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Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates

This entry is part [part not set] of 2 in the series Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates

Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (part II)

by Lady Anne Blunt orig pub in 1879

EDITED, WITH A PREFACE AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ARABS AND THEIR HORSES

BY W. S. BLUNT

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME ii

FRANK CASS & CO. LTD. 1968

CHAPTER XXVIII,

ON HORSES.

PART I  

PART II

CON’T

Of diseases there are few among the Bedouin horses. I have never heard of an instance of roaring, and only once of broken wind. An accident known as “twisted gut,” is, however, rather common, and some other diseases of an inflammatory nature which prove suddenly fatal. Horses, mares, colts, and all alike are starved during great part of the year, no corn being ever given, and only camel’s milk when other food fails. they are often without water for several days together, and in the most piercing nights of winter they stand uncovered, and with no more shelter than can be got on the lee side of the tents. Their coats become long and shaggy, and they are left uncombed and unbrushed till the new coat comes in spring. At these times they are ragged-looking scarecrows, half-starved, and as rough as ponies. In the summer, however, their coats are as fine as satin, and they show all the appearance of breeding one has a right to expect of their blood.

The Bedouin never uses a bit or bridle of any sort, but instead, a halter with a fine chain passing round the nose. With this he controls his mare easily and effectually. He rides on a pad of cotton, fastened on the mare’s back by a surcingle, and uses no stirrups. This pad is the most uncomfortable and insecure seat imaginable, but fortunately the animals are nearly always gentle and without vice. I have never seen either violent plunging, rearing, or indeed any serious attempt made to throw the rider. Whether the Bedouin would be able to sit a bare-backed unbroken four-year old colt, as the gauchos of South America do, is exceedingly doubtful.

The Bedouin has none of the arts of the horse-dealer. He knows little of showing off a horse, or even of making him stand to advantage, but, however anxious he may be to sell him, brings him just as he is, dirty and ragged, tired, and perhaps broken-kneed. He has a supreme contempt himself for everything except blood in his beast, and he expects everybody else to have the same. He knows nothing of the simple art of telling a horse’s age by the teeth, and still less of any dealer’s trick in the way of false marking. this comes from the fact that in the tribe, each colt’s age is a matter of public notoriety. We avoided, as much as possible, having direct commercial dealings with our friends in the desert, but, from all we heard and the little we saw of such transactions, it is evidently very difficult to strike a satisfactory bargain. As soon as one price is fixed, another is substituted; and, unless the intending purchaser rides resolutely away, there is no chance of the bargain being really concluded. Once done, however, and the money counted and re-counted by half a dozen disinterested friends, the horse or mare may be led away. I do not think the Bedouins have in general much personal love for their mares, only a great deal of pride in them, and a full sense of their value.

As I have already said, they will not tell a falsehood in respect of the breeding of their animals, a habit partly due to the honour in which all things connected with horseflesh are held, partly, too, not doubt, to the public notoriety of the breed or breeds in each family, which would at once expose the falsehood; and public opinion is severe on this head.

Having premised thus much of the general characteristics of the thoroughbred Arabian, I will now explain what I have been able to discover of his pedigree.

PEDIGREE OF THE ARABIAN HORSE.

Tradition states that the first horse-tamer was Ismail-ibn-Ibrahim, or Ishmael, who, after he was turned out of his father’s tents, captured a mare from among a herd which he found running wild, “mittl wahash” (like the wild ass). The Emir Abd-el-Kader, in confirming this story, told me that the children of Ishmael had a mare from this principal stock which grew up crooked, for she had been foaled on a journey and, being unable to travel, had been sewn into a khourj(ital), or goat’s-hair sack, and placed upon a camel. From her descended a special strain of blood, known as the Benat-el-Ahwaj, or “daughters of the crooked,” and this was the first distinction made by the Bedouins among their horses.

The Benat-el-Ahwaj, or Ahwaj, as it is more commonly called, may therefore be considered the oldest breed known. I have never heard of it in the Arabian deserts, but the Emir assures me that it exists under that name in the Sahara; and that the breeds now recognised in Arabia are but ramifications of this original stock.

It is difficult to give more than a guess as to the antiquity of the names now in use. The five breeds known as the Khamsa are not possessed by the tribes of Northern Africa; and it is therefore probable, that at the time of the first Arabian conquests (in the 7th and 8th centuries of our era), they had not yet become distinguished from the general stock. The Emir, however, does not doubt of their extreme antiquity, and I think it is certain that the Kehilans must have been contemporary with Mahomet; for a breed called Koklani exists in Persia, and we may fairly suppose it to have been brought there by the early Arabian invaders. It has not, however, been kept pure in Persia.

The Kehilans, then, we may presume, were an early sub-breed of the Ahwaj, receiving their name from the black marks certain Arabian horses have round their eyes; marks which give them the appearance of being painted with kohl, after the fashion of the Arab women. Or, indeed, “Kehilan” may be merely a new name for the Ahwaj, used first as an epithet, but afterwards superseding the older name in Arabia. This supposition is favoured by Niebuhr, who evidently treats the Kochlani, as he calls them, as the generic name of the pure Bedouin race, as contrasted with the Kadishes or town horses of the peninsula.

The Kochlani,” he says, “are reserved for riding solely. They are said to derive their origin from King Solomon’s studs. However this may be, they are fit to bear the greatest fatigues * * *. The Kochlani are neither large nor handsome” —

(It must be remembered that Niebuhr was a Dane, and took his ideas of beauty in all probability from the great Flanders’ horses ridden by our ancestors. The Eastern breed in his day, more than a hundred years ago, was hardly yet quite established even in England), —

but amazingly swift; it is not for their figure, but for their velocity and other good qualities that the Arabians esteem them. These Kochlani are chiefly bred by the Bedouins settled between Basra Merdin and Syria, in which countries the nobility never choose to ride horses of any other race. The whole race is divided into several families, each of which has its proper name; that of Dsjulfa seems to be the most numerous. Some of these families have a higher reputation than others, on account of their more ancient and uncontaminated nobility. Although it is known by experience, that the Kochlani are often inferior to the Kadischi, yet the mares at least, of the former, are always preferred, in the hopes of a fine progeny.

The Arabians have indeed no tables of genealogy to prove the descent of their Kochlani; yet they are sure of the legitimacy of the progeny; for a mare of this race is never covered unless in the presence of witnesses, who must be Arabians. This people do not indeed always stickle at perjury; but in a case of such serious importance, they are careful to deal conscientiously. There is no instance of false testimony given in respect to the descent of a horse. Every Arabian is persuaded that himself and his whole family would be ruined, if he should prevaricate in giving his oath in an affair of such consequence.

The Arabians make no scruple of selling their Kochlani stallions like other horses; but they are unwilling to part with their mares for money. When not in a condition to support them, they dispose of them to others, on the terms of having a share in the foals, or of being at liberty to recover them after a certain time.

These Kochlani are much like the old Arabian nobility, the dignity of whose birth is held in no estimation unless in their own country. These horses are little valued by the Turks. Their country being more fertile, better watered, and less level, swift horses are less necessary to them than to the Arabians. They prefer large horses, who have a stately appearance when sumptuously harnessed.

It should seem that there are also Kochlani in Hedjas and in the country of Dsjof; but I doubt if they be in estimation in the domains of the Imam, where the horses of men of rank appeared to me too handsome to be Kochlani. The English, however, sometimes purchase these horses at the price of 800 or 1000 crowns each. An English merchant was offered at Bengal twice the purchase-money for one of these horses; but he sent him to England, where he hoped that he would draw four times the original price.”

I have given this extract almost in extenso, as it is interesting in spite of some blunders, which are easily explained by the fact that Niebuhr never visited the great horse-breeding tribes. It shows, at any rate, that the names of the breeds were at that time as clearly established as now, and that these are in no wise a mere modern invention, as some assert, got up by horse-dealers for the benefit of Englishmen in India. The notion of such an imposture is not to be entertained by anyone who has conversed, even for half an hour, on horseflesh with a Bedouin. The fanatics about breeding are not the English but the Bedouins themselves; and it is inconceivable these can have been converted by any conspiracy of horse-dealers. An equally absurd idea, also current in India, is that the Anazeh breed has within the last sixty or seventy years received an infusion of English blood. Some talk of English thoroughbred horses, left by the French under Napoleon in Egypt, others of horses introduced into Syria forty years ago, but nobody who knows anything of the Anazeh can for an instant conceive that the existence of any number of English thoroughbreds at Damascus or Cairo, would have the slightest influence on their own breeding stock. By the Anazeh the finest horse that ever ran at Newmarket would be accounted a mere kadish, and would not even be looked at for stud purposes.*

*Some thoroughbreds brought by Mr. Skene to Aleppo eighteen or twenty years ago were laughed at by the Arabs even of the towns, and no one dreamed of sending his mares to them. Prejudice was too strong. We took great pains, while travelling with the Anezeh, to ascertain what they knew of our English thoroughbred stock, but with the exception of Mr. Skene’s they had never heard of any, and laughed heartily at the idea of any mixture with them or other kadishes having been permitted.

But to resume. The Kehilans, whenever first so called, have been without doubt a recognised breed in Arabia for many centuries, and were in all probability the parent stock which produced the other four great strains of blood, which with the Kehilan make up the Khamsa. These also have existed as distinct breeds in Arabia from “time immemorial,” but whether that means one hundred or five hundred, or a thousand years, it is quite impossible to say. The common belief of their descent from the five mares of Solomon is of course a fable, (2) and is not much talked of in the desert itself.

(2) Abd-el-Kader told me that these five mares were Benat-el-Ahway, purchased by Solomon of the Ishamelites, and that one of them, the most celebrated, was given by him to the Sheykh of the Uzd, in which tribe her descendants are still found. she was called Azd-el-Musefir (food for the traveller) on account of her being fast enough to run down the gazelle.

The names of the Khamsa, or five great strains of blood (originally Ahwaj, and possible all Kehilan,) are as follows: —

1. KEHILAN, fem. Kehileh (or Kehilet before a vowel).

This strain is most numerous, and, taken generally, the most exteemed. It contains a greater proportion, I think, of bays than any other strain. The Kehilans are the fastest, though not perhaps the hardiest horses, and bear a closer resemblance than the rest to English thoroughbreds, to whom indeed they are more nearly related. The Darley Arabian, perhaps the only thoroughbred Anazeh horse in our stud book, was a Kehilan. The Kehilan is not by any means the most beautiful of the strains. Its subdivisions are very numerous, and will be given, in the list at the end of this chapter. The favourite substrains are the Kehilan Ajuz, the Kehilan Nowag, the Kehilan Abu Argub, Abu Jenub, and Ras-el-Fedawi.

2. SEGLAWI, fem. Seglawieh

One strain of this blood, the Seglawi Jedran, is considered the best of all in the desert; and the Seglawis generally are held in high repute. They are, however, comparatively rare, and exist only in a few families of the Anazeh. Among the Shammar there are Seglawis, but no Seglawi Jedrans, the last mares of this breed having been bought up at fabulous prices by Abbas Pasha. The four strains, Jedran, Obeyran, Arjebi and el-Abd are identical in origin, being descended from four Seglawi mares, sisters–but only the first has been kept absolutely pure. Even the Seglawi Jedran is to be found pure in the families of Ibn Nederi and Ibn Sbeni only. The Seglawi Obeyran has been crossed with the Kehilans and other strains, and the El Abd though purer than the Obeyran is yet not absolutely so even in the family of Ibn Shaalan, where it is at its best. The Seglawi Jedran of Ibn Nederi is powerful and fast, but not particularly handsome. Ibn Sbeni’s strain is more perfect in appearance, and of equal purity.

3. ABEYAN, fem. Abeyeh.

The Abeyan is generally the handsomest breed, but is small and has less resemblance to the English thoroughbred than either of the preceding. The Abeyan Sherrak is the substrain most appreciated, and an Abeyan Sherrak we saw at Aleppo, bred by the Gomussa, could not have been surpassed in good looks. He was not however of a racing type. Again an Abeyeh Sherrak mare belonging to Beteyen ibn Mershid was the most perfect mare we saw. But her sire was a Kehilan Ajuz. The pure Abeyan Sherrak strain is only found in the family of Abu Jereys of the Meseka, and in a single family of the Jelaas.

4. HAMDANI, fem. Hamdanieh,

is not a common breed either among the Anazeh or Shammar. Most of the animals of this breed I have seen have been grey, but a very handsome brown horse was shown us by the Gomussa. This was a Hamdani Simri, which is the only substrain recognised as hadud. The very beautiful white mare, Sherifa, which we had with us on the latter part of our journey, was a Hamdanieh Simri. She was bred in Nejd, and had been in the possession of Ibn Saoud. Her head is the most perfect of any I have seen. She stands fourteen hands two inches, and is pure white in colour, with the kohl patches round the eyes and nose very strongly and blackly marked. Her ears are long like a hind’s, and her eyes as full and soft. She was admired all over the desert. In shape, head apart, she is more like an English hunter than a racehorse.

5. HADBAN, fem. Hadbbeh,

also uncommon among the Anazeh, the best having formerly been possessed by the Roala. Hadban Enzekhi is the best substrain, and to it belonged a remarkable mare owned by Mohammed Jirro at Deyr. She stood about fourteen hands two and a-half inches, was a bay with black points, carried her tail very high, and was full of fire. She looked like a racehorse, though not an English one. The two other substains, Mshetib and El Furrd, are not so much esteemed as the Enzekhi.

Besides these five great breeds, which are called the Khamsa, there are sixteen other breeds, all more or less esteemed, and most of them with one or more strains of blood, accounted equal to the Khamsa. These are: —

1. MANEGHI, fem. Maneghieh (the long necked).

Said by some (but without sufficient authority) to be an off-shoot of the Kehilan Ajuz. The characteristics of this breed are marked. They are plain and without distinction, have coarse heads, long ewe necks, powerful shoulders, much length and strong but coarse hind quarters. They have also much bone, and are held in high repute for the qualities of endurance and staying power. Niebuhr’s description of the Kochlanis seems to have been written expressly for them. Of the two substains the most esteemed is the Maneghi Hedruj, of which the family of Ibn Sbeyel of the Gomusa possesses the finest mares. These are generally known as Maneghi Ibn Sbeyel, but there is no distinct strain of that name. The other substrain, Maneghi es slaji (greyhound), is described as being “the original” Maneghi breed.

2. SAADAN, fem. Saadeh.

The substrain, Saadan Togan, is in high repute. The handsomest and strongest mare we have is of this breed. She is a chestnut fourteen hands two inches, of perfect beauty and immense power, but she cannot gallop with the Kehilans. She bears a strong resemblance to one of the portraits of Eclipse, that published in the “Book of the Horse.” She was bred by the Towf Anazeh, who never come north of the Hamad. She was known far and wide among the Anezeh tribes as “the Saadeh.”

3. DAKHMAN, fem. Dakhmeh.

The substrain Em Amr. We saw a very beautiful Dakhmeh filly at the Gomussa. All the horses of this breed we saw or heard of were dark bay or brown.

4. SHUEYMAN, fem. Shueymeh.

Of this the only substrain is the Shueyman Sbab. Faris, Sheykh of the Northern Shammar, has a mare of this breed. She is coarse, but of immense strength and courage, and when moving becomes handsome. She is a dark bay of fourteen hands three inches, or thereabouts.

5. JILFAN, fem Jilfeh

Substrain Jilfan Stam el Bulad (sinews of steel). A –, son of Mijuel of the Misrab, rode a fine bay three-year old colt, a Jilfan Stam el Bulad.

6. TOESSAN, fem. Toesseh.

Substrain Toessan Algami. The only horse we saw of this breed was a bay, handsome but very small.

7. SAMHAN, fem. Samheh.

Substrain Samhan el Gomeaa. The tallest and strongest colt we saw among the Gommussa was of this breed. He has already been described in the journal.

8. WADNAN, fem.Wadneh.

Substrain Wadnan Hursan.

9. RISHAN, fem. Risheh.

Substrain Rishan Sherabi.

10. KEBEYSHAN, fem Kebeysheh.

Substrain Kebeyshan el Omeyr.

11. MELEKHAN, fem. Melekha.

12. JEREYBAN, fem. Jereybeh.

13. JEYTANI, fem. Jeytanieh.

14. FEREJAN, fem. Ferejeh.

15. TREYFI, fem. Treyfieh.

16. RABDAN, fem. Rabdeh.

It will be observed that in the foregoing list, all the breeds, except the last six, have at least one substrain, whose name is added to that of the breed, and these substrains only are used in choosing sires. A Kehilan without an affix to his name is not hadud, that is, not “worthy;” and of the disqualified class mares only are used for breeding — their produce, however, inherit their disabilites, and the Arabs do not consider that a stain in the blood can be extinguished by lapse of time. On the other hand, a Rishan, with the affix of Sherabi, or a Samhan, with that of El Gomeaa, are perfectly qualified, although a Kehilan Ajuz or a Seglawi Jedran would be preferred. Of the minor breeds none are kept absolutely pure, except the Maneghi Hedruj of Ibn Sbeyel. In all cases, the breed of the colt is that of his dam, not of his sire.

There is no such distinction in the desert as that made in India, of high caste and low caste, first class and second class. An animal, about whose breeding there is any doubt, is disqualified altogether, and is not bred from.

I add a table, showing the whole of the strains and substains, premising that one and all of them are reputed to have descended from the same original stock.

Web cmkarabians.com

Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates

This entry is part [part not set] of 2 in the series Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates

Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (part I)

by Lady Anne Blunt orig pub in 1879

EDITED, WITH A PREFACE AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ARABS AND THEIR HORSES

BY W. S. BLUNT

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME ii

FRANK CASS & CO. LTD. 1968

CHAPTER XXVIII,

ON HORSES.

PART I  

PART II

A neighing quadruped, used in war, and draught and carriage.”

Arab horse-breeding — Obscurity respecting it — There is no Nejdean breed — Picture of the Anazeh horse–He is a bold jumper — Is a fast horse for his size — His nerve excellent, and his temper — Causes of deterioration — How the Bedouins judge a horse — Their system of breeding and training — Their horsemanship indifferent — Their prejudices — Pedigree of the thoroughbred Arabian horse.

Considering the obscurity in which the whole subject of Arab horse-breeding is hidden in England, I trust that I shall be excused for venturing to give a slight sketch of this interesting subject. It was one that engaged our attention more than any other on our late journey, and which we took especial pains to understand in principle as well as in detail.

