Fascinated by casual, but authoritative, statements made to me about Feysul's Jallabiyah by Prince Kamal Ad-Din of Egypt and by Muhammad Ibn Khalifa of Bahreyn, I began to gather historical material connected with Feysul's mare.

The foremost evidence that I may cite was information I drew personally from the testimony of Amir Feysul Ibn Dauwish, supreme chief of one of the greatest camel and horse breeding Bedouin tribes of eastern and central Arabia. No other person in desert Arabia was better qualified to tell the story of this immortal Arabian mare and pronounce solemn judgment upon her ancestral strain and pure breeding. It was this chieftain's family who, more than any other in Arabia, was connected with the life of the Jallabiyah.

But Feysul's Jallabiyah played another adventurous and romantic career far away from Arabia in modern Egypt. The material on these other fascinating events in the history of this indomitable mare I gained from Prince kamal Ad-Din and his cousin Prince Muhammad Ali. The forefathers of these two well-known Egyptian breeders were also intimately connected with the life of Feysul's Jallabiyah. Without relating the Egyptian story I would not be able to complete that unique picture which made Feysul's Jallabiyah the most beloved horse of an age.

I could not help using many Arabian words and names in my story, but as this not a fiction story, but a record of actual people and horses, and their countries and history, I expect that I will be appreciated by my readers.

America has become the new home and pasture grounds for Arabian horses. Actually we breeders in the United States are saving not only the greater number of Arabian horses in this world today, but also their distinctive qualities. While we are still pioneers in Arabian horse breeding, compared to what Europeans have accomplished during the last 500 years, we are far ahead of other nations now, as our great country has not only lived in peace and security at home, but also because we have the natural resources and the intelligent people who provide the means and scientific methods to put Arabian horse breeding on a practical and enduring foundation and thus improve horse breeding in general and throughout the land.

THE WESTERN HORSEMAN magazine has become the platform in America where we may discuss, and argue about, the breeding an and raising and handling of Western horses to our hearts' content. The most typical of all Eastern horses, the Arabian, has become one of the most distinguished of our Western horses. In fact, the Arabians came here first with the Spaniards and they came later with our early pioneers from new England, Canada, Virginia and across the Mississippi--not always pure, but often as a cross or part-bred Arabian, the Thoroughbred (Anglo-Arab), the Morgan, the Kentucky (and others), and they in turn became mated again with the Spanish-Indian of the Southwest, producing various types of Western Stock Horses.

Nothing will be appreciated more by intelligent breeders than the historical records back of our animals. When I take my readers into Arabia I also lead them right up to their own living horses in America today. The precious metal of which our Western horses have been shaped is like the stainless steel of a meteorite: it has come to us on its lofty passage from beyond...and of this "beyond"--of Arabia--I will speak to you now.

From sundrenced, windblown black goat hair tents in scant but fragrant highland pastures, the Bedouin horses have carried their masters to the mudbanks of the great river. Harnessed to high wheeled chariots, the lightfooted animals had pranced triumphantly into the Sphynx colonnades of the Royal Palace--and there, in the shade of palm trees and sycamores, and under the eaves of marble kiosks and pillared temples, the lean, hungry animals of the wilderness rested their tired feet, restored the strength of their starved bodies, shed their rough coats, and, behold! new creatures emerged, revealing a magnificence of beauty and perfection never seen before.

Centuries have rolled by since the shepherd kings of the Arabian wilderness brought their horses to Egypt, and an ocean of life-giving water had flowed down the sacred river of Africa, but to this magic land of the Nile visitors still came from the Arabian desert and brought their greatest treasure--their antelope-like steeds as gifts to the king and the princes of Egypt. And so we come to our own age.

During the battle in the bay of Aboukir, on July 25, 1799, a former Albanian tobacco trader, now a captain in the sultan's army, fell overboard from a Turkish man-of-war. British sailors from the admiral's gig saved the Albanian from drowning within sight of the shores of Egypt.

The British had saved a man who by a strange twist of fate was to become a tyrant no less cruel and inhuman than one of our modern dictators. The young Albanian was to become known as Muhammad Ali of Egypt.

Muhammad Ali, after establishing himself in Egypt, first sided with the Mamelukes (1802) and commanded some of their military outfits, but a few years later (1804) he turned against his masters, gaining control over their affairs with the aid of his relatives and friends, which he had brought in great numbers from Albania, placing many of them in key government and military positions, while others were organized into deadly groups of personal body guards. At an opportune moment (1811) Muhammad Ali massacred the Mamelukes and thousands of their supporters in the most treacherous and ghastly way, and thus established himself for the next thirty-seven years (until 1848) without rival on the throne of Egypt.

