The Arabian Horse in Motion… An Anthology of Glimpses

221 Baker Street: “The Arabian Horse In Motion… An Anthology Of Glimpses”   Compiled by Robert J. Cadranell from ARABIAN VISIONS Jan ’91 used by permission of RJ Cadranell  

        Below are some descriptions of the Arab horse in motion written by people who knew the breed well and who also happened to publish books about it. These statements were made prior to 1945. The advantage to the early dates, is that all of the writers were familiar with foundation stock of Arabian breeding in the English speaking world and can tell us about those horses. The disadvantage is that some of the statements are likely to be out of date and might not apply to our modern Arabians. Additionally, the writers were more or less limited to those Arabians of which they have personal knowledge, what they say might not reflect the breed as a whole. Nonetheless, a reader gets the impression of graceful, agile horses, which one hopes Arabians will always be.

        ”The Arabian in his purity is a horse… with elastic and graceful movement.” (1) [page 446]

        ”No other breed has such harmony of motion, giving the rider a delightful sense of riding over the ground on wings and springs.” (11) [page 27]

        ”The natural Kehilan gallops easily and trots with the freest shoulder and hock action. Knee action, however, is not a characteristic of the breed nor should it be sought for.” (8) (W.S.Blunt quoted, page 225)

        ”In action, the Arabian gives the impression of daintiness in the handling of his feet, — a certain dwelling of the feet just before being placed on the ground, with a light and airy tread,” (7) (page 59).

        ”At the walk, the powerful hindquarters come prominently into play, sending this small horse along at a great pace, far beyond expectation, the hind foot often overstepping the fore foot from two to three feet, and giving him a speed of close to five miles an hour. It is considered a point of breeding among the Arabs that a horse should look about him to right and left as he walks… ” (7) (page 78).           ”…Queen of Shea made a sudden rush, tail curved over back and neck arched, snorting proudly.” (9) (page 203)

        ”The shoulder… should have… the freest possible action, and there is no better test of quality than to turn a colt loose in a paddock and take note of how he moves his shoulders and forearms. There should be little high knee-action, but the whole limb should be thrown forward and the hoof ‘dwell’ a second in the air before it is put down. This, with corresponding action behind, like that of a deer trotting through fern, is most important in a sire and a great test of quality.” (5) (W.S.Blunt quoted, page 221).

        ”…her action was beautiful in the extreme; she had a long sweeping stride, and great reach; her movements were most springy and elastic, and full of force, power, and energy.” (4) (page 346)

        ”His action should be from the shoulder and not from the knee, and he should bend his hocks like a deer.” (5) (WSBlunt quoted, page 226).

        ”Generally the men rode up four or five at a time in line, and it was a pleasant sight to watch their mares coming towards us, with their long striding walk and the slightly swinging motion of their hindquarters and tails, their graceful necks bent as they turned their heads to look from side to side, their riders sitting easily on them, swinging in their hand the end of the halter rope, until, as not infrequently happened, one mare would make a snatch at her neighbour’s neck or shoulder, causing the other to spring to one side from the aggressor, when the men would rate them with a peculiar sound, which ‘Yach–k!’ might express to some extent, but indifferently; and we were constantly reminded of the Arab description, that mares resemble well-formed and beautiful women, distinguished by their swinging walk, and looking from side to side at objects as they pass.” (4) (page 260)

        ”Myself [mounted] on Siwa who goes up and down hill with catlike agility.” (9) (page 282)

        ”The Barb is held to have more knee action than the pure Arabian, who has shoulder action. The Arabian gait is pendulous, forward and ahead, and he dwells without much bending or lifting of the knee.” (7) (page 121).           ”Trotting is discouraged by the Bedouin colt-breakers, who, riding on an almost impossible pad, and without stirrups, find that pace inconvenient; but with a little patience the deficiency can be remedied, and good shoulder action given. No purebred Arabian, however, is a high stepper.” (5) (page 422).

        ”Trotting action should be smart and free and darting from the shoulders, the forefeet dwelling a moment before touching the ground with a semi-floating dancing movement, which suggests treading on air and springs and recalls a deer trotting in fern. The hock action powerful, and the hocks well lifted and brought forwards with a swinging stride… The knee action is rather higher perhaps than that of the Thoroughbred, but it is the shoulder action which matters.” (2) (page 227).

        ”…Mutlak[rode] the strange mare that we might be able to see her properly. One glance was enough, her going was heavy, as Mutlak said adding ‘but galloping is of the Arab horses,’ as saying she was not of them.” (9) (page 216)

        ”The Arab… is an easy horse to sit on. His gaits are so smooth and elastic one does not grow fatigued. This, no doubt, is accounted for by the fact that he does not lift his feet high or pound the ground. He is a good walking horse and has a nice trot, at which he merely lifts his feet high enough to clear the ground, and his canter, or gallop, is low, but smooth and graceful.

        ”…His trot is smooth and easy to sit, as are all his gaits, but he is not a fast trotting horse, nor a high stepper” (6)

        ”As to the action of the Arabian, it is very well described by the writer of an able article who signed himself ‘Picador.’ ‘Sit easily and flexibly on him, put your hands down, and set him going, and then you will experience a sensation delightful to the man who really can ride; he will bound along with you with a stride and movement that gives you the idea of riding over India-rubber.” (10) (page 151).

Abbreviations refer to the following works:

1) Arab Horse, by Homer Davenport. (Article appeared in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture).

2) The Authentic Arabian Horse, by Lady Wentworth.

3) The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, by the Blunts.

4) Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia, by R.D.Upton.

5) Greely, Arabian Exodus, 2nd ed.

6) The Arabian Horse, by Albert Harris. (Reprinted in volume V of The Arabian Stud Book).

7) The Horse of the Desert, by W.R.Brown, 2nd ed.

8) The Crabbet Arabian Stud, Its History and Influence, by Archer, Pearson, and Covey

9) Lady Anne Blunt, Journals and Correspondence, edited by Archer and Fleming.

10) Newmarket & Arabia, by R.D.Upton.

11) Arabian Type and Standard, by Lady Wentworth.

The Case of the Missing Rustem

Copyright 1997 by R.J. CADRANELL
from Arabian Visions Sept/Oct 1997
Used by permission of RJ Cadranell

221b Baker Street: “We met next day and inspected the rooms at 221b Baker Street and at once entered into possession.” — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

Fifteen or more years ago I acquired a reprint of the 1917 catalog of England’s Crabbet Arabian Stud. The catalog for the 1917 season gives details of the Crabbet Stud as it was at the end of 1916. It lists all of the broodmares, stallions, and young stock — 81 horses in all.

Back in 1906, the Crabbet Stud’s founders, Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt, had separated. They divided the stud, after which Wilfrid Blunt managed his “Newbuildings Half” apart from Lady Anne’s “Crabbet Half.”

The 1917 catalog seemed to list both halves of the stud. But I noticed a glaring omission: where was Rustem? Lady Anne Lytton remembered Rustem as “a very favorite stallion”[1] of her grandfather Wilfrid Blunt, and Rustem had been one of the Crabbet Arabian Stud’s chief sires from the time he was three.

Then I noticed another gap: where was Abla? Rosemary Archer had written in The Crabbet Arabian Stud, Its History and Influence: “Abla became Wilfrid Blunt’s favorite riding mare.” The catalog included Abla’s 1915 filly Arusa, but Abla herself was absent.

A pattern was emerging: both missing animals were favorites of Wilfrid Blunt’s. But all the rest of the Newbuildings horses–among them Ibn Yashmak and *Nureddin II–seemed to be included.

Years later I had a chance to study additional Crabbet Stud catalogs from the Partition years. The available catalogs–for 1907, 1908, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1914, 1915, and 1916–list just the horses in Lady Anne’s Crabbet Half. There is also a 1913 catalog, with a slightly modified format, listing just the Newbuildings Half. Comparing these to the 1917 catalog indicates that the two halves were united during 1916, with Wilfrid Blunt retaining his two favorites, Rustem and Abla.

But a reunited Crabbet Stud ran counter to what I had always understood of its history. Hadn’t Wilfrid and Lady Anne failed to reach an agreement on the future of the stud when they met in 1915? Didn’t Blunt manage his portion separately right until Lady Anne died at the end of 1917? Didn’t the existence of two halves at the time of Lady Anne’s death fuel the lawsuit fought between Blunt and his daughter Judith (Lady Wentworth) over the ownership of the horses? I decided to scan Rosemary Archer’s book again, looking for clues, and found the following passage:

On October 13th [1915], Lady Anne signed the “new stud agreement which makes me sole owner” of the Crabbet Arabian Stud. Blunt, however, refused to sign it, alleging that it contained a “dangerous” clause… He nevertheless appears to have acquiesced in the new arrangement; five months later, in March, 1916, he and Caffin [agent for both the Crabbet and Newbuildings estates] were planning the removal to Crookhorn [a farm Blunt owned near Newbuildings] of what remained of the Newbuildings section of the Stud, on the following Saturday “which is Lady Day when my separate ownership of it comes to a final end” (p. 150).

Later in 1916 when Lady Anne prepared the Crabbet Stud catalog for the 1917 season, she added 23 Newbuildings horses (see sidebar) to what she had owned the year before. This bolsters Lady Wentworth’s claim in her Authentic Arabian Horse that “in 1915 the whole remaining stock was repurchased by, or made over to, Crabbet Park.”

These horses afford a look at a decade of selection by Wilfrid Blunt, apart from Lady Anne. Even though each party had the right to use the other’s stallions without fee, these horses show a high concentration of the Newbuildings sires: Rijm and *Astraled from the years immediately after the Partition; Ibn Yashmak and Rustem later on. The stallions Lady Anne used during the Partition — in particular Daoud and *Berk — are scarcely represented at all.

Many bloodlines were duplicated, of course: Newbuildings had *Nureddin II and Nessima, while the Crabbet Half had their full brother *Nasik. Crabbet had Feysul, and Newbuildings had his son Ibn Yashmak. Crabbet had Rustem’s full sisters Rim and Riyala. Newbuildings had Selima, while Crabbet had her full brother Sotamm.

Other bloodlines were unique to one half or the other. Lady Anne had lost the Queen of Sheba family in tail-female, for example. Newbuildings also had the stud’s only remaining descendants of the imported mares Ferida and Meshura. And Lady Anne had bloodlines Wilfrid lacked, for example the lines from Basilisk, Bint Helwa, and Rosemary.

Anyone could be proud of the record of several of the Newbuildings-bred horses Wilfrid Blunt turned over to Lady Anne in 1916. *Nureddin II became an influential sire under Lady Wentworth’s ownership of the stud. *Ferda left a daughter in England, then was sold to California’s Kellogg Ranch in 1926, where she was arguably that program’s single most important foundation mare. *Nafia and *Felestin were imported to the U.S. in 1918, where they left descent. Fejr, Nessima, and Selima became broodmares for Lady Wentworth. Fejr’s sons became important in England, but she also had a daughter sent to Poland, where she produced *Sulejman. Selima had foals exported to Russia (Star of the Hills), Poland (Sardhana), and the U.S. (*Selmian) — all became influential.

The Newbuildings Half

Horses from Wilfrid Blunt appearing in the 1917 Crabbet catalog
stallions & colts
Ibn Yashmak 1902 Feysul/Yashmak
*Nureddin II 1911 Mesaoud/Kasida
Kamar 1913 Rustem/Kartara
Najib 1914 Rustem/Narghileh
Fauzan 1914 Rustem/Feluka
Fantass 1915 Rustem/Feluka
Karun 1915 Rustem/Kantara
mares & fillies
Feluka 1899 Mesaoud/Ferida
Kantara 1901 Mesaoud/Kasida
Ajramieh 1901 Mesaoud/Asfura
Selima 1908 *Astraled/Selma
Nessima 1909 Rijm/Narghileh
*Ramla 1909 *Astraled/Ridaa
Fejr 1911 Rijm/Feluka
*Kerbela 1911 Ibn Yashmak/Kantara
Marhaba 1911 Daoud/Feluka
*Ferda 1913 Rustem/Feluka
Ajjam 1915 Ibn Yashmak/Ajramieh
Arusa 1915 Rustem/Abla
foals of 1916
Fursan colt Rustem/Feluka
*Nafia colt Ibn Yashmak/Nessima
Mabruk colt Ibn Yashmak/Marhaba
*Felestin filly Ibn Yashmak/Fejr
  1. [1]Lady Anne Lytton quoted in Mary Jane Parkingon’s The Kellogg Arabian Ranch, the First Fifty Years, p. 67.↩

Lady Wentworth in the London Times

221b Baker Street: Lady Wentworth in the London Times

Copyright 1993 by R.J.CADRANELL from Arabian Visions Mar/Apr 1993 Used by permission of RJ Cadranell

Founded in 1878 by Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt, from 1920 to 1957 the Crabbet Arabian Stud was under the firm hand of their daughter Judith Blunt-Lytton, also known as Lady Wentworth. Lady Wentworth added the stallion Skowronek to the stud, picked and chose from among the “Blunt mares,” bought back horses her parents had sold, sold some they had kept, and set about breeding Arabian horses to suit her own ideals and tastes. The Depression and Second World War put a crimp on her breeding activities, but after 1945 she expanded her program and Crabbet was going full blast when Lady Wentworth died in August of 1957. She left behind a herd of about 75 head.

Lady Wentworth continued her parents’ practice of selling horses all over the world. All of today’s major breed subdivisions benefited from Crabbet breeding. In 1936 Lady Wentworth sold a large draft to Russia’s Tersk Stud, including the key animals Naseem, Rissalma, and Rixalina. Her sale to Egypt in 1920 included the stallions Kasmeyn, Sotamm, and Hamran as well as the mares Bint Riyala and Bint Rissala. Five Skowronek daughters were among the horses she sold to Spain’s Duke of Veragua, and of these Reyna founded a particularly strong dam line. To Poland she sold the stallion Rasim and the mare Sardhana; in more recent decades horses from Tersk have brought additional Crabbet lines to the Polish state studs. To America she sent such key breeding animals as *Serafix, *Raffles, *Raseyn, *Rissletta, *Nasik, and *Ferda.

Lady Wentworth’s obituary in the London Times ran on August 10, 1957. The headline read “Lady Wentworth, Breeder of Arab Horses” and a surprising amount of the text was devoted to the Crabbet Arabians:

Baroness Wentworth died in hospital at Crawley, Sussex, on Thursday night at the age of 84.

As a leading breeder of Arab horses and as a writer of books on breeding, Lady Wentworth carried on the tradition of the Crabbet stud which had been built up by her father and mother. In her independence of mind, her eccentricities, her artistic pursuits, and her stormy domestic relations she reflected her ancestry — both her father, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, the traveler and poet, and her maternal great-grandfather, Lord Byron.

Judith Anne Dorothea Blunt-Lytton, Baroness Wentworth, as sixteenth holder of the peerage, was the only daughter of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne King-Noel, who as a child of the Earl of Lovelace was a granddaughter of Lord Byron, the poet. In youth she was a society beauty and her appearance made a strong impression on Burne-Jones, for some of whose last studies she sat. “She gives me the impression,” he said, “of perfect beauty combined with the speed and lightness of foot of some wild creature.” The second part of this tribute was not merely fanciful, for Lady Wentworth was a fine athlete. She became a champion royal tennis player, a game that is not generally regarded as suitable for women, and she built her own court at Crabbet. She was also a good squash player and went on playing the game until late in life.