It is singular that former travellers should not have attempted this. Niebuhr and Burckhardt, exhaustive as they generally are, are silent here, or tell us little that is correct, while later travellers, either from lack of interest or lack of knowledge, ignores the subject altogether. Mr. Palgrave, in his contempt of all things Bedouin, disposes of the Anazeh horses in a few sentences, which reveal his little acquaintance with his subject, and repeats a fantastic account of the Royal Stables at Riad and the tale of a distinct Nejdean breed existing there, a tale which so far as I could learn no Bedouin north of Jebel Shammar believes a word of: Mr. Palgrave must have been deceived on this point by the townsmen of Riad, for the northern Bedouins know Ibn Saoud perfectly by name and know of his mares. But they all assert that the Riad stud is quite a modern collection, got together by Feysul and acquired principally from themselves. Abdallah-ibn-Feysul-inb-Saoud still sends to the Anazeh for additions to it from time to time; and I know of one instance in which he sent four mares from Riad as far as Aleppo to a celebrated horse standing there.

General Daumans’s book on the horses of the Sahara does not do more than touch on those of Arabia; and, with the exception of an Italian work which I have heard of, but which is out of print, I know of nothing on the subject better than Captian Upton’s pamphlet called “Newmarket and Arabia.” This, with some really interesting facts and generally correct notions, is but a sketch taken from information gained at second hand. The pamphlet, as far as it relates to Arabia, consists mainly of a discussion as to what sort of horse it was Noah took with him into the ark, and where the horse went after he was let out of it. *

*Since writing the above I have been shown an article in Fraser’s Magazine of September, 1876, in which Captain Upton corrects his original impressions about Arabian horse-breeding, in consequence of a visit paid by him to the Sebaa, Moali and other tribes in the neighbourhood of Aleppo. The account thus corrected is exceedingly good, though it still contains not a few mistakes.

Not to go back so far as that, I think we may be content with accepting the usual belief that Arabia was one of the countries where the horse was originally found in his wild state, and where he was first caught and tamed. By Arabia, however, I would not imply the peninsula, which, according to every account we have of it, is not at all a country suited to the horse in his natural condition. there is no water above the ground in Nejd, nor any pasture fit for horses except during the winter months; and the mares kept by the Bedouins there are fed, during part of the year at least, on dates and camel’s milk. Every authority agrees on this point. The Nejd horses are of pure blood, because of the isolation of the peninsula, and the want of proper food has stunted the breed. Nejd bred horses are neither so tall nor so fast as those of the Hamad, although the blood is the same. Dr. Colvill, who went to Riad in 1854, assures me that he saw but one single mare during the whole of his journey there and back, and that that was a small insignificant animal. He has seen, however, ponies of thirteen hands in el Hasa which he describes as “little lions,” of great power and beauty; the “tattoes” of the Indian market.

It is not then in the peninsula of Arabia, where water is only to be had from wells, that the original stock can have been found, but rather in Mesopotamia and the great pastoral districts bordering the Euphrates, where water is abundant and pasture perennial. I was constantly struck, when crossing the plains of Mesopotamia, with its resemblance to Entrerios, and the other great horse-producing regions of the river Plate. Here the wild horse must have been originally captured, (just as in the present day the wahash or wild ass is captured,) and taken thence by man to people the peninsula.

Later on, invasions from the north seem to have brought other breeds of horses to these very plains, members perhaps of other original stocks, those of the Russian steppes or of Central Asia. These we find represented on the Chaldean bas-releifs, and still existing in the shape of stout ponies all along the northern edge of the desert — animals disowned by the Bedouins as being horses at all, yet serviceable for pack work, and useful in their way. This Chaldean type, from whatever source it springs, stands in direct contrast with that of the true Arabian. It is large-headed, heavy-necked, straight- shouldered, and high on the leg — a lumbering clumsy beast, fit rather for draught, if it were large enough, than for riding; and in this way the ancient Chaldeans seem to have chiefly employed it. The desert, however, has always preserved its own breed intact; and wherever the Bedouin is found, whether in Nejd or in the Hamad or Mesopotamia, the same animal, with the same traditions and the same prejudices concerning him, is to be found. It is of this animal only that I propose to speak.

The pure bred Bedouin horse stands from fourteen to fifteen hands in height, the difference depending mainly on the country in which he is bred, and the amount of good food he is given as a colt. In shape he is like our English thoroughbred, his bastard cousin, but with certain differences. The principal of these is, as might be expected, in the head, for where there is a mixture of blood the head almost always follows the least beautiful type of the ancestors. Thus, every horse with a cross of Spanish blood will retain the heavy head of that breed, though he have but one-sixteenth part of it to fifteen of a better strain. The head of the Arabian is larger in proportion than that of the English thoroughbred, the chief difference lying in the depth of jowl. This is very marked, as is also the width between the cheek-bones where the English horse is often defective to the cost of his windpipe. The ears are fine and beautifully shaped, but not very small. The eye is large and mild, the forehead prominent as in horses of the Touchstone blood with us, and the muzzle fine, sometimes almost pinched. Compared with the Arabian, the English thoroughbred is Roman nosed. The head, too, and this is perhaps the most distinguishing feature, is set on at a different angle. When I returned to England the thoroughbreds seemed to me to hold their heads as if tied in with a bearing rein, and to have no throat whatever, the cause perhaps of that tendency to roaring so common with them.

The neck of the Arabian horse is light, and I have never seen among them anything approaching to the crest given by his pictures, to the Godolphin Arabian. The shoulder is good, as good as in our own horses and the wither is often as high, although from the greater height of the hind-quarter this is not so apparent. The forearm in the best specimens is of great strength, the muscle standing out with extraordinary prominence. The back is shorter than it is in our thoroughbreds, and the barrel rounder. The Arabian is well ribbed up. He stands higher at the croup than at the wither. The tail is set on higher, but not, as I have heard some people say, on a level with the croup. Indeed, the jumping bone, to use an Irish phrase, is often very prominent. The tail is carried high, both walking and galloping; and this point is much looked to, as a sign of breeding. I have seen mares gallop with their tails as straight as a colt’s, and fit, as the Arabs say, to hang your cloak on.

The hind-quarter in the Arabian is much narrower than in our horses, another point of breeding, which indicates speed rather than strength. The line of the hind-quarter is finer, the action freer, and the upper limb longer in proportion than in the English racehorse. The hocks are larger, better let down, and not so straight. The cannon bone is shorter. The legs are strong, but with less bone in proportion than back sinew. This last is perhaps the finest point of the Arabian, in whom a “breakdown” seldom or never occurs. the bones of the pastern joints are fine, sometimes too fine for strength, and the pastern itself is long even to weakness. Its length is a point much regarded by the Arabs as a sign of speed. The hoofs are round and large, and very hard, though, from the barbarous method of shoeing and paring of the foot practiced by the desert blacksmiths, a stranger might doubt this. The toe is often cut ludicrously short, out of economy, to save frequent shoeing.

The only defect of the Arabian as a racehorse, compared with our own, is his small size. Inch for inch there can be no question which is the faster horses.

It is commonly said in England that the Arabian has but one pace, the gallop; and in a certain sense this is true. 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 easily be remedied, and good shoulder action given. No pure bred Arabian however is a high stepper. His style of galloping is long and low, the counterpart of our English thoroughbred’s. He is a careless but by no means a bad or dangerous walker. It is considered a great point of breeding that a horse should look about him to right and left as he walks; and this, combined with the great lengths of his pasterns, makes him liable to trip on even ground, if there are slight inequalities in his road. I have never however seen him even in danger of falling. The horse is too sure of his footing to be careful, except on rough ground, and then he never makes a false step. The broken knees one comes across are almost always the result of galloping colts before they are strong enough over rocky gbround, and, though a fearful disfigurement in our eyes, are thought nothing of by the Bedouins. The reputation, so often given to the Arabian, of being a slow walker, is the reverse of true. Though less fast than the Barb, he walks well beyond the average pace of our own horses. His gallop, as I have said, is long and low, and faster in proportion to his height than that of any other breed. If one could conceive an Arabian seventeen hands high, he could not fail to leave the best horse in England behind him. As it is, he is too small to keep stride with our race-horses.

The Arabian is a bold jumper, indeed the boldest in the world. Though in their own country they had had absolutely no knowledge of fences, not one of the mares we brought home with us has made any difficulty about going at the fences we tried them at. One of them, the evening of her arrival in England, on being let loose in the park, cleared the fence which is five feet six inches high. We pulled down the lower rails after this, and walked her back under the top one, a thick oak rail which was several inches higher than her wither. Another, though only fourteen hands two inches, clears seven yards in her stride over a hurdle. The mare I rode on the journey, carried me over the raised watercourses by the Euphrates in the cleverest way in the world, off and on without the least hanging or hesitation, and always with a foot ready to bring down in case of need. As hunters, however, in England, they would all be too small for any but children to ride, and their want of comparative height at the wither would be a serious defect.

Of their galloping powers, as compared with those of English thoroughbreds, I cannot speak from experience. I do not, however, suppose that over three miles, the longest English race, and Arabian would have much chance against any but quite inferior animals. Over five miles it might be different, but over twenty I am convinced that none but very exceptional English horses, would be able to go with them.The Arabians seem capable of going on for surprising distances, under heavy weights, without tiring; and they have the advantage of being able to stand almost any amount of training without going “stale.” The thoroughbred Anazeh horse will train as fine as any English racehorse. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the pure bred Arabian possesses extraordinary powers of endurance. On a journey he may be ridden day after day, and fed only upon grass. Yet he does not lose heart or condition, and is always ready to gallop at the end of the longest march, a thing we have never ventured to propose to our horses on any previous journey.

In disposition the Arabians are gentle and affectionate, familiar indeed almost to the extent of being troublesome. They have no fear of man whatsoever, and will allow anyone to come up to them when grazing, and take them by the head. If they happen to be lying down, they will not move though you come close to them. They are not to be intimidated by any lifting up of hands or sticks, for they do not understand that you can hurt them. It often amused us in the desert to see the mares come up to their masters and use them for a rubbing-post. this extreme gentleness and courage, though partly the effect of education, is also inherited, for a colt born and brought up in the stable is just as tame. It never thinks, as English colts do, of running round behind its dam for protection, but comes at once to anyone who enters the box.

I have never seen an Arabian vicious, shy, or showing signs of fear. They do not wince at firearms, though they are not at all accustomed to them; and in England no railway train or sudden noise gives them the least alarm. In this they are very diffferent from Barbs, Turks, and all other foreign horses I have had to do with.

There is among English people a general idea that grey, especially flea-bitten grey, is the commonest Arabian colour. But this is not so among the Anazeh. Bay is still more common, and white horses, though fashionable in the desert, are rare. Our white Hamdaniyeh mare, Sherifa, which came from Nejd, was immensely admired among the Gomussa for the sake of her colour almost as much as for her head, which is indeed of extraordinary beauty. The drawing at the beginning of this chapter is her very faithful portrait. Perhaps out of a hundred mares among the Anazeh one would see thirty-five bay, thirty grey, fifteen chestnut, and the rest brown or black. Roans, piebalds, duns, and yellows, are not found among the pure bred Arabians, though the last two occasionally are among Barbs. The bays often have black points and generally a white foot, or two or three white feet, and a snip or blaze down the face. The chestnuts vary from the brightest to the dullest shades, and I once saw a mottled brown. The tallest and perhaps handsomest horse we saw was a Samhan-el-Gomeaa, a three-year-old bay with black points, standing about fifteen hands one inch. He was a little clumsy, however, in his action, though that may have been the fault of his breaking. He had bone enough to satisfy all the requirements, even those of a Yorkshire man, but showed no sign of lacking quality. With very few exceptions, all the handsomest mares we saw were bay, which is without doubt by far the best colour in Arabia as it is in England. The chestnuts, as with us, are hot tempered, even violent. Black is a rare colour, and I never saw in the desert a black mare which I fancied. In choosing Arabians I should take none but bays, and if possible bays with black points.

It must not be supposed that there are many first-class mares among the Bedouins. During all our travels we saw but one which answered to the ideal we had formed, an Abeyeh Sherrak of the Gomussa. Nor were there many which approached her. Among the Shammar we saw only two first-class mares, among the Fedaan perhaps half a dozen, and among the Roala, once the leading tribe in horse-breeding, none. The Gomussa alone, of all the Anazeh, have any large number of really fine mares. We had an excellent oppportunity of judging, for we were with the Gomussa when fighting was going on, and when every man among them was mounted on his mare. I do not consider that we saw more than twenty “fok el aali,” or, to translate it literally, “tip-top” mares, nor more than fifty which we should have cared to possess. I doubt if there are two hundred really first-class mares in the whole of Northern Arabia. By this I of course do not mean first-class in quality and appearance as well as blood.

I cannot help suspecting that a certain amount of deterioration has taken place within the last fifty, perhaps the last twenty years. There is no doubt that in the early years of the present century, the Roala were possesssed of immense numbers of mares, and had the reputation of having the monopoly of some of the best strains of blood. It was to their sheykh, Ibn Shallan, whom he called the “Prince of the Desert,” that Abbas Pasha sent his son to be educated, and from them that he bought most of the mares, of which he made such a wonderful collection. Yet from one cause and another the Roala, though still rich and powerful, have now no mares to speak of. They have within the last few years abandoned the old Bedouin warfare with the lance, and taken to firearms. Horses are no longer indispensable to them, and have been recklessly sold. The Shammar of Mesopotamia have suffered for the last two generations by the semi-Turkism of their Sheykhs, Sfuk and Ferhan, and have been divided by internal dissensions to such an extent, that their enemies, the Anazeh, have greatly reduced them. Abbas Pasha also bought up many fine mares from among them at extravagant prices; and they now have not a single specimen among them of the Seglawi Jedran breed, for which they were formerly famous. The Montefik in the south, once also celebrated for their horses, have allowed the purity of their breed to be tampered with , for the sake of increased size, so necessary for the Indian market which they supplied. It was found that a cross-bred animal of mixed Persian and Arabian blood, would pass muster among the English in India as pure Arabian, and would command a better price from his extra height. The Persian or Turcoman horse stands fifteen hands two inches, or even, I am told, sixteen hands; and these the Montifik have used to cross their mares with. The produce is known in India as the Gulf Arab, but his inferior quality is now recognised. Lastly, among the Sebaa themselves, who have maintained the ancient breeds in all their integrity, various accidents have concurred in diminishing the number of their mares. Several seasons of drought and famine, within the last fifteen years, have reduced the prosperity of the tribes, and forced them to part with some of their best breeding stock. Many a valuable mare was thus sold, because her owner had no choice but to do so or to let her starve, while others, left “on halves” with inhabitants of the small towns, never returned to the desert. Mijuel, of the Misrab, told me of a mare of his, which he had been obliged to leave in this way with a townsman, and which, from having been left standing a whole year in a filthy stable, had become foundered in all four feet and could not be removed. Finally the continual wars, which for years past have devastated the tribes, have caused an immense consumption of horses. When a mare is taken in war she is usually galloped into the nearest town, and sold hurriedly by her captor, for what she will fetch, for fear of her being reclaimed when peace is made. While we were at Aleppo, mares were thus every day brought for us to look at, terribly knocked about, and often with fresh spear-wounds gaping on flank or shoulder.

Besides all these reasons, the Bedouin system of breeding, as at present practised among the Anazeh and Shammar, must have had a degenerating effect upon their blood stock, which is only now beginning to show its results. That this system has in most of its features been the same from time immemorial in Arabia, is no doubt true, but there is one point on which it is more likely the practice has been modified by recent circumstances. In former times when the tribes were rich and prosperous, it cannot be doubted, but they kept a larger proportion of horses as compared with mares than is now seen. At present time there can hardly be more than one full-grown horse kept for stud purposes to every two hundred mares. Indeed, the proportion is probably far smaller, and this fact alone is sufficient to account for much of the barrenness and much of the inferiority of the produce, complained of in the desert. In England such a proportion would not be tolerated. Then, if there be any truth in the doctrine that in-and-in breeding is wrong, this too may be looked upon as an increasing evil in the desert. The Shammar have long been separated from the rest of Arabia, and, though occasionally recruiting their breeding stock by capture from the Anazeh, they have been for a couple of hundred years practically cut off from all communication with other horse-breeders. They have despised the horses of their Kurdish and Persian neighbours too thoroughly to allow any infusion of blood from them, and thus have been forced to breed in-and-in during all these generations. The Anazeh, too, though not so absolutely severed from Central Arabia, have, since the reduction of Jebel Shammar by the Wahabis, been precluded from free communication with the peninsula, and have become more and more isolated; and the evil has been exaggerated by the extraordinary fanaticism shown by both Anazeh and Shammar in favour of certain special strains of blood which monopolise their attention. At the present moment all the blood stock of the Anazeh tribes must be related in the closest degrees of consanguinity. That this fanaticism operates most injuriously there can hardly be a doubt. The horses bred from are not chosen for their size or their shape, or for any quality of speed or stoutness, only for their blood. We saw a horse with a considerable reputation as a sire, among the Aghedaat, for no other reason than that he was a Maneghi Hedruj of Ibn Sbeyel’s strain. The animal himself was a mere pony, without a single good point to recommend him, but his blood was unexceptionable, and he was looked upon with awe by the tribe.

These two points then, the insufficiency of stud horses and in-and-in breeding, may be looked upon as exceptional, yet adequate causes of degeneracy among the rank and file of the Bedouin horses north of Jebel Shammar.

It is difficult to understand how it happens that the pure Arabian race should have in fact retained as much of its good quality as it has. In all ages and in all parts of Arabia, to say nothing of the points I have already mentioned, an unpractical system of breeding has prevailed, due in part to prejudice, and in part to peculiarities of climate and soil. To begin with, there has been the extraordinary prejudice of blood I have spoken of, and which, though doubtless an excellent one as between pure Arabians and “kadishes,” is hardly valid as between the different strains of pure blood. An inferior specimen of a favourite strain is probably preferred all over Arabia to a fine specimen of a lower strain, or rather of a less fashionable one. Thus the Bedouin’s judgment of the individual horse itself, when he does judge it, is rather a guess at this pedigree than a consideration of his qualities. In examining a horse, the bedouin looks first at his head. There, if anywhere, the signs of his parentage will be visible. Then, maybe, he looks at his colour to see if he have any special marks for recognition, and last of all at his shape.

Of the speed of the animal, though much is talked of it, it is seldom that anything accurate is known. The Bedouins have no set races by which they can judge of this, and the relative merits of their mares can hardly be guessed at in the fantasias where they figure. Even in war it is rather a question of endurance, than of speed, which is the better animal; and, where a real flight and a real pursuit takes place, the course is so seldom a straight one, that it is as often that the best trained or the best ridden mare gets the advantage, as the one which really has the speed. A mare, celebrated for speed in the desert, is as often as not merely a very well-broken charger. The Bedouins have, moreover, no idea, even if they had the intention, of riding their horses so as to give them full advantage of their stride. They must be very hard pressed indeed, if they keep on at a steady gallop for more than a mile or two together. Their parties and expeditions, even where haste is necessary, are constantly interrupted by halts and dismountings; and a steady pace all day long is a thing not to be thought of. They go, however, immense distances in this way, cantering and stopping and cantering again, and are out sometimes for a whole month together, during which time their mares are very insufficiently fed, and often kept for days at a time without water. They are also exposed to every hardship in the way of climate, heat, and cold, and pitilesss wind. The mares then, depend rather on stoutness and long endurance of privations, than on speed, for finding favour with their masters.