Muhammad Ali loved Arabian horses with a maniacal obsession. This passionate pre-occupation induced him to accept the urgent request of the Turkish government to invade Arabia. In this campaign he abused not only his enemies, but he also took advantage of his allies and friends to acquire their horses. He would invite tribal chiefs and their children to festivals in is desert outposts or to his court in Cairo, and then hold his guests as hostages until the horses he wanted were delivered to his stud masters. Muhammad Ali built the most magnificent stables, saying that these desert horses were heavenly creatures and deserved to have the finest abode on earth--even more elaborate, beautiful and expensive than his own palace. Muhammad Ali is known to have spent four and a half million gold pounds on his Arabian steeds, their palace-like stables, their jewelled saddles and other equipment. Great festivals were staged to honour these spoiled creatures and Muhammad Ali saw to it that such celebrations became regular state affairs to which the ambassadors of Europe were invited and allowed to choose stallions as gifts to their governments.

After the massacre of the Mamelukes (1811) Muhammad Ali dispatched his sixteen-year-old son, Tussun, to Arabia with ten thousand Egyptian troops. Though first defeated by Sa'ud (the Wahhabi Prince of Arabia), Muhammad Ali's son succeeded eventually in occupying Mecca and Medina (1812). A year later Muhammad Ali appeared personally on the scene in Arabia, but he was unable to lead his Egyptian army further into Arabia. Negotiations of his emissaries with the camel and horse breeding tribes in the highland of inner-Arabia, seeking to persuade them to join forces with him, failed. The Bedouins also ignored his offers of great amounts of gold to purchase their brood mares and stud horses.

Muhammad Ali returned to Egypt, laying out new plans for a speedy conquest of Arabia and subjugation of the Nomadic people to gain complete control of their horse breeding. But in the midst of these preparations Muhammad Ali's son, Tussun, suffered a disastrous defeat near Taif. Tussun would have lost the whole campaign if his opponent prince Sa'udd (the Wahhabi leader) had not died the same year (1814). Sa'ud's son, Abdullah, asked for a temporary cessation of warfare.

Muhammad Ali, who had kept in constant touch with his son in Arabia through carrier pigeons, agreed to an armistice if two hundred and twenty-two specified Arabian horses were delivered to Egypt as a peace offering. The names and pedigrees of each horse was stipulated, as Muhammad Ali's spies in Arabia knew by this time practically every famous brood mare and stud horse owned by the Prince (Abdullah) of Arabia, his governors and allied Shiyukhs (chiefs) of Bedouin tribes.

The price which Prince Abdullah of Arabia and his friends had to pay in horses to negotiate peace with the Egyptians may seem to us trivial as a penalty of war, but in Arabia the most treasured possession were pure-strain horses, whose true worth we may only compare to great works of art in our western world, or to priceless relics of antiquity which become the loss of a whole nation if allowed to leave the country. Any of these precious animals of desert Arabia was as ireplaceable as a statue of Phidias or a painting by Rembrandt.

Disastrous and a cause for national mourning in Arabia was Muhammad Ali's demand for the surrender of Prince Abdullah's priceless Arabian horses. The whole peninsula of Arabia felt this tragic loss of a source of Asil (pure-strain) blood which belonged in the very life stream of the nation and could never be substituted.

Every foundation horse in Abdullah's stud had come originally as a present to him of friends or enemies in the desert. His allies as well as his hostile neighbors vied with each other in supplying Prince Abdullah with their rarest and best blood. They considered (as all Bedouins since times immemorial have done) the breeding of pure-in-the-strain-horses above the "pale" of war and raids, and outside the domain of politics. Of course, the gift horses were usually colts and fillies by the fountain-head sires and out of mares of the original pure strains. Occasionally a Bedouin would deprive himself of the last "relic" of his pure strain and deliver the priceless creature into Abdullah's stud to save this particular bloodline from total extinction, though there never was any personal gain possible (only a sacrifice).

One of Abdullah's bitter enemies and personal foes, on account of an ancient bloodfeud, was Amir (Prince) Feysul Ibn Dauwish, chieftain of the Mutayr tribe. Though deadly opponents, whenever they met in skirmishes of the desert, they had been exchanging horses and loaned stallions to each other at frequent times under a flag of truce.

For years Abdullah attempted to own some specimens of the celebrated jallabiyah family, a substrain of the Kuhaylan. Feysul was in possession of a small stud of these almost extinct horses, but he could never afford to let any one of these rare animals go. Either they were too old, or too young, and to continue this purestrain he never had more than two mature mares available at one time. But one day Abdullah's camel riders ambushed a party of Feysul's Bedouins and captured one of the priceless Jallabiyah brood mares. When the mare was brought to Abdullah's camp, the prince recognized the horse as one of Feysul's Jallabiyat, and returned her immediately to his enemy with due apologies. A few months later Feysul received the tragic news of Abdullah's misfortunes in war and that he had to surrender two hundred and twenty-two specifically selected Arabian horses to Muhammad Ali of Egypt as a peace offering. At once Feysul dispatched one of his slaves to Abdullah's camp. To the saddle cinch of the messenger's race-camel was fastened a chestnut Arabian mare with two white hind stockings. She was the famous jallabiyah mare which had been captured by Abdullah's men and then returned. She proved to be in foal to one of the Asil (pure-in-the-strain) Kuhaylan stallions of the Kurush family (substrain) of Feysul's own people.