In 1899 she married Neville Stephen Lytton, son of the second [actually first] Earl of Lytton. The marriage took place in Cairo. The bride was given away by Lord Cromer, the Resident, who to the Queen’s inquiry about the ceremony sent the laconic reply, “Marriage duly performed.” She later became estranged first from her father with whom she had differences of opinion about the management of the Crabbet estates, and afterwards from her husband, from whom she was divorced in 1923. Her mother succeeded to the Barony of Wentworth a few months before her death in 1917, when it devolved by special remainder on Judith Blunt-Lytton. The new Lady Wentworth lived for the rest of her life at Crabbet Park in the grounds of which her father was buried.[1]

She inherited from her parents the love of the desert and of the horse of the desert, the Arabian, and the “feeling for the desert” never left her. After her mother’s death she took over the Crabbet stud which the unfortunate quarrels of her parents had allowed to reach a very low level, and gradually built it up to the dominating position which undoubtedly it holds to-day. There is hardly a stud in this country or abroad which does not owe its existence to one or other of the Crabbet stock. As a breeder she probably had few equals; she combined a voluminous knowledge of pedigree with a keen eye for a horse and with the means to breed on a big scale, and she had a certain flair or instinct which transcends scientific calculations. She was also a competent horse trainer and brought the business of preparing horses for the show ring to a fine art. The foundation of the modern Crabbet stud was undoubtedly the almost legendary Skowronek, a pure bred Arab foaled in Poland, whose sire was hanged in the market place[2] by the revolutionaries of 1917; he was saved from a like fate by being bought for Mr. Walter Winans just before the First World War, after which Lady Wentworth acquired him. From this foundation has flowed the long line of champion Arab sires and mares which have dominated the show ring for many years in almost every country of the world.

A character as strong as Lady Wentworth’s could hardly keep out of controversy; indeed, like the Biblical warhorse which she loved so much, she probably “smelled the battle from afar” and she was a doughty opponent. Just after the war she became involved in a violent controversy within the Arab Horse Society over the height and size of Arab horses in England. After much acrimony she won her point that there should be no limiting the size of the Arab horses in English shows.

At Crabbet she used also to breed dogs and her toy spaniels won innumerable championships. In later years she gave an increasing share of her time to her painting and her poetry. Among her books are two major works: Thoroughbred Racing Stock and its Ancestors (1938), and The Authentic Arabian Horse and His Descendants (1945).

She is survived by her son, the fourth Earl of Lytton, to whom the [Wentworth] title descends, and by her two daughters.

A Requiem Mass was celebrated on August 14 at the Franciscan Friary in Crawley. The burial took place afterwards. According to the London Times of August 15, among those present were:

The Earl and Countess of Lytton (son and daughter-in-law), Lady Anne Lytton and Lady Winifrid Tryon (daughters), Viscount Knebworth, the Hon. Roland Lytton and Lady Caroline Lytton (grandchildren).

The Hon. Mrs. R.E.L. Vaughan-Williams, Colonel Sir Henry Abel Smith, Mr. Gordon Blunt, Mr. Ronald Armstrong-Jones, Q.C., Mr. K.W. Cumming (president) and Colonel D.R. Hewitt (representing Arab Horse Society), Mr. Geoffrey Cross (representing Royal Windsor Horse Show Club), Miss C. Draper (librarian St. Anne’s College, Oxford), Mrs. H.V. Musgrave Clark, Mr. Nigel Napier, Mr. R.W.F. Staveacre, Mrs M. Odell, Mr. R.S. Summerhays (representing National Pony Society), Dr. R.A. Matthews, Mr. and Mrs Cecil Covey, Mr. Gladstone Moore.

Lady May Abel Smith and Sir John and Lady Blunt were among those unable to attend.

  1. [1]Wilfrid Blunt was buried in the woods behind his house Newbuildings Place, about sixteen miles away from Crabbet.↩
  2. [2]In a February, 1958 Arabian Horse News article, Count Joseph Potocki presented a different account of Skowronek’s sire Ibrahim: “Some communist soldiers led him out of his box stall during the Revolution as other horses were being taken. Whereupon, that generally quiet and kindly horse began to react violently and would not be taken away. The troopers, in their irritation, killed him on the spot with their swords. The incident is described in a well known book ‘Pozoga’ by Zofia Kossak Szcyucka, who was there at the time.”↩

The Mistress of Crabbet

Copyright 1990 by R.J. CADRANELL from Arabian Visions March 1990

Used by permission of RJ Cadranell

Judith Blunt was five years old when the first Arabians arrived at Crabbet Park in 1878. By the time she died in 1957, she had spent 79 years with the breed, and the Crabbet Stud had owned or bred more than a thousand horses. Her position was unique. Modern Arabian horse breeding in the English-speaking world dates from 1874. Lady Wentworth was a part of it, originally as an observer and later as a dominant force, almost from the beginning. Many Americans became involved with the Arabian horse during the 1940s and 1950s, when the breed was moving out of the realm of rare breeds and into the equestrian mainstream. These people owned and bred their horses in Lady Wentworth’s shadow. This titled aristocrat had been involved with the breeding of Arabian horses longer than most of them had been alive. She had bred some of the most cherished ancestors in the pedigrees of their horses: *Raffles, *Raseyn, and *Rissletta (dam of Abu Farwa). She lived on a fabled estate almost none of them had ever seen. Her death brought with it the awe and dismay which accompanies the demise of hallowed institutions expected to last forever.

Lady Wentworth kept her distance, secluding herself at Crabbet. Her many books loudly praise Crabbet horses and inadvertently give us glimpses of her eccentric personality, but it is impossible to look at her or her breeding program through them alone. Other sources aid our understanding of this key figure.

Lady Anne Blunt’s published Journals and Correspondence indicate that Judith’s interest in the stud was never desultory. Nonetheless, Lady Anne Blunt often expressed disappointment at her daughter’s apparent lack of interest in continuing the stud when she herself would be gone. After Lady Anne Blunt died and Judith inherited from her the title of Lady Wentworth, there was no doubt about her desire to control the Crabbet Stud

Lady Anne Blunt died at the end of 1917. Beginning in 1918, Wilfrid Blunt had been removing horses by night from the Crabbet stables and stockpiling them at his estate at Newbuildings. Lady Wentworth learned to lock her paddock gates. During the ensuing lawsuit, perhaps in anticipation of the court coming down on her father’s side, Lady Wentworth began gathering scattered Crabbet animals. She repurchased the stallion Nadir from George Ruxton. She also repurchased the mares Jask, Amida, and Kibla. Her son-in-law lent her Rish. She and her children forcibly removed the mare Riyala, a special favorite of Lady Wentworth’s, from her father’s stables. With these she had the makings of her own Crabbet program to rival her father’s at Newbuildings.

Lady Wentworth was 47 years old when the courts settled the lawsuit in her favor on March 5, 1920. The first Arabians returned from Newbuildings on April 16. In the interim, Lady Wentworth had acquired a grey stallion named Skowronek. Skowronek was one of very few Arabians with no Crabbet ancestors which Lady Wentworth used for breeding, and the only one to become a part of her long-term program. He had been bred in Poland at Count Potocki’s Antoniny Stud. The Blunts had admired many of the Potocki mares during their visits to Antoniny, but their writings indicate they did not consider Antoniny a viable source of Crabbet foundation stock. The disputed Riyala was one of the first mares Lady Wentworth bred to Skowronek. She named the foal Revenge, and proceeded to weave Skowronek into the Crabbet tapestry.

When the horses returned to Crabbet, Lady Wentworth found herself the owner of between 80 and 90 Arabians. Many of these were excess colts and breeding stallions. She was able to reduce the herd by selling nearly 20 to Egypt’s Royal Agricultural Society. During the lawsuit, she had complained about her father turning horses into cash. Now that she was able to choose which horses would go and which stay home, sales were known as reducing the herd to a manageable size.

The period from 1920 to 1930 was a time of great experimentation at Crabbet. The genetic base was broad, and Lady Wentworth broadened it further with Skowronek blood and by continuing to reacquire Crabbet horses her parents had sold into other hands. The mare band was in full production, with nearly every mare covered every year. Lady Wentworth bred mares to a variety of sires, giving them a chance to show what they could produce by each. Lady Wentworth conducted a number of experiments in inbreeding. Rasim, *Nureddin II, and Skowronek all had the chance to sire foals out of their own daughters. Rasim was also bred to his dam, Risala. The most famous result of these consanguineous matings was *Raffles, a favorite of many American breeders from the late 1930s to the present. Among the horses Lady Wentworth returned to Crabbet during the 1920s were *Nureddin II, *Battla, Astola, Jawi-Jawi, Fejr, Nessima, Riz, and Rythma. She also bought the all Crabbet Savile-bred mare Julnar. In doing this, she was able to revive lines which had died out at Crabbet itself, in particular the Basilisk and Johara families. Halima briefly returned the Bint Helwa line. With Fejr to represent the Ferida family, Lady Wentworth was able to let the bay *Ferda go to the Kellogg Ranch in 1920.

Many of the horses Lady Wentworth bred during the 1920s travelled the globe and ended up changing the course of world Arabian breeding, whether in Australia, the United States, Poland, Brazil, Egypt, Russia, or Spain. Of those which stayed home for a time, among the most important to Crabbet’s future turned out to be Shareer, Naseem, Razina, Silver Fire, Rissam, Raseem, Ferhan, and Astrella.

Crabbet’s breeding peak under Lady Wentworth was in 1929, when nearly 30 broodmares were covered for 1930 foals. By 1931, the Depression had caught up with Crabbet. Lady Wentworth cut production by a third. The 1932 foal crop of eight was the smallest Wentworth crop yet. In 1933 only two foals were born. Although foal production expanded slightly in 1934 and 1935, Crabbet was overstocked and in financial trouble. A discouraged Lady Wentworth contemplated giving up the Crabbet Stud.

In 1936, however, a major reduction took place. Lady Wentworth sold 25 horses to Russia’s Tersk Stud, three to America’s Kellogg Ranch, and other horses went singly in 1936 or ’37 to new owners in Australia, Portugal, Brazil, Holland, and England. With numbers reduced and the genetic base narrowed, foal production at Crabbet continued on a limited basis as the Depression era abruptly ended and the war years began.

During the war Lady Wentworth’s aunt, Mary Lovelace, died and left her a large fortune. It marked the end of the financial problems which had hampered Lady Wentworth’s management of the Crabbet Stud from the beginning. In 1926 Lady Wentworth’s son, Anthony Lytton Milbanke, later the fourth Earl of Lytton, visited W.K. Kellogg. Kellogg had, earlier that year, bought a number of horses from Lady Wentworth. In a memo dated July 27, 1926, Kellogg recorded that “Mr. Milbanke stated that the propagating of horses by his mother had not proven profitable; he mentioned that this year had been an exception, and was the most profitable year that they had ever had.” This apparently refers to the more than $80,000 Kellogg had paid Lady Wentworth for his horses.

When the war ended, Lady Wentworth had been learning about Arabian breeding for 68 years. Despite the smaller numbers born during the Depression and war years, the breeding program had continued to advance. Of the horses born at Crabbet during the Depression, the most important to its future were Sharima, Indian Gold, Indian Crown, and Sharfina. If Lady Wentworth had spent the 1920s finding the way she wanted to go, then the 1930s saw the birth of the horses she needed to get there. During the war these elements began to come together in horses like Grey Royal, Silver Gilt, Indian Magic, Silfina, and *Serafina. By the spring of 1946, nothing stood in the way. Lady Wentworth was free to apply her knowledge to the production of horses which matched her ideals. Although foal production had increased toward the end of the war, the 1947 crop was the first to evidence the expanding breeding program. Ten foals was a large crop during the years between 1936 and 1946. After the war, Lady Wentworth’s foal crops again reached toward the mark of 20.

Post-war breeding at Crabbet produced its own distinctive stamp of Crabbet Arabian. Since 1920 Lady Wentworth had been culling the herd and selecting for the characteristics she most admired. The breeding she did in her later years stressed a few key animals, namely Raktha, Oran, Sharima, Silver Fire, Indian Gold, and Nisreen. Raktha and Oran were bred at Lady Yule’s Hanstead Stud from straight Crabbet bloodlines; Lady Wentworth bought them as youngsters. It is difficult to imagine post-war Crabbet without these two stallions. Writers often comment on Lady Wentworth’s knack for recognizing the potential of immature stock. Part of this was no doubt because she had spent her entire life watching animals of Crabbet breeding go from birth to old age. No one else was similarly qualified to predict how a young Crabbet Arabian would look at maturity. After the war, Lady Wentworth also added to her mare band from English studs using Crabbet lines. Included were Indian Flower and *Silver Crystal.

The movie footage of Lady Wentworth’s parades (what we in America might think of as “open houses”) of 1952 and 1953 document what she had achieved. With a remarkable degree of consistency, the films show us tall Arabians with upright carriage and lofty bearing. They are regal, magnetic animals with tremendous presence and arched necks. They seem to move well. Faults showing up in the herd with some frequency are long backs and a tendency to stand high behind. When Lady Wentworth died in August of 1957, she owned about 75 of these “Modern Crabbet” Arabians. To American breeders, the best known examples of Modern Crabbet horses are probably *Serafix, *Silver Vanity, and *Silver Drift. As impressive as these horses were, they replaced the wider variety of Arabian types which had graced Crabbet in earlier days.

With a few exceptions, Lady Wentworth stayed within the parameters of the Crabbet herd as her parents had defined it. The first and most lasting exception was Skowronek. By the time Lady Wentworth died, very few of her horses had pedigrees without Skowronek in them. In 1928 Lady Wentworth began using the stallion Jeruan, whose pedigree traced to the non-Crabbet desert-bred horses El Emir and Maidan. Lady Wentworth used none of his foals for breeding, but Roger Selby imported Jeruan’s daughter *Rishafieh to America, where she had a successful breeding career. In 1930 Lady Wentworth bred a number of mares to the Thoroughbred stallion Mighty Power, an experiment in Anglo-Arab breeding which apparently did not last at Crabbet. In 1946 Lady Wentworth purchased a remarkable yearling colt named Dargee. A sensationally successful show horse, Dargee traced to several non-Crabbet imported lines, namely those of Dwarka, Mootrub, El Emir, Ishtar, and Kesia II. Dargee was a successful cross on the Crabbet mares and Lady Wentworth did use his offspring Royal Crystal, Sirella, and Indian Peril for breeding, but that is the furthest extent to which she had incorporated him at the time of her death.

Many breeders of Arabian horses have suspected that certain coat colors are usually found in conjunction with recognizable types. Since there is no way to quantify a horse’s “look” in the scientific sense, the science of genetics is not yet able to tell whether this is so. Coat color was important to Lady Wentworth’s breeding program. She exhibited a preference for grey horses all her life. Her first recorded favorite in her mother’s Journals was the grey mare Basilisk, apparently the first Arabian she ever rode. Judith Blunt was six at the time.