The education they receive, no doubt, prepares them for this, but at the same time it interferes with their growth, and prevents them from developing the full posers of strength and speed they might otherwise acquire. The colt, as soon as it is born, and this may be at any time of the year (for the Bedouins have no prejudice in favour of early foaling), is fastened, by a cord tied either round the neck or round the hind leg above the hock, to a tent-rope, and kept thus close to the tent all day, its dam going out the while to pasture. The little creature by this early treatment becomes extraordinarily tame, suffering itself to be handled at once and played with by the children. It is fed, as soon as it can be made to drink, on camel’s milk, which the bedouins pretend will give it the endurance of that beast; and, at any rate by the end of the month, it is weaned altogether from the mare. The real reason of this can hardly be the good of the foal, but the necessity of making use of the mare for riding. The Bedouins allow at most a month before and a month after foaling for rest. The colt then has not the advantage we think so essential to proper growth, of running with its mother during its first season. It continues, however, quite tame, and, as soon as it is a year old, is mounted a little by the children, and later on by any boy who is a light weight. The Bedouins declare that, unless a colt has done really hard work before he is three years old, he will never be fit to do it afterwards; so in the course of his third year he is taken on expeditions, not perhaps serious ghazus, where he would run some risk of breaking down or being captured, but on minor journeys; and he is taught to gallop in the figure of eight, and change his legs so as to grow supple. This treatment is indeed a kill or cure one; and, if the colt gets through it, there is little fear of his breaking down afterwards. It is seldom that one sees a three-year old without splints, though curbs and spavins are not common. I have seen several animals with the shank bone permanently bent, through hard work when very young. I agree, however, with the Bedouins, in believing that to their general health and powers of endurance this early training is necessary. The fillies go through the same course of treatment, and themselves become mothers before they are four years old. The colts are sold off when opportunity offers to the townsmen of Deyr, Aleppo or Mosul, as the case may be, or to dealers who come round to the tents of the tribes, during their summer stay in the extreme north. The best are usually taken by the townsmen, as the dealers, especially those who supply the Indian market, seldom or never purchase hadud colts. These cost about three times as much as the others, and it is easy to forge a pedigree. The townsmen, particularly those of Deyr, who are almost Bedouins themselves, know the difference well, and care for nothing but the best. Others are sold to the low tribes, who take them in to the towns for further sale, as soon as they have broken them. The fillies are generally kept in the tribe.

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Carlton Cummings and his Skyline Trust Arabians

Rick Synowski Copyright 1995
Used by permission of Rick Synowski
from Arabian Visions Mar/Apr 1995

Carleton Cummings holding the weanlings Antezeyn Skowronek and Abu Farwa’s Rawia, both by Abu Farwa. Rawia, called by Cummings “the Queen of Diamonds” for her three diamond star, strip and snip, carried two generations of children to show ring victories, the last at age 17 when she was named champion mare of the Pacific National Exposition in Vancouver, B.C., shown by an eight-year-old boy.

Like many kids looking for their first Arabian horse in the 1950’s and early 1960’s — kids perhaps from less than affluent families and looking to make their dreams of owning an Arabian horse come true — I first heard of Carleton Cummings after reading about his Skyline Trust Arabians. An article by H. H. Reese stated that Cummings had “developed his Arabian horse breeding program with the purpose of assisting boys and girls who like horses to secure good specimens of the breed on a partnership basis.” Reese’s article described Cummings’s “lend lease” program whereby youngsters could lease a mare, breed her and then, after the birth of the foal, return either the mare or the foal. To an imaginative 11-year-old, this sounded like just the ticket. I wrote a letter to Cummings. Having read H. H. Reese’s Kellogg Arabians a hundred times, I had pictured in my mind’s eye the Arabian horse I wanted to own. I described this horse to Cummings in the first letter. Cummings replied with a post card. He stated he had about 2500 letters on his desk from youngsters across the country. If I was still interested, I was to write him again. I wrote Cummings that very day and so began a correspondence of some two years which culminated in buying half interest in a weanling colt, Skowronek’s Antez, with my own savings in 1962. Cummings wrote the following spring that “few breeders ever get colts of this quality and even fewer ever offer them for sale.” Nevertheless, he was giving me the opportunity to buy out his interest in the now yearling colt. I took Cummings up on his offer. It was a purchase I was never to regret. Within a few weeks Cummings died of a heart attack.

Skowronek’s Antez (Antzeyn Skowronek x Raseynette).
The author’s first Arabian and a wonderful companion for 28 years.
He also proved a fine sire.

Cummings’s background outside the sphere of Arabian horses was in music. He had been an operatic tenor of some notoriety in the east. He later turned to teaching as professor of music at Wake Forest College and later as the head of the music department at the University of Idaho. Cummings’s wife, Theresa, had been a drama major in college where they met. After their marriage and graduation, they traveled to Army posts doing music and drama presentations during World War I.

Cummings’s background in music and theatre suited a personality that tended toward the theatrical, and a soul that was flamed by the same qualities in Arabian horses. His love for the dramatic carried over to the horses he purchased and bred and the ways he talked about them. However, his flowery descriptions were no means an exaggeration of the splendid group of horses he assembled.

His initial purchase in 1945 was the four-year-old Kellogg-bred Direyn (*Raseyn x Ferdirah). Cummings rode in a boxcar with Direyn the entire trip from Pomona, California to Moscow, Idaho. Cummings was to become part of “the Reese circle of breeders.” Reese, having left the Kellogg Ranch as manager by then, and with a ranch of his own, continued in an influential role in the early Arabian horse community. Cummings’s later purchases were from Reese himself, from that circle of cooperative breeders like the McKenna brothers, and from the Kellogg Ranch. Cummings’s notable purchase outside this circle was Rifala’s Lami (Geym x Maatiga, by Image) from Roger Selby in 1954. She was to become one of his most influential foundation mares.

Rifala’s Lami (Geym x Maatiga, by Image).
Roger Selby wrote Cummings that she was as good a filly as he had ever bred.

In 1949, Cummings purchased the weanling Abu Farwa son Antezeyn Skowronek (x Sharifa, by Antez out of Ferdith, by Ferseyn). He became Cummings’s head sire. His progeny earned him a reputation as the third ranking son of Abu Farwa in the list of leading sires of show champions — with many fewer foals on the ground than the first two ranking Abu Farwa sons. Antezeyn Skowronek ranked first of the Abu Farwa sons on another of Gladys Brown Edwards’s lists: Abu Farwa sons whose own sons had sired show champions. Cummings himself claimed that for a three year period Antezeyn Skowronek had sired more ribbon winners than any sire of any breed. This was entirely possible since his progeny were in the hands of an army of horse-crazy, show-happy kids who would take their Skyline charges to every local show, weekend after weekend, entering dozens of classes in every division from halter to three-gaited to gymkhana events — and winning. These Antezeyn Skowronek offspring were notable not just for their quality and sheer beauty. And their successes were not limited to the competition of local shows. In 1958, the Pauley girls took their young Antezeyn Skowronek daughter, Khatum Tamarette, on the road, first to Estes Park, Colorado, to take 1959 U.S.Top Ten Mare; then to Yakima, Washington, to win Pacific Northwest Champion mare; and finally to Calgary to win a Top Ten at halter. These victories, which Cummings later described as no small feat of endurance for a young mare, earned her the Legion of Merit, one of the first mares to earn this award.

Antezeyn Skowronek, Skyline Trust head sire.


Cummings’s band of foundation mares numbered at 16. He selected these mares to complement Antezeyn Skowronek, but each was chosen on her own merits. Four of his mares were daughters of Ferseyn, taking Reese’s lead to cross Ferseyn daughters with Abu Farwa, and Abu Farwa daughters with Ferseyn, an idea which echoed Lady Wentworth’s earlier cross of Skowronek and Blunt lines. Cummings purchased the Farnasa daughter Anazeh’s Nijm from the Kellogg Ranch, in partnership with one of his protegées, Mary Hall. Anazeh’s Nijm was bred to Ferseyn prior to shipping her home. The resulting foal was the chestnut colt Ferseyn’s Rasim, whom Cummings traded Mary for full interest for his interest in the mare. Ferseyn’s Rasim became Cummings’s junior sire and proved himself an excellent cross on Antezeyn Skowronek daughters as well as on Skyline foundation mares. Two of Cummings’s foundation mares were daughters of the Antez son Gezan, a popular southern California sire of the early 1950’s. Antezeyn Skowronek himself was a grandson of Antez, a Kellogg sire of 100% Davenport breeding who ended an international career as a successful sire himself at the Reese ranch. The Davenport influence was an important presence in the Cummings breeding program.

Cummings was a somewhat controversial figure and outside his band of young, loyal protegées, he was not always well liked. He did not seem to care, and used to say “It doesn’t matter what people say as long as they keep talking about you.” This advice must have harkened back to the days when he performed on stage. Cummings was outspoken and did not mind stating his opinions while sitting in the stands at a horse show. If sitting on the same side of the arena as Cummings, everyone got to hear his opinions, which sometimes referred to the horses in the ring, whether they wanted to hear them or not. It was a little embarrassing for the youngster such as I who was sitting at his side. Cummings also made enemies of a few breeders who had horses for sale at fancy prices. Cummings’s kids sometimes beat these breeders in the show ring with horses leased from Cummings or sold by Cummings at bargain basement prices. And the parents of competing kids must have sitting in the stands bored stiff watching the Skyline horses entering, and often winning, class after class.

Wafa El Shammar (Cavalier x Shama, by Abu Farwa). When Cummings died everyone wanted this mare. Seven people lay claim to her. Wafa El Shammar produced a half-dozen champions. Five of her offspring produced national champions or top ten winners in halter and performance.

Abu’s Rissletta (Abu Farwa x Alleyna, by Alla Amarward), bred by and purchased from H.H.Reese. The rider is a young Bruce Clark, later well known as co-owner of Bru-Mar-Ba Stud. An important mare at that stud was Skyline-bred Rasim’s Ghazayat. Abu’s Rissletta was later purchased and shown by another youngster, Joyce Stockdale, who now with husband Ron Paelek owns Vantage Point Farm. When not carrying youngsters in the show ring, Abu’s Rissletta was having foals, including the important Risseyn for Berry’s Skyline Arabians in Iowa. Risseyn was trained and shown by daughter Lyn, now Lyn Freel of Crystal Castle Arabians.

Nadir (Gezan x Bint Sedjur). Maternal half-sister to Bint Sahara. Nadir produced Canadian Top Ten stallion Raseyn Gezan by Antezeyn Skowronek. Raseyn Gezan was leading sire of champions in Canada for years.

Cummings was not in the habit of getting things down on paper and sometimes made agreements or promises he did not remember. After his death, his daughter inherited his estate, which included the horses. I told her Cummings had promised Wafa El Shammar to me to breed to my colt. His daughter told me six other people had written to tell her Cummings had promised this mare to them. (I did get Wafa El Shammar, who became my foundation mare.)

Despite these discrepancies, Cummings was a real horseman and a genius as a breeder. The horses he selected and bred from were outstanding for their “tangible as well as intangible qualities.” Most of his horses were mounts and companions for youngsters. Few of the horses were ever trained or shown by professionals, but were remarkably successful nevertheless. As breeding horses, they were notable for their ability to consistently produce first rate stock. Cummings’s advertising slogan “Home of beautiful heads and great performance horses” was an accurate description of the Skyline Arabians, as was another of his slogans, “bred for and born with spectacular action.” Cummings admired the Crabbet-bred Naseem for his exceptional beauty above all other ancestor horses, and the Crabbet-bred *Berk for his spectacular action. He used to brag about the number of crosses his horses had to those icons of Arabian horse breeding. Cummings also admired *Raffles. He used to say he liked a “touch of *Raffles for beauty” in his horses. His statement no doubt reflected his delight with the foals of Rifala’s Lami, especially the Antezeyn Skowronek son Rifala’s Naseem. Cummings described Rifala’s Naseem as a “peacock of horses” and “well worth traveling 10,000 miles to see him.” From his pedigrees-in-a-name (another of Cummings’s idiosyncrasies) his pride in these particular ancestors of Rifala’s Naseem is obvious.

Perhaps most important of all, Cummings provided an opportunity for kids to have their dreams come true — not just to own an Arabian horse, but to own a good one. Cummings stressed hard work and responsibility to these youngsters, but his often heard advice was “to dream big.”

See also:

Antezeyn Skowronek

(Ad recreated from the one appearing with 1995 Skyline Trust article)

CMK PRESERVATION BREEDING

SILVER FELICITÉ 1993 fily (Jericho Cortez x Silver Joi)

Carlton Cummings would have raved about this filly and he would have recognized his own breeding in her — 4 crosses to Antezeyn Skowronek and tracing to 6 of his Skyline foundation mares. He too would have commented on her 6 crosses to NASEEM whose influence bred down in spades. We are honored to have bred and to own such a filly to carry forward the Skyline type and bloodlines into the 21st century.

RICK SYNOWSKI ARABIAN HORSES since 1962
200 SE Uglow #2                                     
Dallas, OR 97338                                     
(503) 623-6726  
For more information on CMK Arabian horses we carry the CMK HERITAGE CATALOGUES, vols. I, II, & III @ $10, each.

In Memoriam: Jericho Cortez 48007 (January 27, 1968 – March 8, 1995) One of the great Skyline stallions is gone.

(Ad recreated from the one appearing with 1995 Skyline Trust article)

Having owned Antezeyn Skowronek…

Robert Bruce photo, age 28

…there really isn’t much more one can say…

…except belatedly to thank his breeder, E.J.Boyer (and the guiding spirit H.H.Reese), his long-time owner, Carlton Cummings, who gave him opportunity with those brilliant mares in the Skyline program; the director of his later career, Rick Synowski; and the Illings of Twin Brook Farm who entrusted the old horse to us in Maryland.

Antezeyn left us just one representative, his lovely feminine daughter ENCHANTED GOLD, from the Lewisfield mare MOSTLY MAGIC. See the Skyline descendants’ photo feature for ENCHANTED and two of her offspring, CROWN OF GOLD by GALAN, making a good start as a sire at Hill House Arabians in Lincoln CA, and our own filly GOLD AND SPICES by ABU ZANZABAR. Both these youngsters are linebred Abu Farwa and CROWN traces in 50% of his pedigree to the classic Reese blend of Abu Farwa with ANTEZ.

MAGIC GOLD (Zadaran x Enchanted Gold) is one of the promising young geldings we currently offer for sale; he is rising four, has been ground worked and is ready to start.

Five CMK stallions at stud (shipped semen available; filly consideration on the Sweepstakes sires).

Neziah+ 85494 15 hh br 1972 (Galah x Nalysa by Ayf) book closed

Cantador 273930 15 hh ch 1983 (Kimfa x Auralu by Aurab)

*Seffer 318071 15 hh ch 1983 (Prince Saraph x Sa’lilah by Silver Flame) Sweepstakes

Najih 337363 15:2 hh br 1985 (Ben Rabba ++/ x Narah bint Neziah) Sweepstakes

Zadaran 393353 14:2 hh b 1987 (Aurtal x Razya by Zadir)

Abu Zanzabar 437396 15 hh ch 1989 (Abu Malacar x Zanobiyah by Brendan)

Call or write for pedigrees and our stallion video, or come visit when things are a bit drier.

Michael, Ann and Lydia Bowling; Claire Bowen Trommershausen

The New Albion Stud   Crabbet-Maynesboro-Kellogg Preservation Breeding 24920 Road 96 Davis, CA 95616 (916)756-3911*   *The above area code has been changed, and the number is now (530)756-3911

Indian Magic: A Master Breeder’s Masterpiece?

© R.J. Cadranell II from The CMK Record VIII/2 Fall 1989
used by permission of RJ Cadranell

Indian Magic

INDIAN MAGIC at age 26, with his long-time handler Fred Rice, in a Parade of Progeny and Personalities at the 1970 British Nationals. Note that one of the judges seated at left, the late Lady Anne Lytton, appears to be unable to keep her eyes off “the prince of horses.” Photo by Photonews, © Alexander Heriot & Co.

In an article reprinted in the Arabiana anthology, Lady Anne Lytton wrote: “Indian Magic was, I think, Lady Wentworth’s masterpiece…” Bred at Crabbet in 1944, INDIAN MAGIC became a legend in his own time. He was one of the most famous Arabians in England in the post war era, and an important sire for both Lady Wentworth and later Cecil Covey when he inherited the Crabbet Stud. INDIAN MAGIC was the last horse Cecil Covey retained when external influences forced him to give up the rest of the Crabbet Stud.

Pedigree of INDIAN MAGIC
INDIAN MAGIC
gr s 1944
Raktha Naseem Skowronek
Nasra (Daoud x Nefisa)
Razina Rasim
Riyala (*Astraled x Ridaa)
Indian Crown Raseem Rasim
Rim (*Astraled x Ridaa)
Nisreen Nureddin II
Nasra

Pedigree extended to Crabbet Foundation Animals:

  • *ASTRALED by MESAOUD out of QUEEN OF SHEBA
  • DAOUD by MESAOUD out of BINT NURA
  • NARGHILEH by MESAOUD out of NEFISA
  • NASRA by DAOUD out of NEFISA
  • NEFISA by HADBAN out of DAJANIA
  • *Nureddin II by RIJM out of NARGHILEH
  • RASIM by FEYSUL out of RISALA
  • RIDAA by MERZUK out of *ROSE OF SHARON
  • RIJM by MAHRUSS out of *ROSE OF SHARON
  • RISALA by MESAOUD out of RIDAA
  • *ROSE OF SHARON by HADBAN out of RODANIA

Though no breeder can predict exactly where his or her great successes will come, INDIAN MAGIC did not happen by chance. Lady Wentworth did not buy an Arabian mare about which she knew little or nothing, take her to the nearest or most heavily advertised or most expensive champion she could find, and expect to produce a world beater. Rather, INDIAN MAGIC represented twenty-four years of Lady Wentworth’s own breeding, on top of a prior forty years of watching his ancestors breed for her parents. INDIAN MAGIC’s pedigree shows eight generations of Arabian horses owned by the Crabbet Stud. With the exception of Skowronek’s antecedents and the possible exception of FEYSUL’s dam, EL ARGAA, Lady Wentworth knew first hand every single animal in INDIAN MAGIC’s pedigree as far back as his great-great-great-grandparents, as she or her parents owned them all.

