Monthly Archives: November 2008

*Aziza & *Roda

Copyright 1996 by R.J.CADRANELL
from Arabian Visions Nov/Dec 1996
Used by permission of RJCadranell

The stories of *Aziza and *Roda run parallel. They were bred by Prince Mohamed Ali of Egypt, daughters of his mare Negma, and imported to the U.S. by W.R. Brown in 1932. From Brown’s Maynesboro Stud they were sold to General Dickinson of Tennessee. Both mares later had foals by *Raffles, and both ended their lives with breeders who were part of Jimmie Dean’s wide circle of influence. Since both also appear in the pedigrees of black Arabians, they seemed a natural choice for this issue.

*Aziza. Foaled in 1926 and sired by Gamil Manial, *Aziza was the elder of the two. When Jack Humphrey selected the horses for W.R.Brown’s importation from Egypt, he wrote, “Aziza has wonderful quality in conformation and a wonderful head, in structure fully as good as her mother’s.”[1] *Aziza was imported along with her foal:

  • 1932 grey colt *Silver Yew 891, by Ibn Rabdan. He died soon after arrival.

W.R. Brown began dispersing his Maynesboro Stud not long after the 1932 importation. Many of the horses, including the entire Egyptian importation, were sold to General J.M. Dickinson of Traveler’s Rest in Tennessee. W.R. Brown bred only one foal from *Aziza. This was the

  • 1935 grey colt Azkar 1109, by Rahas.

Azkar accompanied his dam to Tennessee. Herbert Tormohlen related that *Aziza and Azkar were the last horses to leave Maynesboro. Dickinson’s stud catalog states Azkar was sold to Louisiana from Traveler’s Rest; the 1937 stud book gives his owner as J.S.Serio of Ferriday, Louisiana. According to an article on Azkar, from there Azkar was sold

“to a ranch in West Texas where he was branded and turned loose with a band of stock horses to fend for himself for the next six years. Hearing of this stallion that was to be sold, Mr. Babson, on a ‘hunch’ decided that a son of Aziza and Rahas was not to be overlooked and purchased him ‘sight unseen’ regardless of injuries and condition. Many admired Azkar at Mr. Babson’s and many wanted him. The Tormohlens at Ben Hur Farms were fortunate in first leasing him, then purchased him.”[2]

Azkar’s first registered foals were born in 1947, all bred by Tormohlen. During the 1950’s Azkar’s 65 registered foals included many successful show and breeding horses, among them Aalzar and Aazkara.

*Aziza spent more than ten years at Traveler’s Rest, where she became a fixture of the herd. The Traveler’s Rest catalog describes her as 14.1 and 1000 lbs. and states,

“By many she is considered to represent the ultimate in the classic type of Arab for which the great studs in Egypt became famous.”

*Aziza produced ten foals bred by Dickenson, but five died young and two were sold to homes where they left no registered progeny. *Aziza’s Traveler’s Rest foals were

-> 1936 black filly Black Auster 1211, by *Zarife. Listed dead in the 1937 stud book. The Traveler’s Rest catalog states simply, “Died young.”

-> 1937 grey colt Abyad 1389, by *Nasr, died young.

-> 1938 grey colt Asad 1478, by *Nasr. Sold to Arizona in 1938. The 1944 stud book lists him as gelded.

-> 1939 grey colt Julep 1678, by Gulastra.

Julep was a three-quarter brother to Azkar, since Gulastra was also sire of Rahas. The Dickinson catalog states Julep was sold to Texas and described by a Nebraska rancher as

“a very stout looking horse, plenty of bone, good straight legs, extra good quarters and back also a fine looking horse, one of the best horses I’ve seen in a long time. A top cow horse.”

Elliott Roosevelt bred 2 foals by Julep, a 1943 colt and a 1944 filly. Dr. LaRue of Illinois later purchased the horse. Julep stood his first season at stud in Illinois in 1954, siring foals for Dr. La Rue and the Warren Buckleys, including Synbad, the 1959 National Champion Stallion. The LaRues sold Julep in about 1957 to Buckley’s Cedardell Stud. Julep sired 42 registered foals, the last born in 1964. Along with Synbad. Julep’s son Julyan (out of Bint Maaroufa) also deserves mention.

-> 1940 grey filly Wafra 1852, by *Czubuthan. Killed by lightning as a yearling.

-> 1942 grey filly Aparri 2276, by *Czubuthan, was sold to Texas in 1946. Her 1947 foal was bred by Dickinson, but registered at the beginning of a string of foals bred by Texan W.S.Jacobs, who bred Aparri’s next three foals. Aparri’s last was a 1963 filly bred by Tish Hewitt of Friendship Farms in Illinois. Of Aparri’s five registered foals, two left registered progeny.

-> 1943 grey colt Argao 2551, by *Czubuthan, Died of pneumonia.

-> 1944 brown colt Azual 2931, by Kenur. Sold to New Mexico.

-> 1945 chestnut colt Abjar 3201, by Kenur. Died young.

-> 1947 grey filly Azyya 3952, by Kenur.

From 1952 to 1967 Azyya produced 13 registered foals for the Lodwick family of Ohio, of which the best known is probably Azzaraf (by Imaraff). As an old mare Azyya went to Albert Guilbault of Canada.

In September of 1947 Alice Payne, then of Whittier, California, purchased *Aziza from Dickinson. Mrs. Payne wrote that *Aziza was in foal to one of the Traveler’s Rest stallions, but that *Aziza lost the foal. This fills the 1948 gap in *Aziza’s production record.

*Aziza was 21 when she arrived at her new home. Although she herself had become an institution, none of her produce had yet made a mark as breeding animals — Julep’s two get were still young. Aparri’s and Azkar’s first foals had just hit the ground, and Azyya was only a weanling. Reading Alice Payne’s notes, she apparently admired *Roda’s 1947 filly by *Raffles – it may be that she hoped for something similar from *Aziza. Carl Raswan probably also steered her toward *Aziza. His letter of October 6, 1947, to Alice Payne makes it clear he had admired *Aziza since she was a young mare in Egypt, and recommended crossing her with Mrs. Payne’s horse Rasraff. Raswan later came to stay with *Aziza in Whittier when she foaled.

Alice Payne bred *Aziza twice to her *Raffles son Rasraff. In November of 1949 she acquired *Raffles himself, so *Aziza’s last foal was by *Raffles. *Aziza’s last three foals were:

-> 1949 grey colt Aziz 5388, by Rasraff.

Aziz was transferred in July of 1958 to J.G.Coleman of Los Angeles. Aziz sired 13 registered foals, born from 1960 through 1970.

-> 1950 grey colt Ibn Rasraff 6134, by Rasraff.

Ibn Rasraff does not appear to have been transferred out of Alice Payne’s ownership. He sired just nine registered foals (one of which was bred by Mrs. Payne), all born in 1955 and 1956.

-> 1951 grey filly Bint Aziza 6997, by *Raffles.

Alice Payne bred one foal from Bint Aziza (the filly Asil Bint Bint Aziza, by Rafferty) then in September 1959 sold Bint Aziza to Tish Hewitt of Friendship Farms in Illinois. Bint Aziza was carrying a 1960 foal, named Asil Rafziza. Bint Aziza then produced four more foals for Mrs. Hewitt, the last born in 1966. Back at the Asil Ranch, Asil Bint Bint Aziza was sold to Bill Munson in 1959.

Thus, much as Alice Payne had admired *Aziza herself, the *Aziza line did not produce what she wanted from it and was dropped from the Asil Ranch program. Across from the *Aziza entry in her copy of the Raswan Index, Alice Payne wrote *Aziza was

“a disappointment to me. She produced a filly by Raffles & 2 studs by Rasraff. (The younger stud was good & produced well.)…B.B.Aziza produced one nice filly for B. Munson…by Garaff.”

*Aziza was recorded dead as of April 25, 1952.

*Roda, by Mansour, was foaled in 1931. When Jack Humphrey selected the Maynesboro importation in 1932 he described her as

“just a baby, but to me represents the best thing you are getting as a combination of individual Arab character (at this time) plus the blood that has produced their true Arab quality.[1]

From Maynesboro *Roda was sold to General Dickinson, apparently by 1933. Billie McCutcheon later recalled *Roda as

the first Arabian I ever rode – and I lost my heart to her on sight – back in 1934 – I showed her in the costume class for Gen. J.M.Dickinson. At the time it was said that she had the most perfect head of all Arabians in the U.S. … She was a very beautiful thing indeed. Especially when she went into the strutting trot.[3]

*Roda is described in the Dickinson stud catalog:

“This was the Reserve Champion Mare in a strong class of twelve entries in the National Arabian Show of 1933, second in Arab saddle class at Belleview, Tenn… The head of *Roda has been described by one of the most distinguished breeders of Arabs in the United States as perfectly representative type.”

Going to the stud books, the first of *Roda’s foals was:

-> 1937 black or brown colt Hallany Mistanny 1315, by *Zarife.

The Dickinson catalog reads,

“this young horse is most striking in appearance. He promises to mature as a powerful horse of moderate height and supreme breed type.”

At age six months he was a wedding gift from Dickinson to his daughter. When her husband entered the military, it was time to sell the colt. The catalog states,

“Sold 1940 to California and there a 1st prize winner. His owner described him as having ‘the most exquisite rein, is as fast as he can be on his feet,’ and described by a visitor as ‘most beautiful black stallion I have ever seen.’ ”

During first 18 years of his life, Hallany Mistanny sired just one registered foal, a 1943 colt. Like *Aziza’s sons Azkar and Julep, Hallany Mistanny was nearly lost to the breed. In March of 1955 the Arabian Horse News was asking if anyone knew where he was. At least two California breeders did know where he was – he sired two 1956 foals. That year, Howard Marks acquired him and started using him for breeding. He quickly became a cornerstone of the Howard Marks Ranch breeding program. Among his early foals for Marks was the 1957 filly Habina (x Binni), by age two already a successful show filly for the Lasma Arabian Stud, and named a U.S.National Top Ten Mare in 1960 and 1961. Hallany Mistanny died October 15, 1965. He sired 139 registered foals.

-> 1938 grey colt Rodasr 1591, by *Nasr,

“Used 1941. Sold to California and there used on coast patrol during World War II. He has been described as ‘one of the finest horses I have ever handled… He obeys most of my commands when he is being ridden by word of mouth.’ ”

Rodasr sired just one registered foal, a 1942 filly bred by Dickenson and named Shangi-La. Through her he has a presence in pedigrees.

After producing the two colts for Dickinson, *Roda was sold, apparently in 1938, to L.V.Simons of Allendale, South Carolina. Simons bred her to Agwe (*Mirage x *Hilwe) for her next foals:

-> 1939 grey colt Apollo 1687, by Agwe.

Apollo began his breeding career in South Carolina for Neil Trask. He sired a total of 36 foals.

-> 1940 grey filly Rodetta 1972, by Agwe.

Rodetta accompanied her dam to ownership of Margaret Shuey, for whom she produced the *Raffles fillies Cassandra, Rose Marie, and Julie. Rodetta and her 1948 daughter Julie were sold to Federico Castellanos of Cuba in the fall of 1948. After Joye was weaned, the Shueys trucked Rodetta and Cassandra to Selby’s in Ohio; Cassandra was on her way to R.B.Field, and Mr. Castellanos had Rodetta bred to Image. In August of 1949 Rodetta was trucked to Florida with a stop to pick up Julie. From Florida the horses were flown to Cuba.[4]

-> 1941 g/ch filly Shemma 2150, by Agwe, left no recorded progeny.

-> 1943 grey filly Weda 2734, by Agwe.

From 1951 to 1955 Weda produced four foals for Bob Tarr, then from 1961 to 1966 another four for Jimmie and Thelma Dean.

The year after Weda was born, *Roda was sold to her last owner, Miss Margaret Shuey of Asheville, North Carolina, who later wrote,

“I will always remember that day in June 1944 when my father said I could buy Roda. She was the first Arabian I ever purchased. It was quite a venture for me, but when my father approved I was walking on air. I had wanted her for eight years and so at last my dream came true. At the same time I bought her daughter Rodetta. Roda was in foal to Agwe…”[5]

From that mating she produced:

  • 1945 grey colt Jaspre 3190, by Agwe.
    In May of 1947 the Shueys sold Jaspre to Bob Tarr, who showed him successfully. Late in 1953 or early in 1954 Jaspre moved to Illinois and the ownership of Martin Loeber. In 1961 Loeber sold Jaspre to Dr. and Mrs. Mangels of New York, who advertised him as standing at their Just So Farm from 1962 until 1967. Jaspre stood the 1968 season in New Jersey with his last owner, Gail Hoff of Princeton Arabians. He died December 16, 1968. Jaspre sired 64 registered get.

For her next foal, *Roda went to the Selby Stud in Ohio for breeding to *Raffles. Over the next three years, three foals were born from this cross:

  • 1946 grey colt Tut Ankh Amen 3830, by *Raffles.

    The Shueys sold this young stallion to Mrs. Morrill of the Bear Claw Ranch in Wyoming late in 1950. He left one 1951 foal in North Carolina. Tut Ankh Amen became a key sire for Mrs Morrill. After several foal crops she sold him to R-Farm of Buckley, Washington; the horse moved to his new home in May of 1958. Tut Ankh Amen sired 103 registered foals, the last born in 1965.

  • 1947 grey filly Star of Egypt 4167, by *Raffles.

    From 1951 to 1969 Star of Egypt produced 15 foals, all bred by Margaret Shuey. They include one by Image (Pamela), four by Ibn Hanad (Egypt, Sunny Acres Misty, Sunny Acres Prometheus, and Sunny Acres Cherie), and one by Shalimar Teke (Sunny Acres Easter Star).