The Blunts seem to have selected against grey to a certain extent. Greys were harder to sell to military remounts and government studs, a significant portion of the Blunts’ customer base. This was due to greys being easier targets on the battlefield, as well as grey hair being more obvious on dark uniforms. For the most part, it is only generals who are depicted on white horses. The last of the three grey sires the Blunts used was Seyal, sold to India in 1904. With the exception of a non-productive breeding to Rosemary, the GSB records that the Blunts restricted Seyal to grey mares. Mrs. Archer states that Judith was anxious for her mother to find another grey stallion for the stud, but that she was unsuccessful in her search (History and Influence, page 146.) During the lawsuit, Lady Wentworth claimed that her mother had intended for her to have every grey mare in the stud.

Reconstructed lists of the Crabbet herd at the time immediately after the settling of the lawsuit indicate that slightly more than half of the horses were bay or brown, a third were chestnut, and the remaining 15% were grey. The figures concur with Lady Anne Lytton’s recollection of the period, recorded in her article “Memories of the Crabbet Stud,” from the August, 1963 Arabian Horse Journal: “…bays were more common than chestnuts…[but] when Lady Wentworth took over the Stud I think she found that the quality among the chestnuts was much higher, with a few notable exceptions. At the time of her death there was not a bay left at Crabbet. She was not very fond of bays…” *Nizzam was one of the last bays foaled at Crabbet.

To speak today of an Arabian of “Crabbet Type” is a misleading oversimplification. Among Lady Wentworth’s horses, *Raffles and Grand Royal come to mind as two vastly different extremes. The Blunts owned animals as different from one another as Rijm and Sobha. Today, finding an Arabian of pure Crabbet pedigree is as difficult as finding one with no Crabbet blood at all. In a 1% sampling of 80 pedigrees from vol. XL (1982) of our stud book, the writer found that every one had Crabbet ancestry, including those in the pure Polish and straight Spanish categories. In spite of the present dilution of Crabbet blood, and in spite of the variety of horses Crabbet owned, certain ancestors reappear again and again in their descendants. Once familiar with them, it is possible to recognize the influences of Rodania, Mesaoud, Skowronek, Sharima, Feluka, and the rest of the pantheon of Crabbet luminaries.

Index to English-Bred Arabians Named Above
Amida 1913 cm Ibn Yashmak/Ajramieh Crabbet
Astola 1910 bm Rijm/Asfura Crabbet
Astrella 1929 cm Raseem/Amida Crabbet
*Battla 1915 gm Razaz/Bukra Crabbet
Dargee 1945 cs Manasseh/Myola G. H. Ruxton
Feluka 1899 cm Mesaoud/Ferida Crabbet
*Ferda 1913 bm Rustem/Feluka Crabbet
Ferhan 1925 cs *Raswan/Fejr Crabbet
Fejr 1911 cm Rijm/Feluka Crabbet
Grand Royal 1947 cs Oran/Sharima Crabbet
Grey Royal 1942 gm Raktha/Sharima Crabbet
Halima 1916 bm Razaz/Hamasa A.D.Fenton
Indian Crown 1935 cm Raseem/Nisreen Crabbet
Indian Flower 1939 cm Irex/Nisreen Miss I. Bell
Indian Gold 1934 cs Ferhan/Nisreen Crabbet
Indian Magic 1945 gs Raktha/Indian Crown Crabbet
Indian Peril 1952 cm Dargee/Indian Pearl Crabbet
Jask 1910 gm *Berk/Jellabieh Crabbet
Jawi-Jawi 1912 cm Rijm/Jiwa C.W.Laird
Jeruan 1920 cs Nureddin II/Rose of Persia A.J.Powdrill
Julnar 1911 cm *Abu Zeyd/Kabila G.Savile
Kibla 1900 gm Mesaoud/Makbula Crabbet
Nadir 1901 bs Mesaoud/Nefisa Crabbet
Naseem 1922 gs Skowronek/Nasra Crabbet
Nessima 1909 bm Rijm/Narghileh Crabbet
Nisreen 1919 bm *Nureddin II/Nasra Crabbet
*Nizzam 1943 bs Rissam/Nezma Crabbet
*Nureddin II 1911 cs Rijm/Narghileh Crabbet
Oran 1940 cs Riffal/Astrella Hanstead
*Raffles 1926 gs Skowronek/*Rifala Crabbet
Raktha 1934 gs Naseem/Razina Hanstead
Raseem 1922 cs Rasim/Riyala Crabbet
*Raseyn 1923 gs Skowronek/Rayya Crabbet
Rasim 1906 cs Feysul/Risala Crabbet
Razina 1922 cm Rasim/Riyala Crabbet
Revenge 1921 gs Skowronek/Riyala Crabbet
Rijm 1901 cs Mahruss/*Rose of Sharon Crabbet
Risala 1900 cm Mesaoud/Ridaa Crabbet
Rish 1903 bm Nejran/Rabla Crabbet
*Rishafieh 1930 cm Jeruan/Rishafa Crabbet
Rissam 1928 cs Naseem/Rim Crabbet
*Rissletta 1930 cm Naseem/Risslina Crabbet
Riyala 1905 cm *Astraled/Ridaa Crabbet
Riz 1916 bm Razaz/*Rijma Crabbet
Rosemary 1886 bm Jeroboam/Rodania Crabbet
Royal Crystal 1952 gs Dargee/Grey Royal Crabbet
Rythma 1914 bm *Berk/Risala Crabbet
*Serafina 1945 cm Indian Gold/Sharfina Crabbet
*Serafix 1949 cs Raktha/*Serafina Crabbet
Seyal 1897 gs Mesaoud/Sobha Crabbet
Shareer 1923 bs *Nureddin II/Selima Crabbet
Sharfina 1937 cm Rytham/Sharima Crabbet
Sharima 1932 cm Shareer/Nashisha Crabbet
Silfina 1944 cm Indian Gold/Sharfina Crabbet
*Silver Crystal 1937 gm Rangoon/Somara W. Hay
*Silver Drift 1951 gs Raktha/*Serafina Crabbet
Silver Fire 1926 gm Naseem/Somra Crabbet
Silver Gilt 1943 gm Indian Gold/Silver Fire Crabbet
*Silver Vanity 1950 gs Oran/Silver Gilt Crabbet
Sirella 1953 cm Dargee/Shalina Crabbet

Bibliography

Arab Horse Society, The. The Arab Horse Stud Book 7 vols. England, 1919-52.

Archer, Rosemary, Colin Pearson, and Cecil Covey. The Crabbet Arabian Stud. Gloucestershire, 1978.

Archer, Rosemary, and James Fleming, editors. Lady Anne Blunt, Journals and Correspondence. Gloucestershire, 1986.

Blunt, Wilfrid S. My diaries. 2 vols. New York, 1922.

Kellogg Ranch Papers, The. Collection held by California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California.

London Times, February 20 & 21, 1920.

Parkinson, Mary Jane, The Kellogg Arabian Ranch. 1977.

Weatherby & Sons. The General Stud Book, vols. 13-35, London, 1877-1965.

Wentworth, Lady. The Authentic Arabian Horse. 3rd., 1979.

An Interview with Johnny Johnston

Thinking Visually An Interview with Johnny Johnston   Copyright 1992 by R.J.CADRANELL from Arabian Visions October 1992 Used by permission of RJCadranell  

        One of the first and best of the Arabian horse photographers is Johnny Johnston. Since the 1960s, his name has appeared on photographs of everything from beloved family companions to the giants of the breed, including *Bask and *Serafix. We caught up with Johnny this summer at a ranch shoot and were able to talk when he was “in between” horses.

Arabian Visions: How did you become interested in photography?

        Johnny Johnston: I became interested in photography when I was maybe nine or ten years old. I had always been an artist and did a lot of sketching when I was very young. In the first grade my teacher had me drawing things. I’ll never forget when she had me go out and look at turkeys and draw the Thanksgiving turkey. Then when I was in second and third grade I’d draw sketches of the other kids: just rough sketches of their faces and so on, for two cents a piece.

        Then I found out about photography. Big revelation. I found out it was a whole lot easier to take pictures, and sell the pictures, than it was to sketch the little rascals. My first camera was a Falcon. It was a cute little camera, and it cost me a lot of money: $6.95! I started taking pictures and doing contact sheets and selling them. Through high school I was interested in sports, particularly boxing. Photography fell by the wayside until I got in the service and bought an Argus C-3. Some of you people who go back a few years will remember the little Argus C-3 35mm. That wasn’t a bad camera.           One of the ways I made money as a youngster was as a Saddlebred hot walker. They had several of us children 11 or 12 years old who liked horses. We started cleaning stalls and when they found out we got along with the horses they’d let us hot walk Saddlebreds. I made 25 cents an hour. So I had the horse interest and the photography interest. As a child I always dreamed about owning a black stallion. Sometimes it was a white stallion, because I saw the Lone Ranger, but it was always a stallion. And black was my color. I was about six years old.

        The interest in horses was there from fooling with those big, powerful Saddlebreds — to an 11-year-old, that’s a lot of horrse. They were gentle giants. They were never ornery, at least the ones I had. They weren’t treated quite as rough as they are today. We didn’t have any problems with them. We’d clean them up and walk them down and cool them out and take the saddles off. Finally they put me up on top of a few of them and I decided right then I wasn’t going to be much of a rider because of the way I’m built.

        The first time I actually took a horse picture to sell, I was in my early 20s. I was in the Air Force, and every time I would go to a different base, I would look up every ranch I could find in a fifty mile radius. I’d go out there and I’d clean the stalls or mend fence so they’d let me ride. Some people have a natural affinity for horses, and when you do, it’s a never ending love. You just can’t help it. You just want to be around horses. When I was in the Air Force, every spare minute I’d be around horses. I started photographing them, just because I liked them. By then I’d learned how to develop my own film and did a lot of enlarging. I would take pictures and trade pictures if they’d let me ride the horse. That was a lot easier than cleaning stalls.

        My first professional pictures, if you look at it like that, were in my very early 20s. I actually started selling them, because apparently I began to get some sort of a knack. People I wasn’t working for would come out and say, “Why don’t you take one for me? What will you charge me?” I think I charged $5 a print. So I started photographing professionally about age 25 or 26. I got out of the service in 1963 and immediately started photographing horses for a living. I was a B-52 navigator and every time I landed a B-52, I had two or three people wanting me to come photograph their horses. It seemed like a way I could do what I wanted to do with both photography and horses.   Were there any photographers who influenced your early work?

        There were no photographers who influenced my early work because there were no standard Arabian horse pictures back then. When I became a full fledged B-52 navigator I bought myself an Arabian stallion called Robu, by Royal Son (who was bred by Frank McCoy) out of the mare Labu, who was an Abu Farwa daughter. A fellow named Bruce Clark helped me pick him out.

        I made friends with Bobbi Gassert, whose husband flew tankers. She had maybe eight or ten El Nattall bred horses. El Nattall was at one time a very famous ranch in southern California, owned by one of the finest people in the Arabian breed, Marietta Whitcomb. And Marietta spent hours teaching me Arab pedigrees.

        At Bobbi’s I got some drafting paper. I would draw pictures of what I thought, if I saw the image, would make me know it was an Arabian. Not a Quarter Horse, not a Morgan — if I looked at this image I would know it was an Arabian. I must have spent several months. I’d draw a picture and Bobbi would look at it and say, “That’s pretty close. Let’s go try to make the horses do it.” Then we’d go out and practice with the horses. When I landed a B-52 I’d usually go and spend two or three hours and we’d fool with the horses and fool with the sketches.

        I looked at some of Lady Wentworth’s pictures, and I looked at Saddlebred pictures and Morgan horse pictures and I looked at paintings of Arabians, and I finally came up with a drawing which was probably a composite of a lot of different things I’d seen. I’d never seen any photographs like it, but I’d seen paintings: “I know that’s an Arabian because of the tail and arched neck.”

        Back then we had a problem. We had what they called the “California stretch.” You pulled the neck out as far as you could pull it, whipped the front legs, and that was the way you stood your horses. And they did not look like Arabs. But I drew the picture and then I had Bruce Clark stand my horse like I wanted him stood. When I brought the pictures back and showed Bruce he became my biggest promoter. He said that was the best horse picture he’d seen and asked if I would take some of his horses. The word started spreading. But Bruce Clark stood up my first Arabian horse, and that was probably 1960 or 61.   Are there any other photographers whose work you admire?

        I’m a fan of Jerry Sparagowski’s and Polly Knoll’s. I think Jeff Little is getting to be a fine photographer; he’s come a long way in a very short time. Judith I think does some outstanding work, some beautiful work. She’s also a very fine artist, by the way.

Do you photograph breeds other than Arabians? Do you photograph things other than horses?

        I photograph a lot of flowers, a lot of cattle — I used to do the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I did all the cattle, sheep, swine, chickens, rabbits, the whole thing! I did the State Fair of Texas, probably for 15 years. I photographed everything including the horses there. It was a 16 day show. I photographed the Appaloosa World for 14 or 15 years, the Appaloosa nationals for several years, the Morgan Horse nationals, Walking Horses — I was raised with Saddlebreds, so I’vee photographed too many Saddlebreds. I photographed dogs, I photographed fighting cocks, dog races — I photographed everything you can think of.

You’ve photographed many famous Arabians over the years. Would you tell us about some of the ones you admired the most?

        Probably the most impressive horse I guess I’ve ever seen was a horse called *Serafix (Raktha x *Serafina), and Fadjur would run a very close second. During their day they were absolutely incredible. The horse that got me started in Arabians was a horse called Ibn Hanrah (Hanrah x Ronara). I watched him in the three-year-old class at Denver. I’d gone down to buy a Quarter Horse and Ibn Hanrah came in the ring with a little skinny fellow named Walter Chapman showing him — things have changed, huh Walter? — he was the 29th horse in the ring, and I’ll never forget that horse. He was a bay horse, and the most beautiful horse I had ever seen. At that point in time — this was I think in 1953 or 1954 — I immediately went to the library to find everything I could about Arabians, because I didn’t know anything about them. All I knew was Saddlebreds and Quarter Horses. A librarian got me started on Walter Farley’s Black Stallion series. I read everything he ever wrote, and then got to meet him in person, and finally became fairly good friends.

        *Bask (Witraz x Balalajka) was probably the most elegant horse I’ve ever seen. When he came in this country, we had some magnificent horses like *Silver Drift (Raktha x *Serafina) and *Serafix. But *Bask suddenly had a neck as long as *Silver Drift’s neck, but it was very fine. *Bask had action like I’d never seen on an Arab before, and I don’t think anyone else had, either. He had very free shoulders, and not just shoulders. It wasn’t trappy action. There’ve been a lot of Arabs that had a real high action, but it was trappy. *Bask had high reaching action. The humerus would actually come out past the vertical. I’ve got pictures that can prove it. His humerus — it was not just his shoulder working — that humerus would actually come out past the vertical, which gave him long reaching as well as high action, which was totally different from anything I or anybody else had ever seen. It was something that you saw in a really good five-gaited horse, but I’d never seen it in an Arab before.

        I always thought Fadjur (Fadheilan x Bint Sahara) was the most typey Arab. And Fadjur had one of the great minds. Fadjur was one of those horses who was a very mental horse — by that I mean a horse that’s very responsive to humans, who follows their lead and does what pleases humans. I think Fadjur as much as any horse I’ve ever seen enjoyed being around people.

