And most likely the bald-faced horse and his gallant rider would have been slaughtered had Belisarius' bodyguard not hastened to rally round him and eventually succeeded in beating off his assailants, many of whom, earlier in the day, had fought beside him. CHAPTER V Mahomet encourages horse-breeding—Procopius; a misstatement—Early allusion to horse races—Figures of horses cut on cliffs—Roland and his horse, Veillantiff—Orelia, Roderick's charger—Trebizond, Alfana; Odin's mythical horse, Sleipnir—Horse fighting in Iceland—Some horses of mythology: Pegasus, Selene, Xanthos, Balios, Cyllaros, Arion, Reksh—Arab pedigrees traced through dams—Influence of the horse upon history—Courage of Julius Cæsar's horses The coming of Mahomet, who announced himself prophet about the year 611 A.D., marks an epoch in the history of nations, and it serves also as a landmark, if one may express it so, in the horse's progress in its bearing upon the world's history. At intervals throughout the Koran, which Mahomet compiled probably about 610, we come upon direct allusions to the horse in the part it played at that time in the growth of what must be termed civilisation. Probably Mahomet realised more fully than any of his contemporaries how indispensable to the human race the horse had by this time become, for in one passage in the Koran he puts a strange utterance into the mouth of the Almighty, whom he represents as apostrophising the horse, telling it that it shall be “for man a source of happiness and wealth,” adding, “thy back shall be a seat of honour, and thy belly of riches, and every grain of barley given to thee shall purchase indulgence for the sinner,” while in another place he declares that “every grain of barley given to a horse is entered by God in the Register of Good Works.” He describes in an interesting way the horse of the Archangel Gabriel, to which the name Haizum was given, also Dhuldul, the peerless steed of his son-in-law, Ali, and his own milk-white mule, Fadda. All this is the more remarkable when we bear in mind that in the centuries that preceded Mahomet's birth the Arab race was practically a nonentity in so far as the continual struggles for supremacy in Egypt and in Western Asia were concerned, when the great Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Median, Roman and Macedonian tribes fought with such dogged determination and proved each in turn more or less victorious. Yet it is more than likely—some of our leading historians pronounce positively upon this point—that if in the years just before Mahomet's birth the tribes had not become possessed of a staunch race of horses, and devoted much time to perfecting themselves in horsemanship in the true meaning of the term, Islam would have remained unchanged instead of almost revolutionising the world in the way it did.