  • 1948 grey filly Joye 4803, by *Raffles.

    Joye was the dam of nine registered foals born from 1953 to 1967, all bred by Miss Shuey. They include the Ibn Hanad daughters Sunny Acres Papaya and Sunny Acres Lovejoye, as well as the Sunny Acres Aeneas daughter Sunny Acres Genevieve.

The Arabian Horse News reported that *Roda was bred to Image for a 1950 foal.[6] No foal was registered; Margaret Shuey wrote that *Roda was

“barren for a number of years after a bout with enteritis,”[5]

but finally produced:

-> 1954 chestnut filly Sunny Acres Katydid 9142 by Ibn Hanad.

From 1959 to 1963 Katydid produced four foals for Miss Shuey, including Sunny Acres Gigi (by Rapture). Katydid’s last foal, born 1964, was bred by R.W. and L.A. Van Hoose.

-> 1955 bay filly Sunny Acres Fantasy 9886, by Ibn Hanad.

Fantasy was the dam of six foals for Margaret Shuey, born from 1959 to 1967. They include the Rapture son Sunny Acres Tarzan, and three fillies by Sunny Acres Darius.

*Roda spent the rest of her days at Sunny Acres and died in 1960. To quote Miss Shuey once more,

“She became ill on the afternoon of April 13 and by 9:00 p.m. on April 14 she was gone. She had an impaction, with which we were making progress when her old heart gave out. It was a shock even though she had just passed her twenty-ninth birthday in March because she had come through our rough winter looking better than she had for the last three years. There will never be another Roda. How she will be missed. One thing helps, she was happy here… Roda meant a lot to me.”[5]

Additional sources:

Arabian Horse News, September 1958, p. 34.

Arabian Horse News, April 1969, p. 73.

notes of Alice Payne in margins of books and on backs of photos.

notes of Margaret Shuey on backs of photos sent to Alice Payne.

“Hallany Mistanny,” by Robert E. Doherty Jr., repr. Arabiana.

  1. [1]Jack Humphrey to W.R.Brown, quoted in Carol Lyons, “Egypt 1932,” Arabian Horse News, December 1973.↩
  2. [2]Arabian Horse News, May 1952, p. 7.↩
  3. [3]“Remembers *Roda,” Arabian Horse News, July 1960, p. 11↩
  4. [4]Arabian Horse News, February 1950, p. 11.↩
  5. [5]“Green Pastures,” Arabian Horse News, March-Apr-May 1960, p. 40.↩
  6. [6]Arabian Horse News, February 1950, p. 16.↩

Fortunate Outcross: *Azja IV

Fortunate Outcross: *Azja IV

Copyright 1992 by R.J.CADRANELL

(champion research and statistics by Arlene Magid)

from Arabian Visions October 1992

Used by permission of RJCadranell

Though her most famous son, living legend Azraff, as well as through her other foals, *Azja IV has bred on phenomenally well. *Azja IV has national winners tracing to her through all her progeny. She has countless thousands of descendants. Who was this uniquely bred mare, an outcross to virtually all of the Arabian horses in America at the time of her importation?

Arabian stud book registration number 1543 for *Azja IV provide a starting point, *Azja IV was a bay mare bred in Poland at the Bezmiechowa Stud of J. Czerkawski. Foaled in 1935, she was imported to the United States at the age of three by Henry B. Babson of Illinois. Also in this importation were *Kostrzewa, *Kasztelanka (granddam of Fadjur), *Rybitwa, and the stallion *Sulejman. The in-utero imports *Zewa and *Warsaw were born in 1939, the year Hitler’s invasion of Poland altered history and Polish Arabian horse breeding forever.

Looking Back

Although *Azja IV was bred in Poland, her parents were not. Her sire Landsknecht was the product of more than a century of Arabian breeding at Germany’s Weil Stud, founded in 1817 by King Wilhelm I (d. 1864) of Wurttemberg. Imported to Poland in 1928, Landsknecht had a successful race career, and was used for purebred breeding in Poland from 1933 to 1945.

Landsknecht’s dam, Soldateska, was from the Murana I mare line, one of the oldest in the breed. Soldateska is said to have been ridden as a cavalry horse in World War I, after which she became a Weil broodmare, and later a cornerstone of Marbach breeding when the Weil stock was transferred to Marbach in 1932. Soldateska died in 1935. Her sire Souakim was an in-utero import to Europe, his dam Smyrna having been purchased in foal in Damascus. Soldateska’s dam Sylphide I was a daughter of Amurath 1881, probably the most influential sire bred at 19th century Weil. After standing at Weil he went to the Austro-Hungarian state stud of Radautz (now in Romania) in 1895 and sired 315 foals, both purebred and partbred Arabian. His get are found in Arabian, Shagya, and various European Warmblood pedigrees the world over. Through foundation stock obtained from Radautz, Amurath blood has been part of Polish state Arabian breeding since the end of World War I. Sylphide I’s grandsire Djerid had been imported to Germany from Egypt in 1876 as a gift during the time of King Karl, son of King Wilhelm I. The rest of Sylphide I’s pedigree represents the lines of original Arabians imported to Weil from 1817 to 1861 during the time of King Wilhelm I, with the addition of Mehemed Ali, bred at Babolna in Hungary and added during the time of King Karl. Soldateska is the female line ancestor of Plum Grove Farm foundation mare *Sanacht, granddam of 1978 U.S. National Champion Stallion Amurath Bandolero.

Landsknecht’s sire Koheilan IV was bred at Babolna and stood at stud there as a senior stallion. After World War I, Weil and Babolna found themselves lacking stallions they could use on their mare bands without inbreeding too closely, so an exchange was arranged in 1924 or 25. Princess Pauline zu Wied of Weil sent a stallion named Sven Hedin to Babolna, where he was renamed Kemir (Arabic for “hope”) and bred to daughters and granddaughters of Koheilan IV. In return Babolna sent the old stallion Koheilan IV to Weil, where he covered mares closely related to Sven Hedin, including Sven Hedin’s younger full sister Soldateska.

Koheilan IV was the result of nearly a century’s Arabian breeding at Babolna. His grandsires Koheilan Adjuze and O’Bajan had both been imported to Hungary from the desert in 1885. Through Koheilan IV’s son Koheilan VIII (Koheilan I in PASB), this sire line is prominent in both Russian breeding carried on at Tersk and Polish breeding.

*Azja IV’s dam Asra was bred at Prince Odescalshi’s stud Inocenzdvor in Yugoslavia near Ilok. Prince Odescalchi was from Poland’s Branick family, and inherited the family interest in Arabian horse breeding. The stallion 436 Gazal-1, used at Inocenzdvor, had been bred at the government stud in Bosnia. Both of his parents were desert bred horses imported from Syria. Adshwa was probably also bred at Inocenzdvor. Her sire Siglavy Bagdady-11 was bred at Babolna and stood at Inocenzdvor. Siglavy Bagdady and 219 Aida had been imported from the desert in 1902.

More than one foundation horses for Inocenzdvor came from Baron Pfeiffer’s stud of Visnjevci, also in Yugoslavia. Baron Pfeiffer went twice to Weil for his foundation stock. Among his Weil-bred horses was a son of Amurath 1881 known as Amurath 1892 or Amurath “Dukaten.”

Britta Fahlgren’s The Arabian Horse Families of Poland presents a pedigree for *Azja IV’s sixth dam Dyra going back another seven generations. It is stated that Dyra was bred by Baron von Nizshwitz at Konigsfeld in Saxony from parents bred at Weil.

Asra was imported to Poland in 1930. She produced five foals in Poland, and was lost during World War II. Her only line of descent is through *Azja IV.

Looking Forward

Arriving in America in 1938, *Azja IV was covered during the 1939 season and produced her first foal at the Babson Farm in 1940. This was a grey filly named Bint Azja, by Babson’s Egyptian import *Fadl. Following this *Azja IV is said to have become a problem breeder, going some years without another registered foal. The Babson Farm finally sold her as a riding mare to Walter W. Ross of Kansas City, Missouri, along with her daughter Bint Azja. Walter Ross was a friend of Daniel C. Gainey, in whose breeding program the blood of *Azja IV would one day play a significant role.

*Azja IV became a favorite riding mare for Ross’s son Jack. At some point in her life *Azja IV sustained a serious knee injury. Whether from race training in Poland or being jumped in the U.S. is not known.

In 1947 Walter Ross took *Azja IV to the Selby Stud in Ohio for breeding. He wanted to breed her to the famous Selby import *Raffles, bred at the Crabbet Stud in England. Ross found out *Raffles’s book was full. Instead *Azja IV went to his half brother Image, with a breeding to *Raffles to follow the year after. On June 1, 1948, *Azja IV had a bay colt named Miraz, born at Selby’s. After foaling Miraz, *Azja IV was bred to *Raffles.

Toward the end of May in 1949, Marj Boyt of Iowa called her friends Joe and Garth Buchanan to discuss an Arabian mare for sale, stabled with some horse dealers named Butler and Bond near Lincoln, Nebraska. Her name was *Azja IV. The Boyts were concerned she was priced too high for a 14-year-old mare with traumatized front legs, despite being in foal to *Raffles, and asked Garth’s advice about buying her. “If you don’t, I will,” Garth replied, having seen and admired *Azja IV at Selby’s.

Garth and Joe together with Marj went to Nebraska to get *Azja IV over the Memorial Day weekend. *Azja IV was past her foaling date, and Joe remembers being told the mare could foal at any time. “like maybe right now.” Garth and Marj made him stop “what seemed like every ten miles” to check on her. The trip was completed without incident, and Azraff was not born until June 4. As soon as Azraff was born the Boyts called Garth, who went down to see him that day. She admired him from the beginning. Azraff’s first registered foals were born in 1953 and 1954, and bred by the Boyts. His first registered foals with Garth Buchanan listed as breeder were born in 1955. Several years later when the Boyts retired and moved, Garth got her choice of their horses, and was able to acquire Azraff.

*Azja IV produced three more foals for Mr. and Mrs. Boyt, the last of which was born in 1954. *Azja IV was put down about two years later because of arthritis in her front legs.

Production record of *Azja IV: 3/3/1940 gr. f. Bint Azja 1897, by *Fadl (Ibn Rabdan x Hahroussa) 6/1/1948 b.c. Miraz 4949, by Image (*Mirage x *Rifala) 6/4/1949 gr. c. Azraff 5596, by *Raffles (Skowronek x *Rifala) 6/10/1952 b. c. Razja 8075, by Ramage (Image x Rafina) 6/13/1953 gr. f. Arachne 8620, by Desmoin (Image x Rafina) 6/29/1954 gr. C. Bagdad 9573, by Desmoin

To look at her, “*Azja IV was obviously a well bred mare.” Garth Buchanan says. She remembers *Azja IV as having a level croup and a lovely neck and withers. Her head was different in type and not “fancy,” being a little longer and with a straighter profile, but she had huge eyes and fine skin and coat. The lower part of her face was almost bare of hair in the summer. Garth Buchanan mentions that Dan Gainey knew and admired *Azja IV too. According to Garth, Dan Gainey said she was a quality mare and an excellent ride.

As a breeding influence through Azraff, *Azja IV has provided good length and fine shape of neck, good shoulder and withers, and a short back. Azraff is one of the key components of the Azraff-Ferzon cross. When asked about how the cross came about, Garth Buchanan replies that she first thought of using Ferzon blood in her program when she saw a picture of Ferzon as a foal. She wrote to Ferzon’s breeder, Frank McCoy, but at that time the horse was not for sale. It was later, when Ferzon was under the ownership of Dan Gainey in Minnesota, that the lines were crossed. Dan Gainey and Garth Buchanan, whose farms were only about 150 miles apart, were able to establish a good relationship. The blood that was exchanged was to the benefit of both and many breeders who have followed. Jimmie Dean, longtime manager of the Selby Stud and friend and mentor to both Dan Gainey and Garth Buchanan, also deserves credit for the continued development of the Azraff-Ferzon breeding stock.

Azraff became the top-siring *Raffles son, with 87 champions and 23 national winners including U.S.National Champion Stallion Galizon and Canadian National Champion Stallion and Reserve National Champion Western Pleasure Comar Bay Beau. Azraff has 41 get which have produced national winners. These Azraff grandget include U.S. National Champpion Mare Jon San Judizon and U.S. National Champion Stallion Gai Parada.

Of *Azja IV’s other foals, Bint Azja’s son Jasul (by *Sulejman) sired 1980 Canadian Top Ten Formal Driving Horse Jaskom. Miraz, himself a halter champion, is the grandsire of Doraza, one of the breed’s all-time leading broodmares with nine champions. Razja, through his daughter Azja, is the grandsire of U.S.Top Ten Native Costume Twin Brook Azlad.

Bagdad is a sire of champions, and his daughters have produced national winners in halter and park. He is the maternal grandsire of Taffona, dam of U.S.Reserve National Champion Futurity Stallion and U.S.Resere National Champion English Pleasure Huckleberry Bey. Arachne is the dam of four champions. Two of her daughters, Galicassatt and Gai Gay Ferzona, have produced national winners.

References

Other articles with information on *Azja IV include:

“Azraff,” by Dixie Ryan, Arabian Horse World, November 1977, p. 228.

“Azraff, the Pedigree and Record of a Self-Made Man,” by Sarah A. Wax, and “Comar Arabians, the Garth Buchanan Story.” by Anne Brown, both in September 1983 Arabian Horse World.

“Walter W. Ross, A Man of Devotion,” by Sandy Rolland, Arabian Visions, April 1992, p. 40.

