reason for supposing that it differed in anything but
degree from what we ourselves saw, or that the animals composing it were
distinct from those still owned by the various Bedouin tribes of Nejd.
All our inquiries, on the contrary (and we spared no occasion of asking
questions), tend to show that it is a mistake to suppose that the horses
kept by the Emirs of Riad were a special breed, preserved in the towns of
Aared from time immemorial, or that they differed in any way from those
bred elsewhere in Central Arabia. They were, we were repeatedly assured,
a collection recruited from the various tribes of the Nefûds,—a very fine
collection, no doubt, but still a collection. Every Bedouin we have
asked has laughed at the idea of there being a special _Nejd breed_, only
found in Aared. In answer to our questions we were informed that in
Feysul’s time emissaries from Riad were constantly on the look-out for
mares wherever they could find them; and that the Emir had often made
ghazús against this and that tribe, with no other object than the
possession of a particular animal, of a particular breed. The tribe from
which he got the best blood, the Hamdani Simri and the Kehilan el-Krush,
was the Muteyr (sometimes called the Dushan), while the Beni Khaled,
Dafir, Shammar, and even the Ánazeh, supplied him with occasional
specimens. Abdallah ibn Saoud, his successor, still retains a few of
them, but the bulk of the collection was dispersed, many of the best
passing into the hands of Metaab and Bender, Mohammed ibn Rashid’s
predecessors. Mohammed himself follows precisely the same system, except
that he does not take by force, but on payment. He makes purchases from
all the tribes around, and though he breeds in the town, his collection
is constantly recruited from without. Were this not the case, no doubt,
it would soon degenerate, as town-bred horses in Arabia, being stall-fed
and getting no sort of exercise, are seldom fit for much. There is a
false notion that the oases, such as those of Jebel Shammar and Aared,
are spots especially adapted for the rearing of horses, and that the
sandy wastes outside contain no pasture. But the very reverse of this is
the case. The oases in which the towns stand, produce nothing but date
palms and garden produce, nor is there a blade of grass, or even a tuft
of camel pasture in their neighbourhood. The townspeople keep no animals
except a few camels used for working the wells, and now and then a
donkey. Even these must be fed either on corn or dates, which none but
the rich can afford. Horses are a luxury reserved only for princes, and
even the richest citizens do their travelling from village to village on
foot. Longer journeys are performed on dromedaries brought in from the
desert for the purpose, which are either the property of Bedouins or held
with them by the citizens on shares.
The Nefûds, on the other hand, contain pasture in abundance, not only for
camels, but for sheep and horses, and it is in the Nefûds that all these
are bred. Ibn Rashid goes every spring with the bulk of his live stock
to the desert, and leaves them during part of the summer with the tribes,
only a few animals being reserved for use in the town. It cannot be too
strongly insisted upon, that the upper plateaux of Nejd, where the towns
and villages are found, are a stony wilderness almost entirely devoid of
vegetation, while the Nefûds afford an inexhaustible supply of pasture.
The want of water alone limits the pastoral value of these, for the
inhabited area is necessarily confined to a radius of twenty or thirty
miles round each well,—and wells are rare. These facts have not, I
think, been hitherto sufficiently known to be appreciated.
With regard to Ibn Rashid’s collection at Haïl we looked it over three or
four times in the stables, and saw it out once on a gala day, when each
animal was made to look its best. The stables consist of four open yards
communicating with each other, in which the animals stand tethered each
to a square manger of sun-dried brick. They are not sheltered in any
way, but wear long heavy rugs fastened across the chest. They are
chained by one or more feet to the ground, and wear no headstalls. It
being winter time and they ungroomed, they were all in the roughest
possible condition, and, as has been mentioned, our first impression was
one of disappointment. When at Haïl they are given no regular exercise,
remaining it would seem for weeks together tied up thus, except for a few
minutes in the evening, when they are led to drink. They are fed almost
entirely on dry barley. In the spring only, for a few weeks, they eat
green corn grown on purpose, and then are taken to the Nefûd or on
ghazús. It is surprising that they should be able to do their work under
such conditions.