Feysul had originally come into possession of these distinguished Jallabiyat through the Ibn Hithlayn Bedouin family of the Ma Idh-Naja clan of the Ajman tribe, who were friends and allies of the Mutayr (Feysul's tribe) and had continuously exchanged their Asil (pure-strain) Kuhaylan horses among each other to perpetuated the authentic blood of the various families (substrains) of the genuine Kuhaylan strain.

Prince Abdullah remonstrated with Feysul's slave to take the Jallabiyah mare back to his master, but the slave explained that his master, Feysul, had designed a plan to save with this Jallabiyah mare five other horses of Prince Abdullah. For years Muhammad Ali of Egypt had tried to acquire some mares and colts of the Jallabiyah strain, too, but always in vain, though his emissaries had approached Feysul and other owners of the Jallabiyat. Now Feysul was willing to let one of his finest Jallabiyah mares to to Abdullah, if Abdullah in turn would offer this mare for the five Hamdaniyah horses which Muhammad Ali of Egypt had demanded of the Prince of Arabia. Feysul knew that Muhammad Ali would rather have one Jallabiyah than five Hamdaniyat, as the Jallabiyat were better, more refined and distinguished horses than the Hamdaniyat. To "fanatic" breeders, "Purists," however, the Hamdaniyat were of greater sentimental value. The handful of Hamdaniyat which Prince Abdullah owned, and had been forced to surrender to Muhammad Ali of Egypt, were actually the last pure-in-the-strain Hamdaniyat in the world at that time. They were what we called the original Hamdaniyat of Ibn Simran.

Prince Abdullah accepted Feysul's Jallabiyah mare only after he had received the consent of Tussun (in the name of Tussun's father, Muhammad Ali of Egypt) to substitute the Jallbiyah for the five Hamdaniyat.

On the day of the surrender of the two hundred and eighteen horses Prince Abdullah claimed to have a vision, a Divine revelation. When he handed the lead rope of Feysul's mare to Tussun's Egyptian master-of-horses, Prince Abdullah of Arabia, well-known for his psychic powers, suddenly exclaimed, addressing the Jallabiyah: "Rawia (she-who-pours-out-the-water, or in another sense of the word, she-who-pours-out-the-vision) be thy name henceforth, Thou Muhajjalah (of-the-shackled-white-stocking-feet), thou leader of our peace horses. I behold a messenger of darkness and death seated upon thee and his countenance is of Tu sun's likeness. I hear the rider's voice saying that his son shall be thy master, oh blessed jallabiyah, before thy own son, whom thou carriest in thy womb now by the Kurush stallion, be weaned rom thy side...."

The master-of-horses laughed, scoffing at Abdullah's superstitious idea which he, the Egyptian, called contemptuously "heathenish Arabian magic" like the pagans before Muhammad, the prophet's, time practiced in the wilderness.

The Egyptian asked Abdullah if he was not aware that Abbas, Tussun's son, was only an infant, barely two years of age and thus too young to be the master of the mare before her (yet unborn foal) be weaned.

Prince Abdullah ignored the Egyptian's derisive remarks, and in serious vein declared that Tussun would indeed die if the Jallabiyah were sent away to the land of the Nile, but that, as long as Tussun would keep the Jallabiyah in her homeland of Arabia, Tussun would live.

Tussun's master-of-horses ridiculed this "insolent remark" of Abdullah even more than his "vision" and warned Abdullah that the "nefarious design of his recondite heart" to save the Jallabiyah mare from going abroad would be ignored, as it seemed too obvious to the Egyptian that Abdullah hoped to get hold of the Jallabiyah some day if she remained in Arabia, as the "scales of war" might change again in favour of the Sa'udi Arabians.

The same year (1815) Tussun concluded peace with Abdullah and his Wahhabis in Arabia. Tussun and the Egyptian army retired from Nejd (central Arabia, the true Bedouin country) to the Red Sea coast.

Tussun personally supervised the departure of Abdullah's horses to Egypt. The animals went in four shipments, spaced over a period of five months, under the guidance of Ukayl (professional camel and horse traders). In the last shipment went Feysul's Jallabiyah. Tussun had liked her above all other mares and in his correspondence with his father, Muhammad Ali in Egypt, had arranged that the Jallabiyah become the property of his brother.

Exactly three months and three days after Tussun had sent Rawia (the Jallabiyah) away to his brother, Ibrahim Pasha in Egypt, Tussun died! Thus the strange vision of Prince Abdullah had come true.

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