In spite of the urgency Ibrahim Pasha took a few hours off from his duties on that fateful day and went to a little village outside of Cairo to take leave of the "Jallabiah," the desert-born Arabian mare, which his late brother Tussun had sent to him before his death. Only a few weeks previously the beloved mare had given birth to a sorrel colt "of great splendor."

The handsome little foal trotted gaily by his mother's side when Ibrahim Pasha, astride the Jallabiyah, rode from the stable to his late brother's palace to bid farewell to the young widow and her infant son, Abbas. Mounted upon another mare behind Ibrahim Pasha rode Srur, an Old Bedouin slave, who had accompanied the Jallabiyah mare from Central Arabia to Egypt as he her attendent by order of his master, Prince Feysul, chieftain of the great Mutayr tribe. The old Negro kept a close watch on the playful colt of the Jallabiyah.

Tussun's widow and two Circassian slave girls greeted Ibrahim Pasha, while the child, Abbas, playing on the lawn, dropped his toys, precious playthings once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Abbas rushed up to his uncle, Ibrahim Pasha, and begged to be permitted to ride the Jallabiyah. To please the child the young warrior dismounted and lifted his three-year-old nephew from the ground. Placing him on the back of his mare, Ibrahim Pasha addressed him with these flattering, but prophetic, words in flowery Arabian speech:

'Highborn lord, rider of Feysul's Jallabiyah, be thou the master of this noble mare while I shall be absent in alien lands and among the pagan desert Arabs."

Thus the strange prediction, uttered in Mecca a year previously by Abdullah, Prince of Arabia, found its fulfillment: Tussun, the child's father, had died before the colt of the Jallabiyah had been weaned from her side, and Tussun's son, Abbas, had now become her master, exactly as prophesied.

Thus, on a cool autumn morning in 1816, little Abbas was riding the Jallabiyah, following the drums and music of a detachment of mounted police and a troop of cavalry and camel riders. The people lining the streets of Cairo, sitting on rocks and ancient tombs along the old pilgrim road that winds through the barren defile of the Mokattam hills, rubbed their eyes in wonderment when they saw their great hero and general, Ibrahim Pasha, and an old slave. They were walking humbly on foot along the dusty, rock-strewn path, leading a beautifully caparisoned chestnut mare ridden by a child dressed in Bedouin garments. A high-stepping sorrel colt pranced about the leadmare, whinnying loudly and tossing his pretty head up and down, wheeling on his hind feet and narrowly escaping collisions with the cheering crowd, the marching and mounted men and their horses and camels.

Ibrahim Pasha's hareem and the widow of his late brother followed with their slave girls, riding in highly ornamental camel-litters, huge frames placed upon the humps of the long-legged creatures. The center of these camelthrones were comfortably arranged "nests," stuffed with pillows and soft cushions. Canopies of cashmere shawls and damascene silk curtains were suspended from the framework of the loftily litters and shaded the "cradles"(as they are called) in which the ladies of the Pasha and their children were riding.

In the early afternoon the cavalcade came to a halt at a tent camp southeast of Cairo in the desert hills. Fires smoked behind protecting rocks, confusing noises and the pungent smell of perspiring animals and men filled the air.

One of the officers of he mounted troop pressed through the crowd that had assembled around Ibrahim pasha and the little child on the chestnut mare. The officer lifted Ibrahim pasha's sleeve and kissed it. Then he laid his drawn scimitar into Ibrahim Pasha's hand and announced that he had a request to make of his general and that if the favour he was about to ask of the Pasha displeased His Sultanic Highness, he could sever his servant's head.

Ibrahim Pasha motioned with his arm to him to rise and make his request known.

The officer pointed to the old slave and asked if the Negro was the former servant of Prince Feysul of the Mutayr tribe. Ibrahim Pasha nodded his head. The officer inquired next if the chestnut mare was the Jallabiyah, "the one of great excellence" which had come as the leader of the peace offering--the famous horses of Prince Abdullah's stud and the Asilat (pure-in-the-strain-bred) horses of the Shiyukhs (the chieftains) of Arabia.

Again Ibrahim Pasha nodded silently.

"Then I claim their lives!" the officer shouted.

"Their lives?" Ibrahim Pasha cried in surprise.

"The life of the Jallabiyah and the life of her colt," the man explained. "Sacrifice them and thus save the child of they brother, Tussun..." then the officer revealed that he was the former Master-of-Horses of Tussun and that Prince Abdullah's psychic vision and message had been given him in Arabia. The officer claimed to know that greater disaster would befall Muhammad Ali's family (and also Ibrahim Pasha and his little nephew, Abbas) if the mare and her colt were allowed to live another day.

Ibrahim Pasha scolded the superstitious Egyptian for his crazed fear, derided him for his supernatural belief, and, throwing the officer's scimitar on the ground, asked him to go back to his troop. Before anyone had a chance to interfere, the demented officer had drawn two heavy double-barrelled pistols from his sash and fired four bullets point-blank into the Jallabiyah and into her startled colt.

Ibrahim Pasha now recovered from the shock of surprise, picked up the curved sword and brought it down upon the officer. With one stroke he felled him, cleaving the steel of the blade through the Egyptian's head, neck and shoulder.

"Fanatic violator, assassin of the blessed mare!" were the words Ibrahim Pasha is said to have called out over the lifeless body of the former Master-of-Horses. Turning to his little nephew, now gathered in the arms of the old slave, Ibrahim Pasha asked the Negro if the child was still alive.

"Abbas lives!" Srur, the old slave, assured him. The child was uninjured.