        The Real McCoy probably had the most extreme head. It was incredible. The Real McCoy was a big grey horse raised by Frank McCoy. Then Fadheilan (*Fadl x *Kasztelanka) was one that I liked a lot. He was up at Harry Linden’s place in Spokane. Fadheilan and Fadjur had incredible tail carriage. It was unbelievable, and they put it on every baby they had. I never saw a bad tail on a Fadjur or Fadheilan baby.

Has your work changed over the years?

        My work has changed a lot. I used to do 35 or 40 horse shows a year. I did that for 15 or 18 years. I was probably one of the two original on-the-spot photographers. I had black and white pictures ready within two hours of the time they were taken. When I did color, I found a color lab in the town where I was working and had the color back generally within half a day. Now, I do really nothing but ranch work, and basically Arabian ranch work.

        Every time you turn around you learn something new. I watch everything other photographers do. I look at paintings. When I go to a movie I’m always trying to see if there’s something in the movie I can apply. Everything visual changes your outlook on things visual. I think that’s a fundamental. No human being to my knowledge ever gets tired of things visual, because they’re always changing. As they’re changing you’re always learning, so you never get bored, and you never quit learning. So your business does change, constantly.

        I think probably not very many people know me anymore. It used to be everybody knew me, because I did 35 or 40 horse shows a year. Every horseman of every breed in the country I swear used to know me. Now very few do, because they’re all new people. “Johnny what? Oh, that’s who. Excuse me.” They don’t know who I am anymore. If you’re not out there in front, why would they?

What three things do amateur photographers most frequently overlook when they photograph horses?

        The background is the most important thing. Clean up the manure. Make sure nothing’s growing out of the horse. You don’t want phone poles or trees growing out of the horse. Be sure the fence line does not sit on top of the horse’s back. If you’ve got a fence taller than the horse, you’re out of luck. But if you can possibly do it, get down low enough so the fence line is not on top of the horse’s back. Second is watch the foreground. Don’t let manure and garbage or even cigarette butts clutter the foreground. Get them out of the picture. The third thing is that amateur photographers are not ready to shoot. Have the camera set up and ready to go, then worry about the horse. All you should have to do is focus and push a button.

Do you have any comments to make on the changes in grooming and presentation that have taken place over the years?

        Personally, I don’t like clown masks on a horse, and I don’t like a horse that looks like a caricature of a horse. If what God created and man has bred isn’t good enough, then we’re in a lot of serious trouble. The extreme “caricaturization,” I call it, to me is absolutely grotesque. I just don’t like it. If people do like that, when I photograph their horses I try to talk them into toning it down: “Let’s make him look like a horse.” I hate greasy black eyes and noses in a picture. It doesn’t look like an Arab. It’s a mask. It’s a clown face. That’s my opinion, whatever that’s worth to you. But it’s your horse. Do what you want. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not going to tell you what to do. But I don’t like it.

Where is the horse market right now?

        People who are buying horses now are buying them because they really like and want to be around horses. They’re not buying them for investments. In a lot of respects this may be good. If you’re a good, conscientious breeder you don’t have to worry about what kind of home the horse is going to go to. If somebody buys a horse because they love the horse they’re going to take the best care of it they can, and they’re going to try to keep learning about the horse. Hopefully the horse will become a teacher and they will start to get along and everybody will have fun. That’s what it’s supposed to be. The only value of a horse is the fun. It’s really a four-legged recreational vehicle, when you think about it. Except unlike other recreational vehicles you can fall in love with him, pet him, groom him, and talk to him. You’d look kind of silly talking to a Ferrari, although I probably would if I had one.

Out of all the photographs you’ve taken, do you have any that are particular favorites?

        I have lots of photographs that are favorites. The four fillies comes to mind immediately. I took that up at a place called Sir William Farm. That was used for years. The picture of Tornado (*Bask x *Silwara) trotting in the ring: They’ve used that in every way, and painted him bay and black and white and everything you name. He had a real high trot and his head was turned almost to the middle of his body and he was looking up real high. Everybody’s used that in every conceivable painting and ad. That was one of my favorites. I had another one of Tornado early in the morning coming across a field full of fog. Probably the *Bask halter shot is one of my favorites, only because the people who knocked *Bask finally got to see what he really looked like when he was stood up about the best he could be stood. Gene LaCroix talked me into doing that picture because I didn’t think we’d ever get a halter shot. So Gene talked me into trying it one more time and sure enough the horse stood up.

What distinguishes a Johnny Johnston photograph from other photographs?

        I try to use the least amount of makeup possible on the horses I photograph. I do want to see a horse well groomed. I like the hairs in place. Rather than cut the eyelashes I’d prefer to use mascara because I worry about flies a little bit.

        When I photograph babies I do everything in my power not to cut the whiskers off, and particularly not to cut the feelers around the eyes of babies, because they don’t see well at close range and they’ll knock their little eyes out. And leave the hair in the ears with those babies. If you take the hair out of the ears with those babies, the flies are going to drive him crazy. Why put a horse through that for a picture? To me it’s not worth it. I try to tell people, “With baby pictures, just make them as clean as you can and do them natural.” It doesn’t make that much difference to the picture. It’s a baby. He’s going to change in six months so why put him through the misery?

        I think my pictures are a little more natural. I think my halter pictures are a little bit better balanced than most. But there are a lot of good photographers out there. I think the Arabian horse breed should consider itself lucky because there is no other breed with the same level of high quality photographers. And most of them I’ve got a lot of respect for.

Are some horses more photogenic than others?

        Lots of horses are photogenic, and lots of horses are just coyote-ugly and it’s not their fault. But every horse has some angle you can do something with. Maybe a horse with a common head has great tail carriage and fantastic action. There’s always something you can do if you’re a photographer, and the horse will show you what it is if you will watch him.

Anything you’d like to add?

        I started making an income at this in 1959 or 1960, and started making a living in 1963. I just hope I’m around and all my folks are around for another 30, or 40 or 50 years so I can keep doing it. Because this is what I do. I had a guy ask me once, “Johnny, if you got two million dollars, what would you do?” Well, I’d take horse pictures. Maybe I would give them away, and take only those horses I was interested in. But I’d be taking horse pictures. And I’ve had people ask if I ever burn out. Sometimes you can get aggravated with people, but if you try to understand a horse, and understand and work from his mind, you can see why they do what they do. They’ll teach you. I never get tired of it.

Janow Podlaski Between The Wars, A Road Map for Beginners

Copyright 1990 by R.J.CADRANELL from Arabian Visions Feb ’90
Used by permission of RJCadranell

Although the Polish state stud, Janow Podlaski, dates its history back to 1817, the Arabian breeding program for which it is famous began more than a century later. From the arrival of the first broodmares in 1919 until the day in September of 1939 when the Russian army walked away with most of Janow’s horses, the state stud bred some of Poland’s most important Arabians. They are the core of modern Polish breeding.

After World War I, Poland found itself an independent state, no longer part of the Russian Empire. The new government sought to refound the state stud for the breeding of horses at Janow Podlaski, where the stables had been empty since the removal of horses to Russia in 1915. One of the categories of stock was to be a herd of Arabians. Finding Arabian horses after the devastation and disruption of World War I was not easy, but the animals collected were worth the efforts expended to acquire them.

Janow gave all foals born in the same year names beginning with the same letter. The “A” year was 1919, “B” followed in 1920, “C” in 1921, and so on. Knowing this, one can determine the year of birth of all Janow Podlaski foals in the charts below. (Skip Q, U, V, X, and Y to end with W in 1938 and Z in 1939).

After twenty years, the Arabian breeding program at Janow Podlaski was flourishing when the Nazis invaded Poland in September of 1939. The decision was made to begin moving the horses east toward Rumania. After several days, losing animals to exhaustion and injury and leaving some behind as they traveled, word came that Russian troops were coming toward them from the east. The party returned to Janow. The Russians soon appeared there, and when they departed they look with them hundreds of horses, including nearly all the Arabians. They left behind Najada after she injured one of their soldiers, and her son Ali Said was born in 1940. The Janow Arabians greatly broadened the genetic base of Russia’s Tersk stud, and many of the bloodlines have returned to Poland in recent decades through horses sent from Tersk.

Following are charts listing most of the more important Arabians bred or owned at Janow Podlaski between the wars, arranged according to foundation mare. Two 1939 fillies have names deviating from the alphabetical system. The Russians named Mammona. Ofirka was lost as a foal during the evacuation of Janow Podlaski and found two years later on a farm in Volyhnia. Apparently the recovery of an Ofir daughter was more important than that she had been born during the “Z” year. (Note that Ali Said in 1940 started another cycle with “A,” continuing through G in 1946.)

Janow’s first Arabian mares were bred at the Austrian state stud of Radautz and arrived in 1919:

282 SIGLAVY BAGDADY 1908 (Siglavy Bagdady OA x 15 Malta). Her sire was part of Babolna’s 1902 importation from the desert. Her dam, Malta, was bred in Poland at Chrestowka and traced to the Slawuta taproot mare Milordka. In the tradition of the Austrian military studs, broodmares bred at Radautz bore the names of their sires and were distinguished from their sisters by a prefixed broodmare number. Polish pedigrees often omit the Radautz broodmare numbers.

  • Bajka (Amurath III 1910)
    • Jaga II (Koheilan I)
      • Saga (Hardy)
      • Wyrwidab (Ofir) named “Wind” in Germany
    • Oda (Kuhailan Haifi)
  • Fetysz (Bakszysz)
  • Haszysz (Ganges I)

ANIELKA 1919 (Amurath 1881 x 346 Belgja). Belgja was another mare bred at Chrestowka from the Milordka family.

  • Arabja (Koheilan IV)
  • Ceclja (Bakszysz)
    • Lirnik (Farys II)

HEDBA 1913 (Hermit OA x Amurath). Hebda’s dam was bred at Radautz, a daughter of Amurath (1881) out of 96 Odysseja, bred at Chrestowka from the Milordka family.

  • Kaszmir (Farys II)
  • Malaga (Mazepa II)

KOALICJA 1918 (Koheilan IV x 238 Amurath) Her dam, bred at Radautz, was out of 15 Malta. Her sire was bred at Babolna.

  • Enwer Bey (Abu Mlech)
  • Federacja (Burgas)
    • Narada (Hardy)
      • Walna (Lowelas)
    • *Witez II (Ofir)
  • Konfederacja (Farys II)
  • Miecznik (Fetysz)
  • Niezgoda (Fetysz)

An even more solid foundation for Janow Podlaski were mares bred at Count Dzieduszycki’s Jezupol stud, acquired via another stud in 1920. These mares, together with the stallions Farys II and Abu Mlech, represented the breeding of the Dzieduszycki family, founded on the desert bred mares Gazella, Mlecha, and Sahara, all imported to Poland from Arabia in 1845.

POMPONIA 1902 (Zagloba x Kadisza). Pomponia’s fifth dam was Sahara.

  • Bona (Mazepa I)
  • Dora (Bakszysz)
    • Krucica (Farys II)
      • Wojski (Lowelas)
      • Mammona 1939 (Ofir)
  • *Nora (Hardy)
  • Omar II (Hardy)

ZULEJMA 1914 (Kohejlan OA x Pomponia). Count Dzieduszycki imported her sire from India in 1910, along with the stallion Hermit, later sold to Radautz.

  • Dziwa (Abu Mlech)
    • Limba (Bakszysz)
      • *Tarnina (Lowelas)
    • Mokka (Flisak)
    • Ofir (Kuhailan Haifi OA)
    • Taki Pan (Kaszmir)
    • Wrozba (Lowelas)
  • Ferja (Bakszysz)
    • Kasyda (Farys II)
    • Magja (Koheilan I)
    • Norma (Hardy)
  • Kahira (Farys II)
    • Trypolis (Enwer Bey)
  • *Lassa (Koheilan I)

GAZELLA II 1914 (Kohejlan OA x Abra). Through Witraz and Wielki Szlem alone this mare’s family has been a major force in shaping the breeding of Polish Arabians. But more of Poland’s key sires came from this line: Wilga is the second dam of Comet, and Taraszcza produced Negatiw in Russia. Gazella II herself, at age 25, was one of the horses marched to Russia.

  • Czapla (Bakszysz)
  • Elegantka (Bakszysz)
    • Jaszmak (Koheilan I)
    • Kamea (Farys II)
      • Rozeta (Almanzor)
      • *Wierna (Ofir)
    • Lowelas (Koheilan I)
    • Mulatka (Koheilan I)
    • Opal (Koheilan I)
    • Wielki Szlem (Ofir)
  • Fryga II (Bakszysz)
    • Maskota (Koheilan I)
      • Zalotna (Ofir)
    • Ofirka 1939 (Ofir)
  • Hardy (Ganges I)
  • Jaskolka II (Koheilan I)
    • *Przepiorka (Almanzor)
    • *Rybitwa (Almanzor)
    • Wilga (Ofir)
  • Makata (Fetysz)
    • Witraz (Ofir)
  • Najada (Fetysz)
    • Ali Said (Kuhailan Said)
  • Taraszcza (Enwer Bey)

Two other mares acquired in 1920 had been bred at the Antoniny stud. Their sire, Ibrahim, also got Skowronek. Their dam, Lezginka, bred at Antoniny, was a daughter of the stallion Euclid (also known as Obejan Szarak), a horse Count Potocki had imported from India in 1890. Lezginka was out of Zalotna, a mare of the Szwejkowska family.

KALINA, 1909 (Ibrahim OA x Lezginka)

  • Dziewanna (Bakszysz)
    • *Kostrzewa (Koheilan I)
    • Piolun (Koheilan I)
    • Rozmaryn (Almanzor)
    • Skrzyp (Lowelas)
  • Floks (Bakszysz)
  • Halina (Abu Mlech)
    • Paproc (Koheilan I)
    • Sokora (Hardy)
  • Jagoda (Koheilan I)

ELSTERA 1913 (Ibrahim OA x Lezginka). This is the family of *Naborr, as Obra produced his dam, Lagodna.

  • Drweca (Bakszysz)
  • Flisak (Bakszysz)
  • Ikwa (Koheilan I)
    • Obra (Hardy)

In 1921 the state purchased from Prince Roman Sanguszko’s Gumniska stud:

BIALOGRADKA 1910 (Orjent x Pojata). Her daughter, *Kasztelanka, is the dam of Fadjur’s sire, Fadheilan. Halef is the grandsire of *Sanacht, a Plum Grove Farm foundation mare.

  • Gaweda (Burgas OA)
    • Plotka (Koheilan I)
  • *Kasztelanka (Koheilan I)
    • Towarzysz Pancerny (Enwer Bey) [named “Halef” in Germany]

KEWA 1923 (Siglavy Bagdady-11 x Kalga) was a later addition, bred in Yugoslavia at the Inocenzdvor stud and imported to Poland. Her sire was bred at Babolna from desert bred parents. Her dam, Kalga (Amurath Dukatan x Hadrja), was also bred at Poland’s Uzin stud. Kewa and daughters went to Russia in 1939, but the line became important again in Poland when Wlodarka’s Tersk-bred daughters, Prowierka and Piewica, returned it. *Prowizja (U.S. National Champion Park Horse) and *Penicylina (1987 U.S. National Champion Mare) are from this family.