In type as well as pedigree, INDIAN MAGIC represented the combination of Skowronek and *Nureddin II of which Mrs. Archer has written as a key to much of later Wentworth breeding. Miss Ott, writing in an article reprinted in Arabiana, characterized some of the animals representing this combination as being “a Nureddin Type with Skowronek details.”

Skowronek contributed a prettier head, arched neck, broad and level croup, high set and carried tail, and a certain ethereal beauty combined with good stout bone. *Nureddin II provided extra size, a loftier, more upright carriage, higher withers, better shoulders, and a lankier frame. Lady Wentworth began combining the two of them as soon as she had a *Nureddin daughter old enough to breed to Skowronek, but it was some years before any of the Skowronek daughters went to *Nureddin. Instead, Crabbet’s first foals from Skowronek daughters were inbred to Skowronek: *Raffles (Skowronek x *Rifala, Wright’s coefficient of inbreeding 25%) and *ROSE OF FRANCE (*Raswan x Jalila, inbred to Skowronek at 12.5%). (A third Skowronek daughter, SHELIFA, produced in the same year an Anglo-Arab colt named BLACK TOM, by CHEVALIER.) *Nureddin II later had a chance to sire his own “Raffles” when Lady Wentworth bred him to his daughter RISHNA, producing the filly RIFWA.

Most of Lady Wentworth’s more successful combinations of the two stallions came from breeding Skowronek-line sires to *Nureddin-line dams. This perhaps illustrates Carl Raswan’s oft-repeated tenet that the dam gives to her offspring size and frame, while the sire contributes muscling and detail. Anyone can name myriad exceptions to this rule, but animals like INDIAN MAGIC, GREY ROYAL, and *SERAFIX adhere to it.

Raktha (Naseem x Razina) photo from the Newbuildings collection.

The pedigree of INDIAN MAGIC’s sire RAKTHA is almost a mirror image of the pedigree of his dam INDIAN CROWN, but where one has Skowronek, the other has *Nureddin II. In the cases of both Skowronek and *Nureddin, the vessels carrying their blood to INDIAN MAGIC were NASRA foals. Lady Wentworth apparently recognized at an early point that of all the mares she had from her parents, NASRA would become one of the cornerstones of her breeding. NASRA’s *Nureddin II daughter NISREEN became the dam of the “Indian” family; her Skowronek son NASEEM was an important sire; her daughter NASHISHA was to produce SHARIMA, of great importance to post-war Crabbet breeding; while her son NAZIRI was perhaps Lady Wentworth’s favorite of all the Skowronek colts.

In INDIAN MAGIC’s pedigree, both of the NASRA foals were crossed with horses “strain bred” to RIDAA before the final doubling to NASRA to produce INDIAN MAGIC. RAZINA and RASEEM were full siblings in blood, the result of Lady Wentworth’s breeding RASIM to mares that were three-quarter sisters to his own dam. RASEEM’s and RAZINA’s coefficient of inbreeding was 10.57%. (Lady Wentworth had also tried breeding RASIM back to his dam RISALA, but no foal resulted, apparently.) The cross of RASIM on RIM and RIYALA concentrated the blood of MESAOUD and RIDAA, while FEYSUL and QUEEN OF SHEBA functioned as outcrosses.

Quite different factions have maligned one or the other of the latter Crabbet foundation animals. Criticizing FEYSUL denigrates the judgment of Lady Anne Blunt, who used him at stud both in Egypt and in England. His foals RASIM, KARINA, IBN YASHMAK, and RAS EL HADD had a flair not seen in other lines of Crabbet breeding, though after his first few foal crops in England FEYSUL was used rather sparingly.

QUEEN OF SHEBA might not have matched Carl Raswan’s idea of the classic Arabian, but the mare contributed something to her descendants which must have pleased the Blunts immensely. They used two of her sons as sires, put into the mare band her only daughter to live to maturity, and by the end of the Blunt period of breeding they were using a double QUEEN OF SHEBA stallion at stud (SOTAMM) and producing triple QUEEN OF SHEBA foals (SILFA, by Rustem out of Selima). QUEEN OF SHEBA might have contributed any or all of the following: fire and presence, more wither, a good shoulder, a longer neck, the ability to move well, high tail carriage.

INDIAN CROWN (Raseem x Nisreen) photo by Lady Wentworth

Breeding the key ingredients (Skowronek and *Nureddin) to NASRA, crossing those foals with strain bred Crabbet “R” horses, and finally combining the two influences produced INDIAN MAGIC. Lady Wentworth must have realized she had discovered something special: the RAKTHA to INDIAN CROWN breeding she did more frequently than any other cross in her entire history as a breeder. INDIAN CROWN’s production record, extracted from the GSB, is a follows:

  • 1939 ch f *CROWN OF INDIA, by Rix (sent to U.S.A.)
  • 1940 barren to Radi
  • 1941 gr c INDIAN GREY (died 1944), by Raktha
  • 1942 gr c (destroyed) by Raktha
  • 1943 barren to Raktha
  • 1944 gr c INDIAN MAGIC, by Raktha
  • 1945 ch c INDIAN GEM, by Raktha (sent to South Africa)
  • 1946 barren to Oran
  • 1947 gr f by Raktha
  • 1948 ch c INDIAN CRESCENT, by Oran (sent to Brazil)
  • 1949 gr c by Raktha
  • 1950 barren to Raktha
  • 1951 ch f by Grand Royal
  • 1952 barren to Dargee
  • 1953 ch f SILVER PARADISE, by Royal Diamond
  • 1954 ch f INCORONETTA, by Dargee
  • 1955 ch c SUMMER CROWN by Oran
  • 1956 not covered in 55, sold, and put out of Stud

Once Lady Wentworth had discovered the successful “nick” with RAKTHA, she repeated it frequently, but not every year. In the same way the Skowronek-NASRA cross was very successful, but in between NASRA’s first foal by Skowronek (NASEEM) and her last (NASIEDA) she also produced to RAFEEF and NADIR. Had Lady Wentworth bred NASRA to Skowronek year after year, she could have had as many as eight offspring from the cross. But in creating them she would have limited severely the future possibilities for the use of NASRA blood. She would not have made the best use of one of her most important mares. Instead, she used in her breeding program NASRA foals by five different sires. This gave her a much broader range of options to continue breeding with the NASRA influence.

Lady Wentworth did not foresee INDIAN MAGIC’s pedigree twenty-four years in advance and then create it. It took many years of trial and error, combining everything she had with everything else she had, taking note of which mare lines were producing her favorite horses, or her best breeding animals, and taking each step as it presented itself for taking. Before breeding INDIAN GREY, Lady Wentworth had experimented with many combinations of the horses which produced him and his famous full brother. She had tried Skowronek on NISREEN, producing NASIRIEH and *INCORONATA, both of which produced to RASEEM. *INCORONATA produced INDIAN GLORY to this cross, a favorite colt struck by lightning and killed as a yearling. With NASIRIEH Lady Wentworth tried doubling the *Nureddin influence by breeding her to *RAHAL and SHAREER. Lady Wentworth also tried combining Skowronek and *Nureddin while doubling NASRA by breeding NASEEM to NISREEN, producing INSILLA and INDIAN LIGHT. This combination lacked the perhaps crucial elements of RASIM and QUEEN OF SHEBA.

INDIAN MAGIC’s pedigree contains more crosses to HADBAN than to MESAOUD, although people generally think of the latter as the more pervasive Crabbet foundation sire. All seven of INDIAN MAGIC’s Crabbet bred great grandparents were from HADBAN influenced mare lines. *Nureddin II was doubled to him. Lady Wentworth began to focus on the tail-female descendants of the HADBAN daughters, NEFISA and *ROSE OF SHARON, very early in her breeding. Lady Anne Blunt credited the HADBAN influence with producing animals of greater height, meaning well over 15 hands. Lady Wentworth made no excuses about her own preference for the taller sort of Arabian, although she also used and appreciated the smaller ones like RASIM, Skowronek, and DARGEE.

INDIAN MAGIC’s pedigree is not sire dominated, except perhaps by MESAOUD and HADBAN. Instead, Lady Wentworth has done rather consistent line breeding to two successful mare families. NASRA and RIDAA have special prominence. Using Raswan’s system of strain analysis, INDIAN MAGIC is bred three generations in the Kuhaylan strain.

INDIAN MAGIC’s pedigree is not the result of outcross upon outcross, but is instead rather tightly linebred. The five different Crabbet bred great-grandparents were all closely related through MESAOUD and HADBAN, while RODANIA and DAJANIA were also key ancestors. From this point on the pedigree only gets tighter. From 1904 until the tenure of Lady Wentworth the Crabbet horses were bred as a closed herd. INDIAN MAGIC’s ancestry represents a very small sampling of that herd, augmented with one line to Skowronek, Lady Wentworth’s outcross of the 1920’s. RAKTHA and INDIAN CROWN were roughly three-quarter siblings in blood.

The Blunts saw in *ASTRALED, RIJM, *Nureddin II, DAOUD, and RASIM, as Lady Wentworth saw in NASEEM and RASEEM, colts they wanted to retain as future sires rather than sell. The Blunts decided to keep for breeding the fillies *ROSE OF SHARON, NEFISA, RIDAA, NASRA, NARGHILEH, RISALA, RIM, and RIYALA, as Lady Wentworth kept NISREEN and INDIAN CROWN. A farm which sells every foal it breeds, and then starts over with new foundation stock, is returning time and again to “square one.”

Other than the Crabbet foundation animals, all of INDIAN MAGIC’s ancestors tabulated in the pedigree above were bred by Crabbet except his sire, RAKTHA. RAKTHA illustrates another principle which successful livestock breeders have employed: the use of “satellite” farms. Place with another breeder some of your best stock, and it might be combined in ways which never would have occurred to you, eventually producing something which you might want to use. By buying ASTRELLA and RAZINA and bringing RAZINA back to Crabbet for breeding to NASEEM and NAUFAL (sire of RIFFAL), Lady Yule provided Lady Wentworth with two of Crabbet’s greatest post 1940 sires: RAKTHA and ORAN (Riffal x Astrella). (Like INDIAN MAGIC, ORAN was by a RAZINA son and out of a RASEEM daughter.) Lady Wentworth purchased both of these stallions as younger animals with an eye to using them at stud.

Lady Wentworth started using INDIAN MAGIC at stud when he was three, breeding him to NEZMA (Rafeef x Nasra). Thereafter she used him every year, but he does not seem to have covered more than six Crabbet mares in a single season. INDIAN MAGIC completed for mares with stallions like ORAN, DARGEE, RAKTHA, INDIAN GOLD, GRAND ROYAL, *ROYAL DIAMOND, and later *SILVER VANITY, ROYAL CRYSTAL, and *SILVER DRIFT. Lady Wentworth always maintained a large stallion battery. With a few years as exceptions, no one stallion dominated a foal crop. Again, this allowed her greater flexibility as a breeder than the alternative method of maintaining only one or two stallions and breeding all the mares to one or the other year after year.

Lady Wentworth bred INDIAN MAGIC very frequently to mares of the SHARIMA family, and also to INDIAN FLOWER (Irex x Nisreen) and her daughter *INDIAN DIAMOND (by Oran). SILVER FIRE (Naseem x Somra by Daoud) produced her last two foals by INDIAN MAGIC. The “R” family had already seen its greatest days at its parent stud by the time INDIAN MAGIC came into use, but he sired foals from ROSALINA (Indian Gold x Rissella) and her daughter ROSINELLA (by Oran).

INDIAN MAGIC’s foals for Lady Wentworth were all born during the last nine years of her life, making it difficult to discern which she might have used for breeding and how. The only one she appears to have used was the SILVER FIRE daughter SILVER MAGIC, dam of SILVADORIS (by Oran) before her exportation to Australia.

What INDIAN MAGIC’s long term impact on Lady Wentworth’s herd might have been we shall never know. However, he proved himself an outstanding sire and major influence on other breeding programs around the world.

The grandsires of INDIAN MAGIC, photos courtesy Rosemary Archer

From Needham Market to Oyster Bay Part I

This entry is part [part not set] of 2 in the series Needham Market

by Thornton Chard

from The Horse May-Jun 1942

Such horses are
The jewels of the horsemen’s hand and thighs,
They go by the word and hardly need the rein

John Brown’s Body, Book v.
S.V.Benet

Kismet, Garaveen, Maidan. The mention of these horse notables in Mr. Albert W. Harris’ timely article, “Arabs for the Remount,” in the November-December The Horse, where he describes the Remount’s plan of a separate stud for breeding pure-bred Arabs, prompts this review of the circumstances of the arrival of the descendants of some of these particular individuals, and of some of their kin, in the United States. For it is owing, in part, to them that the Remount is able to carry out its plan so important to the future horse stock of the Western Hemisphere; and possibly of Europe too.

In 1875 the late Major Roger D. Upton, author of Newmarket and Arabia [1] and of Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia,[2] having been commissioned by Albert G. Sandemen, M.P., and Henry Chaplin, M.P., brought from the Desert to England, among other horses, four individuals: a chestnut colt, the horse Yataghan and the mares Zulieka and Haidee. The cost of his importation was $62,000 in gold.[3]

“Upton himself selected [these horses] from the Gomussa with the assistance of their Chief who was the greatest man and the greatest authority on horses among the Bedouins. The Gomussa breed none but pure horses.”[4]

As a result of the mating of Haidee and Yataghan, the chestnut filly Naomi was born in England in 1876. And, with her importation to the United States, in 1888, by Randolph Huntington, the first opportunity, since Keene Richards’ time, to breed pure Arabs, in a serious and intelligent way, was made use of by Huntington who, convinced of the necessity of the Arab “yeast,” saw his chance by reason of the previous arrival of General Grant’s two Eastern horses Leopard and Linden Tree.

In the following letter Huntington tells how he acquired Naomi:

“It was by accident that I got the mare Naomi. Capt. Upton died; then the Rev. Vidal got her, (5) and as Vidal was about to be retired from his living, it was proposed by Lady Anne Blunt and the Hon Etheldred Dillon that he let me have her. Immediately he offered her to me (it is true the price was strong) I accepted her by cable. After I got her over I was offered three prices for her return. I even had offers for her from Algiers; but I did not buy her to sell but to breed….” (6)

That Naomi’s value was known in England is shown by a letter to Vidal from W.S.Blunt who wrote:

“I think the idea of changing a mare is a good one and I should like to send someone down to see Naomi. I have two mares that I shall be willing to part with this year, and perhaps a third…. I hope if you are coming this way you will pay us another visit at Crabbet this summer and in the meantime if we can come to an arrangement for exchanging I shall be very glad as I know the breeding of your mare must be correct.” (7)

Vidal sent to Huntington a copy of Blunt’s letter on which Vidal wrote: “The exchange did not come off because I did not consider either of the three [Blunt] mares as equal to Naomi.”

As already mentioned, Naomi arrived in America (Rochester, N.Y.) in 1888. She was not bred in 1889, but in 1890 Huntington made use of General Grant’s horse Leopard by whom she produced the chestnut colt Anazeh. (7a) He was her fifth foal, as she had already produced four in England, the fourth having been the chestnut filly Nazli by the desert-bred steeple-chase Arab Maidan.

At this point a slight digression is necessary in order to show how some of Naomi’s offspring in England were bred to a famous desert-bred Arab sire and how his and some of Naomi’s descendants got to the United States; and a few other things.

The “cloth” (8) has contributed more sportsmen to England than to America, so, it is not surprising to learn that the famous desert-bred racing Arab Kismet was owned by the rector of Creeting St. Mary, the Rev. F. Furse Vidal, through whose good offices he was rented to and imported by Huntington to die a few hours after landing in New York. (9)

This tragedy in the horse world temporarily delayed the important and patriotic plans of Huntington who not only intended to breed pure Arabs, but, by uniting the bloods of Arab and Clay, sought to give the United States a national horse built on blood as good if not better than that from which the English thoroughbred was created. (10) However, the delay was brief, for, with typical courage he at once opened negotiations again with Vidal for the purchase and importation of more of the same blood in a group of individuals comprising Nazli, daughter of Naomi, Garaveen, Naomi’s grandson and Nazli’s son Nimr. (11)

As both Garaveen and Nimr were sons of Kismet his loss, though tragic in its dramatic suddenness and because of his remarkable turf career, was not irreparable, for, luckily these sons were living and available; and, under the devoted personal supervision of Vidal the group landed safely, in New York, the spring of 1893 (12)

So, in the year 1893 the United States could boast of the blood of the desert-bred Yataghan in his daughter Naomi, in his granddaughter Nazli and in his great grandsons Nimr and Garaveen; and of the blood of the desert-bred Kismet in his sons Nimr and Garaveen; and of Naomi herself and her blood in her daughter Nazli and in her grandsons Nimr and Garaveen. Besides the blood mentioned there was that of Blunt’s highly prized Saqlawi Jidrani horse Kars in Garaveen and of Miss Dillon’s desert-bred Muniqi-Hadruj horse Maidan in Nazli and Nimr. All in all a closely related group mostly of the Muniqi-Hadruj strain of which Carl Raswan says:

“The Miniqi-Hadruj of the Kismet, Maidan, Naomi, Khaled, Nimr, Yataghan, Haidee blood lines are the most important in America as far as speed, size and bigger bone are concerned.” (13)

Vidal’s opinion of the blood value of the group of horses that Huntington imported and his regret at having to part with them was frankly expressed in a letter to Huntington in which he wrote:

“Since getting your letter which concluded our bargain [the purchase of Nazli, Nimr and Garaveen] I have received an offer of LB 2,000 for Nimr; and had there been time I perhaps should have asked you to let me off. But, on consideration, I feel satisfied that it is as well as it is—(tho’, of course, the difference in price is a serious consideration to me) I am happy to think he will be in the hands of such a thorough believer in the value of blood, as you—than that he should be lost in the general crowd.

“Dear Mr. Huntington, you are now receiving the fruits of 35 years of careful study, expenditure and experience. Alas! Alas! that it should come to this. One soweth but another reapeth. You will have the finest strain of blood that has ever come out of the desert and it should be your task to preserve it pure for the use of future generations.” (14)

Huntington in his letters and in his stud bills always stressed the fact that he had a group of horses “of one family blood” and it was his intention always to preserve a group whose blood was “intensified” by being interbred in the same family. And, when it is recalled that at this date little was known, outside of Arabia, about the different strains and their special values, Huntington should be credited with close observation in his pioneer breeding experiments, for, besides the Muniqi strain he had individuals of other strains whose characteristics, he noted, differed from those of the Muniqi. His close study of the offspring of the few strains that he had the opportunity to observe led him to declare that the Arabian horse was in different families with different instincts.

___________________________

Images and Footnotes:

(3)

(4)

(5) Vidal bought Naomi from Albert G. Sandeman.

(6) Huntington to C.V. Bouthillier, Dec. 17, 1890.