  Web cmkarabians.com

Excerpts from Points of the Horse (Asiatic and North African Horses)

Excerpted from: POINTS OF THE HORSE

Chapter XXXII, Asiatic and North African Horses

by Captain M. Horace Hayes, London, 1897

From The Khamsat Vol 5, Num 4, Oct. 1988

We learn from General Tweedie that although Arabs pay great attention to preserving purity of blood in their horses, they have no written pedigrees of their animals, because they are illiterate. They apply the general term, Kuhailan, to their pure-bred horses in a manner somewhat similar to our use of the word “thorough-bred.” We read in The Arabian Horse, that the parent trunk of Kuhailan, has produced four great branches (Saklavi, U’baiyan, Hamdani, and Hadban); and that they, and it, are known in Arabic as al Khamsa (The Five).

Palgrave (Encyclopedia Britannica) tries to make out that pure-bred Najdi horses are not exported. Tweedie shows that this idea is entirely wrong, and that a large trade is done with India via Kuwait (Grane). As the Najdi Arabs ride only mares, they are naturally glad to get rid of their surplus entires at a remunerative price. Although they have a strong prejudice against selling mares for export, liberal payment enables them to occasionally overcome that feeling. Experienced Arab dealers whose friendship I have enjoyed, have often assured me that many of the best and highest caste horses bred in the Desert are to be found among the Arabs sent to India for racing…

“We do not know of an easier method by which a European might see and buy Najdi horses prior to export than by stationing himself from June to September in the well-oasis of Barjasia, a three day’s journey out of Kuwait. He would then be on the caravan route which leads from Najd to the sea coast.” (Tweedie).

The port of Kuwait is about 150 miles south of Bussorah.

Palgrave (Narrative of a Year’s Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia), Skene (Sporting Review, March, 1864) and others have insisted that there is

“blood and stride in the desert which has never been seen out of it” (Skene).

“Not only do all the facts refute the argument that Arabia contains better colts than those which she distributes, but they go further. They show that every desert of which we have any knowledge is so extensively stripped of its best blood-horses, that not many likely colts of from three and five years old remain in the hands of their breeders. If England possesses too many stud-horses, Arabia retains too few. One may visit a considerable encampment of the Aeniza and see no unweaned colts, except a few reserved ones and those which dealers will not buy. The stock which these people always have with them chiefly consists of well-tried mares, aged stallions and the rising fillies.” (Tweedie)

My friend, the late Esa Bin Curtas, who was a large importer of Arab horses into Bombay, always maintained that the best Arabs did not, as a rule, exceed 14.1 to 14.2 in height. From an all-round point of view, this opinion is undoubtedly correct, especially with regard to the true Sons of the Desert, the Najdi Arabians… Judging by the Indian racing records of the past sixty years, the balance of galloping excellence is a little in favour of big Arabs (those over 14.3)… Yet during the respective times when Anarchy, Chieftain, Shere Ali, and Turkish Flag raced in India, there were no faster Arabs than those brilliant 14 handers. Consequently, I see no advantage in an Arab being over 14.1. The more an Arab exceeds, say 14.2 in height, the more inclined is he to be long in the legs, light in the loins, and flat-sided. We may infer from the foregoing remarks, that the typical Arab is, according to our Western acceptation of the term, a pony.

  Web cmkarabians.com

What’s In A Name? Counting Doves a Century After They Hatch (part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series What's In A Name?

Copyright © 1998 by Michael Bowling
(with particular thanks to Margaret Dickinson Fleming)
originally published in Arabian Visions Oct 1998
used by permission

(with added photos)

After the early 1930s the BINT YAMAMA horses were universally referred to as of the Kehilan Jellabi strain. In later editions of PASB the strain of KAFIFAN was changed to Kehilan. No hint of a connection between Prince Mohammed Ali’s [BINT] YAMAMA and YEMAMEH, the dam of MESAOUD, was ever suggested, and a substantial tradition grew up that BINT YAMAMA was a daughter of the Sheykh Obeyd YEMAMA, sometimes even to the point of suggesting BINT YAMAMA had been bred at Sheykh Obeyd.

Speculation is fruitless but also inevitable. Perhaps BINT YAMAMA was known to be half-sister to, or from the family of, “Lady Anne Blunt’s horse” and this came to be taken as a reference to one of the Blunts’ several Jellabi horses from Ali Pasha Sherif (besides YEMAMA there were MERZUK, KHATILA, MAKBULA, KERIMA, KASIDA, FEYSUL, JELLABIEH and MANOKTA), rather than to MESAOUD. Possibly the existence of a “BINT YEMAMA” daughter of the Sheykh Obeyd mare had become known in some circles, although access to Lady Anne Blunt’s stud records was strictly limited after her death. That name belongs at Sheykh Obeyd to a bay mare without a grey parent, foaled in 1904, who left Egypt for Greece in 1906; she cannot have had anything to do with a grey mare some 10 years older who appeared in 1908 in the Manial Stud.

Prince Mohammed Ali also commented that [BINT] YAMAMA “was a beautiful mare and produced till her age of 25.” If her last foal was the 1918 colt *NASR—there is no record of a later one—then this implies she was foaled in 1893, the same year as YASHMAK, so they could not have been out of the same dam anyway. If BINT YAMAMA produced a foal after *NASR then she was foaled later than 1893, when the bay YEMAMA was in the possession of the Blunts and her time is fully accounted for. The bay mare had some unnamed colts between YASHMAK and IBN YEMAMA, but no fillies until the BINT YEMAMA of 1904.

This was where matters stood on the 1986 publication of Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals and Correspondence. Lady Anne’s writings make it clear that she and Prince Mohammed Ali were on visiting terms and she repeatedly listed the mares, with their strains, that he possessed. Not only is no animal of the Kehilan Jellabi strain mentioned, but it is flatly stated that among his best mares is “the Seglawieh Yemama (daughter of the old Yemama, dam of Mesaoud),” and again that her dam was “Yemama owned by the Khedive.” These statements contradict over 50 years of accepted pedigree tradition, but it is worth noting that Lady Anne Blunt’s is the only contemporary reference we have to the matter. Not only was she writing at the time these horses and breeders were living, but she took particular interest in Arabian horses of Ali Pasha Sherif ancestry, in horses related to her own, and in the strains and origins of the horses which her contemporary breeders showed her.

Table: Yemama Bay and Yemameh Grey
Name Color DoB Breeder Produced for
Yemameh gr pre-1880* Ali Pasha Sherif Ali Pasha Sherif, Abbas Hilmi II
Yemama b 1885 Ali Pasha Sherif [?Moharrem Pasha], Lady Anne Blunt
*her first known foal was a full brother to Mesaoud, aged 4 in January 1884

In 1998 it became possible to address this pedigree relationship with the techniques of molecular biology (see Sidebar: The Science). Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) had already been used to reject the hypothesis that the coat color incompatibility in DOMOW’s registered parentage could be explained on the basis of a foal switch in 1913. Sequences from the mtDNA of tail-female descendants of DOMOW matched those of other *WADDUDA descendants, and were different from those of *BUSHRA and *ABEYAH descendants, these being the other dam lines from which fillies were available to be switched with DOMOW.

Addressing this Ali Pasha Sherif question demonstrates how the technique can be applied another 20 years or more back in time. It was possible to compare mtDNA from the three relevant families: direct female line descendants of 1) BINT YAMAMA; 2) BINT HELWA (attributed to the female line of MESAOUD and so of his dam YEMAMEH); and 3) MAKBULA, of Ali Pasha Sherif Jellabi origin (only one source of this family is recorded, the mare known as JELLABIET FEYSUL from Ibn Khalifa of Bahreyn, although the exact interrelationships among the Jellabi horses are not clearly stated).

In short, the mtDNA of the BINT YAMAMA descendants matched that of the BINT HELWA horses, and both were different from the MAKBULA descendants. Based on this testing, the conclusion is that BINT YAMAMA was indeed half-sister to MESAOUD, and not from the dam line which produced MAKBULA.

Postscript: Names and Identities

It is important to remember that the nature and identity of Prince Mohammed Ali’s mare have never changed; she has throughout been the same horse she always was. What has “evolved” over the decades is our knowledge about her.

Both Prince Mohammed Ali and Lady Anne Blunt refer to our subject mare and her dam by the same name, but the export pedigrees uniformly give her as “BINT YAMAMA,” and her dam as “YAMAMA,” a daughter of “WAZIRIEH” or “WAZIREH” from the stud of Abbas Pasha. This YAMAMA now appears to be identical with the dam of MESAOUD, the mare Lady Anne Blunt refers to in her stud records as YEMAMEH.

Since the 1920s YEMAMEH’s dam has been known as BINT GHAZIEH, but it may be that she had what might be called a “personal” name (BINT GHAZIEH is a description, “daughter of Ghazieh,” as much as it is a name, and as with the Banat Nura, might have been a generic term for any mare of the GHAZIEH family). In fact MESAOUD’s second dam’s name may actually have been “WAZIRIEH.”

This could be a reasonable name for a sister to WAZIR, as this mare was; further, this gives a possible origin for the confusing reference in Lady Anne Blunt’s journal to MESAOUD’s dam as sister to WAZIR, which seems improbable on chronological grounds (Peter Upton, personal communication): on a hasty reading, the dam’s name WAZIRIEH might look like a reference to YEMAMEH herself as sister to WAZIR. Unfortunately the relevant page of the document in question apparently has not survived for comparison with the journal entry.

The Science

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) codes for some of the proteins of the mitochondria, the “energy furnaces” responsible for cellular respiration. Mitochondria reside in the cell’s cytoplasm, not in its nucleus, so mtDNA is transmitted independent of chromosomal inheritance. In the nature of mammalian reproduction, the sperm cell’s mitochondrial contribution is swamped by that of the vastly larger egg cell, and so mtDNA is inherited for practical purposes through the female line, uninfluenced by the sires used over the generations.

A part of the research program at the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory of the University of California at Davis involves the development of techniques for analyzing mtDNA. An advantage of mtDNA testing is that, in sharp contrast to nuclear genes, it can be applied even at many generations’ remove to address questions of maternity, provided direct female line descendants of the animals in question are available. A scientific manuscript surveying the usefulness of mtDNA comparisons for use in Arabian horse parentage testing is in preparation.

The march of science

Since 1998, it’s been shown that there is a specific enzymatic system which eliminates the sperm mitochondria from the developing embryo—the male contribution is not just overwhelmed by the numbers in the egg cytoplasm, as was believed then; there actually is none under normal circumstances. — mb, April 2004

The mtDNA identity of the descendants of BINT HELWA and BINT YAMAMA has one further very interesting direct implication. The pre-stud-book pedigrees of the Ali Pasha Sherif and Abbas Pasha Arabians are properly referred to as traditional beliefs. They are not documented pedigrees as would be the case for horses whose parentage is published in a stud book. It appears that the mtDNA results actually link the descendants of two GHAZIEH daughters: HORRA, second dam of BINT HELWA, and WAZIRIEH or BINT GHAZIEH, second dam of BINT YAMAMA. This strongly implies an actual existence for GHAZIEH and reinforces the reality of at least this particular set of traditional pedigrees.

Scientific papers:

  • Assignment of maternal lineage using mitochondrial nucleic acid sequence in horses, J.A. Gerlach, A.T. Bowling, M. Bowling and R.W. Bull. 1994. Animal Genetics 25: Supplement 2:31.
  • Mitochondrial D-loop DNA sequence variation among Arabian horses, A.T. Bowling, A. Del Valle and M. Bowling. Animal Genetics 2000 Feb;31(1):1-7.
  • Verification of horse maternal lineage using mitochondrial DNA sequence, A.T. Bowling, A. Del Valle and M. Bowling. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics, 115 (1998), 351-355.

Sources:

  • Unpublished pedigrees and other documents from the files of Traveler’s Rest Farm, courtesy Margaret Dickinson Fleming
  • The General Stud Book
  • The Polish Arabian Stud Book
  • The Arabian Horse Families of Egypt, Colin Pearson with Kees Mol
  • “The Banat Nura of Ali Pasha Sherif,” Robert J. Cadranell II (The CMK Record XI/2)
  • Egypt and Cromer, Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid
  • Journals and Correspondence 1878-1917, Lady Anne Blunt, edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming
  • My Diaries, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
  • Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

What’s In A Name? Counting Doves a Century After They Hatch (part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series What's In A Name?

Copyright © 1998 By Michael Bowling
(with particular thanks to Margaret Dickinson Fleming)
originally published in Arabian Visions Oct 1998, used by permission

(with added photos)

Names in 19th-century Egypt do not appear to have been the hard-edged entities we would like them to be; Ali Pasha Sherif himself first comes to our attention, buying horses at the auction put on by the heirs of Abbas Pasha, as “Ali Bey.” Who would realize at first glance that “Ibn Yemameh al-Saghir” on Ali Pasha’s own 1889 sales list is the same horse as the great Blunt sire MESAOUD?

(Bint) Yamama with Negma
*Nasr 1918 AHC 889 (Rabdan El Azrak x Bint Yamama)
Negma at age 32 (Dahman x Bint Yamama)
Jasir 1925 (Mabrouk Manial x Negma)
*Aziza 1926 (Jamil x Negma)
Khafifan 1916 (Mabrouk Manial x Negma) Imp. to Poland 1924 by Count Potocki
Mahroussa ca. 1920 (Mabrouk Manial x Negma)
*H.H.Mohamed Ali’s Hamama 1927 AHC 887 (Kawkab x Mahroussa)
*H.H.Mohamed Ali’s Hamida 1929 AHC 890 (*Nasr AHC 889 x Mahroussa)
Julep AHC 1678 (Gulastra x *Aziza)
Azkar 1938 AHC 1109 (Rahas x *Aziza)
*Zarife 1928 AHC 885 (Ibn Samhan x Mahroussa
*Fadl 1930 AHC 896 (Ibn Rabdan x Mahroussa)
*Maaroufa 1931 AHC 895 (Ibn Rabdan x Mahroussa)
Rodasr 1938 AHC 1591 (*Nasr x *Roda)

Not only did the same horse (or person) appear under different names, the same or very similar names could be used for different horses. Different names may be spelled similarly, or the same name may be Westernized differently; the potential for spelling differences of transliterated Arabic names is almost infinite. The convention used varies not only with the native language of the writer but with the scholarly tradition to which s/he subscribed, and with the brand of Arabic native to the speaker or writer being transcribed (Susan K. Blair, personal communication).