  • Oaza (Kuhailan Haifi OA)
  • Troska (Enwer Bey)
  • Wlodarka (Ofir)

The Stallions

The other half of the story of Janow Podlaski between the wars is its foundation sires:

BAKSZYSZ 1901 (Ilderim OA x Parada). Bred at Slawuta, and purchased in 1920. His sons Flisak (out of Elstera) and Fetysz (out of 282 Siglavy Bagdady) were also sires at Janow. In 1936, Fetysz was sold to Trakehnen in Germany, where he was head sire until 1944. Fetysz disappeared before the end of the war, but is still found in Trakehner pedigrees.

GANGES I 1901 (Hindostan II x Lezginka). Bred at Antoniny. His son Hardy (out of Gazella II) was also a sire at Janow.

ABU MLECH 1902 (Mlech I x Lania). Bred by Count Dzieduszycki at Jezupol, and purchased in 1920. His son Enwer Bey (out of Koalicja) succeeded him at Janow.

FARYS II 1905 (Mlech I x Sahara IV). Bred at Jablanow. His son Kaszmir (out of Hebda) sired Taki Pan.

ALMANZOR 1909 (Athos x Mlecha III). Bred by Prince Czartoryski at Pelkinie. Almanzor’s sire, bred at Antoniny, carried two lines to Pharaoh, a desert bred stallion the Blunts used at Crabbet before selling to Poland.

MAZEPA II 1910 (Mazepa x Hajduszka).

BURGAS OA 1907 (an Abeyan Sherrak x a Seglawieh Jedranieh). Imported to France in 1914. The French government sent this desert bred stallion to Poland as a present in 1923.

KUHAILAN HAIFI OA 1923 (a Kuhailan Kharas x a Kuhaila Haifi). Bred by the Ruala tribe. Bogdan Zietarski and Carl Raswan imported this horse to Poland in 1931 for Prince Roman Sanguszko’s Gumniska stud. Kuhailan Haifi covered several of the Janow mares, getting among others the important sire Ofir.

KOHEILAN I 1922 (Koheilan IV x 10 Gazal). Bred at Babolna in Hungary. Imported in 1924, and returned to Babolna in 1937 in exchange for two sons of Kuhaylan Zaid OA. One of them, Kuhailan Said, was a 1934 colt known at Babolna as Kuhaylan Zaid-7. His dam was 204 Kemir, a mare of Weil and Babolna lines. Koheilan I’s son Lowelas (out of Elegantka) was also a Janow sire.

Among the Arabians that went to Russia in 1939 were the stallions Kuhailan Said, Enwer Bey, Hardy, Ofir, Piolun, Skrzyp, and Taki Pan. The mares included Gazella II, Kewa, Bajka, Dziwa, Elegantka, Fryga II, Hanina, Ikwa, Kahira, Kamea, Konfederacja, Krucica, Limba, Mulatka, Narada. Niezgoda, Oaza, Plotka, Taraszcza, Wlodarka, Wrozba, Walna, and Mammona.

Breeding at Janow Podlaski did not stop in 1939. Janow was able to gather horses from private studs and track down a few lost during the evacuation. A limited program continued under the management of the occupying Nazi forces. However, it was never quite the same, and the war forced another evacuation in 1944. When peace returned and the Poles started over with three state studs, Janow was not one of them, due to the damage the place had sustained toward the end of the war. Janow Podlaski’s history begins again in 1960, when it was restocked with horses from state stud Nowy Dwor. Horses from state stud Albigowa followed in 1961, and the breeding program continues uninterrupted to the present.

Featured photo of Janow Podlaski by dzikusiak

Hanstead Horses

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Hanstead Horses

Copyright 1997 by R.J. CADRANELL
from Arabian Visions Mar/Apr 1997
Used by permission of RJ Cadranell

Next to Crabbet, no English stud has been as important as Hanstead. Hanstead’s worldwide influence is particularly remarkable in light of the relatively short time it was in operation—not even 35 years of breeding—and the relatively small number of foals produced. There were barely 125, while Crabbet had more than a thousand spread over 93 years.

The Hanstead Stud owed its origin to Lady Yule, wife of merchant prince Sir David Yule. He and his brother Andrew amassed a fortune in India, estimated at up to 20 million pounds. David and Annie Henrietta Yule were married in 1900. Sir David Yule and his wife had just one child, a daughter named Gladys, born at Hanstead House in 1903. The Hanstead estate was in Hertfordshire, and there Lady Yule and her daughter Gladys took to breeding Thoroughbreds and Suffolk Punch horses, along with cattle and other livestock. Sir David Yule died in 1928 and is not known to figure directly in the story of the Hanstead Stud.

Lady Yule “first became interested in Arabs on seeing the gallant carriage and action of a pair of Arabs regularly driven to York, from his home, by Major Wailes-Fairburn.”[1]

Razina (

Razina (Rasim x Riyala).

Lady Yule wanted to try her hand at Anglo-Arab breeding, thus on July 11, 1925, she and her daughter Gladys visited Lady Wentworth’s Arabian stud at Crabbet Park. That year at Hanstead the Thoroughbred mare Tarantella produced a filly by the Crabbet stallion *Nasik; this may have been the cause of Lady Yule’s visit to Crabbet. But before the day was out, Lady Yule had purchased a young Arab mare named Razina. Razina had been sold to Ireland but recently repurchased by Crabbet in foal to the Thoroughbred stallion Mighty Power. It is not clear whether Lady Yule liked Razina’s looks or was simply interested in her anticipated Anglo-Arab foal. Nonetheless Arabian breeders around the world can be glad Lady Yule chose the mare she did.

Razina later won five gold medals, establishing Hanstead as a power in the show ring. Razina’s broodmare career, however, established her place in history. After producing the Anglo-Arab filly Razzia in 1926, Razina was never mated to another Thoroughbred.

Razina was not covered in 1926 because of a railway strike, but in 1927 Lady Yule sent her to the Arabian stallion Almulid (Skowronek x Alfarouse), bred and owned by the Hon. Mrs. R. E. L. Vaughan Williams. The resulting filly, Rasana, soon joined her mother as a Hanstead broodmare, bringing the Arabian mare band to a total of two. Rasana turned out to be a poor mother whose foals had to be raised by hand; she was put down in 1937, and her two fillies not retained.

Raktha (Naseem X Razina)

Lady Wentworth was unhappy when she learned Lady Yule was using Razina for purebred breeding. For the next several years, Lady Yule sent her mares to outside stallions, but did not have access to those at Crabbet. Instead she used horses of entirely or largely Crabbet blood. These horses included C.W. Hough’s Nuri Sherif (*Nureddin II x Sheeba) and Akal (Shelook x Almas), and Capt. the Hon. George Savile’s Joseph (Nadir x Maisuna). Of the six foals produced in these early years, only Nurschida (Nuri Sherif x Razina) had influence on the later Hanstead program. Through her sire, Nurschida carried one line to Miss Dillon’s imported stallion Maidan, thus was not quite “pure Crabbet,” although like all Hanstead Arabians, Nurschida was registered in the Arabian section of Weatherby’s General Stud Book (GSB).

In 1932 the Hanstead mare band expanded. Mr. and Mrs. Kent, known to the pony breeding fraternity, visited Crabbet and purchased two young mares. In less than a week the mares turned up at Hanstead. They were chestnut Astrella (Raseem x Amida) and grey Naxina (Skowronek x Nessima). Lady Wentworth had used a similar ploy to acquire Skowronek in 1920. The ice between Lady Wentworth and Lady Yule broke not long after this episode, and in 1933 Lady Yule sent all five of her Arabian mares to Crabbet for breeding.

The 1934 foal crop included Hanstead’s first sire prospects, the greys Raktha and Grey Owl. Of the two colts produced prior to 1934, Halil Sherif was gelded “as he had not got a perfect Arab head or eyes.”[2] He was hunted with the Heythrop Hunt in 1933-34, jumping anything asked, and later took up dressage, giving a performance at the International Horse Show, Olympia. Kehelan was sold to Scotland for crossing on Highland mares. He proved infertile, and later found a home with the Bertram Mills Circus. After that he became the first Arabian owned by Mrs. Linney, later a well known breeder in England, and owner of another Yule-bred horse: Mikeno, purchased in 1952.

It could be debated endlessly whether the Yules had a knack for choosing sires, or whether they simply had in Razina the beginning of a mare family with which it was scarcely possible to go wrong. Probably both were factors. According to Miss Yule’s companion and stud manager, Miss Patricia Wold, Gladys Yule believed in using only the best sires and wanted the Arab Horse Society to inspect the conformation and type of all stallions before approving them for breeding.[3]

To return to Raktha, he swept the show ring in 1937, and that year it was noted that “much interest and amusement has been caused by the various opinions as to which is the best, Grey Owl or Raktha.”[3] Although Grey Owl did leave several lines, 60 years of breeding have proven Raktha the more influential of the two. Lady Wentworth bought Raktha in 1939, and from 1940 until his sale to South Africa in 1951 he was one of Crabbet’s chief sires.

During the 1930s the Hanstead mares continued to visit outside stallions. Lady Yule patronized Crabbet’s Naseem, Raseem, Faris, Naufal, and Naziri. Lady Yule is the only outside breeder recorded in the stud books as sending a mare to Naseem. Rosemary Archer explains this was because no other breeders in England could afford the high stud fees Lady Wentworth charged at that time for her best stallions.

In 1936 two more sire prospects were born at Hanstead: Riffal (of whom more later) and Naseel. Naseel was a classic 14.1 hand grey, sold as a yearling to Mrs. Nicholson in Ireland. Describing Naseel as a riding horse, she wrote in the Spring, 1960, Arab Horse Society News,

“I was thrilled. I had never ridden an Arab horse before, let alone a stallion, and I just couldn’t believe the joy that he gave me.”

Naseel became a successful sire of children’s show ponies as well as purebreds. Naseel’s sire was Raftan (Naseem x Riyala), bred at Crabbet but owned elsewhere. Naseel was invited to make a special appearance at the Arab Horse Society’s 1956 Summer Show, where he and his progeny paraded in front of the Queen.

Another outside horse Hanstead used in the 1930s was George Ruxton’s Algol (Dwarka x Amida), who sired Namilla for Lady Yule. The last time an outside stallion was used was 1939, when Razina and Nurschida went to Shihab (Algol x Almas).

In 1938 or 1939 Lady Yule acquired the last of her foundation mares by trading Ghezala to Lady Wentworth for the Rissam daughter Niseyra. Through her son Blue Domino, Niseyra was to be just as important as the earlier acquisitions.

Lady Yule seems to have brought home no more than three stallions in her entire career as a breeder. One was Radi, the foal Razina had had in 1925. He was acquired from Crabbet during the early part of the war years and was used at Hanstead before returning to Crabbet. Lady Yule seems to have made a special effort to work Rissam into the herd. In 1940, five out of the six Yule mares were bred to Rissam. No other Hanstead sire ever dominated a single foal crop to this extent. Only Rissam’s daughter Niseyra had a 1941 foal by a different horse, although Lady Yule would try her with Rissam the following year—the only close inbreeding at Hanstead recorded in the stud books.

Although Radi and Rissam each sired a few important foals at Hanstead, the most brilliant acquisition was Rissalix (Faris x Rissla), purchased from Crabbet in 1940. Known for his quality and brilliant action, a better cross for the Hanstead mares could scarcely have been found. Yet another example of Hanstead’s worldwide success despite tiny numbers, Rissalix sired fewer than 20 Yule-bred foals of record, but they include such as *Count Dorsaz, Blue Domino, Mikeno, and Pale Shadow (dam of Bright Shadow). Rissalix was one of the few horses Lady Wentworth later regretted selling, but owing to labor shortages after the start of the war it was necessary to reduce the number of stallions at Crabbet.

The decade of cooperation between Crabbet and Hanstead came to a close toward the end of the war. Lady Yule tried to buy from Crabbet a colt named Indian Grey, full brother to Indian Magic, but Lady Wentworth refused to sell. In 1943, shortly after, Lady Wentworth made an offer on Oran, but Lady Yule retaliated and turned it down. Instead, she sold Oran to Mr. C. McConnell in 1944, who sold him to the British Bloodstock Agency, which sold him to Lady Wentworth later the same year. When Lady Yule learned that Oran was at Crabbet, relations were broken off. Oran did leave his daughter Umatella at Hanstead, but it was at Crabbet, where his blood was frequently combined with Raktha’s, that he achieved his fame as a sire.

Crabbet and Hanstead emerged from the war years as rivals, both in the show ring and the marketplace. The stud was now under the direction of Miss Gladys Yule, as Lady Yule gave the horses to her daughter in 1946. Lady Yule died on July 14, 1950.

In the post-war years Hanstead was a mature stud, with a band of 10 to 15 mares and a battery of homebred stallions standing alongside and later succeeding Rissalix and Radi. In addition to Grey Owl, these included:

Colorados (Radi x Astrella) was a three-quarter brother to Crabbet’s famous sire Oran.

Riffal, a brown horse foaled 1936, and already a show winner as a yearling. He matured to 16 hands and a quarter inch. Because most of his Hanstead career took place during the war years, his opportunity at stud was limited, but true to the Hanstead pattern, he achieved much with his few foals, which included Oran. In 1947 Mrs. Maclean bought him and the young mare Carlina for her stud in Australia. Riffal became a major influence there.

Salinas (Grey Owl x Shamnar)

Suvorov (Rissalix x Razina), as a son of Hanstead’s most influential foundation mare and stallion, might have proven an important sire, but he was not fertile.

Sala (Grey Owl x Hama) was grey, sold to the New South Wales Department of Agriculture and exported to Australia in 1949. There he sired more than 100 foals, and has perpetuated the rare male line of Crabbet foundation sire Feysul.

*Count Dorsaz (Rissalix x Shamnar)

*Count Dorsaz (Rissalix x Shamnar) was one of the many Hanstead horses exhibited under saddle. At the Royal International Horse Show he was twice awarded the Winston Churchill Cup for the supreme riding horse. He inherited and passed on a full measure of the Rissalix action. By 1956 he had also won nine first prizes in hand.

General Grant (Raktha x Samsie) carried two crosses to Razina and was typical of what may be thought of as Hanstead type: a deep-bodied horse of quality, good balance and substance, and obvious Arabian character. General Grant was later owned by the Hedleys. He sired many British champions.

Blue Domino (Rissalix x Niseyra) ranks among the most famous horses bred at Hanstead. Although not tracing to Razina, he seems to have had much the same proportions as, for example, General Grant. This stamp of horse is also apparent in Rissam, Blue Domino’s grandsire. A dark chestnut color, Blue Domino won acclaim in the show ring as a young horse and sired a long list of internationally influential horses. A 1956 Hanstead ad noted that his “stock are very promising, good movers with good heads.”

*Count Orlando (*Count Dorsaz x Umatella) was the Arab Horse Society’s Junior Male Champion in 1954, and was awarded the Winston Churchill Cup in 1956. He was sold to the United States in 1960.

