The Arabs, who neither understand nor practice our system of fighting in compact and serried masses, at times immovable, but who charge without any semblance of order and see nothing disgraceful in a headlong flight, are naturally disposed to love and to vaunt above all others the drinker of air. "The air-drinker," say they, "is the first in the combat to rush at the enemy; and the first after victory to fly at the booty, and in case of defeat the first to escape from danger." A poet has said: "There are things which an intelligent King should never neglect. The first is a horse, that by its swiftness shall be able to rescue him from the enemy he has failed to overcome." The favourite steed of the Prophet was named _Ouskoub_, "the torrent," from the word _sakab_, "quickly flowing water." The intervention of the Angel Gabriel in the creation of the horse commends that animal to the good offices of the true Believers, for the Angel Gabriel is the constant medium of communication between the Deity and the Prophets, especially Mohammed. Now it was by means and with the assistance of the horse alone that the Mussulman tribes succeeded in accomplishing that immense system of emigration, that propaganda war, as far as China to the eastward, and westward to the Ocean, which was in the mind of Mohammed to impose upon them. It was indispensable, therefore, that the horse should be looked upon in the light of a sacred animal, a providential instrument of war, created by the Deity for a special purpose, and of a nobler essence than that with which He fashioned the other animals. To produce the horse in a manner beyond the common law of creation, to envelop his origin in a symbolism that wanders abroad from natural history to lose itself in mysterious legends, to place him thus beneath the safeguard of religious reverence, evinced, as the result has proved, a thorough knowledge of the spirit of the people upon whom Mohammed purposed and was about to operate. The Koran in speaking of horses calls them _El-Kheir_, "the especial treasure," and from this simple word the commentators of the Sura, _sad_, have arrived at the conclusion that "an Arab ought to love horses as a part of his own heart, and to sacrifice for their keep the very food of his own children." A volume might be composed of phrases detached from the sacred book, or from the _hadites_ of the Prophet (his conversations as handed down by tradition), and of the commentaries upon them, which under the form of maxims and precepts, prescribe to Mussulmans, as a religious duty, the love of horses. I shall quote only a few of them.