(7) Blunt to Vidal, Feb 2, 1885.

(7a) Foaled May 10, 1890; bred and owned by Huntington who in a letter to the press, May 25, 1890, wrote:

“That Naomi should be brought from the Desert [in her dam] to England, and there produce a son [ Gomussa, sold to the Chilean government] to an Arab horse [Kouch] presented by the Sultan of Turkey, Murad V, to the Princess of Wales, and then come to America and produce another son [Anazeh] to the credit of an Arab [Leopard] presented to a representative of the American people [General Grant], by a second Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, is singular, if not phenomenal.”

(8) It may not be known generally that John Wesley, the renowned English evangelist, was a great horseman and cross-country rider. On his tours about the country he rode above 100,000 miles with slack rein. He wrote a sermon on the horse prophesying that at the last days horses would enjoy a state of exalted happiness. (The Horse (English) vol. VIII, No. 31, p. 199).

(9) For a detailed account of Kismet’s remarkable career, see The Horse (Washington, D.C. )vol. 19, No. 1, Jan. -Feb., 1938.

(10) In Bruce’s American Stud Book (vol. VI, 1894, pp. 1165-1168 inclusive) are registered 51 Americo-Arabs; most of them bred and owned by Randolph Huntington.

(11) Besides these three Vidal brought over on the same ship a bay Arab, Ibex, by Miss Dillon’s El Emir, for Fullerton Phillips of Philadelphia. Ibex did not enter into the breeding project here described.

(12) Shortly after his arrival Vidal went to the Chicago Exposition to judge Arab and other classes.

(13) Western Horseman. Jan. – Feb., 1942. p. 14.

It was claimed that the Darley Arabian was a Muniqi. “Later discovery of his pedigree in the files of the Darley family proved him to be a Muniqi Hadraji….From him descended Flying Childers.” (W.R.Brown. The Horse of the Desert. New York, 1929, p. 126.)

(14) Vidal to Huntington, May 20, 1893.

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Images

image of Rectory:

CREETING ST. MARY RECTORY

Reproduced from a photograph through the courtesy of Mrs. H.A. Fleetwood, wife of the present (1936) rector who succeeded the Rev. Vidal.

________________________________

Image of church:

CREETING ST. MARY CHURCH

The late Rev. F. Furse Vidal, who owned “Kismet,” “Naomi,” “Nazli,” “Nimr” and “Garaveen” and bred the last three and from whom the late Randolph Huntington bought the last four, was at the time and for many years the rector of this church. In one of his letters he wrote: “I have been much occupied of late with various Parish matters … I have had five sermons to preach in the last week — this means a good deal of time and thought.” (1) For recreation he indulged in a small breeding stud and with his sons and daughters was active in the hunting field.

St. Mary’s stands on the top of a hill [near Needham Market], surrounded by trees, and is a building of flint and stone in a variety of styles …. The registers date from 1681.” (2)

Reproduced from a photograph through the courtesy of Mrs. H. A. Fleetwood, wife of the present (1936) rector, who succeeded the Rev. Vidal.

(1) Vidal to Huntington, Xmas day, 1903.

(2) “County Churches — Suffold.” T. Hugh Bryant. London. 1912.

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Photo of 2 handwritten pages

Pages 1 and 5 of Vidal’s letter to Huntington quoting Upton’s Note about His Importation of Valuable Arabian Stock. the letter in full follows:

Mrs. Upton cannot remember the date of the arrival — but she thinks it must have been in March or April 1875 or 1876. the latter date would tally with ‘Naomi’s’ age and with what Mr. Sandeman told me.”

“In a note he, Upton, says: ‘I have tried to get a Managhi Hedrudj of the family of Ibn Sbeyel of the Gomussa tribe of Sebaa Anezeh which I hold to be the best breed in the Desert. I have succeeded and one of them is now in my stable. I had enquired at the same time about about the mares; and two have come of the same family. The four are as follows: No. 1. Chestnut stallion, 4 yrs. old. 14.2. His dam a Keheilet Jeabeh taken from the Heissa Anezeh, and his sire the famous Keheilan Hellawi of the Shammar tribe. No. 2. Pearl Grey stallion with black mane and black tail, tipped with white, 4 years old 14.2 His dam “Managhi Hedrudj” of Ibn Sbeyel family of Gomussa anezeh, and his sire of the same breed, now in the stud of the King of Italy. No. 3. Bay mare 5 years old 14.1 1/2. Same breed as No. 2, but dam and sire not the same. No. 4. Chestnut mare 4 years old 14.3. Same breed as No. 2 and 3, but dam and sire not the same. Noted for speed and bottom’.”

” ‘The Keheilan Hellawi, sire of the chestnut colt, is preferred to any Seglawi Jedraan stallion for covering mares, on account of the constant success of his progeny — colts got by him are always sought after. All horses bear the name of the breed of the dams and this Keheilan jeeban is therefore considered first class, as that is on of the best varieties of the Keheilan Adjooz breed. The Hellawi strain is also a branch of the Keheilan Adjooz — but not in general so much thought of as the sire of this chestnut colt is in particular. The Managhi Hedruj is highly esteemed as a breed — and those of the family of Ibn Sbeyel of the Gomussa tribe are known as the best strain of that blood though not always so handsome as some other breeds.’

” ‘The name means “long necked.” Jeeban is the “proved” and Hellawi “the sweet“.’

“I also send you a facsimile of a translation made by Upton of the delivery note and description of my old mare Zulieka (the No. 3, I presume) — the others have been lost.

“I think these notes of Uptons which have only just been unearthed, will go far to confirm you in what I have always told you, that Naomi’s blood is the finest and best that could possibly be.

“P.S. You will note that the Shiek Suleyman ibn Mirschid is the famous chief of the Gomussa spoken of by Upton in [and] Lady A. Blunt in their books.”

Photographed from a letter found among the letters and papers of the late Randolph Huntington.

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Image of a facsimile

“Fac Simile of a translation [from the Arabic] made by Roger D. Upton of the delivery note and description of my old mare “Zulieka” (the No. 3 I presume) — the others [translations for other horses] have been lost.” (Excerpt from a letter, Jan. 15, 1896, of F.F.Vidal to Randolph Huntington.)

“The No. 3” refers to a quotation by Vidal of Upton’s description of the Arabian horses and mares imported to England by him.

No. 1 in the same letter refers to Chestnut colt.

No. 2 in the same letter refers to “Yataghan.”

No. 4 in the same letter refers to “Haidee.”

“Yataghan” and “Haidee” were sire and dam of “Naomi.”

“Zulieka” was half-sister “Haidee.” All these horses were registered in the G.S.B.

Reproduced from a photograph of the original found among the letters and papers of the late Randolph Huntington.

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Photo of “Naomi”

“Naomi,” a chestnut sorrel, of the Munigi-Hadraji strain, 15 1/2 hands high, was imported to England in 1875, in her dam “Haidee,” from the Euphrates Valley, by Captain Roger D. Upton of the 9th Lancers. Her sire, “Yataghan,” and her dam “were full brother and sister.” (1)

Foaled in 1876, the photograph shows her at nineteen years of age with her ninth foal, the colt “Khaled,” thirteen days old. Up to 1898, the year she died, she had produced twelve foals as follows:

1884, bay colt “Gomussa,” by Princess of Wales’ Saqlwai-Jidrani Arab “Kouch.”

1885, not bred.

1886, chestnut filly “Kushdil,” by S.W.Blunt’s Saqlwai-Jidrani Arab “Kars.”

1887, bay filly “Naama,” by Hon. Miss Dillon’s Shammar Arab “El Emir.”

1888, chestnut filly “Nazli,” by Hon. Miss Dillon’s Muniqi-Hadraji Arab “Maidan.”

1889. not bred.

1890, chestnut colt “Anazeh,” by Gen. Grant’s Saqlwai-Jidrani Arab “Leopard.”

1891, seal brown filly “Ruth Clay,” by the Americo-Arab “Young Jack Shepard.”

1892, bay colt “Boaz Clay,” by “Young Jack Shepard.”

1894, chestnut colt Nejd, by Arab “Anazeh.”

1895, chestnut colt “Khaled,” by Arab “Nimr.”

1896, chestnut filly “Naomi II,” by Arab “Nimr.”

1897, chestnut filly “Narkeesa,” by Arab “Anazeh.”

1898, chestnut filly “Naressa,” by Arab “Anazeh.”

Reproduced from a photograph found among the letters and papers of the late Randolph Huntington.

(1) While this is the oft repeated statement, Vidal quotes Upton that they were of the same family but of different parentage.

____________________________

Photo of “Nazli”

(G.S.B. Vol, XVI, p. 655

By “Maidan” [G.S.B. Vol. XVI, p. 657] out of “Naomi”; height 14h. 3 in., without shoes. Measures under knee 7 7/8 in. chestnut mare (same color as “Naomi”) white star on forehead. Splended shoulders; clean flat legs and good feet– hocks good — but not quite so fine as “Kushdil’s.” Was quiet to ride last year but has been turned out October as she is believed to be in foal to “Mesauod” (Lady A. Blunt’s horse). Stands true. Action like her Mother’s. This mare is considered to be the handsomest Arab mare in England. Carries her tail high and straight. Plenty of good strong hair on fetlocks. (1)

“Nazli” and “Nimr” are beauties of the first water. (1)

“Nazli” was foaled in England in 1888. She was 7 years old as shown here, held by Mr. Huntington, with her second foal, “Naarah.” She had produced, when 3 years old, “Nimr” in England. Up to 1904 she had produced one foal in England and nine in America, as follows:

1891, “Nimr” chestnut colt by “Kismet.”

1895, “Naarah” chestnut filly by “Anazeh.”

1896, “Naaman” chestnut colt by “Anazeh.”

1897 “Nazlina” chestnut filly by “Anazeh.”

1898 “Nadab” chestnut colt by “Anazeh.”

1899, “Nazlita” chestnut filly by “Khaled.”

1900, “Nazlet” chestnut filly by “Khaled.”

1901, “Nejdran” chestnut colt by “Anazeh.”

1903. “Nahor” chestnut colt by “Anazeh.”

1904, “…….” chestnut filly by “Anazeh.”

Reproduced from a photograph found among the letters and papers of the late Randoph Huntington.

(1) Vidal to Huntington March 31, 1893.

  1. [1]London, 1873
  2. [2]London, 1881
  3. [3]Included in the Upton importation were the following colts and mares, the portion of the Hon. Henry Chaplin ex-British Minister of Agriculture and breeder of Hermit and other Derby winners: Jocktan, bay colt 3 1/2 years old; Ishmael, dark bay colt 2 years old; Kesia bay mare 10 years old; Keren-Happuch, chestnut mare 8 or 9 years old. (The Arab Horse Stud Book, Vol. 1, No. 4). As the Chaplin lot were not kept as a pure-Arab Stud and as their descendants, so far as is known, never came to America, they do not concern this review.
  4. [4]Excerpt from a letter of F. F. Vidal, Dec. 24, 1895, to Randolph Huntington.

J. Hamilton Leigh: Piercing the Veil

by Robert J. Cadranell II ©1991 from The CMK Record IX/2 Winter, 1991
used by permission of Robert J. Cadranell II

BINT RANYA (Redif x Ranya), a RIYALA granddaughter, is one of two Leigh-bred Arabians still represented in pedigrees.

American Arabian breeders encounter the name of J. Hamilton Leigh infrequently. Nevertheless the name was connected to Crabbet Arabians in England for a period spanning nearly forty years. Despite the frequency with which one encounters his name in the AHS and GSB, the details of his personality remain enigmatic.

The earliest record of Leigh’s involvement with Crabbet Arabians seems to be in the Crabbet herdbook. Courtesy of Peter Upton’s Desert Heritage, we know that J. Hamilton Leigh Esq. of Brinnington Mount, Stockport bought from Crabbet on June 20, 1900 the stallion MAHRUSS. The Blunts had bought the 14.1 1/2 hand MAHRUSS from Ali Pasha Sherif and imported him to England in 1897. While at Crabbet MAHRUSS had been the sire of one foal, viz. a chestnut colt out of BADIA which broke its leg and was destroyed as a foal. When MAHRUSS left Crabbet five mares had been bred to him for 1901. Of these, ROSE DIAMOND, NARGHILEH, and SEFINA were returned as barren in GSB. *BUSHRA had been exported to America, where she produced *IBN MAHRUSS. That left ROSE OF SHARON to produce Crabbet’s only link to MAHRUSS: the nearly 16-hand favorite of both the Blunts, RIJM.

After leaving Crabbet, MAHRUSS sired two more registered Arabian foals and then dropped out of written record. In this MAHRUSS established for Leigh a pattern of buying key Crabbet individuals and holding them in a sort of twilight zone while he bred from them sparingly or not at all. Leigh is named as the breeder of fourteen foals born over a thirty year period, two of which are in modern pedigrees. What Leigh did with his Arabs is not now clear. Whether he rode them, used them for cross breeding, or enjoyed them as pets is a matter of speculation.

Leigh next acquired from Crabbet two mares, apparently in 1901 or 1902. GSB vol. XX lists “Mr. J. H. Leigh” as the breeder of 1902 fillies from SEFINA (Mesaoud x Safra) and RAYYANA (Ahmar x *Rose of Sharon). SEFINA’s (a chestnut by SEYAL) was registered dead. SEFINA was next bred to MAHRUSS and produced in 1903 an unnamed chestnut filly for Sir S. Pigott. After that she returned to Crabbet. RAYYANA’s 1902 filly was a chestnut by MESAOUD named RUYA. Leigh did not rebreed RAYYANA and sold her at about the same time he sold SEFINA. RUYA was also sold, and produced for a Mr. G. O. Pardoe a 1905 chestnut colt named RUSTUM (by MAHRUSS). This is the point at which MAHRUSS drops out of the record, and is also the end of the first phase of Leigh’s career as a breeder.

Leigh’s name does not appear again in Arabian stud books for nearly fifteen years. When it does reappear, it is as Capt. J. H. Leigh. Apparently in 1916, he went back to Crabbet for two more mares. This time he acquired ROKHAMA (*Astraled x Rabla) and FEJR (Rijm x Feluka). During this period he was also the owner of the Crabbet stallion REDIF (Daoud x Rosemary). ROKHAMA left at Crabbet her *NASIK daughter *ROKHSA. For Leigh she produced a 1918 REDIF colt and then died after foaling. This colt, HERMIT II, had no registered Arabian offspring. FEJR had left at Crabbet her IBN YASHMAK daughter *FELESTIN. She produced no foals for Leigh, although the GSB records Leigh put her to REDIF. In 1922 Lady Wentworth brought FEJR back to Crabbet, where she promptly produced FASILA, FARIS, FERHAN, and FAYAL.

The first stud book of Britain’s Arab Horse Society appeared in 1919. At this time Capt. J. Hamilton Leigh (Blindon House, Wellington, Somerset) was a member of the Society’s Council. In addition to the horses named above, he had also acquired, apparently from Musgrave Clark, the mare SIMHAN II, bred at the Government Stud in Bosnia. SIMHAN II produced for LEIGH a 1917 colt by Clark’s DAOUD and then one in 1918 by REDIF. Neither colt left any Arabian get. SIMHAN II herself died before foaling in 1919. As of this 1919 stud book, Leigh’s most recent acquisition seems to have been BELKIS (Seyal x Bereyda). BELKIS had spent the first part of her life as a riding and driving mare for Lady Anne Blunt and the Lyttons. She produced no registered foals for Leigh, although AHS vol. I does record a 1919 breeding to FANTASS, a full brother to *FERDA.

Leigh appears to have maintained good relations with Lady Wentworth, who assumed the helm of Crabbet in 1920. Acquired from Lady Wentworth in 1920 or 1921 was the mare RANYA. Leigh is the breeder of her 1921 filly MIRIAM (by Lady Wentworth’s stallion NADIR). MIRIAM was exported to Australia in 1925, where she became an important line foundress. Next Leigh bred RANYA to his stallion REDIF. The 1922 filly he entered in the AHS stud book as RANYA II (“Bint Ranya” in GSB). By 1926 Leigh had sold RANYA II to a J. W. Darwood. RANYA II began her illustrious career in 1932 with a foal for Miss Mary Russell. Through her, REDIF is the only DAOUD son in modern pedigrees. Within a year or two after producing the only Leigh-bred foals with any pedigree influence, RANYA herself became the property of Mr. C. W. Hough.

In 1922, Leigh got from Lady Wentworth the 21-year-old Crabbet matron AJRAMIEH (Mesaoud x Asfura). She had left a number of foals at Crabbet, the most important of which is AMIDA. Leigh is the breeder of AJRAMIEH’s 1922 filly named AJRAMIEH II (by NADIR). This filly died in 1924, and AJRAMIEH herself failed to produce another foal. Around this time Leigh also acquired from Lady Wentworth KESRATAIN (Ibn Yashmak x Kantara). She was Crabbet’s last foal of straight Ali Pasha Sherif breeding. Nothing further is known of her.

Leigh’s other two broodmares from Crabbet were RAYYA (Rustem x Riada) and RUDEYNA (Daoud x Rose of Hind). RUDEYNA produced for Leigh a 1922 RASIM colt (registered dead) and in 1923 a Skowronek colt named in GSB IRAM (registered as “Feith Dhomnuil” in AHS; later changed in AHS to *Iram”). Leigh did not breed from RUDEYNA again; three years later she was back at Crabbet. IRAM seems briefly to have taken the place of REDIF, destroyed in 1925, as Leigh’s stud stallion. Leigh took IRAM to the 1926 London Show, where he placed over the illustrious SAINFOIN. Other than two fillies out of *BATTLA and RAYYA, IRAM’s use at stud was of no consequence. The only other mares he seems to have covered were Lady Wentworth’s RIM and FEJR, whose sons RIX and FAYAL were among the Crabbet horses with an “or” sire. FAYAL and RIX generally are attributed to MIRAZE rather than IRAM. IRAM did spend some time at Crabbet; he was photographed there. Cecil Covey’s last booklet of photographs states that IRAM was exported to Egypt in 1929.

RAYYA appears not to have been sold to Leigh until after AHS vol. I was prepared. In April of 1920 she was at Crabbet, although she seems to have gone to Leigh’s that year; her production career begins with a 1921 REDIF filly named RADIYEH, born the property of Lady Wentworth. In 1922 RAYYA was barren to *Nureddin II and NADIR for Leigh. In 1923 RAYYA was back at Crabbet where she produced *RASEYN for Lady Wentworth. The next year she was barren to *Nureddin II for Lady Wentworth. By 1925 RAYYA had settled with Leigh, producing that year for him *RASEYN’s full sister ROTHA (died as a yearling), followed by a 1927 brother named FADLALLA. Leigh then bred from RAYYA a 1929 IRAM daughter named ZANAB and finely a 1931 filly named SAFARI (by the desert bred stallion OUTLAW). FADLALLA was gelded as a three-year-old. SAFARI was exported to the British West Indies. Lady Wentworth acquired ZANAB but she does not seem ever to have produced a foal.