Rissalix (Faris x Rissla)
Rissalix (Faris x Rissla)
Teresita (GSB)
Teresita (GSB)
Mikeno (Rissalix x Namilla, by Algol) was sold to Mrs Linney in 1952.
Mikeno (Rissalix x Namilla, by Algol) was sold to Mrs Linney in 1952.
Bright Shadow (Radi x Pale Shadow, by Rissalix), bred from Hanstead sire and dam, was another to stand at Crabbet
Bright Shadow (Radi x Pale Shadow, by Rissalix), bred from Hanstead sire and dam, was another to stand at Crabbet

Count Manilla (*Count Dorsaz x Namilla) represented several generations of Hanstead breeding on both sides of his pedigree. He won first prize stallion under saddle at Roehampton in 1956. Count Manilla was sold to Australia in 1957, where he sired about 80 foals.

Rifaria (Rifari x Meccana, by Riffal) was another horse who stood at Hanstead in the 1950s. He was one of the few outcrosses Gladys Yule introduced.

Iridos (Irex x Rafeena) was a son of one of the two new mares Gladys Yule added to the stud. In 1950 Rafeena arrived with her Irex filly, *Reenexa. She was in foal to Irex again, and produced the grey colt Iridos in 1951.

*Minta was Gladys Yule’s other addition to the stud. A granddaughter of Rissam and Irex, she was less an outcross than an added source of lines already tried in the stud.

Lady Wentworth never had much room for visiting mares, so smaller breeders in England were grateful to Miss Gladys Yule for making available stallions like Rissalix, General Grant, *Count Dorsaz, and Blue Domino to the public.

During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Hanstead joined Crabbet and Courthouse in dominating the British show ring. A look at Deirdre Hyde’s 40 Years of British Arab Horse Champions shows nine of the first 40 titles going to horses bred by the Yules. An additional 17 winners had a parent bred at Hanstead. Only four horses (Dargee, Bahram, Sirella, and Celina) were without any Yule-bred ancestors. Many of Crabbet’s winners were sired by Oran or Raktha. And just as Hanstead had sent these two important sires to Crabbet, Hanstead also sent one to Courthouse. This was Champurrado, the first foal Niseyra produced for Lady Yule.

Gladys Yule served as president of the Arab Horse Society in 1949. She was also chairman of the Ponies of Britain Club, helping to preserve Britain’s native pony breeds. She strongly believed in Anglo-Arabs as superior horses for hunting, dressage, or eventing, and continued to breed these alongside her Arabians and Thoroughbreds. She also bred Jersey and Aberdeen Angus cattle.

Early in 1957 an article in the Arab Horse Society News noted that 20 Hanstead Arabs had been sold overseas: four to Australia, 11 to South Africa, three to Holland, and two to Canada. Nor was there any shortage of promising young stock in 1957. The young stallions coming on included the show winners Blue Grotto and Samson, as well as *Little Owl: “Miss Yule has been longing to have a colt foal by Grey Owl, who has produced a long list of fillies through the years, so let us hope Little Owl will develop the presence and character of his magnificent sire.”

Among the young mares and fillies, the late Queen Zenobia’s daughters *Zulima, Zena, and *Princess Zia were admired, of which *Princess Zia was probably the most decorated in the show ring.

When Lady Wentworth died in August of 1957, Gladys Yule remarked “now we can go back to Crabbet.” But it was not to be. Within a few weeks she had also died. The estate taxes owed were reported in the Daily Mail to be in excess of 3 million pounds under headline “Last of a vanishing 20,000,000 pound fortune may go in taxes.” It was necessary to reduce the stud. The single largest group sold, consisting of about 14 head, went to Bazy Tankersley’s Al-Marah Arabians in the United States before the year was out. At the same time, Mrs. Tankersley purchased a similarly large group from Lady Wentworth’s executors, making it the single largest importation to arrive in America up to that time.

Miss Wolf sent a letter published in the Arab Horse Society News for autumn, 1958, explaining the situation with the remaining horses:

“I was left options on some Thoroughbreds, Arabs and Anglo-Arabs and therefore I retained in a small way some of the best of each. Since then foals have increased in number and it will not be long before there are more foals on the way and so I have felt that I must sell some more horses… These are to be sold by auction on November 27th here at Hanstead when all the saddlery, stable and stud equipment are sold…. I shall be moving to Aylesbury…. All the horses and the stud I retain are the property of the Exors. of the late Miss G.M. Yule and so for the time being I shall be the Manager.”

Many breeders in England established or added to their studs at the 1958 Hanstead auction. *Count Dorsaz was leased that year to Mrs. Tankersley, who bought him later. He proved an important sire for Al-Marah, and was later joined by *Ranix (a son of Rissalix and out of the Hanstead mare *Iorana).

By 1959 Gladys Yule’s band of 15 broodmares had been reduced to three. Of these Rafeena died the next year at age 20, and Umatella and Azella each produced one Blue Domino filly for Miss Wolf before moving on to new homes.

Finally just Blue Domino was left. He lived out his days surrounded by Miss Wolf’s Thoroughbreds and Anglo-Arabs, succumbing to intestinal cancer in October of 1966. But by then Hanstead breeding was firmly established in Arabian studbooks around the world.

Sources:

Rosemary Archer, Colin Pearson, and Cecil Covey, The Crabbet Arabian Stud, Its History and Influence

Deirde Hyde, 40 Years of British Arab Horse Champions

Erika Schiele, The Arab Horse in Europe, section on Hanstead.

Rosemary Archer, “The Hanstead Stud,” Arabians, September 1984, p. 128.

Michael Bowling, “Razina at the Hanstead Stud” in CMK Record, spring 1991.

The Arab Horse Society News, issues from 1956 to 1960.

Undated clipping from the Daily Mail.

The General Stud Book; stud books of the Arabian Horse Registry of America and Arab Horse Society.

  1. [1]Jack Gannon, “Hanstead Stud,” Arab Horse Society News, spring 1957, p. 10.↩
  2. [2]The Journal of the Arab Horse Society, article on Hanstead Stud.↩
  3. [3]Spring 1960 Arab Horse Society News, p. 15.↩

The GSB Arabians

The GSB Arabians

© 1996 by Robert J. Cadranell
Reprinted from the March-April 1996 issue of Arabian Visions

Look at the bottom of most pre-printed Arabian horse pedigree forms and you will likely find explanations of some standard abbreviations. For example, DB stands for Desert Bred, while PASB stands for Polish Arabian Stud Book, and GSB stands for the General Stud Book. What on earth is a General Stud Book?

Until about 30 years ago, the General Stud Book was a registration authority for Arabian horses in England. It was the stud book cited for the parents of virtually all horses imported from England’s Crabbet Arabian Stud, as well as many horses imported from other studs in England. But why was it called the General Stud Book rather than, for example, the British Stud Book?

The General Stud Book was the world’s first published stud book for any breed of livestock. Before the advent of the GSB, stud books were records kept by individual breeders and were specific to animals in a breeder’s own herd. The new compilation was known as a “general” stud book because it was general to the whole country. The preliminary edition of the GSB appeared in 1791. It was an example of the eighteenth century obsession with assembling enormous compendiums of knowledge, which included Dr. Johnson’s dictionary and the original encyclopædia. The GSB documents “Pedigrees of Race Horses” stretching “From the earliest Accounts” up to the closing date of each successive volume. Its compiler was James Weatherby, whose family continued to issue the GSB after him. Thus it is also known as “Weatherby’s stud book.”

The breed of horse that the GSB defined was the English Thoroughbred. The GSB demonstrates the Thoroughbred’s descent from Oriental sires and dams such as the Darley Arabian, the Leedes Arabian, and the Darcy Yellow Turk.

GSB Arabians in England: Volume XIII of the GSB appeared in 1877. This volume included a new Arabian section to register several horses recently imported to Britain from the desert near Aleppo. The first group, imported by Mr. Sandeman, had arrived in 1874. It included Yataghan and Haidee, sire and dam of *Naomi. The second importation, made by Mr. Chaplin, arrived in 1875. This group included the mare Kesia, carrying an in-utero foal named Kesia II. These early registrations were the beginning of current Arabian horse breeding in the English speaking world. The Arabian section was included in the GSB with the hope that the new imports would, in time, “give a valuable new line of blood from the original source of the English Thoroughbred.”[1]

Volume XIV of the GSB was published in 1881. The Arabian section was expanded several pages by the first importations of Mr. Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt, who founded their Crabbet Arabian Stud with desert bred Arabian horses they imported to England in 1878. The Crabbet Stud was to endure so long and to achieve such fame that today “Crabbet” is far better known than the stud book which registered its bloodstock. Crabbet has taken a place alongside Egyptian, Polish, and Spanish as one of the Arabian breed’s major bloodline categories.

The Crabbet horses overshadowed the other animals in the Arabian section of the GSB, even though Crabbet horses were not the first and were never the only ones registered there. There are several reasons for this. First, Crabbet was the single largest importer of GSB registered Arabians: approximately 51 animals from 1878 to 1910, two-thirds of which are still in Arabian pedigrees. Second, the Crabbet horses were imported especially to become breeding stock at the Crabbet Stud – not brought to England as retired officers’ mounts or as curiosities. Third, the Crabbet Stud owned and bred more than a thousand Arabians during a period of over 90 years – so long that it even outlasted the Arabian section of the GSB. Fourth, nearly all the non-Crabbet GSB imports with lines still breeding today come down to us only in combination with Crabbet blood.

The Arabian section of the GSB contained many imported Arabian and other Eastern horses (including a Barb mare named Safed) which either had no registered offspring or whose lines quickly disappeared from the stud book. Other than the Blunt horses, only about a dozen imported GSB foundation animals found their way into modern Arabian pedigrees.

Most of the non-Crabbet GSB foundation animals were owned by, or otherwise connected to, the stud of the Hon. Miss Etheldred Dillon. She began her program with the 1880 importation of El Emir, and later acquired some horses from Crabbet. Also among Miss Dillon’s foundation stock were the mares Ishtar, Kesia II, and *Shabaka (Mameluke x Kesia II), as well as the stallion Maidan. Miss Dillon had Rev. Vidal’s mare *Naomi on her farm – and Vidal’s use of *Kismet as a sire introduced that horse to modern pedigrees.

At the turn of the century Miss Dillon’s program was winding down; other breeders introduced the last four horses. Mootrub is in pedigrees through two foals: a colt out of a mare of Dillon+Crabbet breeding, and a filly out of Shakra. Dwarka stood at stud for the Prince of Wales (later Duke of Windsor), who bred him to the Crabbet mares Amida and Rangha. And Skowronek, imported last, is perhaps the most famous of all the GSB founders. After Lady Anne Blunt died in 1917, her husband and her daughter, Judith Blunt-Lytton (Lady Wentworth), disputed the ownership of the Crabbet Stud. The dispute went to court, and in 1920 Lady Wentworth emerged as the stud’s sole owner. Also in early 1920 she purchased the white stallion Skowronek, imported several years earlier from Poland. Skowronek quickly became one of Crabbet’s chief sires.

Skowronek was hardly the last Arabian imported to England, but he was the latest import to gain access to the GSB. In 1913 the Jersey act had closed the GSB to imported Thoroughbreds unless their pedigrees traced in all lines to horses entered in previous volumes. A 1921 decision did the same thing for the Arabian section. Thus a “GSB Arabian” became an Arabian from a clearly defined, closed pedigree group. Britain’s Arab Horse Society (AHS) was founded in 1918, and published its first stud book in 1919. This was likely a factor in the decision of Weatherbys not to enter any more new Arabian imports – the GSB’s Arabian gene pool was sufficiently large to continue indefinitely. Why not let the new stud book of the Arab Horse Society register future imported Arabians?

Thus for the next 45 years, England had two stud book authorities registering Arabian horses. Weatherbys continued to register those Arabian bloodlines “eligible for GSB” – and there was strong incentive for British breeders to maintain GSB registration. For one, the export market was crucial to them. Often countries overseas might not have an Arabian stud book, but probably did have a stud book for Thoroughbreds. An Arabian with a GSB certificate could be entered in virtually any Thoroughbred stud book in the world.

From the first, the stud book of the Arab Horse Society allowed entry of new desert imports. As a registration authority for Arabian horses, it also entered imports from Poland, the United States, the U.S.S.R., and elsewhere. Most of the GSB Arabian foals carried “dual registration,” entered in both GSB and AHS. If a GSB foal did not appear in AHS, it was often because it had been exported young or died young.

The GSB continued to register Arabian foals until Weatherbys announced that as of January 1, 1965, the Arabian section would be discontinued. Rosemary Archer, owner and breeder of GSB Arabians since the late 1940s, described the response to this.

“…a strong representation was made by The Arab Horse Society asking [Weatherbys] to retain the Arabian section. . . . [Weatherbys] intimated that if the Arab horses registered in the G.S.B. had been used for crossing with Thoroughbreds to produce racehorses, they might have been interested in retaining the Arabian Section but there was no question of a reservoir of pure Arab blood being kept for possible future use…. ‘it is sad,’ Weatherby’s spokesman conceded, ‘after so many years, but there it is.’ “[2]

Thus the stud book of the Arab Horse Society was left as the Arabian breed’s official registration authority in Great Britain, and GSB Arabian foals born 1965 and later did not carry Weatherbys registration. Nonetheless several breeders in Britain continued to breed GSB Arabians, whether “straight Crabbet” or carrying crosses to the non-Crabbet GSB founders. Beginning in the mid 1970s, imports of Arabians from around the world flowed to Britain in increasing numbers. While breeders in England today have a much wider selection of bloodlines, this has also meant that the older English bloodlines, including the “straight Crabbet” and GSB horses, are in danger of being crossed out of existence. As a means of fostering the breeding of these horses, A Catalogue of Arabians in Great Britain Descending from G.S.B. Registered Horses appeared in the early 1990s.

GSB Arabians in America have been present almost from the first. The earliest imported mare with descent in registered Arabian pedigrees was *Naomi. In the years before World War II when American breeders were laying in their foundation stock, GSB imports outnumbered those from any other source, including Poland, Egypt, and the desert itself. Into the 1930s, foals theoretically “eligible for GSB” if sent back to England made up fully one third of all U.S. registrations. Of the remaining two-thirds, most carried substantial Crabbet or other GSB ancestry.

The list of the GSB imports brought to America prior to World War II is a familiar litany. It is impossible to imagine traditional American Arabian breeding without these horses. The Roger Selby imports included *Raffles, *Indaia, *Rose of France, *Kareyma, and *Rifala. The W.K. Kellogg imports included *Raseyn, *Ferda, *Nasik, *Rifla, *Rossana, *Ferdin, *Rissletta, and *Crabbet Sura. W.R. Brown’s group contained *Berk, *Rijma, *Ramim, *Rokhsa, and *Simawa, among others. F.L. Ames brought in *Astraled, *Narda II, and *Noam, while Homer Davenport imported *Abu Zeyd. Spencer Borden brought us *Rose of Sharon, *Ghazala, *Shabaka, and *Rodan. Counting in-utero foals, there were 111 pre-World War II GSB imports in all, of which some 77 are still in pedigrees.

Our stud book shows another 28 GSB horses brought in between 1947 and 1956. These include *Ranix, *Silver Crystal, *Rithan, *Shamadan, *Sun Royal, *Serafix, and *Electric Storm.