Arabian mares appear to have suffered from a particular lack of nomenclatural precision. The same name might routinely be used for several generations of a dam line, or for a set of full and half sisters, or indeed for mares even more nebulously connected (cf Cadranell, “The Banat Nura of Ali Pasha Sherif“). How many mares named with some variation on “Yamama”—”Dove”—actually lived in Egypt in the 1890s? There were at least two.

The Khedive Abbas Hilmi II was 17 years old and at school in Vienna when he succeeded his father Khedive Tewfik as ruler of Egypt in 1892. The story of Abbas Hilmi II and his relationship to British colonial power is a sufficiently complex subject to qualify in its own right as a historical specialty, but the last Khedive also figures in Arabian breed history. On his return to Egypt to take up the position of ruler of that country, he began to breed Arabian horses, in the tradition of his great-grandfather Abbas Pasha I. One of his first acquisitions, the Ali Pasha Sherif mare YEMAMEH, had already produced the Blunt sire MESAOUD. Wilfrid Blunt in his diary mentions that on 11 January, 1896 he “[t]ook Anne and Judith to Koubbah to see the Khedive. He… showed us his stud. He has got together some nice mares, but nothing quite first class, except two of Ali Pasha Sherif’s, one of which is our horse Mesaoud’s dam, a very splendid mare, with the finest head in the world. He has bred some promising colts and altogether the thing is well done.”

Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt also bought a mare named YEMAMA in 1892. According to the original GSB registration for her son IBN YEMAMA, she was “stated to be an Abeyah, a bay mare brought from a desert tribe, through a Tiaha sheykh, to Mohammed Thabit, Sheykh of the Sualha tribe, in the Sherkieh Province, for Ali Bey Shahin, son of Shahin Pasha, and purchased from Ali Bey Shahin.” YEMAMA produced at Sheykh Obeyd from 1893 through 1904, taking time off for adventure in 1897—she served as Wilfrid Blunt’s mount on his eventful last desert journey. YEMAMA’s named offspring at Sheykh Obeyd were the grey 1893 mare YASHMAK by *SHAHWAN, and the 1902 and 1904 bay full siblings IBN YEMAMA and BINT YEMAMA by FEYSUL. YEMAMA was given away in 1906, aged 21; her only link to modern pedigrees is through her grandson IBN YASHMAK, taken to England in 1904 and returned to Egypt in 1920.

In a 1907 journal entry Lady Anne Blunt records a visit from Moharrem Pasha and a discussion regarding YEMAMA, “that bay mare Moharrem Pasha sold to us—to which the Pasha replied ‘O! that mare, the Jellabieh I had from Ali [Pasha] Sherif!” Later in the same entry “Ghania’s long tale about Yemama having passed through several hands on her way from the desert is all a fabrication!!!” This reads as though Ghania had been Moharrem Pasha’s agent in the 1892 sale of YEMAMA. The answers to other questions that come to mind (eg, how Ali Bey Shahin comes into the story, and why Moharrem Pasha is not mentioned in the mare’s GSB provenance) are not clear at this time.

Abbas Hilmi II was deposed by the British in 1914 and from that time lived in exile and never returned to Egypt. Most Arabian horse enthusiasts today are probably more familiar with the name of the last Khedive’s younger brother. Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik continued to breed Arabians at his Manial Stud in Cairo for nearly 20 years after Abbas Hilmi went into exile. The Manial Stud provided foundation stock to the Royal Agricultural Society, to the Inshass Stud of the Prince’s cousin King Farouk, and to breeders in Poland, Germany and the U.S. The Prince’s name is enshrined in our stud book as a prefix to two of the mares he sold to W.R. Brown. HAMAMA 418 and *HAMIDA 509 already were registered, so the two Egyptian imports with the same names became *H. H. Mohammed Ali’s HAMAMA 887 and *H. H. Mohammed Ali’s HAMIDA 889.

Prince Mohammed Ali’s most esteemed line of horses was founded by the grey BINT YAMAMA, bred by his brother. In a 1933 letter to General J.M. Dickinson of the famed Traveler’s Rest Farm in Tennessee, the Prince wrote that he had exchanged a black gift stallion from Sultan Abdul Hamid II of Turkey, plus 200 pounds, “to get [Bint] Yamama, wich [sic] was in the possession of one of my brother’s people.”

This exchange can be roughly dated to 1908; Lady Anne Blunt’s published Journals and Correspondence record that she saw the black stallion from the Sultan in December of 1907, while a year later a daughter of YEMAMA [sic] is among “the principal mares.” The same mare is mentioned in similar terms again in January of 1911; in February 1912 she is accounted the second best of the mares, and parenthetically “the dam Yemama owned by the Khedive is dead.”

Ten Manial Arabians of BINT YAMAMA’s descent in the direct female line were used for breeding in Poland, in Germany and in this country (imported by W. R. Brown and Henry Babson). This breeding element is a widely influential one in international pedigrees; to pick a few names at random, KONTIKI, BEN RABBA, KHEMOSABI and many horses of the Al-Marah and Shalimar programs carry this Manial breeding. It is behind the majority of horses bred from Germany’s Weil-Marbach lines. There is also a strong tradition of breeding straight Egyptian Arabians carrying more or less of BINT YAMAMA’s influence (see Sidebar: The BINT YAMAMA Influence Summarized).

General Dickinson, on buying four of the Manial Arabians imported by W. R. Brown, had noticed a discrepancy in their strain designations, compared to that of KAFIFAN, a stallion from the same family which Prince Mohammed Ali had sold to Count Potocki of Poland in 1924. The Brown imports were given as Jellabi or Kehilan Jellabi; KAFIFAN, in the original (first edition) Polish Arabian Stud Book (PASB), was registered of the strain “Saklawi Djedran.” General Dickinson later bought from Poland the KAFIFAN daughter *MATTARIA, and in the summary of her ancestry supplied by the Polish registration authorities (the source would have been the records of the Potocki family) KAFIFAN also appears as “of the Saklawi family.”

Asked to comment on this apparent contradiction, Prince Mohammed Ali stated, not that PASB was in error on the strain of KAFIFAN, but that “[t]he Kehilan-Jellabi are descending from the Seglawi-Jedran.” This is a somewhat ambiguous statement; an Arabian horse of any strain may “descend” from horses of any other strain if they are not in its direct female line. If this statement refers to the strain-determining dam line, it runs counter to the conventional descriptions of strain evolution, in which the other strains are said to arise from, and originally to be named as substrains of, the Kehilan Ajuz. Furthermore, strain designations are not expected to change in this way over the course of a few years (from 1924 to 1932) and outside the tribal breeding system.

Prince Mohammed Ali puts more emphasis on the fact that BINT YAMAMA “is a descendant of the stables of Ali Pasha Sherif, who bought his horses from my grandfather Prince Ilhami, son of Abbas Pasha I… the strain of these horses is in our family since 80 years…” It may not be reading too much into this to suggest the Prince is telling General Dickinson that, whatever their strain name, the origin of this family is unimpeachable. On the record which survives, Lady Anne Blunt’s efforts to record precise pedigree relationships among her Arabians of Ali Pasha Sherif origins may have been the exception rather than the rule. More often her contemporaries appear to have accepted a horse of named strain, “of Ali Pasha Sherif” or “from the stud of Ali Pasha Sherif,” as sufficient, and indeed unsurpassable, provenance.

The Prince added in the same letter that the stud records of his brother Abbas Hilmi II had been confiscated at the time the latter went into exile. While these records may well languish yet in some British archive, there has to date been no suggestion that they were ever recovered. If Prince Mohammed Ali changed his mind about the strain designation of this line of horses, his decision clearly was not based on information from his brother’s stud records. Still less can any subsequent ideas about the BINT YAMAMA pedigree have been based on the relevant stud records.

Preservation and Improvement

Breeders can have both in their programs

by Michael Bowling, Copyright © 1997

from Arabian Visions magazine Sept/Oct 1997

used by permission of Michael Bowling

I sometimes wish we had waited a bit longer in the preservation breeding community and used the terminology which has been developed by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy: ALBC refers to conserving breeds or genetic stocks, while they limit preservation to technological innovations such as cryopreservation of gametes and embryos. This might be a little easier to understand in terms of everyday language. It’s too late to change now that “preservation breeding” is an accepted term, though it’s still useful to remember that distinction: frozen semen preserves genetic contributions from individual sires. Breeding from their descendants does not constrain the individual ancestors’ genetic representation in the same way.

ALBC also distinguishes groups which have been subject to selection in the past from those (land races and feral stocks) whose value is precisely that they have not been influenced by much if any human control over breeding. Animals in the latter class have had a chance to retain ancient genes for things like prolificacy, or resistance to weather, diseases, and parasites, and should continue to be bred with as little selective pressure as possible for visual or production traits. Some maintain that, in order to allow natural selection to operate, such stocks should also be raised without worming, immunizations, foot care, and the like.

The modern “straight desert” programs, with which I am familiar only in the most general terms, may define an Arabian preservation movement which is very close to the land race model–in theory, and I daresay largely in practice, their foundation stock was at least close to horses which had been selected primarily for survival under desert conditions, not in terms of any show ring visual standard.

Most of us are working in traditions which have been highly selected in the past; what we are preserving is, as much as anything, a set of minority views of what the Arabian horse is about. This is quite in keeping with the relevant population genetics theory as it’s very well presented by ALBC [see A Conservation Breeding Handbook, reviewed in the January-February 1996 Arabian Visions]: the goal is to maintain selection as nearly as possible to the same standards employed by the historical breeders of each tradition. Most of the people I know and work with (I realize there are other people active in other preservation contexts who may see things differently) are acutely aware that, in a narrow breeding group, we run the risk of having difficulty in breeding away from faults of conformation, type, or disposition. We are just as acutely aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each individual as we are of the distinctive character which sets our animals off from the breed at large.

As to the notion sometimes encountered that preservation breeding is not compatible with selection for improvement or with breeding “quality horses,” I think there are two separate ideas here: we want to improve our individual animals, in the sense of breeding to combine more of the best features of our kind of horse in each individual. What we do not subscribe to is the conventional notion that one can “improve the breed,” which seems to mean, in practice, “make it look more like some other breed.” Most of us are breeding within specific pedigree limits precisely because in our experience they turn out specific kinds of good Arabian horses.

The “Mares at Grass:” A Photo of *Raseyn’s Second Dam

Copyright 1990 by MICHAEL BOWLING

used by permission of Michael Bowling

published in Arabian Visions Oct 1990

(left to right) RIADA, ROSE OF HIND, KIBLA, RISALA and KASIDA at Crabbet in 1913. (Photo from the Brown collection, courtesy Arabian Horse Owners’ Foundation.)

Those of us who study the historical Arabians are always looking to expand the range of knowledge: for foundation stock there’s documentation of origin to pursue; one always hopes they and their progeny might have been the subject of a contemporary photograph or written comment which has been preserved. Some of us particularly value photos as an aid to making the old horses more “real,” even though we are well aware that interpreting such photos may be fraught with danger. As frustrating a situation as we can find ourselves in, is having an old photo of Arabian horses in which individuals are not identified. Fortunately, when a photo’s provenance is clearly established, there are sources of information with which to compare its images.

There are many such photos to work with, within the Crabbet canon alone; this discussion will center on one which Lady Wentworth used on page 27 of her 1924 Crabbet Stud Catalogue, and captioned, “Mares at Grass.” As luck would have it, there is an original Rouch print of this photo in the Brown collection at the Arabian Horse Owner’s Foundation, presumably one of the items W.R. Brown recieved from Spencer Borden when he bought out Borden’s Interlachen Stud. The Brown print is labeled “Arab mares at Crabbet – 1913” in what appears to be Lady Anne Blunt’s handwriting: Spencer Borden corresponded extensively with Lady Anne. This original print is of course much clearer and sharper than the reproduction in the Catalogue. The photo, which accompanies this article, shows five mares without foals; one group of four is in the foreground, two of them facing the camera and two looking away; a fifth is some distance behind them to the right.

One obvious resource for identifying horses in old photos, is to ask someone who might have been there at the time. I had the good fortune to be present nearly 13 years ago, when the late Lady Anne Lytton identified the foreground mares as Riada, Rose of Hind, Kibla and Risala. Either Lady Anne did not identify the mare on the right, or I did not remember the identification long enough to make a note of it.

The mares are in slick coat and at least four of them are in high condition; they are swishing flies, the trees are in full leaf and the pasture fairly short, all suggesting mid to late summer as the time the photo was taken. The foreground mares all appear to be in the prime of life, while the mare at the right is down in the back, has a big left knee and, under magnification, shows possible scars on her left cheek and point of hip. The mark on the cheek is ambiguous and may be a flaw in the negative, though it seems a lot to ask that such a flaw should accidentally fall in this position.