The first yard one enters in going through the stables, contained, when
we saw them, from twenty-five to thirty mares. In the second were twenty
more, kept in a certain kind of condition for service in case of
necessity; but even these get very little exercise. As they stand there
in the yard, slovenly and unkempt, they have very little of that air of
high breeding one would expect; and it requires considerable imagination
to look upon them as indeed the _ne plus ultra_ of breeding in Arabia.
We made the mistake, too common, of judging horses by condition, for,
mounted and in motion, these at once became transfigured.
Here may follow some descriptions of particular animals, written after
one of our visits to the stud; these will give a better idea of them than
any general remarks. In our notes I find:—
“1. A chestnut Kehîlet el-Krush with three white feet (mutlak el-yemin),
14 hands, or 14·1, but very powerful. Her head is plainer than most
here—it would be thought a good head in England—lean and rather narrow.
She has too heavy a neck, but a very fine shoulder, a high wither, legs
like steel, hind quarter decidedly coarse, much hair at the heels. More
bone than breeding, one is inclined to say, seeing her at her manger,
though moving, and with the Emir on her back, one must be very captious
not to admire. She is Mohammed’s favourite charger, and of the best
blood in Nejd. Ibn Rashid got this strain from Ibn Saoud’s stables at
Riad, but it came originally from the Muteyr.”
“2. A bay Hamdanieh Simri, also from Ibn Saoud’s collection, a pretty
head, but no other distinction. N.B. This mare is of the same strain as
our own mare Sherifa, but inferior to her.”
“3. A grey Seglawieh Sheyfi, extremely plain at first sight, with very
drooping quarters, and a head in no way remarkable, but with a fine
shoulder. This Seglawieh Sheyfi has a great reputation here, and is of
special interest as being the last of her race, the only descendant of
the famous mare bought by Abbas Pasha, who sent a bullock cart from Egypt
all the way to Nejd to fetch her, for she was old, and unable to travel
on foot. The story is well known here, and was told to us exactly as we
heard it in the north, with the addition that this mare of Ibn Rashid’s
is the only representative of the strain left in Arabia.” {7}
“4. A dark bay Kehîlet Ajuz, quite 14·2, one white foot, really splendid
in every point, shoulder quarter and all; the handsomest head and largest
eye of any here. She has ideal action, head and tail carried to
perfection, and recalls Beteyen ibn Mershid’s mare, but her head is
finer. She belongs to Hamúd, who is very proud of her, and tells us she
came from the Jerba Shammar. It surprises us to find here a mare from
Mesopotamia; but we are told that interchange of horses between the
southern and northern Shammar is by no means rare.”
“5. A dark brown Kehîlet Ajuz, no white except an inch in breadth just
above one hoof, lovely head and thoroughbred appearance, and for style of
galloping perhaps the best here, although less powerful than the Emir’s
chestnut and Hamúd’s bay. It is hard to choose among the three.”
“Of the eight horses, the best is a Shueyman Sbah of great power, head
large and very fine. He reminds us of Faris Jerba’s mare of the same
strain of blood; they are probably related closely, for he has much the
same points, forequarter perfect, hindquarter strong but less
distinguished. He was bred, however, in Nejd.”
“A grey Seglawi Jedran, from Ibn Nedéri of the Gomussa Ánazeh, is a poor
specimen of that great strain of blood; but the Bedouin respect for it
prevails here though they have now no pure Seglawi Jedrans in Nejd. It
is interesting to find this horse valued here, as the fact proves that
the Ánazeh horses are thought much of in Nejd. The more one sees of the
Nejd horses here, the more is one convinced of the superiority of those
of the Ánazeh in the points of speed, and, proud as every one here is of
the ‘kheyl Nejdi,’ it seems to be acknowledged that in these points they
are surpassed by the Ánazeh horses.”
“Our own Ánazeh mares are looked upon as prodigies of speed.