In 1957 Lady Wentworth died, and so did her rival breeder Miss Gladys Yule of the Hanstead Stud. The heirs of both women were forced to reduce the herds. This enabled Bazy Tankersley of Al-Marah Arabians to assemble the largest single importation of Arabians to America up to that time. Among the horses were *Salinas, *Silwara, *Thorayya, *Little Owl, *Royal Diamond, and *Silwa. The stallion *Count Dorsaz joined them a year later. From 1957 to 1959 about 61 GSB horses, including the Al-Marah shipment, were imported by various parties.

Importations of GSB horses continued through the next several years, then tapered off toward the end of the 1960s, for a total of some 53 imports for that decade. The early 1960s brought *Nizzam, *Silver Vanity, *Oran van Crabbet, and *Silver Drift. The Lewisfield imports of the same era included *Fire Opal, *Touch of Magic, and *Lewisfield Magic. In 1966 came Bazy Tankersley’s *Royal Dominion.

Only 13 GSB horses were imported in the 1970s, of which one was *RAS Indian Silver. However the 1980s saw a renewal of interest in GSB horses, with 43 more imports. These included *Silvern Magic, *Sa’ika, *Achim NSB, *Odessa NSB, *Seffer, *Rimmon, and *Seyad.

Importations of all Arabians have slowed in the 1990s. To this writer’s knowledge, thus far the only registered import of GSB pedigree is *Star Reflection, imported in 1995.

Counting *Star Reflection, the Arabian Horse Registry of America has registered 311 imported horses of GSB pedigree. But another approximately 2,000 registrations are of GSB horses bred in the United States. Sixty years ago “GSB eligible” Arabians were about a third of all registrations. Now, they constitute less than half of one percent. This does not mean they have vanished from the gene pool, because most Arabians in America have some GSB blood somewhere in their pedigrees – and many are 50% or more GSB-derived. But “straight GSB” Arabians have become rare.

For years GSB stallions and their sons dominated the lists of top sires of American show winners. These GSB stallions included *Serafix, Ferseyn, Abu Farwa, Indraff, *Raffles, *Silver Drift, Aarief, *Count Dorsaz, Sureyn, Al-Marah Radames, Rapture, Aaraf, Gulastra, *Silver Vanity, and Al-Marah El Hezzez. But prominent sire lines in a breed can change rapidly. In the last 25 years other sire lines have taken a substantial market share away from the lines of Mesaoud, Mahruss, and Skowronek.

In the 70s and 80s marketing emphasis was placed on horses of “pure” or “straight” national origin. One might think this would have boosted the numbers of GSB and straight Crabbet Arabians. Paradoxically, it worked to their disadvantage. Many GSB mares were outcrossed to stallions of Polish and Egyptian lines. The outcrosses no doubt produced lovely horses, as such crosses did in past decades, but registrations of GSB foals in America skidded to new lows in the mid-1970s.

In the 1990s, with more Arabian horses and semen flying around the world than ever before, the traditional 20th century distinctions between national breeding groups are breaking down. In the interest of the Arabian breed’s genetic diversity, it makes sense to identify and conserve those living horses from distinctive breeding traditions. Among these are the GSB Arabians and their various subsets. These subsets include, for example, horses tracing entirely to Blunt imports, and horses of Blunt+Skowronek pedigree.

Arabian Visions offers a catalog of the GSB Arabians registered in the United States. It includes a complete pedigree index tracing GSB Arabians imported to America back to the original foundation horses imported to England, and quotes the entries for these horses from the GSB.

Notes:
1. Quoted from GSB Volume XIV.
2. Quoted from the introduction to A Catalogue of Arabians in Great Britain Descending
from G.S.B. Registered Horses.

Gray Polish Arabian stallion Fetysz, born 1924.

Early Polish Pedigrees Simplified: The Three Main Categories

Copyright 1992 by R.J.CADRANELL
from Arabian Visions February 1992
Used by permission of RJ Cadranell

Polish pedigrees from the 19th century are not as labyrinthian as they seem on first examination. To make them easier to understand, they can be separated into three main categories: Sanguszko, Branicki, and Dzieduszycki.

In the 19th century, there were three noble families responsible for the bulk of the modern root stock scattered in World War I and carefully collected after the war. Of these, the Sanguszko family is possibly the best known. Their 19th century studs included Slawuta, Chrestowka, Satanow, Antoniny, and Gumniska (the Potocki family of Antoniny was related by marriage and the stock at Antoniny was Slawuta descended). Polish pedigrees dating back beyond the middle of the 19th century, with named dam lines, are generally of the horses of the Sanguszko. Another way to tell the Slawuta and Chrestowka lines is the names of the horses. Prior to 1861, they follow no pattern as to first initial. Beginning in 1861, foals born in the same year were given names beginning with the same letter. Thus Republika, Rymnik, Reduta, and Rewanza were born in 1876; Siersa, Sybilla, and Slawuta were born in 1877.

The Branicki family also had pedigrees dating back to approximately 1800. Lines from their stud were not as abundant as Slawuta lines in the stock that survived World War I. Their studs were Bialocerkiew, Janiszowka, Szamrajowka, and Uzin. Often, Branicki horses will have names beginning with the same letter as the sire’s name. For example, Hadrja is by Hamdani I by Hussar. Not as many Branicki stud records appear to have survived for the preparation of the Polish Arabian Stud Book in the 1920s, so Branicki horses are more likely to lack foaling dates and occasionally named dams.

The last of the three families to enter Arab horse breeding was the Dzieduszycki. Their studs, Jarczowce, Jezupol, and Jablanow, began in 1840 with the purchase of the stallion Bagdad from a Levantine dealer and horse importer named Glioccho. In 1845, Count Juliusz Dzieduszycki returned from what may have been Poland’s single most important horse buying expedition to Arabia. He brought with him a number of stallions and the legendary mares Gazella, Mlecha, and Sahara.

The bloodlines these three families used have little or no overlap with the pre-World War I foundation lines of other Arabian horse breeding countries. Some overlap does occur with the stud of the Kings of Wurttemberg at Weil, and the Austro-Hungarian state studs of Babolna and Radautz. Weil, near Stuttgart, was founded in 1817 and is Germany’s most historically important breeding stud. During the 19th century, Weil maintained its own distinct and identifiable group of bloodlines, although there was some interchange of stock with Babolna. Babolna, in Hungary, was a military horse breeding establishment akin to the noble and royal horse breeding efforts going on in other parts of central and eastern Europe. Babolna exchanged horses on a limited basis with Weil, and sent a limited number of horses to some of the Polish nobility, but for the most part maintained a herd distinct from that at Weil or those of the Polish nobles. Weil and Babolna continued to influence breeding in Poland, and breeding in Poland also influenced Weil and Babolna, into the 20th century.

All of these studs continued to add new horses from the desert from time to time, with the last such importation arriving in 1932. This group included Kuhailan Haifi, Kuhailan Zaid, and Kuhailan Afas. Erika Schiele described this 1930s expedition as the first of its kind since World War I, and probably the last in our century and for all time.

These were the basic pedigree components of most Arabian horses in Poland at the time the Polish Arab Horse Breeding Society was founded in 1926. In the sample pedigree of *Bask, a well known Polish import, we can see how these elements came together. Witraz, Ofir, Makata, Dziwa, and Fetysz were all bred between the wars at the state stud of Janow Podlaski, and were from the breeding program reestablished there in 1919. Both of Dziwa’s parents, Abu Mlech and Zulejma, were bred at the Dzieduszycki stud of Jezupol, and had pedigrees composed of the Dzieduszycki desert imports as well as a few Babolna lines. One could consider Dziwa “straight Dzieduszycki.” Gazella II was also bred at Jezupol, and was a further representative for Janow of the Dzieduszycki breeding. Her pedigree also contained some of the old Weil lines of Germany through her grandsire Anvil, bred at Weil. Fetysz carried a substantially different pedigree. His sire Bakszysz had come from Slawuta, and brought to Janow lines to the old Sanguszko stock. The dam of Fetysz, 282 Siglavi Bagdady, was bred at the Austro-Hungarian state stud of Radautz. Her sire was one of the desert breds imported by Austria-Hungary. Her dam, 15 Malta, was bred at Chrestowka from a mare of the old Sanguszko lines. Malta’s sire, Handzar, brings in just a drop of Branicki blood to the pedigree of Witraz.

*Bask 1956 Albigowa Witraz 1938 Janow Ofir 1933 Janow Kuhailan Haifi OA Desert Bred  
 
Desert Bred  
 
Dziwa 1922 Janow Abu Mlech 1902 Jezupol  
 
Zulejma 1914 Jezupol  
 
Makata 1931 Janow Fetysz 1924 Janow Bakszysz 1901 Slawuta  
 
282 Siglavi Bagdady 1908 Radautz Siglavi Bagdady OA
15 Malta 1892 Chrestowka
Gazella II 1914 Jezupol    
 
   
 
Balalajka 1941 Krasnica Amurath Sahib 1932 Brenlow 35 Amurath II 1907 Radautz Amurath 1881 Weil  
 
Fatme OA  
 
Sahiba 1924 Breniow Nana Sahib 1907 Weil  
 
Donka 1910 Babolna  
 
*Iwonka III 1936 Krasnica Ibn Mahomet 1925 Gumniska    
 
   
 
Lysa 1915 Prusy Hassizi 1898 Janiszowka  
 
Dzami I 1896 Regow Dardzal 1879 Szamrajowka
Eminach 1888

Balalajka, *Bask’s dam, represents Polish breeding between the wars carried on outside of the state stud of Janow. Her sire, Amurath Sahib, has no lines to Branicki or Sanguszko bred animals. His sire, 35 Amurath II, was bred at Radautz from a desert bred mare and Weil’s Amurath 1881, used at Radautz at the end of his life and one of the most famous products of Weil breeding. Sahiba, like her son Amurath Sahib, was bred in Poland between the wars at the small private stud of Breniow. Her sire was bred at Weil and her dam at Babolna. In spite of this, she does have a distant line to Dzieduszycki breeding. As a horse of Weil and Babolna lines, Amurath Sahib was more or less an outcross to the Branicki, Sanguszko, and Dzieduszycki stock.

*Iwonka III combined the lines of the three Polish families. She was a daughter of Ibn Mahomet, a stallion with a Slawuta/Gumniska pedigree. Lysa was by Hassizi, a horse bred at Janiszowka from Branicki lines. Dzami I’s sire Dardzal also carried a Branicki pedigree. Eminach’s sire Bagdad was a Dzieduszycki horse from Jarczowce. Eminach’s dam, Indostanka, was also bred at Jarczowce, but her sire Hindostan I came from Satanow and had a Sanguszko pedigree. Indostanka’s dam, and thus the rest of the tail female, is Dzieduszycki breeding.

For anyone tackling Polish pedigrees, these distinctions offer a way to sort through the names and bring some order out of initial confusion.

The Blunts and Crabbet Stud

An Abbreviated History And Description of the Breeding Program

by Robert J. Cadranell II
revised and copyrighted 1998 by RJ Cadranell II
used by permission of RJ Cadranell II

Countless times writers have referred to the Crabbet Arabian Stud as the most influential privately owned Arabian stud in the world, and rightly so. The story of the Crabbet Stud and its visionary though eccentric founders, Mr. Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt, is the subject of many articles and books written over the years. However, few have made any attempt to analyze the breeding program in the era of the Blunts, choosing to focus instead on the more dramatic stories of the acquisition of the foundation animals, the Partition of the stud in 1906, and the famous lawsuit fought after Lady Anne’s death between her husband and daughter. The present article is an attempt to describe the breeding program of the Blunts and the changes it underwent as time passed and their knowledge of the breed increased. Crabbet under their daughter, Judith Blunt-Lytton (Lady Wentworth), deserves an article unto itself.

The Blunts had travelled in Spain, then in 1873 through Turkey and Algeria. Next, they went in 1875 to Egypt and Damascus. They longed to go further east. In November of 1877 they set out for Syria to travel in the Syrian deserts and Mesopotamia, with one further end in mind. If possible, they wanted to purchase a horse of the same strain as the famous Thoroughbred foundation sire the Darley Arabian. On board a ship bound for Alexandretta, they met a gentleman who recommended they first go to Aleppo to confer with Mr. James Skene, the British Consul. This they did. Snowstorms detained them in Aleppo, but the extended stay with Skene gave birth to another idea. Lady Anne noted in her journal on the 14th of December, 1877 that

“We have made a plan … of importing some of the best Anazeh blood to England and breeding it pure there … it would be an interesting and useful thing to do and I should like much to try it.” [1]

Mr. Blunt later wrote that they owed the idea to Skene.[2]

When the storms cleared the Blunts set out on the journey recorded in The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates. They bought horses themselves, and Skene bought some as well. These first horses they imported to England from 1878-9, and they are listed in Table A.[3]

TABLE A: Desert-bred imports to Crabbet Stud, 1878-9
Name Strain
Those with Al Khamsa descent:
BASILISK Saqlawiyah
DAJANIA Kuhaylah
JERBOA Mu’niqiyah, on both sides of pedigree
KARS Saqlawi
PHARAOH Saqlawi
QUEEN OF SHEBA Abayyah, sire a Mu’niqi
Those which did not breed on within Al Khamsa:
BURNING BUSH Kuhaylah
DAMASK ROSE Saqlawiyah
DARLEY Kuhaylan-Ras-al-Fidawi
FRANCOLIN Sa’adah
HAGAR Kuhaylah
PURPLE STOCK Kuhaylah
SHERIFA Hamdaniyah
TAMARISK Sa’adah
WILD THYME same as Darley, above

Some of these first horses were similar to Thoroughbreds in type, and since one of Blunt’s early aims was to reintroduce Arabian blood into the English Thoroughbred, these were a logical selection. One Jockey Club member pronounced the early Crabbet stock “thoroughbreds in miniature,” much to the delight of Mr. Blunt.[4] Skene erroneously informed the Blunts that the Darley Arabian had been a Kuhaylan-Ras-al-Fidawi, so they had imported two animals of this strain. In actuality, he was a Mu’niki.[5]

The Blunts made further travels in Arabia. The next importation consisted of six mares, in 1881 (Table B). In 1884 four new stallions followed, enumerated in Table C. The first three listed of these stallions had been owned in India for racing following their export from Arabia. The animals in Tables A-C constitute the breeding stock of what amounts to the first phase of the Crabbet breeding program, 1879-1884.