By the time of the 1937 stud book, if Leigh had any Arabs left, they must have been limited to FADLALLA and ZANAB, although he was still a member of the Council. RAYYA had been given away in 1932, and SAFARI had a new owner.

Between 1922 and 1925 Leigh was promoted to Colonel. It might be that Leigh’s military career prevented him from deeper involvement with the horses. He might have been abroad during the period following his ownership of MAHRUSS. Leigh died between the publication of the 1937 and 1944 stud books.

Although RANYA II and MIRIAM are the only horses in pedigrees attributed to Leigh as breeder, many of his animals contributed to the CMK tradition before and/or after he had them. Plain bad luck seems to have followed Leigh’s horses as well, as the record drawn from the stud books illustrates. Perhaps a reader will be kind enough to write with details of Leigh’s life to add some substance to the framework as constructed from stud book records.

The Double Registered Arabians

by R.J. Cadranell
from The CMK Record Summer 1989 VIII/I
copyright 1989

In 1791, during the century which saw the writing of great compendiums of knowledge, including Dr. Johnson’s dictionary, James Weatherby published in England what was to become the preliminary volume of The General Stud Book, Containing Pedigrees of Race Horses, &c. &c. From the earliest Accounts… In 1808, after several revisions, appeared the version which has become standard. This documented the pedigrees of a breed of horse which later adopted the name of Thoroughbred. Mr. Weatherby’s stud book demonstrates the Thoroughbred’s descent from numerous Oriental sires and dams. The pedigree of the Thoroughbred stallion ECLIPSE (1764) lists the names of the DARLEY ARABIAN, the LEEDES ARABIAN, the OGLETHORPE ARABIAN, the LISTER TURK, the DARCY YELLOW TURK, the BYERLEY TURK, the GODOLPHIN ARABIAN or Barb, HUTTON’S GREY BARB, and the MOROCCO BARB as ancestors.

The American Stud Book, a.k.a. the Jockey Club Stud Book, first appeared in 1873. Its original complier was S.D. Bruce, and The American Stud Book (ASB) is still the registration authority for Thoroughbreds in this country. Volume I included a chapter for “Imported Arab, Barb and Spanish Horses and Mares.

Weatherbys issued Volume XIII of the General Stud Book (GSB) in 1877. This volume included a new section, roughly one page in length, for Arabian stock recently imported to the U.K. It was the beginning of modern Arabian horse breeding in the English speaking world. In this volume are Arabians which Capt. Roger D. Upton and H.B.M. Consul at Aleppo, Mr. James H. Skene, were involved in importing for Messrs. Sandeman (including YATAGHAN and HAIDEE, the sire and dam of *Naomi) and Chaplin (including the mare KESIA). GSB Volume XIV (1881) registered the earliest of Mr. Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt’s importations for their Crabbet Arabian Stud. Skene had provided crucial assistance to the Blunts, too; Wilfrid Blunt later credited Skene with giving him and his wife the idea for the Crabbet Stud (see Archer et.al., The Crabbet Arabian Stud. p. 34). Skene is perhaps the founding father of Arabian horse breeding in the English speaking world. The preface to GSB Volume XIV expressed the hope that the newly imported Arabian stock might, in time, provide the Thoroughbred with a valuable cross back to the original blood from which it had come. This idea had also been behind the thinking of Upton and Skene.

The Blunts subscribed to this view too. The British racing authorities agreed to hold an Arab race at Newmarket in 1884; the outcome was inconclusive, but Blunt wrote that

“the ultimate result, however, was not I think, as far as Arab breeding in England was affected by it, wholly a misfortune. It convinced me that 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.”(see Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum, 2nd ed., London 1912, p. 265)

Although the Blunts gave up the idea of rejuvenating the Thoroughbred with a fresh cross to Arab blood, they continued to register their horses in the Arab section of the GSB, as it was the sole registration authority for Arabian breeding stock in the U.K. GSB registration conferred on the Crabbet horses the advantages of prestige and the eligibility to enter many countries of the world duty free.

Volume IV of The American Stud Book (1884) continued to list Arabian horses imported to America. This volume included the 1879 import *Leopard, the first Arabian brought to America to leave Arabian descent here. The Arabian section in ASB VI (1894) included the imported horses (all from the GSB) of the early breeders Huntington and Ramsdell.

The mare *Nejdme was the first horse recorded in the Arabian Horse Registry of America Studbook. Foaled in Syria, she is pictured here in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair.

ASB VII (1898) listed in the Arab section Huntington and Ramsdell horses, with the addition of Ramsdell’s *SHAHWAN, newly imported from the Crabbet Stud, and his mare *NEJDME (spelled “Nedjme” in ASB) from the Hamidie Society’s exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair. Also included were a stallion from the deserts of Northern Arabia and two stallions imported from Russia for the Chicago World’s Fair. The pedigree information printed with one of the latter, a horse named BEKBOOLAT, states that his second dam was by an imported English Thoroughbred. His pedigree also includes an Orloff saddle mare. BEKBOOLAT’s inclusion in the Arabian section of the ASB demonstrates that at the time the Jockey Club had a rather loose working definition of the term “Arabian.”

ASB Volumes VIII (1902) and IX (1906) list in the Arabian section no newly imported horses other than those which were bred in England, either at Crabbet or by Miss Dillon or Lord Arthur Cecil, and which therefore arrived in this country with GSB certificates. All GSB registered Arabians were automatically eligible for the ASB.

In October of 1906 the S.S. Italia arrived in America carrying 27 Arabians which Homer Davenport had imported directly from the Anazah tribes in Arabia. The only registration authority for Arabian horses in America was the stud book of the American Jockey Club. Not all the Arab horses in America were listed in the Arab section of the ASB. Huntington appears to have ceased registering with the Jockey Club after 1895. The Crabbet bred *IBN MAHRUSS and his dam *BUSHRA appear not to have had ASB registration. Davenport applied for the registration of his new arrivals.

Details of the ensuing embroilment are exceedingly complex, and the full story has yet to come to light. According to testimony published in “That Arab Horse Tangle” (The Rider and Driver, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 11, June 5, 1909 and No. 12, June 12, 1909), the Jockey Club began by sending to Weatherbys for verification the Arabic certificates which had accompanied the Davenport horses. By 1899, “to counter the overt forgery of pedigrees by dealers… the General Stud Book now accepted only Consular Certificates issued in the port where a horse was exported“(James Fleming, writing in Lady Anne Blunt, Journals and Correspondence, p. 407). After a favorable review from Weatherbys, the papers returned to Alexandretta and Aleppo for consular verification, which they obtained. It seemed as though the Jockey Club was ready to register the Davenport horses when negotiations broke down, and the Jockey Club denied the application. Davenport, whose vocation was the drawing of political cartoons, claimed his unflattering portrayal of Jockey Club chairman August Belmont was the cause of bias.

Davenport reminded people that the Jockey Club already had registered several imported Arabians from the Middle East on the basis of documentation ranging from the flimsy to the non-existent. One such mare, belonging to Peter Bradley, was apparently either *ABBYA or *ZARIFFEY, both described as “Kehilan, sub-strain unknown” in the auction catalog from the Hamidie dispersal. Davenport pointed out that their description was useless for establishing purity of blood, and neither mare appears among the eventual registrations of the Arabian Horse Club. Davenport also publicized the Jockey Club’s acceptance of *BEAMING STAR, an unpedigreed animal which Davenport’s traveling companion Jack Thompson had bought on the dock in Beirut and shipped to America on a boat separate from the Davenport importation.

Though registered by the Jockey Club, none of the above animals appears in the Arabian section of the printed ASB volumes. Also conspicuously absent is one of W.R.Brown’s 1918 imports from Crabbet, *RAMLA. This is perhaps because the registrations of foals, and hence to a certain extent their parents, were based on the annual return of breeding records of mares, as were the registrations in the GSB. Since most Americans will not be acquainted with this format, a typical GSB entry is quoted from Volume XXII(1913), p.l 957:

MABRUKA (Bay), foaled in 1891, by Azrek, out of imp.
Meshura, continued from Vol. XXI, p. 896.
1909 b.f. Munira, by Daoud Crabbet Stud
1910 b.c. by Rijm (died in 1912)
1911 b.f. Marhaba, by Daoud
1912 barren to Ibn Yashmak
1913 not covered in 1912

MARHABA is familiar to American breeders as the dam of the Selby import *MIRZAM (by Rafeef).

Since the Jockey Club refused to cooperate, Davenport joined with other interested Arab horse enthusiasts and formed the Arabian Horse Club (AHC) in 1908. The next year the Arabian Horse Club issued its first stud book, and after certification by the Department of Agriculture, it became the official registration authority for Arabian horses in America. The original 1909 stud book registered 71 Arabians, of which twelve had also appeared in the Arab sections of the ASB volumes published to that date. These horses were therefore “double registered” Arabians.

One Arabian breeder was unimpressed. Though invited to register his horses, Spencer Borden felt no need to do so. His stock imported from England was in the GSB and ASB, the foals he had bred were also in the ASB, and he “did not care to enter them in any other place” (see The Rider and Driver, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 9, May 22, 1909, p. 4). At that point in time, Borden was almost the only one breeding ASB registered Arabians. The registration on the Huntington animals had lapsed, and many of the breeders working with Huntington bloodlines entered their horses in the new AHC stud book. Ramsdell produced an occasional ASB registered foal from one of his *NEJDME mares, but his period of greatest activity as an Arabian breeder had passed. Borden had an effective monopoly on the production of Jockey Club registered Arabians.

Borden’s ultimate goal as a breeder of Arabian horses was to convince the United States Army to use his horses as the basis for an American cavalry stud, producing part-Arab animals for military use. In 1909 he was the only person breeding a significant number of Arabians eligible to the same stud books as Thoroughbreds, and he no doubt saw this as a great advantage.

In 1917, apparently at the insistence of W. R. Brown, Borden relented and “double registered” his horses by entering them in the AHC stud book. Shortly after this, Brown bought out the Borden program, becoming the new monopolizer of double registered stock. In 1918 Brown made a substantial importation from the Crabbet Stud. At the time, Brown’s chief American rival as a breeder was Peter Bradley, whose Hingham Stock Farm had continued to breed the Davenport Arabians after the latter’s death in 1912, as well as horses of Hamidie and one or two other lines. However, Bradley did not breed double registered stock, and the last Arabian foal crop born in Hingham ownership came in 1921.

Brown’s Maynesboro Stud was to enjoy a number of years as the largest Arabian nursery on the continent. He had bought Crabbet bred horses imported by Ames, Borden, and Davenport. He had made his own large importation from that source, followed by a second and much smaller importation from England. He had bought the rest of the Borden herd, which included animals of Dillon, Ramsdell, and Huntington lines. Among the latter was the mare NAZLET, whom Borden had had to register with the Jockey Club himself. Brown also developed a network to keep himself informed of Arabian horses which became available for purchase. After the closeout of the Borden operation and before the 1926 Kellogg importation from Crabbet, Brown was almost the only breeder of double registered stock.

Among the horses Brown’s brother had acquired from the Davenport estate was the 1910 bay stallion JERRED, by the Davenport import *EUPHRATES and out of *NEJDME. Several writers have advanced the theory that JERREDE was not out of *NEDJME, but rather her granddaughter NEJDME III, claiming that Davenport never owned *NEJDME and that the AHC made a mistake in attributing the colt to her. Both Volume 1 (1913) of the AHC stud books and Volume XII of the ASB attribute *NEJDME’s ownership to Davenport, and state unequivocally that JERREDE was her son. Furthermore, as of 1909 NEJDME II (whose sire *OBEYRAN was single registered) was in the ownership of Eleanor Gates in California. Brown was using JERREDE at stud in a limited way, and by 1915 he had begun an effort to accomplish the Jockey Club registration of the Davenport imports *URFAH and her son *EUPHRATES, thus making JERREDE and his get eligible, too. Brown traced a copy of the Arabic document pertaining to *URFAH and *EUPHRATES, secured consular verification of it, and finally had Lady Anne Blunt vouch for its authenticity. The Jockey Club notified Brown of the completion of the registration in 1919. *URFAH and *EUPHRATES appear in ASB XII (1920), on p. 662. Since the credentials of the other Davenport imports were really no different from those of *URFAH and *EUPHRATES, the possibility of double registering them arose. Brown did not want to watch the rest of the Davenport horses ride into the ASB on the coat tails of *URFAH and *EUPHRATES. He insisted that should the Hingham management wish to pursue the matter, the Jockey Club ought to consider the Davenport imports on a case by case basis (see Charles C. Craver III, “At the Beginning,” Arabian Horse News, May, 1974, pp. 97-112). The management at Hingham evidently did not, and the other Davenport animals remained single registered, duly entered in The Arabian Stud Book, but not the Jockey Club Stud Book.

The JERREDE influence endured at Maynesboro only through his daughter DJEMELI (out of Nazlet), dam of MATIH. Other single registered lines from Maynesboro’s early days did not endure, producing their last foals for Brown in 1921. In 1921 and 1922 Brown imported Arabians registered in the French Stud Book, making the last additions to the double-registered gene pool which did not come from the GSB. Brown’s limitation of his breeding stock to double registered animals amounted to a self imposed restriction of his options. Looking from the broadest perspective, that of the development of the breed as a whole in America, Brown’s attitude meant that the separate breeding traditions which Davenport and Borden had established by and large remained separate for another generation. Brown’s horses amounted to a breed within a breed. Since double registration gave his animals an added selling point, Brown and others to follow had a not insignificant economic stake in the matter as well.

Brown made two further importations of Arabian stock to this country: the better known of these is his 1932 importation from Egypt, which included *NASR, *ZARIFE, *RODA, *AZIZA, *H. H. MOHAMED ALI’S HAMIDA, and *H.H.MOHAMED ALI’S HAMAMA. The latter two received their lengthy appellations to distinguish them from Brown’s 1923 import *HAMIDA (Daoud x Hilmyeh) and the mare HAMAMA (Harara x Freda) of Davenport and Hamidie lines. There is evidence to suggest that Carl Raswan helped to steer Brown in the direction of the Egyptian horses. None of the Brown’s 1932 imports appears in the Arab section of the ASB, apparently closed to new non-Thoroughbred registered stock by that time (see below), and since Brown began dispersing his herd shortly after their arrival, it is unclear what use he would have made of them. Brown bred single registered 1934 *NASR foals out of RAAB and BAZRAH. *AZIZA produced the 1935 colt AZKAR, by RAHAS.

Brown also made his own small importation from the desert in 1929. These horses were never registered with either the ASB or AHC. Some believe they never reached this country.

W. K. Kellogg’s importation from the Crabbet Stud in 1926 greatly expanded the base of double registered breeding stock, in terms of numbers and also bloodlines. By that time, the GSB had been closed to newly imported Arabians. The passage of the Jersey Act in 1913 had closed the GSB to Thoroughbreds from other countries, unless they could trace their pedigrees in all lines to animals entered in previous volumes. The 1921 decision did the same thing for Arabians, though one wonders if the death of Lady Anne Blunt in 1917 and the advanced age of her husband, leaving no equal authority, had been an additional factor, making Weatherbys leery of becoming involved in future controversies similar to the one which had surrounded the Davenport horses. Their principal business was the registration of Thoroughbreds, not the verification of the pedigrees of imported Arabians. GSB XXIV (entries through 1920) registered imp. Skowronek, and GSB XXV (through 1924) included imp. DWARKA, the last Arabian added to the GSB gene pool. DWARKA blood had reached America in 1924 in his daughter *ANA. Skowronek blood arrived in the Kellogg shipment of 1926. At about this time the ASB followed suit and ceased to consider imported Arabians not already in the GSB or another Thoroughbred stud book. This established the ASB Arabian gene pool as overlapping that of the GSB with the addition of *EUPHRATES, *NEJDME, and Brown’s French imports. The double registration of the line from *Leopard had not been maintained.

With the advent of manager Herbert Reese in 1927 and the influence of W. R. Brown’s opinions, the management at Kellogg’s came to believe in the importance of double registered stock. Letters in the Kellogg files between Reese and Kellogg indicate that the double registration factor had a major bearing on most aspects of management policy: planning matings, starting young stallions at stud, and the buying and selling of breeding stock. For instance, Reese admired the young sires *FERDIN and FARANA for their conformation, and reminded Kellogg that they had the added advantage of being double registered. Reese made the decision to buy LEILA (El Jafil x Narkeesa) in spite of her status as a single registered mare.

Looking at the Kellogg record from Reese’s arrival in 1927 through 1933, one sees that despite the higher priority attached to double registered stock, the first seven mares Reese purchased and then bred registered foals from had Davenport blood, and that Reese bred more than fifteen foals from double registered mares and single registered stallions. The reason for this is perhaps contained in correspondence between Reese and Kellogg among the Kellogg Ranch Papers. They mention the possibility of registering the ranch’s Davenport stock with the Jockey Club for $50 per head. This writer was unable to locate correspondence to and from the Jockey Club, or any letters explaining why the plan did not come to fruition. Whether Reese and Kellogg, or the Jockey Club, did not follow is not known, but by the summer of 1934 Reese was writing to Kellogg that “…we have eliminated a large percent of the single registered stock” (H.H. Reese to W.K. Kellogg, August 25, 1934). Reese’s last three single registered Kellogg foals out of double registered mares were the 1933 HANAD fillies out of *FERDISIA, *RIFDA, and RAAD. Thereafter, he put Jockey Club mares to Jockey Club stallions only. The fortunes of Davenport blood at the Kellogg Ranch declined as many, but by no means all, Davenport and part Davenport horses were sold. Well known double registered Arabians bred at the Kellogg Ranch include ABU FARWA, FERSEYN, SIKIN, RIFNAS, NATAF, RONEK, SUREYN, and ROSEYNA. Later writers had an unfair tendency to bolster the reputation of these horses at the expense of the ranch’s single registered stock.

As Maynesboro began to break up in the early 1930s, the greatest concentrations of Maynesboro stock accumulated at Kellogg’s, J. M. Dickinson’s, and W. R. Hearst’s. All three breeders continued to double register their horses. Together with the Selby Stud, which had acquired the bulk of its foundation stock from Crabbet, these studs were the principal breeders of double registered Arabians in the 1930’s, and among the largest breeders of Arabian horses in general.

