 In 1839, in a letter to his friend, the French consul-general E. Dumas, Amir Abdul Qadir, an Algerian anti-colonial Sufi military leader, described his version of the creation of the Arabian horse. When God wanted to create the horse, he said to the south wind, I want to make a creature out of you, condense, and the wind condensed. Archangel Jibril immediately appeared and took a handful of that element and presented it to God, who made a burnt chestnut form upon saying, I call you horse, I make you Arabian, and I give you the chestnut color of the ant. I have hung happiness from the forelock which hangs between your eyes. You shall be the Lord of other animals. Men shall follow you wherever you go. You shall be as good for pursuit as for flight. You shall fly without wings. Fortune shall be on your back and riches shall come through your mediation. Then he put on the horse the mark of glory and happiness, a white mark in the middle of the forehead. And since that dawn of time, the horse had been roaming the deserts of the Arabian peninsula, predating man by some three million years. And approximately five millennia ago, the first signs of Arabian horse domestication took place. Human life in the harsh climate of the peninsula became intertwined with the horse, a creature that had successfully conditioned itself to its hard surrounding environment. And through the ages, civilization after civilization came to appreciate the amazing and unique qualities of the Arabian. From the story of the Archangel Jereel's descent from the heavens, causing a thunderstorm of wind and rain consequently awakening Isma'il, the son of Ibrahim, and then commanding the storm to halt its raging. And so it converged itself into a prancing, handsome creature, an Arabian stallion, a horse that seemed to swallow the ground beneath its feet. To the tale of Biltis, the queen of Sheb, who upon hearing of Seidna Suleiman's wisdom and achievements, traveled far from her empire in the African Horn to offer respect and allegiance to the king. Knowing of Suleiman's historic weakness for horses, she would offer him many gifts that were rejected but one, a gift that stood above the rest. A prized Arabian stallion named Safanad, meaning the pure, considered by many as the founding progenitor of all Arabian horses. To the 7th century, when the Prophet Muhammad, who after long days of travel in the desert with his caravan and nearing a known watering hole, released his herd of horses to quench their dehydration and thirst. Unknownly for the horses, this was a test planned by the Prophet gauging the loyalty and discipline of his herd. And upon their arrival, but for a very few gallops, the Prophet blew on his war horn to call the horses for battle. Many horses continued on to extinguish their thirst, except for five mares, the Khamsa, in Arabic. These five, showing great character, swiftly returned to the Prophet, alert, ready for war. These five purebloods would become the Prophet's favorite mares and would go on to be the foundational strains for all future Arabian horse lineage. The Khamsa represented the true qualities of Arabian horses and amalgamated and abundant, diverse and wide spectrum physical, mental and anthropomorphic attributes like speed, strength and agility on the physical domain, intelligence, endurance and discipline on the mental domain and loyalty, hot-bloodedness and competitiveness on the anthropomorphic domain. The Khaylan mare would go on to represent the strain characterized by a deep chest and masculine build, exemplifying power and size. She stood up to 15 hands tall, had a short head with a broad forehead. She was chestnut in color. Her name Khaylan came from the horse's dark-lined eyes as if she were wearing khahl or mascara. The Abayyan mare had a very refined appearance with a longer back and is considered the smallest of the five Arabian strains as she only stood at 14 hands tall. Her color was gray with white markings. Her name is derived from the Abaya or robe as it appeared that the mare was wearing a translucent garment, failing the body commonly adorned at the time. The Saqlawi mare considered the most beautiful of all the strains with a refined and elegant feminine appearance had both a long face and neck. She was a fine-boned creature and was generally acknowledged as the fastest of the Khansa. The Saqlawi name originated from her dense and lustrous mane. The Hamdani mare was the largest of all the Arabian horses. She was characterized by a flat head lacking a jibha, the pronounced forehead and having a muscular masculine build and stood at 15.2 hands tall. Her color was of a bay tone. Her name was derived from an Arab family name of a very famous and reputable North Arabian tribe. And finally, the Hadban mare who was also big-boned and muscular but was known for her soft and gentle nature. Standing at 14.3 hands tall, she was brown in color. Her name was also based on a respected Arabian tribe, al-Hadban, that was a branch of al-Hamdan tribe. And since that time in the seventh century, generations after generations of Bedouin and Arab tribes would go on to breed these five strains in their purest form. Islam would spread acceleratingly throughout Asia, Africa and Europe on the wings of the Arabian horse. Empire after empire of the old world would build their successes on the backs of the Arabian. From Alexander the Great and his stallion Busephalus to Genghis Khan, followed by George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, all chose the Arabian horse as their mounts. And as time passed, the appreciation of the Arabian horse grew, crossing its historical habitats of West Asia, Central Asia and North Africa and into Europe, when at the end of the 17th and beginnings of the 18th century, the likes of Francis Godolphin, Thomas Darley and Robert Byerley of Great Britain introduced three stallions from the Arabian Peninsula and started what would become a new European infatuation with the Arabian horse. In the late 19th century, this Western excitement reached its peak with the establishment of the Crabbit Park Studd, an English horse breeding farm that imported a significant number of Arabian stallions and mares outside of their historic Arab center and spread the various strains globally until its closure in 1971. And to this day, this farm's bloodlines continue to influence the Arabian horse breed worldwide. Today, over one million Arabian horses exist around the world and it's been a century since humans replaced their primary function and dependence with machines and for Arabs, this shift happened even more recently. Now Arabians are merely bred for show or sport, lost in the industrialization of the world and away from our day-to-day life. Five millennia of inter-reliance and mutual adoration of this prized gift from God only to be forgotten within a single human lifetime. When once we cherished and protected this beautiful being by guaranteeing their safety through cohabitation within our private domain, our homes and our tents, we now interact at a distance through story, image, or film. Silverry is gone, loyalty is not.