Part 26

"Come, let us drive away the previous bidder, and do thou take 10 douros over and above his offer."

"I accept. Take thy horse, and Allah grant thou mayst be successful upon his back as many times as he has hairs upon it." And should he be desirous to avoid all risk of future annoyance on the subject of warranty, he adds in the presence of witnesses: "The separation between us is from this very moment. Thou dost not know me, and I have never seen thee."

It is not permitted to mount a horse for a trial until after the price has been agreed upon. Nevertheless, before the bargain is completely concluded the animal is tested against a horse that has a certain local reputation. The mode of trial is somewhat singular. The riders are barefooted, and are not allowed to touch their horse with the heel during any part of the race.

Horses whose reputation is well established in the country are never sold in the market-place. It is a positive insult to an Arab to ask him, "wilt thou sell thy horse?" before he has made known his intentions. "They must think me then in a miserable condition," he will say, "that they should dare to make such a proposal to me."

Certain tribes are particularly addicted to traffic in horse-flesh. The most noted of these Arab horse-dealers are the Beni-Addas. It is said of them:

With others, horses are mere carrion, With them, they are youthful brides: With others, they are asleep, With them, they dance.

For the rest, the Arab is no horse-dealer after the European fashion. He never makes use of ginger, nor does he resort to any trickery to disguise the bad points of his horse. He simply places him before the purchaser. But for the fraud he disdains he substitutes a flow of seductive eloquence. His inexhaustible oratory pours itself forth in metaphors and hyperboles. Pointing to the animal, he will say: "Uncover his back and satisfy thy gaze."

He will then go on:

"Say not it is my horse; say it is my son. He outstrips the flash in the pan, or a glance of the eye. He is pure as gold. His eyesight is so good that he can distinguish a hair in the night time. In the day of battle he delights in the whistling of the balls. He overtakes the gazelle. He says to the eagle: 'Come down, or I will ascend to thee!' When he hears the voices of the maidens, he neighs for joy. When he gallops he plucks out the tear from the eye. When he appears before the maidens he begs with his hand. It is a steed for the dark days when the smoke of powder obscures the sun. It is a thoroughbred, the very head of horses! No one has ever possessed his equal. I depend on him as on my own heart. He has no brother in the world: it is a swallow. He listens to his flanks, and is ever watching the heels of his rider. He understands as well as any son of Adam: speech alone is wanting to him. His pace is so easy that on his back, you might carry a cup of coffee without upsetting it. A nosebag satisfies him, a sack covers him. He is so light that he could dance on the bosom of thy mistress without bruising it."

The owner of the truly beautiful offers him for sale; The owner of the swift one makes protestations.

Ben-Youssouf, having one day given in exchange for a mare of the desert twenty she-camels with their young replied to his father who had keenly rebuked him: "And why are you angry, my lord? Has not this mare brought me the agility and the softness of skin of the jerboa, the movement of the neck of the hare, the fleetness and the vision of the ostrich, the hollow belly and the limbs of the greyhound, and the courage and breadth of head of the bull? She cannot fail to turn yellow the face of our enemies. When I pursue them, she will plunder without ceasing the croups of their horses; and if they pursue after me, the eye will not know where I have passed!"

It will be seen, as I had previously indicated in tracing the outline of a thoroughbred horse as sketched by the Arabs, that they esteem it of consequence that in his form he should borrow certain details from other animals. He should unite in himself the qualities that are separately remarked in the gazelle, the greyhound, the bull, the ostrich, the camel, the hare, and the fox. It is agreed that he should have the long, clean limbs of the gazelle, the fineness and strength of its haunches, the convexity of its ribs, the shortening of its fore-legs, the blackness of its eyes, and the straitness of its armpits, He should also recall to mind the length of the lips and tongue of the dog, the abundance of its saliva, and the length of the lower part of its fore-paws. They go so far as to regard this resemblance of the horse to the greyhound as a means of guiding inexperienced purchasers: at least, such appears to be the moral of an anecdote widely circulated among them.

"Meslem-ben-Abou-Omar, having learned that one of his relatives was travelling near the banks of the Euphrates, desired to avail himself of this opportunity to obtain one of the famous horses of that country. His relative knew nothing about horses, but was very fond of the chace, and had some very fine dogs. Despatching a servant with proper instructions, Meslem informed his relative that the form of the horse he wished for corresponded to that of the best of his greyhounds. An animal was thus procured, the like of which the Arabs have never since met with."

Merou-ben-el-Keyss replied one day to some friends who accused him of knowing nothing about either horses or women:

Yes, I have ridden horses Sober, strong, and swift in the course, Whose thighs were solid, Their sinews lean and their rump rounded. Forming as it were a channel towards the tail: Their hoofs were hard: they could go without shoes. By Allah! I used to fancy myself on an ostrich.

To find the tall grass Which grows in solitudes dangerous to traverse, In solitudes defended by the points of lances, And by the descent of torrents, I have many a time galloped, When the birds were yet asleep in their nests.

To hunt the white-skinned zebra, Whose legs are striped like Indian stuffs, Or to overtake the antelope that lives in wild regions, I have ridden horses with flesh hardened by exercise, It was Allah who created them for the happiness of Believers.

Many a time, too, have I rested my heart On that of a maid with budding bosoms, And legs adorned with anklets of gold! In our incursions of horsemen, When eye must meet eye, Many a time have I said: Forward! forward! O my beloved courser! Follow up the enemy routed and fleeing!

The value of a horse is in his stock.

REMARKS BY THE EMIR ABD-EL-KADER.

To a King who asked a poet for his horse named Sakab, the latter replied: "Sakab is not for sale, nor is he to be exchanged. I would ransom him at the price of my life. My family should die of hunger rather than that he should suffer."

An Arab once said: "My countrymen blame me for being in debt, and yet I contracted it for a horse of noble race and well rounded forms, who confers honour upon them and serves as a talisman to my goum, and to whom I have given a slave as his attendant."

An Arab one day sent his son to buy a horse in the market-place, and he, before setting out, asked his father what qualities the animal should have. The father made answer: "His ears should be ever in motion turning sometimes forward, sometimes behind, as if he were listening to something. His eyes ought to be keen and restless, as if his mind were occupied with something. His limbs must be well set on and well proportioned." "Such a horse," the son rejoined, "will never be sold by his master."

Many of the Arabs of Upper Asia have genealogical trees, in which they state and confirm by evidence that would be accepted in a court of justice, the birth and parentage of the colt, so that when a proprietor wishes to sell a horse he has only to produce his genealogical tree to satisfy the purchaser that he is not deceiving him.

I have seen among the Annaza, a tribe extending from Bagdad to the confines of Syria, horses so absolutely priceless that it was impossible to buy them, or at least to pay in cash for them. These horses are usually disposed of to great personages or wealthy merchants, who pay a fabulous price for them in thirty to fifty bills, falling due at intervals of twelve months, or else they bind themselves to pay an annual sum for ever to the vendor and his descendants.

"I take them by surprise in the morning, while the bird is yet in its nest and the moisture from the dew is making its way to the river.

"I surprise them with my sleek-coated courser that by its swiftness overtakes the wild beasts and never wearies of hunting the gazelle in all seasons and far from our home.

"He has the flanks of the gazelle, the legs of the female ostrich, and the straight back of the wild ass standing as a sentinel on a hillock.