The other major player was Albert Harris, who had bought his first Arabians from Davenport. His foundation sire NEJDRAN JR. and mares SAAIDA and RUHA were all single registered. Harris later added the Davenport import *EL BULAD, a stallion he had tried for years to buy from Bradley before he at last convinced him to sell, according to a letter from Harris among the Kellogg Ranch Papers. Other single registered Harris foundation mares included the Hingham bred MORFDA, MERSHID, and MEDINA. Most of the Harris Arabians were single registered, but he also bred from *ANA, a double registered mare he had imported from England, and a number of double registered mares from Maynesboro: OPHIR, NANDA, *SIMAWA, NIHT, NIYAF, BAZVAN, and MATIH. Harris imported the double registered stallion *NURI PASHA from England in 1924, and had his first ASB registered foals born the next year. With an occasional lapse, Harris proved amazingly conscientious about breeding his few double registered mares to double registered stallions. From 1925 through 1941, Harris bred 38 double registered foals, and only 5 foals from Jockey Club mares and single registered stallions. His Jockey Club mares almost always went to KATAR (Gulastra x *Simawa), *NURI PASHA, KEMAH (*Nuri Pasha x Nanda), KAABA, or KHALIL (both *Nuri Pasha x Ophir) rather than Harris’s single registered sires like NEJDRAN JR., ALCAZAR (Nejdran Jr. x Rhua), and *SUNSHINE. From 1925 through 1931, Harris distinguished his double registered foals by giving them names beginning with the letter “K,” among them the stallions named above. He later abandoned the system: three single registered foals of 1932 and 1934 also got “K” names, and beginning in 1935 virtually all Harris bred horses got names beginning with the letter “K.” In 1942 and 1943 (the last two years in which the Jockey Club registered Arabians as Thoroughbred horses), Harris-owned double registered mares produced five more foals, all by Jockey Club stallions. For some reason, these appear only in the AHC stud book, and not the ASB.

General Dickinson’s farm, Traveler’s Rest, also appears to have used double registration as a guide for making decisions. Most of Dickinson’s double registered horses had come from Brown. Dickinson bred 65 double registered foals born from 1931 through 1942. (Two additional foals, ISLAM and BINNI, were from double registered parents but do not appear in the Arab section of the ASB.) Only 17 Traveler’s Rest foals from the same period were by single registered stallions and out of Jockey Club mares. This seems to indicate that the consideration of double registration had a major effect on breeding decisions at Traveler’s Rest. Jockey Club registered mares were more likely to go to GULASTRA, RONEK, JEDRAN, KOLASTRA, or BAZLEYD than *NASR, *ZARIFE, or *CZUBUTHAN. The matter was of sufficient importance to Dickinson that his catalogs indicate which of his horses carried ASB registration. The consideration may have had a bearing on Dickinson’s decision to sell the Davenport stallion ANTEZ to Poland. Famous double registered Arabians bred by J. M. Dickinson include ROSE OF LUZON, NAHARIN, GINNYYA, CHEPE NOYON, HAWIJA, BRIDE ROSE, GYM-FARAS, and ALYF.

At Selby’s, aside from ten foals out of the single registered mares MURKA, SLIPPER, CHRALLAH, and ARSA, the exception was *MIRAGE. Lady Wentworth, daughter of the Blunts, had taken charge of Crabbet in 1920, and bought this desert bred stallion at Tattersalls in 1923. The 1924 Crabbet Catalog relates that Lady Wentworth was waiting for the completion of additional paperwork regarding his provenance before incorporating *MIRAGE into the Crabbet herd. The writer does not know the outcome of the paperwork, but in 1921 the GSB had closed to imported Arabians, as noted above. Weatherbys registration was of the utmost importance to Lady Wentworth, and unable to induce the GSB to reopen for *MIRAGE, she sold the horse to Roger Selby in 1930.

Britain’s Arab Horse Society (AHS) had formed in 1918 and issued its first stud book the following year; it stood ready to register imported Arabians after the closing of the GSB. However, Lady Wentworth had had a disagreement with the Arab Horse Society, and had ceased to register her horses in its stud book after the 1922 foals. Somewhat like Borden before her, she felt that GSB registration was all her horses needed. It was not until after the War that she rejoined the Society, so *MIRAGE does not appear among AHS registrations.

Selby’s showed little reluctance to breed *MIRAGE and his son IMAGE to double registered mares. The *MIRAGE daughters RAGEYMA and GEYAMA went into the Selby mare band. Of the 64 AHC registered Selby foals born to double registered mares from 1932 to 1943, 28 were by *MIRAGE or IMAGE. However, the management at Selby’s took double registration seriously enough that all eligible Selby foals appear in the Arabian section of the ASB, with the inexplicable exceptions of FRANZA (*Mirzam x *Rose of France) and RASMIAN (*Selmian x *Rasmina). Apparently ineligible was NISIM. NISIM was originally registered as the 1940 grey foal of two chestnuts, namely IMAGE and NISA. After the coat color incompatibility became apparent, the AHC changed the sire to *Raffles. The 1940 entry under NISA in the ASB reads, “covered previous year by an unregistered,” which was standard ASB notation for single registered Arabian stallions used on double registered mares. Famous double registered Arabians bred by Roger Selby include RASRAFF, RAFMIRZ, INDRAFF, SELFRA, and MIRZAIA.

The only Arabian sire getting registered Arabian foals in the first two crops of W. R. Hearst’s stud was the 75% Davenport stallion JOON. By 1935, when the third crop was on the ground, the program had expanded to include the Davenport stallion KASAR and the Crabbet import *FERDIN. The Hearst program was growing rapidly with purchases from the Kellogg Ranch and the disbanding Maynesboro Stud. All of the Maynesboro horses were double registered, but some of the Kellogg purchases were horses with Davenport pedigrees. The Hearst Sunical Land and Packing Corp. began producing double registered Arabian foals in 1936. From that year through 1943, it bred 56 double registered foals, and only five foals from Jockey Club mares and single registered stallions. The key Jockey Club sires at Hearst’s were RAHAS, GULASTRA, GHAZI, and REHAL, all bred at Maynesboro, and the homebred ROABRAH (Rahas x Roaba). Hearst’s also owned and used the Davenport stallions KASAR and his son ANSARLAH, but restricted them in large part to their single registered mares: ANLAH, SCHILAN, LADY ANNE (daughters of Antez), RAADAH (by Hanad), ALILATT (Saraband x Leila), RASOULMA (*Raseyn x *Malouma), and FERSABA (out of the Davenport mare Saba). The other single registered sire at Hearst’s was JOON, but after the management decided to use double registration as a criterion for planning the breeding schedule, apparently the only mare he ever saw was ANTAFA (Antez x *Rasafa). The Davenport influence at Hearst’s, as at Kellogg’s and Harris’s, would likely have been far greater had double registration not been an issue.

Other breeders double registering Arabian foals during the years 1934-1943 included Fred Vanderhoof (from *Ferda and *Bint), E. W. Hassan (from Ghazil), L. P. Sperry (from *Kola and Larkspur), Donald Jones (from Nejmat), C. A. West (from Bazvan), Ira Goheen (from Hurzab and Kokab), L. S. Van Vleet (from *Rishafieh, Raffieh, Selfra, Gutne, and Ishmia), and R. T. Wilson (from Matih). Their combined total of double registered foals was minor compared to the five farms discussed above, but it demonstrates that the concern with double registration and its effect on management policy were not confined to a select group of breeders. At Van Vleet’s, for instance, the Jockey Club mares were more likely to go to KABAR (Kaaba x *Raida) than *ZARIFE.

Until fairly recently, the Arabian Horse Club was inconsistent in assigning the breedership of foals to the owner of the dam at time of covering. Sometimes the breedership of a foal was attributed to the owner at time of foaling. The latter seems to have been the Jockey Club definition of “breeder,” and as a result the breeders of several familiar Arabians differ from ASB to AHC. RABIYAS, e.g., was bred by W. R. Brown according to The Arabian Stud Book and by the W. K. Kellogg Institute according to the ASB.

Some Arabians are in the ASB under a different name. Many of these amount to minor spelling variations, as in the case of HAWIJA (spelled “Hasijah” in ASB). Some take the form of the addition or subtraction of a prefix or suffix. DANAS is “Danas Maneghi” in the ASB, while *CRABBET SURA is “Sura.” Sometimes a numeral was added or subtracted. *Raffles is in the ASB as “*Raffles 2nd,” as there was apparently a Thoroughbred by that name. The mare *NARDA II is in the GSB and the 1906 Crabbet catalog as “Narda,” the numeral apparently added to distinguish her from an American Thoroughbred of the same name. In her case it carried over to her Arabian stud book registration. A few have entirely different names, e.g. RIFDA who is “Copper Cloud” in the Jockey Club Stud Book.

The last Arabians which the Jockey Club registered as Thoroughbred horses were 1943 foals. By the late 1950s, most newer breeders were not even aware that at one time there had been two categories of registered Arabians in America. Very few living Arabians in America show straight Jockey Club pedigrees; this writer estimates fewer than 1%. Among them one would have to include those horses bred from GSB registered Crabbet and Hanstead lines imported from the U.K. in recent decades. The GSB continued to register Arabians through the foals of 1964 and this function helped to a certain extent to hold the older English Arabian lines together as a breeding unit.

The issue of double registration had a controlling influence over the development of the Arabian breed in America. Until the early 1940s, all new breeders had to decide if Jockey Club Arabians were important to them, and if so, to what extent. The double registration factor goes a long way toward explaining why Davenport mare lines were more frequently top-crossed to Crabbet stallions than ASB mare lines were top-crossed to Davenport stallions. The double registration idea continued to influence after 1943, but one cannot know exactly how many breeders based decisions on the possibility of the Jockey Club reopening the ASB to Arabians. Readers are encouraged to examine the pedigrees of their own horses to find breedings selected possibly with double registration in mind.

[A final note regarding Jockey Club registered Arabians pertains to the use of the asterisk(*) to denote an Arabian horse imported to this country. Its first use as such in a printed stud book was in ASB Volume X (1910). The Jockey Club also used the symbol to denote imported Thoroughbreds. It was not until Volume IV (1939) that the Arabian registry adopted its use, though it has recently abandoned it. Arabians imported after June 1, 1983 no longer receive an asterisk as part of their registered names in this country. However, the symbol continues to delight advertisers and pedigree writers; there are no restrictions on its use in these contexts.]

The San Simeon Stallions, 1937: from left JOON, RAHAS, SABAB, GULASTRA, KASAR and GHAZI. Is it a coincidence that they were posed so that the single-registered horses alternated with double-registered ones?
Photo courtesy Harriet Hallonquist.

Rafyk and Sir James Penn Boucaut: The Arabian Foundations in Australia

by Michael Bowling
from The CMK Record VIII/4 Spring 1990 used by permission of Michael Bowling

RAFYK (Azrek x *Rose of Sharon) at Quambi Springs in 1903, age 13. (Photo by “The Critic”, courtesy Coralie Gordon; for the record, this is a screen of a copy photo of a photocopy of a 90-year-old newspaper cutting!)

RAFYK was a three-quarter brother to ROSE DIAMOND, featured in Record VIII/2; for information on RAFYK’s and ROSE DIAMOND’s wonderful sire AZREK see p. 20 of that issue. RAFYK was the first major stallion produced by what was to become the breed’s most internationally influential female line. The difference between the pedigrees of ROSE DIAMOND and RAFYK was the replacement of KARS with HADBAN as maternal grandsire of the latter. HADBAN was a bay imported from an Indian racing stable to Crabbet, partly with the idea that he should take part in a highly promoted Arab race. The race was not a notable success and the Arab cause was further embarrassed when its winner was soundly trounced by a moderate TB in a match race. Arab racing in England took a hundred years to recover from its fumbled start, but the 1884 race can claim an important contribution to breed history as it was the occasion for HADBAN’s coming to Crabbet.

HADBAN: the quintessential broodmare sire

Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript stud book describes HADBAN as

An imported bay horse, foaled in 1878, a Hadban Enzeyhi, bred by Jakin Ibn Aghil, Sheykh of the Daafini tribe of Oteybeh, from whom he was purchased by Ali Ibn Amr of Bussora and Bombay and exported to Bombay in the autumn of 1883. Purchased of Ali Ibn Amr soon after being landed at Bombay. Imported in 1884. A bright bay with three white feet, hind feet and near fore feet (mutlak al yemin) and star. Splendid head with prominent forehead (jebha), small muzzle, neck a trifle short but well placed, good shoulder, pasterns rather too long. Fine carriage of tail, fine trotter in harness, grand mover gallopping[sic]. Hadban was the sire of Nefisa, Rose of Sharon and Bitumen [this apparently written in 1885, before the arrival of the 1886 colt MAJID].”

He stood 14:2 and 1/2 and measured 7 and 3/4 inches below the knee, “rather over than under“- in other words measured just under 8 inches of bone.

Hadban was sold in June 1885 to D. Mackay Esq(re) of New South Wales for 120 gs for exportation to Australia. In view of the excellence of the mares by Hadban, it is to be regretted there were so few of his stock.”

Wilfrid Blunt, quoted by Peter Upton, later made a stronger statement:

Hadban is, next to Mesaoud, the most important sire we imported, being numerously represented in the Stud Book through Rose of Sharon and Nefisa, his two best daughters and our two most valuable brood mares.”

HADBAN got just four foals at Crabbet, MESAOUD had over 25 times as many; HADBAN must have been the better sire even without considering the inextricable contribution of the HADBAN daughters to the success of MESAOUD. Those incomparable matrons *ROSE OF SHARON and NEFISA produced 34 foals between them and numbered some of the breed’s great progenitors among their offspring, so it is little wonder the name of HADBAN is “numerously represented” in modern pedigrees.

The hazards of travel

Lady Anne Blunt described HADBAN in India as

a splendid horse–magnificent head–has had an accident which caused near foreleg to swell and swelling went down but left lump on fetlock joint–doubts as to possibility of training so that price came within our reach. Horse not lame now–but might not stand gallopping[sic]. Defect stands slightly back [at knees] also bone lighter than some but quality of sinews appears wiry and shape and style show perfect blood. Mazbut in the tribe… we get him very cheap… hardly over £100.” The next day the Blunts “Saw our own Hadban mounted. W.[ilfrid] also got on him but found his mouth very awkward, he wants teaching, seems to have had only a reshmeh [bitless Arab bridle], looks like Jerboa when trotting but would not settle, would play. The lump on fetlock better. He has a fine temper.”

The Blunts purchased three stallions in India; the other two were RATAPLAN and PROXIMO and they were shipped to England along with two other entries for the Arab race.

On Friday evening a queer accident happened to Hadban, he got his near hind leg over the sling and also tumbled down…[it developed that] the horse had a stoppage and was in violent pain, it was frightful to see the agony. They got a syringe and so I went away, but I heard that before they could do anything to relieve him he had in his plunges got his forelegs out one in front of the other through the side bar of the box and thus hanging on had purposely banged his head from side to side against the iron hoop above as if trying to kill himself. When got out he seemed to be dying and was indeed reported dead. However, they managed to relieve him and he pulled through and was better on Sunday…”

The mind boggles at the gap in the ranks of the modern breed which would have resulted had HADBAN succumbed to the rigors of 19th century horse transport (as RATAPLAN and the younger JEROBOAM were to do in 1887 on their way to Egypt). Incidentally, RATAPLAN’s purchase price in India had been £250; his slim contribution, to Crabbet and the breed, has not justified the difference over HADBAN.

KARS and HADBAN departed together for Australia in 1885; KARS commanded the higher price (£250). He was the original Crabbet sire and had been for years a major figure in Lady Anne’s life, she not unsurprisingly noted his loss more than HADBAN’s in her journal:

The central figure of the stud has disappeared; the glory of it seems to be put out with Kars absence.” His companion received only the comment “Hadban going too.”

Still Lady Anne came greatly to regret the sale of HADBAN after just two seasons and four foals, as reflected in later journal entries:

This [Ashgar offered to Count Potocki by Wilfrid for £150] would be the third horse parted with in too great haste–Pharaoh, Hadban and now Ashgar.” “Perhaps Mahruss [sold to J. Hamilton Leigh] will be more valued now he is out of reach. It was so with Hadban and Merzuk, the losing of both of which–or rather the wanton throwing away of them–was a great misfortune, judging from the produce, alas too few, we did get of theirs.”

[MERZUK and MAHRUSS GSB each left one breeding foal at Crabbet–both proved influential beyond all expectation and both were out of HADBAN’s daughter *ROSE OF SHARON; we will encounter RIDAA and RIJM in later chapters of her saga.]

The foundation of Australian Arabian breeding

Australia proved an important early market for the Blunts; unfortunately Australian purebred breeding was not ready for such potential foundation animals–the Australian Arabian registry was not founded until 1956, any horses which were registered up to that time being recorded in England with the Arab Horse Society. FRANCOLIN and PURPLE STOCK, KARS and HADBAN, NEJRAN (Azrek x Nefisa) and ROSE OF JERICHO were among the Crabbet Arabs to leave no descent Down Under. Dwelling on might-have-beens is generally a waste of space; fortunately there is a positive Australian breeding tradition from these early years to be recorded. Sir James Penn Boucaut maintained a flourishing stud at Quambi Springs, near Mt. Barker in South Australia, from 1891 to 1908 and publicized the breed through his writings. When the Boucaut horses were dispersed two successor programs took over, adding new Crabbet sires and bringing the influences of RAFYK and other Quambi founders (save ROSE OF JERICHO) down to the edge of modern times. Their names, in every possible permutation and combination, are at the back of most modern Australian pedigrees.

The Quambi Springs program was founded in 1891, when Sir James bought through his London agents the yearling RAFYK and the broodmares DAHNA and ROSE OF JERICHO. Lady Anne Blunt had noted, on returning from Egypt in 1891, her pleasure with AZREK’s sons, “the beautiful colt Ahmar who exceeds my expectations. The Rose of Sharon one too. Rafyk has grown well.” The Boucaut sale was recognized as a particularly important one, and every effort was made to present the best available prospects: “Rafyk…is really far the best…I still much prefer Rafyk to represent the Stud.”

Ten years later Boucaut added another top young stallion, FARAOUN, a MESAOUD son who was to be the only representative in modern pedigrees of the Ali Pasha Sherif mare FULANA; and two mares perhaps of lesser distinction: NAMUSA and EL LAHR. NARGHILEH’s first foal NAMUSA by Ahmar, described by Lady Anne as “small but lovely mover,” had been less charitably used by Wilfrid to illustrate his thesis that first foals were undesirable compared to a mare’s later produce; Lady Anne thought this an unwarranted generalization. Whatever NAMUSA’s excuse was for standing just 13.3–and perhaps she was less distinguished than such later NARGHILEH offspring as *NASIK and *Nureddin II–she bred on in keeping with her brilliant pedigree. Small size did not stop her from founding one of the most noted families in Australia, which has achieved international recognition and still produces “lovely movers.”

