You will empower any rider who seeks a glorious mount…You climb to the stars and the sky and the nib of a pen…Your hooves emanate fire as you move…Nobody could even dream of a steed with such virtue…None will ever rival your speed.
-Persian praise poem, Calligraphic Embroidery on a Central Asian Saddle Cover, 19th C, Private Collection, trans. M. Ekhtiar and A. Gouchani, unpublished
Our camels were a sorry lot compared to the Prophet’s flying horse Burāq, his white mule Duldul, or even to his talking donkey Ya’fūr. No surprise there, because Hajj Bashir selected our camels only for the prices they’d bring him at a slaughter house. And our saddle blankets too were sorry cover, in which we wrapped ourselves to sleep rough for forty nights on the Darb.