“In comparing what we see here, with what we saw last year in the north,
the first thing that strikes us is that these are ponies, the others
horses. It is not so much the actual difference in height, though there
must be quite three inches on an average, as the shape, which produces
this impression. The Nejd horses have as a rule shorter necks and
shorter bodies, and stand over far less ground than the Ánazehs. Then,
although their shoulders are undoubtedly good and their withers higher
than one generally sees further north, the hind-quarter is short, and if
it were not for the peculiarly handsome carriage of the tail would
certainly want distinction. Their legs all seem to be extremely good;
but we have not seen in one of them that splendid line of the hind leg to
the hock which is so striking in the Ánazeh thoroughbreds. Of their feet
it is difficult to judge, for from long standing without exercise, all
the Emir’s mares have their hoofs overgrown. Their manes and tails are
thicker than one would expect.
“In their heads, however, there is certainly a general superiority to the
Ánazeh mares, at least in all the points the Arabs most admire, and we
were both struck, directly we saw them, with the difference.”
* * * * *
As I may fairly assume that few persons out of Arabia have an idea what
are there considered the proper points of a horse’s head, I will give
here a description of them:
First of all, the head should be large, not small. A little head the
Arabs particularly dislike, but the size should be all in the upper
regions of the skull. There should be a great distance from the ears to
the eyes, and a great distance from one eye to the other, though not from
ear to ear. The forehead, moreover, and the whole region between and
just below the eyes, should be convex, the eyes themselves standing
rather “_à fleur de tête_.” But there should be nothing fleshy about
their prominence, and each bone should be sharply edged; a flat forehead
is disliked. The space round the eyes should be free of all hair, so as
to show the black skin underneath, and this just round the eyes should be
especially black and lustrous. The cheek-bone should be deep and lean,
and the jaw-bone clearly marked. Then the face should narrow suddenly
and run down almost to a point, not however to such a point as one sees
in the English racehorse, whose profile seems to terminate with the
nostril, but to the tip of the lip. The nostril when in repose should
lie flat with the face, appearing in it little more than a slit, and
pinched and puckered up, as also should the mouth, which should have the
under-lip longer than the upper, “like the camel’s,” the Bedouins say.
The ears, especially in the mare, should be long, but fine and delicately
cut, like the ears of a gazelle.
It must be remarked that the head and the tail are the two points
especially regarded by Arabs in judging of a horse, as in them they think
they can discover the surest signs of his breeding. The tails of the
Nejd horses are as peculiar as their heads, and are as essential to their
beauty. However other points might differ, every horse at Haïl had its
tail set on in the same fashion, in repose something like the tail of a
rocking horse, and not as has been described, “thrown out in a perfect
arch.” In motion the tail was held high in the air, and looked as if it
could not under any circumstances be carried low. Mohammed ibn Arûk
declared roundly that the phenomenon was an effect, partly at least, of
art. He assured us that before a foal is an hour old, its tail is bent
back over a stick and the twist produces a permanent result. But this
sounds unlikely, and in any case it could hardly affect the carriage of
the tail in galloping.
With regard to colour, of the hundred animals in the Haïl stables, there
were about forty greys or rather whites, thirty bays, twenty chestnuts,
and the rest brown. We did not see a real black, and of course there are
no roans, or piebalds, or duns, for these are not Arab colours. The Emir
one day asked us what colours we preferred in England, and when we told
him bay or chestnut he quite agreed with us. Nearly all Arabs prefer bay
with black points, though pure white with a very black skin and hoofs is
also liked. In a bay or chestnut, three white feet, the off fore-foot
being dark, are not objected to. But, as a rule, colour is not much
regarded at Haïl, for there as elsewhere in Arabia a fashionable strain
is all in all.
“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
these 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 Emir tells us that every spring he sends
a hundred yearlings down to Queyt on the Persian Gulf under charge of one
of his slaves, who sells them at Bombay for £100 apiece. They are of
course now at their worst age, but they have the prospect of a few
months’ grazing in the Nefûd before appearing in the market.”
“On the whole, both of us are rather disappointed with what we see here.
Of all the mares in the prince’s stables I do not think more than three
or four could show with advantage among the Gomussa, and, in fact, we are
somewhat alarmed lest the Emir should propose an exchange with us for our
chestnut Ras el-Fedawi which is greatly admired by every one. If he did,
we could not well refuse.”