This photo clearly seems to show a group of dry mares on pasture in the summer of 1913; none of the mares named by Lady Anne Lytton has a 1913 foal in The General Stud Book (GSB). Known photos of Rose of Hind and Risala are consistent with the markings visible on the two mares facing away from the camera, and this pose of head and neck seems to be characteristic of Risala in other pictures. It is more difficult to be certain about a grey mare; Balis, Belkis and Bukra all were Crabbet (as opposed to Newbuildings) mares of the appropriate vintage, and all were barren in 1913. As a first approximation, I see no reason not to think Lady Anne had it right, and a photo of Kibla as a yearling seems consistent with this judgement, in terms of the general shape of her face and the distinctive cut of her nostrils.

The most interesting identification, from a historical standpoint, is that of the mare on the left as Riada. That 1904 brown daughter of Mesaoud and Rosemary had been Lady Anne Lytton’s favorite riding horse as a girl at Crabbet; the mare died of twisted gut in 1920 at age 16, and bred on into modern pedigrees through just one offspring, but that was Rayya by Rustem. Riada, in other words, was second dam of the internationally influential Kellogg sire *Raseyn, and this is her only known photo. Lady Anne certainly should have been able to recognize her favorite mare; if any confirmation be needed, Riada’s markings as recorded in Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript studbook are, “near fore foot, narrow blaze like prolonged star, & spot between nostrils.” That fits this dark mare to a “T.”

That leaves the mare in the background. Comparing the original print with the version in the Catalogue suggests that, for publication, Lady Wentworth retouched the scarred cheek to show a white marking running up from under the mare’s chin. This apparent marking confuses the issue, as it calls to mind the distinctive face marking of Amida, and suggests that this mare might have been her dam Ajramieh, described by Lady Anne Blunt as having a “blaze all over muzzle.” Ajramieh would have been at Newbuildings in 1913 (this was during the partition phase of the Crabbet story), and furthermore possessed leg markings which should have been visible here. Peter Upton recently published a photo of Ajramieh (Arab Horse Society News. Winter 1989), which shows a different mare from this one, and confirms her leg markings.

I listed the Crabbet Stud’s producing mares in GSB between 1906-1916, just to get a base to start from; GSB does not distinguish between Crabbet and Newbuildings, but one can judge which half a mare was in by the sires to which she was bred. One way and another (the other candidates died, were sold, or disappeared from GSB before 1913; or their known markings don’t fit), the choices narrowed down to Abla, Betina, Kantara, Kasida, and Rahma. Abla, Kantara and Kasida all qualify on markings; the other two I can’t find markings on. All but one of these were producing to Newbuildings sires around this time, so were unlikely to have been photographed at Crabbet. Betina and Rahma were a generation or so younger than the rest of our group; Kantara and Abla would have been 12 and 14 in 1913, which would have made them roughly the same age as Kibla and Risala, while our subject is clearly an older mare. Further, Kantara has a 1913 foal in GSB, so would not have been running out with the dry mares even if she had been at Crabbet.

Kasida was definitely a Crabbet mare, and in fact was one of Lady Anne Blunt’s personal favorites. She would have been 20 when photographed here, and according to Peter Upton (The Arab Horse, p. 147) “aged before her time… was shot September 12, 1913.” There is a look of other Kasida photos in this mare, about the eyes and in the awkward conformation. I sent an enlarged copy photo to the Baker Street Irregular, R. J. Cadranell, who pointed out the “pale mane” referred to in Kasida’s published description and visible in her other photos. Based on this and other resemblances to known Kasida photos, and on his reconstruction of Crabbet history, he wrote “I’ve convinced myself that the mare in the photo you sent could not be other then Kasida.”

Thus it is possible, by combining sources, to go from “Mares at Grass” to a photographic record of Riada (Mesaoud x Rosemary), age 9; Rose of Hind (Rejeb x Rose Diamond), age 11; Kibla (Mesaoud x Makbula II) and Risala (Mesaoud x Ridaa), both 13; and Kasida (Nasr I x Makbula II), age 20. All five of these mares are widely represented in modern pedigrees and their photo should be of great interest to many students of the breed.

Sources:

  1. Crabbet Stud Catalogue, 1924.
  2. W.R.Brown photo collection, in possession of the Arabian Horse Owners’ Foundation
  3. Personal communication from Lady Anne Lytton, daughter of Lady Wentworth, and granddaughter of Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt.
  4. Notes from Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript studbook.
  5. Breeding records published in The General Stud Book (GSB)
  6. “‘Worth a King’s Ransom’ — Queen of Sheba,” by Peter Upton (Arab Horse Society News No. 73, Winter 1989).
  7. The Arab Horse, by Peter Upton (Crowood Press 1989).

*El Bulad 29: The New Photo

Michael Bowling © 1994 (used by permission)

from The CMK Record X/4 Winter 1994

Photos: Record archives, as credited

This photograph of a handsome grey Arabian at Hingham Stock Farm has resided for as long as I can remember in an antique cigar box of unidentified prints and negatives in the W.R.Brown collection. On my trip to Tucson for the 1992 Al-Marah Winter Forum I was able to take an extra day and go back to my breed-history roots in the Brown material at the Arabian Horse Owners Foundation. Given the obvious age of the print and the unmistakable Hingham background there were only a few candidates for its identity; after comparison with other known photos, I realized I was looking at the best *El Bulad image I’d ever seen. R.J.Cadranell and Jeanne Craver have since confirmed that diagnosis. A real puzzle by modern standards is why, with a photo like this one available, the others ever saw the printed light of day, but this is the way that story has evolved–almost every Davenport imported Arabian has come to be represented, in the last 20 years or so, by photos which show it in a more favorable light than any that were published near the time of the importation.

*El Bulad did not leave a direct sire line, which makes him easy to miss if one follows the conventional track of riding the top or bottom lines of pedigrees. His descent is all in common with other Davenport imports so several of his chief connections have been mentioned before, in the *AZRA feature, and in the RHUA, *HAMRAH and HANAD sections of the *URFAH story; another will come up in the SAAIDA chapter of our *HADBA treatment.

To begin with a brief summary from the Cravers’ Annotated Quest:

“*El Bulad 29 was a 1903 Jilfan Stam Al Bulad by a Kuhaylan-Ajuz stallion. Davenport wrote in his 1909-10 catalog: ‘…His well-formed body threatens to eclipse even that of Haleb. His lines are extremely pleasant and his bone is good and flat. He has shown great ability at the trot though a frictionless galloper. His mother was a war mare of much repute…Jilfans are noted for the peculiar slant of the shoulder and hip and this horse is a striking example of that peculiarity.'”

All statements about ownerships and dates of death which follow are based on information as provided through 1939 in The Arabian Stud Book and its supplements. This can be at best an approximation of the travels of *El Bulad and his descendants; the stud books and supplements presented information current at the time they were set in type. If a horse underwent two or more transfers between two publications, the reader has no way to catch the intervening owner(s) from the printed record, unless (and this would only readily apply to mares) it also had registered offspring in such an ownership. It also happened occasionally that a horse would be transferred to a distant owner, but stay at or near the home stud, whether to board there for breeding or simply because it was sold again before the new owner had a chance to move it. Thus ownership records may also imply travels which never took place.

(A word to the wise: The only way to trace an Arabian’s changes of address after 1939 has been through stud book breeding records, assuming the breeder of a foal to be the owner of its dam, and in the absence of evidence of the contrary, most foals to be sired by local stallions. This oversimplified picture became further removed from reality in the late 1980’s with the introduction of the “assigned breeder” designation, but its outlines had already been blurred a decade before when the microfiche stud book was produced. Horses whose breeders still were active at that time in the AHR computer files apparently were listed in the microfiche with their breeder’s most recent address, even though that might be unrelated to where the breeder [and so the horses] had lived at the time. The printed stud book remains a more reliable indicator of locality, even with all its limitations. As a rule of thumb, the more nearly contemporary a source is to the time a subject horse lived, the more seriously it must be considered.)

In the Arabian Horse Club’s original 1909 stud book *El Bulad was one of 23 entries “imported from Arabia in 1906” and “owned by the Davenport Desert Arabian Stud, Goshen, N.Y. and Hingham, Mass.” In 1913 his owner was Peter B. Bradley’s Hingham Stock Farm (Hingham, MA) and this was repeated in 1918. The supplement for 1923 shows *El Bulad transferred to Albert W. Harris, Chicago IL (though no doubt the horse spent most of his time at Harris’ Kemah Stud in Lake Geneva, WI); by 1927 he had been reported dead. Judging from the foaling record, *El Bulad was at Kemah by 1921 and probably died between the breeding seasons of 1924 and ’25. Of *El Bulad’s 15 progeny of record, he seems to have gotten two foals for Davenport, three bred by Hingham and ten credited to Harris.

Dahura (*El Bulad x Nanshan), age 24 with her last foal Aabella. Dahura would prove her sire’s most significant offspring and indeed one of the most influential mares bred at Hingham Stock Farm.

One observation I make repeatedly in these stories is that many horses could have died after siring a first crop, or first foal, and still left a major mark on the breed’s history. *El Bulad certainly comes in this category: his first registered foal was the great mare DAHURA, out of the Ramsdell mare NANSHAN (*Garaveen x *Nejdme). DAHURA became the dam of 17 registered foals and founded one of the most extensive branches of the important *NEJDME dam line; she had three non-trivial breeding sons as well.

DAHURA was a grey foaled in 1909; her original registration, in the 1913 stud book, had her owned by Hingham Stock Farm and bred by the Davenport Desert Arabian Stud. DAHURA was “bred and owned” by Hingham in the 1918 volume. Her dam NANSHAN apparently was in Davenport’s hands well before 1906 (to judge from a youthful photo published in that year and reprinted in The Annotated Quest) and was registered in the 1909 stud book in Homer Davenport’s ownership, not in the form “Davenport Desert Arabian Stud.” No horses had been listed in the 1909 book as owned by Hingham Stock Farm, although Bradley’s name did appear as First Vice President of the Arabian Horse Club and Bradley was breeder of record on some registered horses, foaled from 1896 through 1903, derived from the Hamidie Society’s 1893 World’s Fair imports. R.J.Cadranell reminds me that the 1906 importation had been financed by Bradley, and that “Davenport Desert Arabian Stud” was a joint venture of Davenport, Bradley and A.G.Hooley; its two addresses were Davenport’s and Bradley’s respectively. (But note: it was not the given owner of NANSHAN in 1909. The more one digs into the early stud books the more casual about assigning breeder designations the Arabian Horse Club appears to have been, and the more some appear to have been assigned “by guess and by gosh.”) At some point most of the Davenport Desert Arabians were transferred to Bradley’s sole ownership and went on as Hingham Stock Farm; this was probably before Homer Davenport died in 1912 (see the *HADBA story, IX/4, for the imports Davenport seems to have owned when he died.) Hingham Stock Farm did excellent work with the Davenport horses in any event, and DAHURA played a major role in the program.

DAHURA produced 10 foals bred by Hingham in as many seasons, from 1913 through 1922, and half of them remain in pedigrees. That proportion carries through on the eight full siblings by *HAMRAH; those with descent are the grey sisters DEHAHAH, of 1914; MORFDA, 1916; MERSHID, 1919 and AMHAM, 1920. Their stories have appeared in the *HAMRAH chapters (VI/4 and VII/1) under *URFAH, but to hit the high spots, MORFDA produced the important early sire STAMBUL; MERSHID and AMHAM founded extensively branched families. Both the M-named sisters were Kemah Stud matrons; Harris seemed to seek out multiple sources of any influence which worked particularly well in his terms. The lovely AMHAM was a favorite mare of W.K.Kellogg.

DAHURA’s final Massachusetts foal was her first bred son, the grey 1921 colt JOON by *AZRA, whose influence was summarized in his sire’s cover story (IV/4). His most frequently seen offspring in pedigrees probably is the Kellogg producer SHEHERZADE, dam of the familiar sire COURIER and a string of good mares. ROABERTA, OTHMANEE, RAMADI and JOONTAFA are other widespread JOON matrons.

R. J. Cadranell’s notes from documents at the Trust bridge a stud book gap: DAHURA was one of the Hingham Arabians sold in 1921 to J. G. Winant (For a note on the Winants see “HANAD 489, a short biography,” in VII/4); like them she and several of her offspring, including MORFDA, MERSHID and a 1922 filly, were owned in 1923 by Morton Hawkins of Portland, IN. JOON was then with Mrs Wikoff Smith of Bryn Mawr, PA. DAHURA must have been transferred quickly to the ownership of Parker Smith, also of Portland, IN, the breeder of her grey 1924 foal AH BEN, a full brother to JOON. The logistics of all this remain unclear: that 1923 supplement still had *Azra back in New England with Mrs. Winant, which remained unchanged in 1927. A simple guess is that DAHURA left the Winants in foal and was transferred twice before the 1924 colt arrived. AH BEN has one foal to his credit, but to no long-term effect.

DAHURA was reunited with that other former Hawkins horse, HANAD (story in VII/4). The 1926 sibling, the glamorous liver chestnut VALENCIA, was her sire’s first foal and became a well-regarded Kellogg producer. VALENCIA was first registered in 1927 as bred by Dr. C.D.Pettigrew of Muncie, IN; this was repeated in 1934 and ’37. For reasons not yet clear her breeder became H.V.Tormohlen in the more widely available Stud Book V of 1944, and this was how I presented it in VII/4. Briefly, again, AMEER ALI was the original sire for the Glass program in Oklahoma; AABANN’s most important offspring was the mare sire AABADAN; AABAB got the great matron AADAH.