This program the Blunts aimed at producing horses that might one day compete with Thoroughbreds on the English turf. As Wilfrid Blunt outlined it,

“the assumption on which the whole experiment has been based has been of course that stock foaled in this country would, by the action of the English climate, combined with good feeding, increase in size, and probably also in speed. …”[6]

To determine if such were the case, Wilfrid Blunt persuaded the Jockey Club to hold an Arab race at Newmarket in 1884. The results were inconclusive, but the Blunts came to abandon the idea of rejuvenating the Thoroughbred. Many years later Blunt summarized his conversion, writing

“I was on wrong lines in breeding Arabs for speed, and not for those more valuable qualities in which their true excellence lies. Had I continued with my original purpose, I should have lost time and money, and probably have also spoiled my breed, producing stock taller perhaps and speedier, but with the same defects found in the English thoroughbred.”[7]

In another place we find,

“The Crabbet Park Stud… is carried on on strict Arabian principles, and as there is no attempt at increasing the height of the stock, the Kehailan type has been well preserved.”[8]

Additional comments of Mr Blunt on the purpose of the Crabbet Stud run,

“It was the conviction that this wonderful breed of horse was threatened with extinction in its native home that led me… to make the attempt you now see carried out at Crabbet of rescuing at least a fraction of the race and preserving it in all its purity in England. This was my first and most important object—not to improve the breed—for it really needs no improvement—but to keep it pure; pure not only in blood, but in type also, to preserve it carefully from deterioration in shape, in temper, in hardihood, and from departure from those special characteristics of beauty which are peculiar to the ancient race.”[9]

It is unfortunate that the two major reference works that the Blunts authored, The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (1879) and A Pilgrimage to Nejd (1881), were written while they themselves had just begun to familiarize themselves with the Arabian horse. While both are valuable books filled with solid material, they could not possibly contain the experience and insights that the Blunts later gained through forty years of breeding and studying the Arabian. Lady Anne did, however, finish an authoritative work on the Arabian horse near the end of her life. This “Book of Fragments,” as she referred to it, she willed to her daughter Judith, who also inherited the barony of Wentworth at her mother’s death. Portions of this “Book of Fragments” supposedly appear in Lady Wentworth’s Authentic Arabian Horse, but it is difficult to distinguish Lady Anne’s voice from her daughter’s.

TABLE B: Desert bred imports to Crabbet Stud, 1881
Name Strain
Those with Al Khamsa descent:
RODANIA Kuhaylah
Those which did not breed on within Al Khamsa:
CANORA Kuhaylah
DAHMA Dahmah
JEDRANIA Saqlawiyah
MESHURA Saqlawiyah; sire a Mu’niqi
ZEFIFIA Kubayshah

TABLE C: Desert bred imports of 1884.

Those with Al Khamsa descent:

HADBAN PROXIMO   Hadban Kuhalan, sire a Mu’niqi   Those which did not breed on within Al Khamsa:   RATAPLAN ABEYAN Dahman Abayyan TABLE D: Last desert bred imports, 1888-91.

Those with Al Khamsa descent:

AZREK FERIDA Saqlawi Mu’niqiyah   Those which did not breed on within Al Khamsa:   ASHGAR JILFA Saqlawi Jilfah TABLE E: Horses bred in Egypt and imported to Crabbet:   1891 KHATILA MERZUK MESAOUD SAFRA SOBHA   1892 SHAHWAN   1897 BADIA BINT HELWA BINT NURA FULANA JOHARA MAHRUSS 1898 ABU KHASHEB JELLABIEH KASIDA MAKBULA   1904 FEYSUL IBN YASHMAK

The final desert bred horses to join the Crabbet program are listed in Table D. The foal crops of 1880-1891 were produced almost entirely from breeding imported desert bred mares, their daughters, and granddaughters to imported stallions. The only exceptions are about eight foals that the Crabbet bred stallions Roala (Kars/Rodania) and Jeroboam (Pharaoh/Jerboa) sired.

In the first decade of breeding at Crabbet, the Blunts culled many of the original mare lines they had imported. By 1891, no lines remained from Burning Bush, Damask Rose, Purple Stock, Francolin, Tamarisk, Canora, or Zefifia. The Wild Thyme, Dahma, Jedrania, Jilfa and Hagar families left Crabbet soon after. The Blunts tended to think in terms of mare lines, reflected in their system of naming a foal according to the first letter of its dam’s name. This is also a reflection of the Bedouin practice of handing down the strain names from the dam. Certain of the imported mares did not meet the Blunts’ standards. The Blunts were unable to verify the purity of some to their satisfaction, so these were sold along with any progeny. Other mares were barren. Others did not produce the quality that the Blunts desired. In 1904 Wilfrid Blunt stated,

“the produce of certain imported mares, however good individually these were, will become eliminated from the stud and it will be idle out of sentiment to retain them. It is better such strains should be lost when after three generations they have failed to produce a sire of the first class.”

In this way the Sherifa line eventually died out as well. Nineteen years after her importation, her descent had still “not yet produced a first class colt.”[10] Similarly, the 1917 Crabbet catalogue records that the Meshura family had dwindled to one mare. The Blunts never used a stallion of the Meshura family. Although the Ferida family was well represented numerically in the 1917 catalog, it too gave no sires to the stud in the time of the Blunts. The desert mares still represented at Crabbet at the end of Lady Anne’s life were Basilisk, Jerboa, Dajania, Queen of Sheba, Meshura, Rodania, and Ferida. However, the Jerboa line had died out in tail-female.

The Blunts also eliminated many of the original stallion lines. Although Darley, Abeyan, Rataplan, and Ashgar all sired foals at Crabbet, their lines did not breed into the 20th century at that stud. Neither did Proximo’s, apparently. Kars, Pharaoh, Hadban, and Azrek were still represented at the end of the Blunt period of breeding.

1891 was the last year in which the Blunts’ foals were exclusively descended from their own desert imports. The year 1892 marked a transition. his foal crop included the last foals that Azrek (the last desert bred stallion used at Crabbet) sired for them, and the first foals from stallions and mares they had brought from Ali Pasha Sherif in Egypt.

The Ali Pasha horses had certain intangible qualities that led to another reorganization of the breeding program at Crabbet. “I don’t know what it is, or rather I don’t know how to put into words that indescribable air of distinction which marks the horses and mares of Ali Pasha Sherif’s…”[11] Lady Anne commented. Table E summarizes the Ali Pasha horses imported to Crabbet from Egypt.

Merzuk and Mesaoud had shared the 1892 foal crop with Azrek, but 1893 to 1901 saw the imported Ali Pasha horses dominate the breeding program. The only stallion used in this period not bred by Ali Pasha was Ahmar (Azrek/Queen of Sheba), who got roughly 19 foals. This is in sharp contrast with the total sired by the Ali Pasha stallions Mesaoud, Shahwan, and Mahruss in those years, which was something in excess of 90.

This Ali Pasha blood quickly permeated the Crabbet stock. The 1901 Crabbet Stud catalogue lists 81 horses. The average level of Ali Pasha blood in the herd at that time was 53%, indicating that in just ten years the Blunts had placed the Ali Pasha horses on an equal footing with their own desert imports.

In 1897 the Blunts decided they would add no further new blood to Crabbet.[12] This decision manifested itself in their bringing two Mesaoud sons into the stallion battery in 1901, Seyal and Rejeb. In over 20 years of breeding at Crabbet, only three home bred stallions had preceded them. The foal crop of 1902, therefore, marks the beginning of the final phase of the Blunt breeding program at Crabbet.

In the 1902 foal crop, Mesaoud presented his usual high quality foals, but the Blunts exported Rejeb to Japan in 1901, before any of his foals were on the ground. Seyal remained at Crabbet for several more years. Lady Anne seems to have preferred him to Rejeb; she wrote of Seyal “we could not do better except for colour and must risk some greys I suppose.”

Seyal was the last grey stallion the Blunts used at Crabbet to any extent. The only others had been Azrek and Shahwan (the imported grey colt Faris, out of Francolin, was also used sparingly). Of Shahwan Lady Anne wrote, “we can’t get his like again and would not part at all with him were he not grey.”[13]

This aspect may have also been a factor in the sale of Azrek to South Africa. Wilfrid Blunt considered Azrek the best imported sire up to that time, and only Mesaoud later surpassed him.[14] Lady Anne deeply regretted the sale of Azrek, but the ownership of his get consoled her to an extent. The difficulty with greys was that they did not sell as easily as bays and chestnuts. The Blunts constantly guarded against becoming overstocked, relying heavily on the export market as well as sales in England.

Seyal had just four seasons at Crabbet, during which the Blunts bred him, with one exception, only to grey mares. He got around 17 foals. In 1903 one of these grey mares, Bukra, produced a bay Seyal colt. This was Berk, whom Lady Anne ecstatically described as a yearling: “the sight of all was Berk lunged, as his action is magnificent—he was a perfect picture in motion…”[15] With a bay son to replace him, the Blunts sold Seyal that same year to India.

The stallions the Blunts used in their final phase (foal crops of 1902-20) were again imported horses of Ali Pasha stock, and home bred horses combining their own desert breeding with that of Ali Pasha. The one exception was Nejran (Azrek/Nefisa). The Blunts had sold Nejran as a two-year-old in 1893, repurchasing him in 1901. He stood for three seasons, getting about twelve foals before his sale to Australia in 1904. Nejran was the last stallion used at Crabbet who traced exclusively to their own desert stock, following the export of Ahmar to Java in 1901.

The choice of stallions of the lines listed above raised the level of Ali Pasha blood in the herd. The 1917 Crabbet catalogue lists 81 horses. At this point the average level of Ali Pasha blood was 57%. The increase over the 1901 percentage is not as much as one might expect, yet the figure demonstrates that the Ali Pasha blood did come to edge out the “Blunt” blood slightly. However, one must guard against taking the extreme view that the Blunts no longer valued their own desert selections. The level of representation of this blood was still 43%.

Of the Ali Pasha mares, the 1917 catalog details that no descendants remained from the families of Khatila, Badia, Safra, Fulana, Johara, or Jellabieh. However, the blood of the families of Sobha, Bint Helwa, Bint Nura, Makbula and her daughter Kasida, ran strong in the herd, with all but the latter having provided sires to the stud.

Of the imported Ali Pasha stallions, all but Abu Khasheb had progeny in the 1917 catalogue. Shahwan’s line, however, descended only through his grandson Ibn Yashmak, a son of his Egyptian born daughter Yashmak. His English born daughters Shohba (/Shelfa) and Reshmeh (/Rose of Sharon) were in the Crabbet broodmare band for a time, but the lines did not continue.

The imported stallions the Blunts used from 1901 to 1919, their final breeding years, were Mesaoud, Feysul, and Ibn Yashmak, getting between them in this period roughly 54 foals. The Crabbet bred stallions were first Rejeb, Seyal, and Nejran, as described above, then:

Name Sire/Dam Stood No. Get
Daoud Mesaoud/Bint Nura 1902-16 30
Narkise Mesaoud/Nefisa 1904 4
Astraled Mesaoud/Queen of Sheba 1904-09 24
Harb Mesaoud/Bint Helwa 1905-06 8
Rijm Mahruss/ Rose of Sharon 1906-13 26
Berk Seyal/Bukra 1907-16 27
Rustem Astraled/Ridaa 1911-18 12
Razaz Astraled/Rose of Hind 1913-15 6
Nasik Rijm/Narghileh 1914-17 11
Sotamm Astraled/Selma 1914-18 12

Following Lady Anne’s death at the end of 1917, Blunt bred a few foals from two additional stallions, and Lady Wentworth, who had repurchased Nadir (Mesaoud/Nefisa) from George Ruxton, bred him to a couple of the mares she had at Crabbet.

These Nadir foals were born in 1920, the year that the courts settled the lawsuit in Lady Wentworth’s favor. Wilfrid retained a few geldings as well as his favorite stallion Rustem and his 21-year-old riding mare Abla (Mesaoud/Asfura).

Lady Wentworth took charge of the rest of the stud. By the end of the year the stock had altered considerably since her mother’s death. Debts had forced Wilfrid to sell a large number of animals, and Lady Wentworth sold another large draft to the Royal Agricultural Society in Egypt, which included the stallions Razaz and Sotamm, as well as Ibn Yashmak. Of the stallions in the above table, the only one still at Crabbet at the end of 1920 was Nasik.

One odd aspect of the management at Crabbet was that the Blunts sold many of their best foundation stallions just as they were making important contributions to the herd. They regretted the sales of Azrek, Pharaoh, Hadban, Merzuk, and Mahruss at the time of sale and especially later, as their stock matured.

The influence of the Crabbet horses on current Al Khamsa stock is significant. Twenty-three Crabbet horses imported to America have bred on in Al Khamsa lines. An additional six are represented through animals imported from Egypt, a result of Lady Wentworth’s sale in 1920.

Al Khamsa bloodlines also contain descent from another desert bred stallion that Lady Anne owned. He was not, however, a part of the Crabbet breeding program. This was Saadun, a horse she brought from Arabia to her stud in Egypt in 1911. This breeding concern, the Sheykh Obeyd Stud, was located on the property of the same name outside of Cairo in Egypt. The Blunts had bought this land in 1882, later adding to the original 50 acre holding through the purchase of adjoining tracts. Some years later it became their annual winter home, following numerous improvements. The number of Arabians they kept here never approached that at Crabbet, and it served as temporary stabling for a few desert horses and all of their purcheses in Egypt awaiting shipment to England.

However, a number of horses never went to England, remaining as foundation stock for the Sheykh Obeyd Stud. There are grounds to support the argument that Sheykh Obeyd was a Stud in its own right, sharing some bloodlines with Crabbet, but a separate entity. The foundation stock descended mainly rom Ali Pasha Sherif and Abbas Pasha bloodlines, but also included a Bahraini mare that had been a gift to the Khedive of Egypt, from whom Lady Anne had purchased her, and several animals she had imported herself directly from Arabia in 1911 and 1913.

After Lady Anne died, Blunt gave the Public Trustee permission to sell the Sheykh Obeyd horses. Lady Wentworth records that most of them went to Captain Trouncer, acting on behalf of the Egyptian Horsebreeding Commisssion, while the rest went to a Greek by the name of Casdugli. A number of Sheykh Obeyd horses found their way into pedigrees influencing current Al Khamsa stock.

The horses of the Blunts at Crabbet and Sheykh Obeyd, through importation directly to America from England or through Egypt, provided an important “building block” for Al Khamsa.

  1. [1]Lady Anne Blunt, quoted in Archer, Pearson, Covey, The Crabbet Arabian Stud, Its History and Influence, (Gloucestershire: Heriot, 1978), pps. 32-33.↩
  2. [2]Archer, p. 34.↩
  3. [3]Also consulted: Weatherby’s General Stud Book.↩
  4. [4]Wilfrid S. Blunt, “The Forthcoming Arab Race at Newmarket,” in the Nineteenth Century, 1884. Reprinted in George H. Conn, The Arabian Horse in Fact, Fantasy, and Fiction, 4th ed. (New York: Arco, 1973), p. 371.↩
  5. [5]Archer, p. 35.↩
  6. [6]W. S. Blunt, reprinted in Conn, p. 373.↩
  7. [7]W. S. Blunt, Gordon at Kharoum, (London, 1912), pps. 263-5, quoted in Carl Raswan, The Raswan Index, (Mexico, 1957), I, p. 53, entry No. 847.↩
  8. [8] W.S.Blunt, “The Arabian,” Encyclopaedia of Sport, (Lawrence & Buller, 1900), reprinted in Margaret Greely, Arabian Exodus, 2nd ed. (London: Allen, 1976), p. 218.↩
  9. [9]W. S. Blunt, speech made 5 July, 1902, quoted in R.S.Summerhays, The Arabian Horse, 1976 ed. (California), p. 55.↩
  10. [10]W. S. Blunt, quoted in Archer, pps. 226-7.↩
  11. [11]Lady Anne Blunt, 1891, quoted in Judith Forbis, The Classic Arabian Horse, (New York: Liveright, 1976), p. 187.↩
  12. [12]Archer. p. 94.↩
  13. [13]Lady Anne Blunt, quoted in Archer, pps. 70-1.↩
  14. [14]W. S. Blunt, quoted in Archer, p. 227.↩
  15. [15]Lady Anne Blunt, quoted in Archer, p. 126.↩