One of the earliest Western travelers to write about Arabian horse strains was the Swiss Johann Ludwig Burkhardt. His Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys: Collected During His Travels in the East was only published in 1831, but was based on information collected in the Hijaz between 1814 and 1815. Burkhardt died in 1817. In this book, he recounted this anecdote: “The favourite mare of Saoud, the Wahaby chief, which he constantly rode on his expeditions, and whose name, Keraye, became famous all over Arabia, brought forth a horse of uncommon beauty and xceellence. The mare, however, not being of the khomse, Saoud would not permit his people to use thatfine horse as a stallion; and not knowing what to do with it, as Bedouins never ride horses, he sent it as a present to the Sherif. The mare, Keraye, had been purchased by Saoud from a Bedouin ofthe Kahtan Arabs for fifteen hundred dollars.” This account ties the the strain of Kuhaylan al-Kray, itself a branch of the Krush strain and present with the ‘Ajman Bedouins at the time of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (ca. 1850), to the Qahtan Bedouins from a very early date. It corroborates the information which ‘Ubayd…