AMEER ALI and all those “double A” names unequivocally mark the next chapter of DAHURA’s career; she appeared in H.V.Tormohlen’s ownership in 1927, as did AH BEN who ended up with the Remount. DAHURA produced two more registered foals after her HANAD quartet, and was still listed with Tormohlen in 1939 when she would have been 30. Tormohlen was the early writer “Ben Hur” who proselytized for the breed through the pages of Western Horseman in the 1940’s. H.V. and Blanche Tormohlen and their son Brooks also were Ben Hur Farms in Indiana, and developed a very highly regarded program based on the Maynesboro and Hingham dam lines of NADIRAT and DAHURA (NADIRAT belonged to Blanche). Ben Hur stock was entirely within the CMK founder sources, and provided important elements to many modern pedigrees; the Ben Hur horses were known for extreme breed type with brilliant action, bearing comparison with that of RABIYAT according to Gladys Brown Edwards. It’s surprising the Ben Hur story has not received an extensive treatment in these pages before now.

A Ben Hur Farms brochure from about 1959 credits DAHURA with producing 19 foals; it is not unreasonable that two out of so many might have died before registration, or indeed that she might have had a couple of foals by non-Arab sires. (Of course the caption also says DAHURA is shown “at 25 yrs.” with this “19th” foal AABELLA; by my reckoning DAHURA was 24 in 1933 when AABELLA was foaled, and the filly does not look to be a yearling, so a certain carelessness with numbers may be inferred. One finds owners can tack on a year or two or five, once horses get into the mid-20s.) DAHURA probably did not actually live beyond age 30 as I can’t picture old “Ben Hur” could have failed to make much of her passing such a landmark. The brochure also referred to VALENCIA as “foaled and raised here” which taken in conjunction with the stud book implies that DAHURA had come to Ben Hur Farms from Pettigrew in foal to HANAD. Remember that the owner of the dam either at the time of breeding or of foaling could be listed as breeder of a foal, in the early volumes; perhaps in this case they took turns.

DAHURA’s foals after HANAD left for California were three-quarters siblings to the HANAD set: AABAZEM, a bay 1931 colt, was by another *DEYR son, TABAB; AABELLA, by the HANAD son MAHOMET. This made AABAZEM and AADAH seven-eights related to each other, since TABAB and MAHOMET were themselves three-quarters brothers, by *DEYR and his son and both out of DOMOW. AABAZEM was sold to Donald Jones in California by 1934; he traveled the West Coast and got 15 foals, not counting his good partbreds, through 1957. His first son FARZEM (out of the straight Davenport FARHAN) and that horse’s daughter MEHANAZEM (out of a HANAD daughter) in particular have spread his influence widely. AABELLA made her best contribution as dam of AADAH; few mares have ever contributed anything equivalent. Her full career was summarized in the HANAD story (VII/4).

The 100% Hamidie Society mare FREDA produced a chestnut colt by *El Bulad in 1910. BUZLAD first appeared in the 1918 book, when he was owned in New York, and the stud book would have it he again was bred by Hingham Stock Farm. FREDA, like NANSHAN, was registered to Homer Davenport, not DDAS, in 1909 – note that both were mares Davenport had owned before the 1906 importation. BUZLAD was reported gelded in 1923 and transferred to a Massachusetts owner in 1927 who still had him in 1930; he was noted as dead in 1937. *El Bulad had two grey straight Davenport (a concept then almost certainly not invented) fillies in 1912 and ’13, from the important mares *RESHAN and *HAFFIA; they were reported dead by 1927 and 1930 respectively and neither left an offspring of record. The *HAFFIA daughter was one of 12 Arabians, mostly from Hingham, exported to Japan before 1918; two of DAHURA’s *HAMRAH offspring were also in the group.

Fartak (*El Bulad x *Farha): faded photo, willowy hocks and all, this is an impressive and important image of an early Davenport stallion. Photo: AHOF.

The 1913 colt FARTAK (*El Bulad x *Farha) did better for himself, though he too was dead by 1927. He gave his sire two grey straight Davenport granddaughters in the 1919 Hingham Stock Farm crop, PAULAN from *MELEKY and MEDINA from HASIKER. PAULAN too had died before 1927 without producing (one begins to suspect some sort of cataclysm or at least a run of pre-Depression very bad times). MEDINA survived her, traveled a bit and left three registered foals. The 1923 supplement showed MEDINA as one of the Hingham horses owned by F.E.Lewis II in Spadra, CA; in 1927 she was in Connecticut. MEDINA’s first recorded foal, a grey filly of 1929, was JEDRA by JOON and thus represents, with AADAH, the closest *El Bulad doubling in the stud book. JEDRA was bred by Robert Jemison Jr of Birmingham, AL but both MEDINA and the filly had been transferred to Albert W. Harris before 1930. MEDINA and JEDRA each produced two foals in Illinois; JEDRA’s were for a Harris cooperator breeder and neither of them bred on. MEDINA was dead by 1932, leaving a grey filly and gelding, both by NEJDRAN JR, with Harris. The daughter TEBUK produced 10 foals, giving her a well-branched modern family responsible for some familiar names.

*El Bulad had two foals in the 1922 Kemah crop, five in 1923, one in ’24 and two in ’25. Apparently Harris regretted not being able to use the horse more extensively, since he then bought the FARTAK daughter MEDINA and her double *El Bulad filly; he already had the DAHURA daughters MERSHID and MORFDA in 1927.

Abba (*El Bulad x Dawn) had one registered foal when she was 20. Clearly she was not idle in the years the stud book shows her unproductive.

That 1922 pair were three-quarters brother and sister, a grey filly MEDINAH from SULTANA (Nejdran Jr x Rhua) and “ch/gr” colt RUSTAM from RHUA herself; this straight Davenport mating was repeated again to produce BEN HUR in the following year. SULTANA and her sister DAWN produced four more of the *El Bulad foals, so seven of 10 were from the RHUA family. Harris’ other straight Davenport foundation mare SAAIDA outlived *El Bulad but did not produce to him; her NEJDRAN JR daughter GAMELIA did, twice. The other productive Kemah mating for *El Bulad was with the old Ramsdell mare NANDA, sister to NANSHAN, making the resulting filly ALOHA a younger blood-sister to DAHURA. ALOHA was one of the five Kemah *El Bulad offspring to die relatively young (before ages three through seven) without progeny, still apparently in Harris’ ownership. RUSTAM became a Remount sire and seems to have lived until some time between the 1937 stud book and the supplement of 1939. BEN HUR and MURAT (ex GAMELIA) were both listed as living in 1939, in California and Missouri respectively, as stallions, but neither had registered offspring. That left MEDINAH, ABBA (1923) grey filly from DAWN) and SHARAZAD (MURAT’s 1925 bay sister) to breed on from this chapter of the story. For the extensive family of MEDINAH and the thin line from ABBA see under RHUA in the *URFAH treatment (VI/3); SHAHRAZAD must wait until the SAAIDA chapter of *HADBA.

Five of *El Bulad’s 15 offspring still are in pedigrees; he had 33 registered grandchildren (over half through DAHURA) and several of the resulting lines are widespread at the backs of modern pedigrees. As part of the genetic history of the Davenport horses, note that five of *El Bulad’s 15 foals were straight Davenport but there were only two such in the second generation and none after that. *El Bulad maintains a moderately strong link to the Davenport importation in the general Arabian population, but is not represented in modern straight Davenport breeding.

Antezeyn Skowronek 5321

by Michael Bowling (copyright)
originally appeared in the Oct. ’76 issue of the Arabian Horse World

Antezeyn Skowronek in May 1976 at age 27.
He is by Abu Farwa (Rabiyas x *Rissletta by Nasem) and out of SHARIFA (Antez x Ferdith by Ferseyn).

Antezeyn Skowronek was foaled 21 April 1949, bred by E. J. Boyer of Puente, California. He was sired by the quite literally unforgettable Abu Farwa 1960, a horse that can’t be done justice in short space. Briefly, Abu Farwa is one of the most strongly positive breeding influences on the Arabian horse in this country. His get and descendants excel in quality and conformation, and they continue to compile an impressive record in all fields open to the breed, both in and out of the show ring. Abu Farwa was an early product of the famed program of W. K. Kellogg; his sire was the end result of years of breeding for quality and athletic ability by Randolph Huntington and W. R. Brown in this country with basically English stock, and his dam was one of the most elegant individuals ever imported from Crabbet Park. He had the quality and ability for which he was bred, and he passed it on with great success in breeding.

SHARIFA 2798, dam of Antezeyn Skowronek, was not famous as his sire was—in fact she had a rather short breeding career and is best known for this one son. His success as a breeding horse indicates she must have possessed considerable genetic merit, for no sire, not even one of the magnitude of Abu Farwa, can get breeding horses without some cooperation from the mares he is bred to. Pictures and eye-witness accounts of SHARIFA show a very smooth compact mare with a beautiful big-eyed head. She had a fine disposition and was a good riding horse, certainly traits to value in the dam of a prospective foundation sire.

SHARIFA’s pedigree is less consistently English than Abu Farwa’s; her sire was one of the famous early “straight Davenports” and was trained for the track, setting records in speed trials. He has proven one of the most valuable outcrosses to English blood in this country, Antezeyn Skowronek being just one of many successful results of this blend. SHARIFA’s dam FERDITH was the first foal of the former top sire FERSEYN, and remains one of his best achievements; she topped an early-day California production sale and went on to produce many outstanding Arabians, including a remarkable lineup by ABU FARWA. It will be most interesting to read Carol Mulder’s article on FERDITH and her produce when she gets to her numerically, as she knew this group of good horses well. FERDITH’s dam ARDITH founded a good family in the Northwest; she was a great-granddaughter of *ABU ZEYD, called by Lady Anne Lytton the most beautiful son of MESAOUD, so crossing back to the top of the pedigree.

[Note added in 1999: Ardith’s paternal granddam Domow is registered, impossibly, as the bay daughter of two chestnut parents. The latest investigations confirm that her dam line matches that of the chestnut *Wadduda, so this *Abu Zeyd connection is no longer supported by the evidence. The sire of Domow is being sought among the bay stallions in Homer Davenport’s possession in 1912. MB]

The rest of ARDITH’s background was again the Davenport desert group—so Antezeyn Skowronek’s pedigree represents English breeding outcrossed with two highly successful American lines of closer desert derivation.

This pedigree produced a remarkable horse who offers an illustration of the fact that the most worthwhile horses do not always get an opportunity to have brilliant show careers. Antezeyn Skowronek won his class at Pomona as a yearling and as far as I know never entered a show ring again. He has spent the rest of his life as a breeding stallion, although as a mature horse he was started under saddle and proved a willing and enjoyable mount for trail and pleasure riding in his spare time.

After winning that colt class he was purchased by Carleton Cummings and taken to Idaho where he stood several seasons, his first foals arriving in 1952. He was used on Mr. Cummings’ mares and on some Kellogg mares at the University of Idaho during this period. Some time after 1955 he was moved to Spokane, Washington where it seems he remained for the remainder of his owner’s life; it was at this time, the Arabian population of Washington being a bit higher than that of Idaho, that he stood to some outside mares. At Mr. Cummings’ death the horse went into retirement for a couple of years, returning to active duty in 1965 on lease to the Synowski Ranch in Oregon. He was purchased from the Cummings estate by Lois Selby Perry, spending one season on lease at Glenwood Farm in Iowa on the way to Connecticut and the Perry establishment.

Antezeyn Skowronek was not used to sharing his world with a number of stallions and did not thrive at Perrys’; he was made available to the Illings of Twin Brook Farm in New York, first on lease and eventually by sale. In January of 1975 he made what is expected to be his last move and change of ownership; he is now “alive and well in Waldorf, Maryland” and being used lightly at stud. He observed his 27th birthday quietly and shows every sign of planning on at least a few more.

Listing the Antezeyn Skowronek get and descendants of note is simply beyond me in the time at hand—besides, I don’t have the whole October issue to fill with their stories. Rather than offend some by mentioning others I will risk offending all by limiting myself to general statements. Antezeyn Skowronek and his sons have sired many winners in halter and performance in Arabian and open shows, Antezeyn Skowronek is on the Leading Sire list (he is accounted the third leading siring son of Abu Farwa) and has founded a strong male line, with many sons and tail male descendants represented every year by Class A winners. His get and descendants include regional and Legion of Merit champions and U.S. and Canadian Top Tens at halter and performance, and National Champions in performance. He is, simply, a fine sire and an influence for good on the breed.

The story of Antezeyn Skowronek has been 27 years in the telling (leaving out the years of prologue before his birth) and this short sketch is hardly an adequate summary.

NOTE: I sincerely thank all those who participated in this tribute, and apologize to those who would have taken part had they been notified, or notified sooner.

(Ad recreated from the one appearing with 1976 Antezeyn Skowronek article)

July 1976 at age 27 (with Martha Baines)

Antezeyn Skowronek

is alive and well

and living in

Waldorf, Maryland

Visitors Welcome — Young Stock For Sale

Call weekends (AC 301) 645-5547

Michael Bowling

Box 1332

Frederick, Maryland 21701

 and still siring foals like these:

May filly at 2 1/2 months ex Mostly Magic by *Touch of Magic.
May filly at 2 1/2 months ex Mostly Magic by *Touch of Magic.
March colt at 3 weeks ex Faranique by RST Kumait+ He is for sale at private treaty. Contact Intissar Arabians, 3510 Walnut St., Harrisburg, Pa. 17109
March colt at 3 weeks ex Faranique by RST Kumait+ He is for sale at private treaty. Contact Intissar Arabians, 3510 Walnut St., Harrisburg, Pa. 17109
July colt at 2 days ex Ramnada by Damascus Ramnada is for sale. Contact Mrs. Richard P. Davis, Prly Hill Rd., Sanbornton, N.H.
July colt at 2 days ex Ramnada by Damascus Ramnada is for sale. Contact Mrs. Richard P. Davis, Prly Hill Rd., Sanbornton, N.H.