Abbas recovered his senses completely, though he was still shaking with fear and weeping at the gruesome sight of the bloodstained scene around him. The old slave took a Khanjar curved dagger) from his belt and cut off the sacred strand of hair upon the forehead of Feysul's Jallabiyah and, folding it into a leather amulet, placed it around the neck of Abbas, telling the child that the memory of the Jallabiyah would accompany him forever, and make him a peer among the Masters of the noble steeds of Ishmael and a brother to the children of Ishmael (the Bedouins of desert Arabia).

The slave asked the Pasha if he would allow his nephew to accompany him to Arabia so that the child could be brought up in the desert with the chieftains.

Ibrahim Pasha kissed Srur on both cheeks before all the people around them. It was the kiss of liberty to the slave. From then on he was to be a free man. Ibrahim Pasha made him a noble warrior in his army, a leader of a detachment of cavalry and Master-of-Horses to his own stud of Arabian horses.

Picking up the child, Abbas, the new Master-of-Horses stepped over the headless body of the former captain of the cavalry...a symbolic gesture.

In Arabia the old Negro became the connecting link in a chain of friendships which Ibrahim Pasha formed with the Shiyukhs of the desert, above all with Prince Feysul (Ibn Dauwish) of the Mutayr, and with the chiefs of the Harb, Atayban, Ajman and Banu Khalid tribes.

Muhammad Ali's military plans to overthrow Prince Abdullah (Ibn Saud, the Wahhabi) of Arabia, were carried out precisely by his oldest son, Ibrahim Pasha.

Ibrahim's personal charm and his reputation as a man of indisputable honor and generosity won him the confidence of many influential leaders of settled districts, as well as tribal chiefs, in his war against Abdullah. Employing the aid of allied Bedouins, Ibrahim Pasha succeeded in the short space of two years in defeating Abdullah and thus breaking the political and military power of the Wahhabi in Arabia. Ibrahim Pasha's cameleers and cavalry pursued the Wahhabis four hundred miles into the desert east of the holy city of Medina, entering the most remote (and thus far considered inaccessible) highland pastures of Nomadic Arabia.

In September, 1818, Prince Abdullah of Arabia surrendered to Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. To please the Turkish government, Abdullah was sent to Constantinople, where the Turks beheaded him in spite of their sacred promise to Muhammad Ali that his life would be spared.

After the capture of Abdullah in Arabia, Ibrahim Pasha received orders from his father, Muhammad Ali, that he should not conclude his military campaign without the acquisition of Abdullah's entire collection of Arabian horses. Even the stud managers, breeding experts, scribes, chiefs, and chiefs' sons and their slaves who knew anything about the pedigrees and other records of these rare animals, were to be brought to Cairo.

Through the good graces of the former slave, Ibrahim Pasha had become the inseparable friend and ally of Prince Feysul (Ibn Dauwish) of the Mutayr tribe. Some of Feysul's finest brood mares and stud horses had been acquired by Ibrahim Pasha's hands. Misfortunes had kept the number of Jallabiyat so dangerously low that they had reached almost the point of extinction. Only two brood mares, a colt and a mature stallion were left in Feysul's stud in 1818, the year of Abdullah's defeat and capture in Arabia.

Feysul, the Bedouin chief, joined Ibrahim Pasha with two thousand of his horsemen, and together the two friends and allies cleaned up the remnants of the scattered Wahhabi forces in various parts of Arabia. In 1819 the two brothers-in-arms, with their invading soldiers and mounted raiding parties, captured the last stronghold of the Wahhabis in Nejd (central Arabia). With its surrender, the finest and largest assembly of Bedouin horses that was ever known to exist in Arabia, fell into the possession of Ibrahim Pasha.

This stud, located in Turayf, had become near the end of the war the last refuge of the various families of horses which the Prince of Arabia had kept in different parts of pasture districts in Nejd. Every one of Abdullah's horses had been kept fanatically pure in a certain strain (or related strain) under the supervision of some Bedouin chief (or a chieftain's son) and his slaves, who knew each individual animal and its particular bloodlines. Different grazing grounds were used with the change of summer and winter seasons, so that the horses benefitted not only by vigorous exercise, but also by the activity and influence of the elements and a constant variation of wild herbage at different altitudes.

Milking camels by the hundreds were kept in each pasture, for no other purpose but to supply additional nourishment for growing foals and pregnant mares.

Ibrahim Pasha and his ally, Prince Feysul had succeeded in fulfilling Muhammad Ali's order; The great stud of Abdullah Ibn Saud of Arabia, had fallen into their hands. They proceeded at once to move the captive horses, attendants and documents from the heart of Arabia to the Red Sea.

Then--of a sudden--what some have called Divine wrath struck Ibrahim Pahsa's Egyptian army in Arabia and Feysul's Bedouin raiders. The invaders and the spoilers who had plundered the desert of Arabia to carry away those irreplaceable "relics," were almost wiped out to a man. Very few of the soldiers, and none of the Arabian horses, ever reached Egypt; they died of exposure, hunger, thirst and disease on their way to the Red Sea.

Ibrahim Pasha confessed later in Cairo to his friends that he had transgressed against Divine laws when he robbed the Bedouins of their treasure of Arabian steeds, the inheritance of their father, Ishmael, the "Angel horses of Jibrail (Gabriel)," the flower of the desert breed.

The greater part of Feysul's own Bedouins and their horses--the two thousand head of the Mutayr tribe's raiding force--perished on this ill-fated expedition, too.

The disastrous blow dealt to horsebreeding in Arabia was so great that to our day the various Bedouin tribes of Arabia have struggled in vain to recover their former wealth of Asil (purestrain) animals. Today the Mutayr Bedouins do not own more than thirty first-class brood mares, and the Ruala, the greatest of all nomad nations in desert Arabia, whose wealth in camels runs into three to four hundred thousand head, do not possess more than seven hundred horses--and not more than seventy excellent brood mares among them.

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