The Arab also says that a horse should never be beaten. "The expression in a horse's eye is like a blessing on a good man's house."

The Bedouin was entirely dependent on his mare in his daily life and wanderings, and in the ceaseless wars between the various tribes. He was devoted to her and considered her a member of his family. In general, this sort of treatment developed a delightfully human quality in the Bedouins' Arabian horses.

The mare was also greatly valued as the Bedouin's riding horse. And she was kept for breeding. Stallions were kept by the sheikhs only for breeding purposes. It was considered a religious duty to breed a purebred mare to a purebred stallion. An animal about whose breeding there was any doubt was disqualified altogether.

The broodmares and stallions of the Egyptian stud are the descendants of the best horses in existence in ancient Arabia. Their forebears were imported to Egypt by Mohammed Ali the Great and Abbas Pasha I, and afterwards bred by Ali Pasha Sharif. In addition, members of the royal family and Lady Blunt of England maintained studs near Cairo and obtained their horses both from Ali Pasha Sharif and from the Arabian desert.

The Royal Agricultural Society (R.A.S.) was founded in 1898. In 1914, the R.A.S. decided to build up a stud for purebred Arabian horses. Consequently, as many pure Arabians as could be found in Egypt were collected. Such horses were to be found in the stables of Prince Kemal El-Din, Abbas Pasha Hilmi II and Prince Ahmed Pasha Kemal. In order to obtain the descendents of Ali Pasha Sharif's stock, the R.A.S. imported two fillies and some stallions from the Crabbet Stud in 1920. This was the first and last time R.A.S. imported Arabian horses from Europe.

The stud of the R.A.S. was kept on the farm at Bahtim. In the 1930's, the horse-breeding section was transferred to the newly built farm at Kafr Farouk, which was named after King Fouad's son and situated in Ein-Shams, just outside the city limits of Cairo. Kafr Farouk is not to be confused with the Royal Khassa of Kings Fouad and Farouk, located at Inshass, northeast of Cairo.

After the revolution of 1952, the R.A.S. was renamed the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (E.A.O.).

According to ancient tradition, the horse-breeding tribes throughout Arabia identified a horse by its tail-female heritage. The different strains were perpetuated through the mares, the foals taking their dam's strain name regardless of what the sire's was.  Long ago there was a lack of written stud records, so the horses' pedigrees were conveyed from old to young by word of mouth. Thus the strain system was very useful, as the mare was always well known to everyone in the tribe, the sire less so.