(Ad recreated from one appearing in the Arabian Visions, Jan-Feb, 1993)

Abu Farwa 1960 (Rabiyas x *Rissletta by Naseem) working cattle at the Richardson Ranch, near Chico, CA in 1956. Photo courtesy the Wests of Green Acres Arabians.

A recurring theme at New Albion is reinforcing a valued influence through multiple pedigree samples; we do not believe that a single source of any desirable ancestor provides an adequate genetic sampling. Our connections to the great Abu Farwa illustrate this handily. Watch for our new series of ads featuring other major elements in our program.

Abu Farwa, foaled at Pomona, California in 1940, was bred by the W.K.Kellogg institute and has become one of the sires in CMK breeding (and he exemplifies the origin of CMK as a concept: bred at Kellogg’s from a Crabbet-imported mare, while his sire had come to Pomona en utero from Maynesboro). Abu Farwa found his niche in life as a sire for H. H. Reese, the former Kellogg Ranch manager around whom crystallized the Southern California Arabian breeding tradition of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Abu Farwa sired 235 registered foals and became a major force in show and performance breeding; he was selected a Living Legend and his influence still is highly prized where real using horses are valued.

At New Albion we have been fortunate in owning one of the greatest Abu Farwa sons and one of his youngest daughters, in breeding to several of his sons and in working with the Abu Farwa influence through more distant lines. New Albion history parallels that of the breed in general, as in the way we have accidentally lost sources we would rather have maintained (italicized below). We do not claim this to be the ultimate Abu Farwa sampling and it certainly is not meant to be a static thing — there are Abu Farwa sources we would like to add or reinforce. This is where our program stands right now, in terms of one particularly prized founder.

Abu Farwa sources at New Albion (dam and maternal grandsire in parentheses): Tamarlane (Rifanta by Rifnas); Faryn (Ferdith by Ferseyn); Aayisha (Nawari by Alla Amarward); Nirahbu (Nirah by *Ferdin); Shama (Shamrah by Balastra); Abu Baha (Surrab by *Latif); Antezeyn Skowronek (Sharifa by Antez); Awad (Shamrah by Balastra); Farlowa (Farlouma by Farana); Muhuli (Follyanna by Terhani); Shah-Loul(Pomona Avesta by Farana); Galan (Saadi by Rifnas); Miss Nateza (Nateza by *Witez II).

[Additional lines through ’99 include: Riehaba (Amrieh by Kasar), Ga’zi (Ghazna by Chepe Noyon), Rokkara (Sokkar by Rantez) and Lawsouma (Farlouma by Farana).]

Our stallions trace to Farowa, Muhuli, Shah-Loul and Tamarlane. We have retained breedings to the Galan line through a son (out of the youngest Antezeyn Skowronek daughter) and grandson.

Michael, Ann and Lydia Bowling

Claire Bowen Trommershausen

The New Albion Stud

Crabbet-Maynesboro-Kellogg Preservation Breeding

24920 Road 96 Davis, CA 95616

(916)756-3911*

CMK Stallions at Stud and Stock for Sale

*The above area code has been changed,

and the number is now

(530)756-3911

From the Desert, From the Green: The Imported Arabians of Lewis Payne

From the Desert, From the Green: The Imported Arabians of Lewis Payne

Copyright by R.J.CADRANELL

from Arabian Visions March 1992

Used by permission of RJ Cadranell

Of the Americans who imported Arabians from Crabbet, the name of Payne may not be as familiar as Brown, Kellogg, Selby, or Tankersley. Yet Lewis Payne probably spent more time making his selections, and became better acquainted with the horses and breeders in England, than did practically any other American buyer. In February of 1992 when I visited Lewis Payne in Stillwater, Oklahoma, I found him still at the same address listed for him in the 1966 stud book of the British Arab Horse Society. Also visiting that weekend was his daughter Penny Albright.

Mr. Payne’s first trip to Crabbet was in 1959. At that time Cecil Covey owned the Crabbet Stud. Lady Wentworth had died in 1957, leaving her horses to her former stud manager and tennis coach, Geoffrey Covey. As he had died a short time before she did, the horses passed to his son Cecil.

Mr. Covey was suddenly faced with owning a herd of approximately 75 head, on which he had to pay enormous death duties. Further, the Crabbet property itself had to be vacated; Lady Wentworth had left it to her youngest daughter, Lady Winifrid Tryon. Mr. Covey placed the stallions at Caxtons and the mares at Frogshole Farm, two properties he had inherited along with the horses, but it was imperative he reduce the herd to a manageable size. By the time of Lewis Payne’s 1959 visit, the dust was beginning to settle: large numbers of horses had been sold, and with a pared down herd Mr. Covey was continuing to breed.

Crabbet owned an impressive group of stallions in 1959. Although still photographs were not allowed, Lewis Payne was able to capture on movie film Oran and his sons Grand Royal and *Silver Vanity, as well as Indian Magic, Bright Shadow, and Dargee. Mr. Payne remembers that Indian Magic was considered probably the best ever bred at Crabbet. *Silver Vanity was also thought to be one of the best.

“There are many people who think that Dargee was probably the finest horse that ever walked at Crabbet Stud… he was just a picture horse.” he says. Dargee was bred by George Ruxton from mostly Crabbet lines. Lady Wentworth purchased Dargee as a yearling.

Lewis Payne did not buy any Crabbet horses in 1959. At that time he was still working for Aramco, the Arabian American Oil Company, and living on the east coast of Saudi Arabia at Dhahran. He had been living in Saudi Arabia since 1952. But it was several years after that when he and his daughter Penny began to participate in the equine activities at The Corral, originally known as The Hobby Farm, where a number of Aramco families kept horses and participated in the drill team or the gymkhana events, or simply enjoyed riding in the open desert. Lewis Payne bought his first horse in 1957, a bay stallion belonging to the Minister of Oil affairs. The mare he later imported from Saudi Arabia, “Johara,” was acquired in 1958 or 59. By approximately 1960, there were more than one hundred horses stabled at The Corral.

In 1961 some restructuring occurred within the company and Lewis Payne decided it was time to go back to America. Johara was shipped from Saudi Arabia in May of 1961. The trip took two months. In this country she was registered as *Hamra Johara, meaning “red jewel.” In America she produced nine foals, the last born in 1973.

Bringing horses back from Saudi Arabia was not difficult for Aramco employees. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Saudi Arabia imported goods, but had nothing to export on the cargo ships; oil left the country in tankers. Importing goods was expensive, because the ship’s return trip also had to be paid, in effect. Sending things back to America was therefore cheap. It cost about $350 to bring a horse home. Furthermore, the company covered the cost of building shipping crates and loading the horses on trucks and finally on ship, just as it did for furniture and other personal property an employee wanted to bring back to the States.

The year 1961 was also the year of Lewis Payne’s second trip to England. He had decided to breed Arabian horses, and after reading a magazine article had initiated a correspondence with Lady Anne Lytton, Lady Wentworth’s oldest daughter, about buying a young horse named El Meluk. Lady Anne replied that someone else had first refusal on El Meluk, but that she had a mare she would consider selling. Lady Anne invited him to spend a weekend with her at her home, Newbuildings, in Sussex.

Newbuildings lay about sixteen miles from Crabbet, and had been the final home of Lady Anne’s grandfather, Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Together with her grandmother, Lady Anne Blunt, he had founded the Crabbet Stud in 1878. Mr. Blunt had died in 1922, leaving Newbuildings to his adopted niece, Dorothy Carleton. When she died in the early 1950s, the house became Lady Anne’s.

Lewis Payne’s weekend stay at Newbuildings expanded to last three months. The mare Lady Anne offered him he bought and imported to the United States. She was *Mellawieh. Her dam Mifaria had been a gift from Lady Wentworth to her daughter on the occasion of one of their reconciliations. In 1951 Mifaria produced for Lady Anne *Mellawieh, by Lady Wentworth’s stallion Indian Magic.

Lewis Payne and Lady Anne Lytton would drive to studs in England so he could look at horses for sale. He visited Patricia Lindsay, where he was able to see some of the first Arabian horses to leave Poland since the end of World War II. He particularly admired the mare Karramba (Witraz x Karmen II) and the colt *Grojec (Comet x Gastronomia), a horse Lady Anne Lytton later bought and used for breeding. Another Polish mare Lewis Payne admired was H.V.M. Clark’s Celina (Witraz x Elza, by Rasim Pierwszy). He filmed Celina as she won her class at Kempton Park.

Mrs. Bomford showed him the old bay stallion Manasseh, sire of Dargee. She also had Dargee’s full brother, the bay My Man. At Mrs. Linney’s he saw the thirteen-year-old grey stallion Sahran (Rangoon x Sahmana, by Manak), the last grandson of Skowronek in England. She also had the Rissalix son Mikeno, who had inherited a full dose of the famous *Berk trotting action through *Berk’s daughter Rissla, dam of Rissalix. From Mrs. Linney he bought a two-year-old Mikeno daughter named *Micah Bint Mikeno, out of Myoletta, full sister to Dargee. Lewis Payne took movies at each of these studs.

Once he and Lady Anne went to a riding school to look at *Astran, a stallion belonging to a Miss Silberstein. Lewis Payne bought him and brought him to Newbuildings, where he was stabling his horses later exported to America.

In 1961 Lewis Payne also made a return visit to the Crabbet Stud at Frogshole Farm. At Crabbet, Lewis Payne bought one of the 1961 foals. He named her *Qasumah, after a pump station in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Covey congratulated Lewis Payne on being one of the few American buyers to spend time getting to know the English breeders and horses. In his experience, American buyers would look at the horses for sale, indicate which ones they wanted, write a check, and never be seen again.

*Mellawieh had produced one foal for Lady Anne Lytton, a 1957 filly by H.V.M. Clark’s stallion Champurrado. She was named Sahirah of the Storm, having been born during one. At the time of *Mellawieh’s importation to America, she was in foal to her half brother, Lady Anne’s stallion Manto. Manto was a chestnut born in 1956 by Blue Domino (Rissalix x Niseyra). The in-utero import was a 1962 chestnut filly, *Qatifah.

During the stay at Newbuildings, Lady Anne Lytton told Lewis Payne stories of growing up at Crabbet. She talked of the time she had spent living with her grandmother at Sheykh Obeyd Garden in Egypt, referring to it as one of the happiest periods of her life. She also told how Wilfrid Blunt used to drive a team of Arabs at a full gallop around a sharp turn and through a gate. When she was still quite young he tried to teach her to do this; she negotiated the turn at a full gallop, but crashed the carriage into one of the gate posts.

In America, Lewis Payne quietly went about his breeding program, utilizing the bloodlines he had obtained in England along with the Saudi mare *Hamra Johara. Today he has approximately nineteen horses. In addition to his own imported stock, the herd also carries the blood of *Ansata Ibn Halima. A few of the older mares are straight English or English/Saudi crosses, but all of the young stock and stallions carry lines to *Ansata Ibn Halima. Lewis Payne liked the horse and the way he moved. The blood of *Micah Bint Mikeno is not represented due to her death at the time she had her first foal, which was also lost.

An impressive horse is Qarlo, probably the only stallion in the world with Oran and *Ansata Ibn Halima as grandsires. Qarlo is out of *Qasumah and by Qartume, a son of *Ansata Ibn Halima and Qate (*Astran x *Mellawieh). Lewis Payne has built a unique herd combining some of the best horses ever to leave England with *Hamra Johara and *Ansata Ibn Halima.

In the following transcript, we are pleased to present an audience with Lewis Payne.

SAUDI ARABIA

I first got acquainted with Arabians in Saudi Arabia. Somebody said. “We have some horses out here, would you like to take a ride?” I went and looked and thought, “Those scrawny, hungry looking things!” They didn’t mean much to me. So I got on [one] and I was absolutely astounded they did not have to be coaxed to go. The minute you got on them, they moved… So I finally bought a horse from the Minister of Oil Affairs. He was a poor hungry old horse, and I bought him out of sympathy as much as anything else, to fatten him up. He was a stallion, a bay…

In 1951, this may sound hard to believe, but the Arabs were pretty hard up… They had all these horses over at Khafs Dugra, which was near an irrigated place called Al-Kharj…. the king would send a head herdsman [saying], “Give one of my good horses to Prince Ali.” So he just marked down in a book, “One horse to Prince Ali.” Well Prince Ali wasn’t interested in horses, he was interested in Cadillacs… He would never come see the horse, didn’t even want it, so they continued to feed it, and one day Prince Feysul, who later became king, who was also Minister of Economics, he was pretty level-headed, he decided that people should feed their own horses. That was practically unheard of.

Some of the company representatives found out we could get horses. We made arrangements so we could go over and pick twenty horses out of the whole herd. There were seven or eight hundred there, I don’t know exactly. We all put up $200 and we had a committee go over. They picked out several horses, and [*Hamra Johara was] the one they gave me. She was seven years old and had never been broken. She had never grazed in her life… When I brought her over and we put grain in the feed box it was there a week before she found out it was good to eat. She wouldn’t eat out of your hand. An apple or a sugar lump meant nothing to her. She would eat this grass they would give her and some alfalfa. All that herd was being fed on grass, and occasionally alfalfa, just thrown over to them. Apparently she must have lived her first year of life with the Bedouins, because she was crazy about Arab women. She’d see Arab women walking in the distance — they looked like little black tents moving along — she’d always nicker, or want to go over to them. And little Arab children, she was crazy about them, she’d run over to see them… so we know she must have had her nose in a tent, at least the first year she was alive.