With regard to Nejd horses in general, the following remarks are based on
what we saw and heard at Haïl, and elsewhere in Arabia.
First, whatever may have been the case formerly, horses of any kind are
now exceedingly rare in Nejd. One may travel vast distances in the
Peninsula without meeting a single horse or even crossing a horse track.
Both in the Nefûd and on our return journey to the Euphrates, we
carefully examined every track of man and beast we met; but from the time
of our leaving the Roala till close to Meshhed Ali, not twenty of these
proved to be tracks of horses. The wind no doubt obliterates footsteps
quickly, but it could not wholly do so, if there were a great number of
the animals near. The Ketherin, a true Nejd tribe and a branch of the
Beni Khaled, told us with some pride that they could mount a hundred
horsemen, and even the Muteyr, reputed to be the greatest breeders of
thoroughbred stock in Nejd, are said to possess only 400 mares. The
horse is a luxury with the Bedouins of the Peninsula, and not, as it is
with those of the North, a necessity of their daily life. Their journeys
and raids and wars are all made on camel, not on horse-back; and at most
the Sheykh mounts his mare at the moment of battle. The want of water in
Nejd is a sufficient reason for this. Horses there are kept for show
rather than actual use, and are looked upon as far too precious to run
unnecessary risks.
Secondly, what horses there are in Nejd, are bred in the Nefûds. The
stony plateaux of the interior contain no suitable pasture except in a
very few places, while the Nefûds afford grass, green or dry, the whole
year round. The Muteyr, the Beni Khaled, the Dafir, and the Shammar, are
now the principal breeders of horses in Nejd, but the Ánazeh are regarded
as possessing the best strains, and the Ánazeh have disappeared from
Nejd. They began to migrate northwards about two hundred years ago, and
have ever since continued moving by successive migrations till all have
abandoned their original homes. It may be that the great name which Nejd
horses undoubtedly have in the East, was due mainly to these very Ánazeh,
with whose horses they are now contrasted. The Bisshr Ánazeh were
settled in the neighbourhood of Kheybar, on the western edge of the
Nefûd, the Roala south of Jôf, and the Amarrat in the extreme east.
These probably among them supplied Nejd horses in former times to Syria,
Bagdad, and Persia, and some sections of the tribe may even have found
their way further south; for the Ibn Saouds themselves are an Ánazeh
family. So that then, probably, as now, the best strains of blood were
in their hands. To the present day in the north the Ánazeh distinguish
the descendants of the mares brought with them from Nejd as “Nejdi,”
while they call the descendants of the mares captured from the tribes of
the North, “Shimali” or Northerners.
The management and education of horses seems to differ little in Nejd
from what it is elsewhere among the Arabs. But we were surprised to find
that, in place of the Bedouin halter, the bit is used at Haïl. At first
we fancied that this was in imitation of Turkish manners; but it is more
likely to be an old custom with town Arabs. Indeed the Bedouins of the
Sahara, no less than the Turks, use the ring bit, which may after all
have been an invention of Arabia. Bad as it is for the mouth, it is
certainly of use in the fancy riding indulged in at Haïl, the jerid play
and sham fighting. Among the Bedouins of Nejd the halter alone is used.
Of anything like racing we could learn nothing. Trials of speed are no
longer in fashion, as they must have been once, and skill in turning and
doubling is alone of any value. That some tradition, however, of
training still exists among the Arabs, the following recipe for rearing a
colt seems to prove. It was given us in answer to our description of
English racing and racehorses, and probably represents a traditional
practice of Arabia as old as the days of Mahomet.
ARAB RECIPE FOR REARING A COLT.
“If,” said our informant, “you would make a colt run faster than his
fellows, remember the following rules:—
“‘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 goat’s 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 nosebag.
[Picture: Ibn Rashid’s Mares]
“‘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 midday. 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 work will fortify his limbs.
“‘At three years old he should be trained to gallop. Then, if he be of
true blood, he will not be left behind. Yalla!’”
[Picture: Hamúd Ibn Rashid]