For the descendants of the Numidian light cavalry, the Roman and old
Spanish horseshoe was evidently too heavy for their sandy, roadless
deserts, so they made it thinner and omitted the bent-up rim, because
it prevented the quick movement of the horse. For the protection of
the nail heads the outer margin of the shoe was staved, so as to form
a small rim on the outer surface of the shoe, thus preventing the nail
heads from being worn and the shoe lost too soon.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
A horseshoe of that kind is shown by Fig. 8, which was used in North
Africa in the twelfth century, and became the model for all forms of
horseshoes of the Mahometan tribes. Even now quite similar shoes (Fig.
9) are made south and east from the Caspian Sea, at the Amu-Darja, in
Samarkand, etc., which were probably introduced under Tamerlane, the
conqueror of nearly the whole of Asia Minor in the fourteenth century.
The so-called "Sarmatische" (Sarmatian) horseshoe (Figs. 10 and 11),
of South Russia, shows in its form, at the same time, traces of the
last named shoe, however, greatly influenced by the Mongolian shoe,
the "Goldenen Horde," which at the turn of the sixteenth to the
seventeenth century played havoc at the Volga and the Aral.
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