She was absolutely crazy about little kids, and people in general. She finally learned to eat apples, which were a rarity [in Saudi Arabia], we had to ship them in, and sugar. I could take a small cube of sugar and hold it between my two fingers. She’d reach over and very gently bite it in two, and never touch my fingers. She didn’t drink much water there… Even when I’d ride her out in the desert when it was terribly hot, I’d bring her in and give her a bath and put her in her stall, she never went to water. I’d catch her drinking water in the middle of the day sometimes, but she’d just barely sip it… When she came to this country she drank more water than she ever did over there, and she put on more weight. And she learned to graze. I would go down into this irrigated place and take her with me with a scythe and a basket. She’d stand there knee deep in this grass and watch me cut a basket full. Then I’d take it back and dump it in her box and she’d eat it.

How did the horses get to Al-Kharj? Ibn Saud just gradually collected horses, and they were put there because it was an irrigated area, and they could raise grass… None of them ever got to full build or promise, because they just didn’t have [the feed]… All the horses I had here were bigger than those there. A horse at Crabbet at a year old was bigger than a two year old desert horse, and it was feed, pure and simple…

The Arabs fed dates. One time we thought at the farm that dates were the thing to feed the horses, until it dawned on us the only reason they fed dates was because it was that or nothing.

…Horses at Khafs Dugra just accumulated. At that time all the ruling people lost interest in the horses because they got automobiles. The head herdsman had a book in which he’d write things down, I don’t know how accurate, I won’t make any promises on that. He pointed out the sire of my horse, a big red stallion, I don’t know his name, so we just called him “Big Red,” or Kabir Ahmar, big red horse. [Ed. note: this is not the same horse owned at the Corral and referred to there as “Big Red.”] What his breeding was, nobody knows. That man may have known, but it’s lost… My mare, I just list her as “D.B.” and consider her a foundation horse. She was accepted by the way for our registry, and I had her with these Crabbet horses, and when [Thompson] came [from the registry] to look [he] fell in love with her. She had a lot of good qualities, temperament more than anything else. Least head shy horse I ever saw; you could do anything with her.

RJC: Was any breeding done at Khafs Dugra, or was it just a place where they kept horses?

Lewis Payne: I don’t think they bred too much because they had all the horses they needed, and more.

Penny Albright: Feed was at a premium, too.

Lewis Payne: That’s not to say it wasn’t done, because it was. I know we got one quite young one, I think less than two years old, maybe two. Also we had a stallion from over there that had been chained to a stake and stood in one spot for five years. That’s why they didn’t breed any more. They didn’t know what to do with them. They had more than they could use, and nobody was interested in them.

BUYING HORSES IN ENGLAND

I was in Saudi Arabia from 1952. I spent nine years there…[then] there was a reduction in force… so I thought well, I’ll go home. But I stopped off in England to pick up horses. Of course Lady Anne Lytton was kind enough to invite me to stay at her place, and I spent some three months there gathering horses… She and I would go around and visit different studs… When we would leave she would say, “What did you think of this or that horse?” I didn’t really know too much, but I’d give my opinion and she’d tell me what was wrong with the horse. So the next time I’d look for a little more. When I heard [*Astran] was for sale… we went to look at him, and she told me, “He’s just a perfect horse.” I never heard her say that about anything. I asked the people there if I could bring a veterinary to come look at him. They said… “If you find something wrong with him, maybe we can buy him,” because they were merely boarding the horse. I brought the vet over… he would take care of the horses at the national stud, which really wasn’t far from Newbuildings Place. He went over and looked at him, and on the way back I said, “What did you think?” and he said, “That’s a nice horse, but the thing that puzzled me was I looked in his stall and he didn’t look very big, and I thought, ‘Why does this man want such a small horse?’ But he stepped out to the paddock and he grew four inches. I never saw such a thing.” He was only 14.2, but he said you would swear he was over 15 just by the way he stood. When Lady Anne and I were leaving after looking at him I asked her, “What’s wrong with him?” She said, “Absolutely nothing,” She said, “If he was here in the spring, I would use him on everything I have.” She said, “There’s a rumor around that he’s infertile, but nobody knows because he’s never been used.” When I had him checked for fertility after I got him to this country… we found he was highly fertile… He produced some pretty nice looking horses, to the third generation… [*Astran] was a direct descendant of Skowronek, but on that same level he had three crosses to Rasim, and that’s what made him….

[*Astran] was a very good riding horse, and I had the shock of my life when I put him in a show here, what they call English Pleasure… and he didn’t even place. I had him entered in a Park class. I said to the girl riding, “Go ahead and enter, but you’re not going to get anywhere,” and bingo, he won first. I went to the judge later and said, “What was wrong in the other?” He said, “I picked him in the first class to win the second class, because I thought he was too animated for a pleasure horse.” I don’t know why a pleasure horse should be a deadhead, but apparently that’s what they preferred….

*Micah bint Mikeno… strongly resembled the mare I brought out of Saudi Arabia. From across the pasture I’d have to look pretty close to tell the difference. Now that’s from two parts of the world, yet the type had so fixed…. I must admit the English mare moved better and she had a better shape of shoulder. There was also in Lady Anne Lytton’s box of photographs a picture of a mare that looked just like those two… *Micah was two years old. I bred her a year later, and unfortunately before she foaled about three or four days, I noticed her standing separate from the other horses…. I brought her in to another place to foal, and about four days before that she collapsed. She had a stroke. This place was right next door to the Oklahoma state veterinary school, so I had the vets over, and they couldn’t figure it out. It was definitely a stroke, and they had isolated it down to the third vertebra because she could move her head, but her body was inert. Her tail you could move over to one side and the next morning it would be exactly where you’d left it. After four days she tried to foal. The foal had no particular will to live. It had a beautiful head and four stockings, a lot like Mikeno, really. So I lost her. We finally had to put her down. …What caused it we don’t know.

The mare *Mellawieh was in foal to Manto; he was her half brother. She had been sent off but didn’t settle, so in sheer desperation Lady Anne Lytton bred her to her half brother Manto, by Blue Domino. She had a filly [*Qatifah]…

COLOR AND MARKINGS

At Crabbet, nobody worried about any white markings. I don’t see why people worry about it. I have seen horses in the Middle East, some with stockings clear over the knees, some with a big white splash on their bellies, and none of that that I could see ever affected a horse’s way of going, metabolism, threw them off their diet, or made them lame. If it did something of that nature, it would be a fault. But if it’s just a color or marking I just can’t see that it would make any difference….

[The Blunts] kept a stud [in Egypt], which was called Sheykh Obeyd, where they kept a good many horses that never came to England. One of them was a roan. I mentioned to Lady Anne that I’d never seen a roan Arab, and she said her grandmother had one and she showed me a photograph of [Kerima]. It’s a rarity, but don’t say it never happens. I’ve seen one horse in this country that was almost roan…. The people that owned it were so ashamed of it they kept it where nobody would see it. I snuck around and saw it and it was the best horse they had. Whatever the horse’s color is, or his markings, makes no difference…

It’s quite possible that colors do accompany other genes. I don’t know this for sure…. When Lady Wentworth died, Cecil Covey fell heir to about 75 pretty nice Arabian horses. There was hardly a single bay in the whole stud, if there was one at all. It had nothing to do with the color. It was merely that Lady Wentworth was looking for certain characteristics the bays didn’t come up with. Now this is not to decry a bay at all. It was merely what she was looking for. Lady Anne Lytton later bought a bay, a Polish horse, *Grojec, and was quite pleased to have him because of his color, because she said, “I remember we had some beautiful bays at Crabbet, and I’ll be awfully glad to get some back. I just think we need a little more variety.” And that is not to say one is better, or one is less than the other. It’s variety. Trying to get all Arabs to look precisely alike is a waste of time….

ACTION

The Blunts, and of course Lady Wentworth, were quite insistent on a horse’s being able to move, because their introduction to the horse was in the desert where action and movement with efficiency is of paramount importance, which seems to have been lost now. If he’s flashy right now they think he’s good….

Probably the finest moving horse in 1961 or that era was Mikeno, who was by Rissalix and had the Rissalix action, which he got from Rissla, which she got from *Berk. Lady Anne Blunt told her granddaughter, Lady Anne Lytton, one time as they stood and watched *Berk moving, “Anne, that is the way an Arab is supposed to move.” It’s a reaching stride. It takes good slope of shoulder and it takes strong quarters…

When the Blunts founded Crabbet, horses were a means of conveyance, not just a hobby. They had to move from here to there in an efficient manner. I don’t know of anybody in the present day who would have the same background as the Blunts, because time is against you. The Blunts were artists, both of them, so they appreciated the beauty of a horse, the balance, the conformation… They rode their horses in the desert, and they knew that the horse had to make it there and back, so consequently they were quite critical of efficient action….

Here, you ride a horse around the ring for ten minutes or so and that’s it. There’s nothing wrong with that, and you can do anything with your horses you want to, but it is unfortunate that this flashy action, the high knee action — ladder climbing I call it — has come intto vogue so much that a reaching horse, like an Arab should be, is penalized. There’s nothing of course we can do about that, but if you want a horse to move across country, you better get one that reaches, and never mind how high they pick the feet up; it’s how far forward they go.

…I think perhaps the true characteristic of the Arab is moving from point A to point B. That’s not well presented in a show ring. It’s just impossible. So I think perhaps cross country racing is the best, and they have in England now a cross country race… I can see something to that. As for racing on the track, I see nothing wrong with that. And I understand there’s a new program out now: chariot racing, and that strikes me as quite interesting. And I would see nothing wrong with a sulky race trotting, because some of these Arabs can trot….

CONFORMATION

It is better when you have a horse with good conformation, but unfortunately in the desert, or that part of the world, there are very, very few good horses, but seldom do you find a horse with enough good points to say that it’s a first class horse. Occasionally it does happen, but it’s rare….

I personally prefer a horse with length of neck; some are shorter than others, but I prefer the length, because a horse’s head and neck is what helps his balance, and they can’t move gracefully with a short stubby neck.

I like strong quarters. I’ve seen Arabs that people rave about the high tail set, which doesn’t mean a thing in the world if there’s no quarters beneath it.

…Most Arabs have no heels to speak of on their hoofs. They’re rather short. I hadn’t paid much attention to this. One of the veterinarians working on our horses asked me, “Do all Arabs have low heels like this?” I got to thinking, “Why yes, they do.” Some of these Arabs that are kept to imitate the American Saddle horses, they let the feet grow out, and put shoes on them to get a longer heel. I don’t care for that action at all….

LADY WENTWORTH

Geoffrey Covey had been a tennis coach, and Lady Wentworth had quite the thing with tennis. She purported to be world champion at royal tennis. They were quite friendly, so she appointed him to head the stud…. You must remember the nature of this woman. She was headstrong, strong-willed, opinionated. When she decided something was something, that was it. If she said it three times… it became a fact.

…When Lady Wentworth saw *Mellawieh, she ordered Anne to give her back to Crabbet. Anne said, “I’m not going to give you back that horse, I want her myself.” So her mother in a huff wasn’t even speaking to her. When I left England the last of October, she told me, “The last big argument I had with my mother was over that mare.” [At the end of Lady Wentworth’s life] she hadn’t seen her son in thirty years…. The only one speaking to Lady Wentworth was her daughter Winifrid. I had lunch with a family friend… who had been a school chum. She told me Lady Winifrid was to come over to her place for lunch, and she got a call from her: “I have to go… my mother is dying, and I’m the only one she’ll speak to.”

LADY ANNE LYTTON AND CECIL COVEY

[Lady Wentworth] left her horses to Geoffrey Covey, but he died… before she did. So Cecil Covey… fell heir to 75 beautiful horses…. He told me there was no way he could take care of that many horses. So they began selling horses. He told me… there were some very fine horses that sold for less than 100 pounds, which would be at that time around $300.

…I had talked to Lady Anne about breeding a mare to Dargee, and she had said, “Well, I’m not too sure about sending a horse over there.” There was a feeling between her and Cecil Covey, although they had grown up together at Crabbet, a feeling of estrangement… he told me… “I always felt that the family resented my getting the horses. I can understand that. But had any member of that family come to me and asked for a horse, any horse, they could have had it… because I feel that blood is thicker than water…” Lady Anne told me “well, we meet sometimes at horse meetings and are very cordial, but we just don’t have the comradeship.”

…I picked [*Qasumah] out of Mr. Covey’s herd because of the way she stood and looked…. She had a lot of white markings on her [and] he told me, “Americans don’t like white on horses.” I’d come out of Arabia and had seen white on horses and I didn’t see that it made any difference, so I said, “Well ‘Americans’ aren’t buying this horse, I am.” so I took her and I’ve never regretted it. I had talked to Lady Anne about what I’d picked out to buy there, so I asked Mr. Covey, “Would you mind if I had Lady Anne come over and look at this filly?” He said, “Why no.” A day or two later I spoke to her again…. I said, “Would you like to go over to Crabbet and look at this filly?” She was very eager… so we went over and in a few minutes they were just chatting…. He later told me, “I want to thank you for making it possible for Lady Anne to come over,” and this was when he told me he’d always felt that the family resented his having the horses.

I remember one time Lady Anne and Cecil were talking about something, and I thought, “I’ll just sit over here and listen and maybe learn something.” And they’d been talking thirty minutes or so about different horses when she turned to me and said, “Well what do you think? You haven’t said a word.” I was flattered those two people who had such a history with horses — she at that time was about sixty years old and he was approximately the same — they had all of those years of experience with the good horses, and I was amazed that they wanted to know my opinion on something. Yet I never once heard either one of those people say, “I’ve got the finest Arabs in the country.” Yet I’ve heard Americans say time and time again, “I have the finest Arabs in the country.”

At Crabbet, if a horse had something that they didn’t think was quite right… they would tell you…. They never tried to hide anything. They were looking more than anything else for the improvement of the horse.

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