EL LAHR was a granddaughter of the earlier Boucaut purchased DAHNA and possessed a complicated biography. DAHNA’s Crabbet daughter DINARZADE by RATAPLAN had changed hands several times in England, returning at last to Crabbet with this filly by Miss Dillon’s *IMAMZADA. DINARZADE was then sold to Russia, which was to prove an even more effective sink for early Blunt breeding than Australia. Lady Anne recorded in her stud book

Note: Miss Dillon sent with the mare a filly foal by her horse ‘Imamzade

[sic; this spelling has persisted in the Australian stud book. Lady Anne seems to have had a mental block about the names of the Dillon horses, referring to El Emir consistently as Amir and to Jamrood as Jamrud]

which foal I should much prefer not to have had, as it will have to be got rid of whatever good qualities it may possess, for these could not make up for its being half of a strain one cannot vouch for; moreover, if sold from this Stud, it will be counted as of our breeding, no matter what precautions be taken to contradict statements to that effect. A.I.N.B.

As if to illustrate the perversity of things in general, Lady Anne records in her journal a

Discussion with W.S.B. about blunder I find in the catalogue [of the 1901 sale] where ‘Dinarzade filly’ is described as by Himyarite whereas Miss Dillon stated that the sire was her horse Imamzada. [In 1895 JERUD had been repurchased from Miss Dillon in foal to HIMYARITE, perhaps this had caused the confusion.] I wish the filly was not in the actual list at all but might be lead in at the end of sale (as was Barakat last year) but as it is W.S.B. now thinks our best — indeed only — course is to draw a red pen stroke through ‘Himyarite’ and write above it ‘Imamzada’.

EL LAHR overcame her early vicissitudes to fund a major line in Australia–indeed traditional Australian breeding is unique in the world Arabian community for its preponderance of the Dahman strain, owed to the DAHNA family, which includes extensive EL LAHR descent.

Quambi Springs: an eyewitness account

The balance of this RAFYK feature is based largely upon information generously supplied by Coralie Gordon. In July 1903, “The Critic,” in The Advertiser, an Adelaide, South Australia newspaper, wrote:

At Quambi Springs, near Mt. Barker, is located the famous stud of Arabian horses belonging to His Honor Sir J.P. Boucaut. In former years there were importations of Arab stallions into Australia, but these all came from India with at least a shadow of suspicion as to their purity of origin. So enthusiastic was Sir J.P. Boucaut’s admiration of the Arabian horse that importation of Arab stallions for grade raising purposes did not by any means satisfy his ambition, and he determined to establish the pure breed in Australia. For this purpose he took the greatest precautions to secure none but animals of the purest race, and his importations were from the world known stud of Mr. Wilfred [sic] Blunt, of Crabbet Park, England [see Lady Anne’s prophetic comments above about EL LAHR’s identification with Crabbet].

“The Critic” quoted some colorful and fairly imaginative difficulties associated with the importation of purebred Arabians from the desert: of greater interest are his wonderful photo of RAFYK and the circumstantial commentary on the Quambi Springs horses as individuals.

The handsome Rafyk” was “a beautiful blood-red bay, he stands 14 3/4 hands high, girths 5 ft. 9 in., measures 8 1/2 in. below the knee, 20 in. on forearm, and 21 in. from pin to pin across his loin.” FARAOUN was “dark brown and a different type to Rafyk. His beautiful wither could not be excelled by the best English Thoroughbred. Height 14 3/4 hands, girth 5 ft. 7 in., forearm 19 in., bone below knee 8 in., and 21 in. loin pin to pin. He is a magnificent horse.”

With him were imported the two handsome mares, Elzaba [sic] and Namusa. The dimensions of the latter are 13 3/4 hands high, 52 in. girth, 14 1/2 in. forearm, 6 1/2 in. below the knee, and 18 in. loin. Both are handsome bays and are now heavy in foal. Great interest is centered around the two matrons, Rose of Jericho and Dahna. The former, a rich blood bay…shows quality combined with substance to a marked degree…Dahna is a beautiful brown…Both are admirable specimens of brood mares. The other noteworthy Australian mares are Sherifa, Keheilet, Labadah and Sadde [sic]. Sherifa is a beautiful molded mare by Rafyk from Dahna. Twice she has been to Mr. Austin’s imported stallions, Maboab [sic], and also to his latest import, Magistrate. The progeny of the latter mating is now a beautiful [mare in] foal to Faraoum [sic]. Owing to the mares being heavy in foal and in a condition more in keeping with good sense than show yard purposes, The Critic refrains for the present from presenting its readers with the photos of the female portion of the stud. When surroundings are calculated to establish and maintain constitution the beneficial course does not show out stock that run all winter with the sleekness of stable-fed animals.

Another observer, the cattle-dealer A.H. Morris, wrote in a 1904 letter that “the Purebred Arab mares are a nice lot, but Rose of Jericho is quality all over.”

RAFYK in pedigrees

Plainly, “Elzaba” was EL LAHR and “Faraoum,” FARAOUN; no doubt “Sadde” and “Maboab” were the SAADE (Magistrate x Sherifa) and MAHBOUB (imp. India) listed as foundation animals in the Australian stud book. SAADE was bred to her grandsire RAFYK to produce MECCA; she did not leave a female line but MECCA’s son KHAMASIN and grandson ZARAFA made important contributions. KEHEILET was one of ROSE OF JERICHO’s lost daughters, but LABADAH (Mahboub x Sherifa) founded an extensively branched Australian line through her granddaughter DERYABAR, responsible for SENABRA, MINIFER, MUTRIF, TOU-FAIL and ELECTRIMEL, to name just a few branch founders. (Coralie Gordon writes “I am currently doing a story on a mare named DERYABAR, a great-great-granddaughter of Dahna and a very influential Australian mare, for the Australian Arabian Yearbook. The computer printout of her progeny is an inch thick!”)

EL LAHR and NAMUSA from the second importation also bred on with distinction through the nick with RAFYK; AL CASWA (Rafyk x El Lahr) had two fillies by KHAMASIN and both founded most extensively branched lines. This is the family of the classically-named New South Wales Department of Agriculture horses including CALISTO, CALLIOPE, MEDEA, PROMETHEUS and PSYCHE. NAMUSA’s daughters were AYESHA, RABI and SEKH; the first produced the important early sire RAISULI and the other two founded major families to which belong such mares as BARADA II, HAMMAMET, MOTALGA, TARNEY, ATALANTA, YENBO, RUHEYM, YUSUF and TAFILEH, not to mention any of the distinguished sires that might be named here.

SAMPLE PEDIGREE — DERYABAR, a major line foundress of the DAHNA family, typifying Boucaut sources from the Winter Cooke program in Victoria
DERYABAR Khamasin Fakreddin Rijm: Mahruss II x *Rose of Sharon by Hadban
Feluka: Mesaoud x Ferida
Mecca Rafyk: Azrek x *Rose of Sharon by Hadban
Sadde: Magistrate x Sherifa by Rafyk
Khadjad Faraoun Mesaoud: Aziz x Yemameh by Zobeyni
Fulana: Ibn Nura x Bint Fereyha by Aziz
Labadah Mahboub
Sherifa: Rafyk x Dahna

Back to The Critic:

Sir J.P. Boucaut is justly termed the high priest of the Arabian cult. So far he has been the only one who has made a practical attempt to establish the breed of the Arab horse in Australia. That they are becoming exceedingly valuable to the Australian horse breeders is shown by the fact that in the two years of its existence the Quambi stud has made a name for itself for which it ought to be as justly proud as it is conspicuously famous. In producing the photographs, The Critic has departed from the stiff strained attitude generally depicted in illustrations, and adopted the free, easy, ordinary pose that is always more appreciated by true lovers of the Arab horse [emphasis added]. As a reward for his labors, Sir J.P. Boucaut will have the good wishes of every horse lover and every horse breeder throughout Australia.”

RAFYK had already left England when the question of selling AZREK arose; Lady Anne summarized the state of the AZREK sire line and had a good word for RAFYK’s grey brother who was to be named RASHAM:

I am sorry to lose Azrek (if we do lose him) before next year, still as Shah will represent him well–having greatly improved and having quite equal style to Azrek–I do not object to selling him now. There are several colts, the Bozra one and the Dinarzade are the best at present and besides them there are the bay Nefisa colt and the Rose of Sharon and Sherifa ones, not to mention the one of last year, Ahmar–so that of Azrek we have Shah, Ahmar, and two first rate of this year besides three others and probably some colts will appear in 1892.”

Still, Lady Anne recorded in her stud book when AZREK went to Cecil Rhodes in Africa.

it is impossible not to feel a pang of regret at the departure of a horse such as Azrek, whose stock are so satisfactory, while the Stud remains with yet untried sires. There should be a good many worthy sires to represent him, but they are still young, the oldest a two year old.”

In fact the AZREK male line was to vanish from Crabbet and from the breed; AZREK has only four sons (AHMAR, RAFYK, BEN AZREK and NEJRAN) in modern pedigrees and they bred only through daughters.

The absence of a male line of course does not imply the absence of genetic influence, particularly when you note the degree of AZREK linebreeding in some of the foundation Australian pedigrees. RAFYK did have distinguished male representatives, among them the handsome BADAWEEN, whose stud card (again thanks to Coralie Gordon) denotes him

Grand Champion of the Commonwealth of Australia 1913-4-6-7” and further notes that he was “described by the Hon. Sir Jas. P. Boucaut, K.C.M.G, as ‘one of the best horses I ever bred.‘” BADAWEEN was “a very handsome horse, just in his prime, 14.3 hands, bright golden bay, standing on a magnificent set of legs, with good flat bone of exceptional quality, and is possessed of a massive, well-coupled frame. In movement, he displays his Arabian origin by that well-known carriage of head and tail, so peculiar to the breed, and, in his build, gives abundant evidence of quality, speed and endurance. His temper is all which could be desired; and, whilst he is full of life and activity, is remarkably gentle and docile.”

SAMPLE PEDIGREE–BARADA II, a key mare of the NAMUSA family, illustrating Boucaut influence through the Brown program in New South Wales
BARADA II Raisuli Rief Sotamm: *Astraled x Selma by Ahmar
Ridaa: Merzuk x *Rose of Sharon by Hadban
Ayesha Rafyk: Azrek x *Rose of Sharon by Hadban
Namusa: Ahmar x Narghileh by Mesaoud
Gadara Harir Berk: Seyal x Bukra by Ahmar
Hamasa: Mesaoud x Bint Helwa by Aziz
Zarif Faraoun: Mesaoud x Fulana by Ibn Nura
Rabi: Rafyk x Namusa by Ahmar Z

MINARET: unsolved mystery

One might-have-been which I can’t resist noting involves the mystery horse MINARET, a double RAFYK grandson listed in the 1924 Crabbet Stud Catalogue with a photo, 1916 foaling date and pedigree but no breeder or other provenance. Plainly, Lady Wentworth hoped at this transitional period to reintroduce the AZREK male line at Crabbet, but there seems to be no record of what happened to the horse. Coralie Gordon writes in two letters:

Now, MINARET. We’ve all sat and pondered on this one from time to time. Now, luckily Sir James Boucaut was a prolific writer who produced all kinds of printed matter on his Stud. I am photocopying for you a page from his 1903 Stud Brochure which quotes an unknown buyer of [MINARET’s sire] the stallion Zubier (Rafyk/Rose of Jericho) a full-brother to the well-known Badaween, quoted in The Authentic Arabian as being ‘Champion of Australia.’ I believe this ‘horse-breeder of Northern Australia‘ was probably Mr. A.E. Morrow who returned to Sir James’ Stud in 1908 for the dispersal auction and bought the mares Sherifa, Labadah, Keheilet, Kaaba and Abdul. Abdul (Rafyk/Dahna) was the dam of Minaret, so Minaret was probably bred by Mr. Morrow, if he was indeed bred in 1916. Mr. Morrow appears not to have registered any horses, though I haven’t the time to pursue this at the moment. So how did he get to England, if he did get there? The reports of Sir James’ 1908 Sale give Mr. Morrow’s address as “Wyanda,’ Tolga, New South Wales — but the only Tolga I can find is in Far North Queensland, which is very tropical. This fits with the ‘Northern Australia’ vague address given for the buyer of Zubeir. In the 1924 Crabbet Catalogue, the landscape in the background of the photo is not like anything you’d find in North Queensland. It does look like England, or perhaps something you’d find in Central New South Wales or Victoria. Many early horses were lost because their buyers did not register any progeny in England. In Minaret’s case, there must have been a correspondence between Morrow and Crabbet. He wouldn’t have just suddenly ‘appeared’ in the 1924 Catalogue. I doubt if I’ve helped much, but perhaps I’ve managed to fill in a little of the background.”

Since I wrote to you I had reason to be looking through my copy of Sir James Boucaut’s book, “The Arab Horse of the Future, published in 1905, and find that it was not Mr. Morrow who purchased Zubeir. At least not originally, anyway. The relevant passage occurs on p. 245 of the book and reads as follows — ‘Mr. Warburton, a horse-breeder in Northern Australia, who purchased Zubeir, writes:

Will you allow me to congratulate you on being the owner of such a horse as Rafyk? I can only say that words fail me to express my admiration for him. I could have spent hours looking at him. There is not such another horse in Australia; he is perfect in every way.” Again in May 1904: “Zubeir is growing very like Rafyk, and is in good trim. He has not had an ounce of stable feed since he has been up here. He is doing good work, and it would take a big cheque to buy him.

The more I look at MINARET’s photo the more its background looks like England, if not Crabbet. I wonder whether MINARET was not taken to England more or less incidently by a returning traveler and found by Lady Wentworth–as were Skowronek and *MIRAGE at the same period–but for one reason or another never got registered. Perhaps it was as difficult then as now to figure out who bred him, in the absence of an Australian Arabian stud book.

The little more which is known of the Quambi Stud is summarized in the following quote from Colin Pearson.

Shortly before his death in 1908, Boucaut sold his entire stud except for two mares. He was then aged 77 and unable to cope any longer with the management. ‘I miss dear old Rafyk very much.’ he wrote to Blunt, ‘he was more kindly in his nature and much more sensible than many Christians.’ Boucaut had not been wholly successful in upgrading local stock with his Arabian blood. ‘You may more satisfactorily preach to a horse box than a farmer.’ he wrote–although some of Rafyk’s get were making people think, ‘or rather I should say, beginning to think.’ Rafyk’s influence on the pure Arabian stock in Australia has been considerable…but it has been somewhat overshadowed by the importance of the Boucaut mares Dahna and Namusa [at least in terms of reading charted descent tables; in fact RAFYK has six offspring in pedigrees while DAHNA has two and NAMUSA three] … Among the buyers at the Quambi sale were the Hon. Samuel Winter Cooke of Murndal, Victoria and Mr. C. Leonard Brown of Gurlargambone, N.S.W. In 1911 Cooke imported from Crabbet the Rijm son Fakreddin [ex Feluka] and two years later Brown bought Berk’s son Harir [ex Hamasa}. Another Crabbet importation of this period was the stallion Rief [Sotamm x Ridaa].”

The Boucaut influence

The Boucaut mares with those three Crabbet sires provided the basis for an active tradition which lasted into the 1920’s and provided one important element of modern Australian breeding. The Tehama Stud of A.J.Macdonald and sons played an important role in maintaining these lines.

The next phase came in 1925 when the 25% Crabbet stallion SHAHZADA (Mootrub x Ruth Kesia by Ben Azrak), with the mares NEJDMIEH DB, her en utero daughter NEJD SHERIFA (48% Crabbet by NURI SHERIF, another BEN AZREK grandson) and the straight Crabbet MIRIAM (Nadir x Ranya by *Nasik), were imported to New South Wales by A. E. Grace. These horses were bred among themselves and blended with the Winter Cooke, Brown and Tehama breeding to produce what came to be known as the Colonial Australian or Crabbet-Colonial Arabians. They will be the subject of a future Australian Record treatment, and then the background will be in place for the story of “The Lady Wentworth of Australia,” the late Mrs. A. D. D. Maclean of the Fenwick Stud in Victoria–this seems the best way to organize the series though in fact her first Crabbet imports had come on the scene a year before the Grace horses. Fenwick breeding pervades the Australian Crabbet tradition, and Fenwick is still active in the hands of the Maclean family. A fourth Australian chapter will summarize the influence of non-Fenwick later imports which were of Crabbet breeding in whole or in major part. ***

Sources

    • Notes from Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript stud book

Lady Anne Blunt Journals and Correspondence

    • edited by Archer and Fleming

The Crabbet Arabian Stud its History and Influence

    • by Archer, Pearson and Covey

The Arab Horse

    • by Peter Upton Letters and photocopied material from Coralie Gordon

The Arabian Horse in Australian

    published by the Arab Horse Society of Australia The Australasian Arabian Horse Stud Book

Descent Table: RAFYK Sources in Pedigrees

It may seem strange conceptually but this charts tail-female descent from RAFYK daughters (names in bold); colts as they appear in the female line are in ALL CAPS

    Sherifa (Dahna)

      • Labadah (Mahboub)

        • Khadijad (Faraoun)

          • Alcouza (Khamasin) Deryabar(Khamasin)

    Saade (Magistrate)

      • Mecca (Rafyk)

        • KHAMASIN (Fakreddin) Zem Zem (Fakreddin)

          • ZARAFA (Indian Light)

Al Caswa (El Lahr)

      • Kufara (Khamasin)

          • WALAD (Raseel) Melika (Ishmael)

            • DIOMEDES (Prometheus) FEISAL (Sirdar) Aphrodite (Sala) Iris (Sala) Mira (Kataf) Tarfa II (Sirdar) Venus (Sala) Hebe (Sala) THESSALY (Razaz)

        Sir Aatika (Sirdar)

            • ALADDIN (Kataf) Rufeiya II (Kataf) DEISHA (Kataf) ATLAS (Sala) Juno (Sala) Hera (Sala) Iona (Sala)

        Mishal (Sirdar)

          • CASABLANCA (Razaz) Aurora (Sala) Nemesis (Sala)

    Mecca II (Khamasin)

        • SIR AKID (Sirdar) Caswa (Sirdar)

          • GHEYZUL (Sirdar) Semna (Kataf) Kassie (Kataf) Darani (Darinth)

      Cazada (Sirdar)

          • CENTAUR (Genghis Khan) ARGUS (Sala) Fuewasa (Kataf) Alada (Aladdin) BERRY JERRY ZENDI (Aladdin) Sibyl (Genghis Khan) Hemera (Sala)

      Salome (Ishmael)

        • Gypsy Maid (Sirdar) Buraida (Sirdar) Fara (Kataf)

Ayesha (Namusa)

    • RAISULI (Rief)

Rabi (Namusa)

    • Zarif (Faraoun)

      • Gadara (Harir)

        • Barada II (Raisuli) MAMALUKE (Raisuli) Dhofar (Prince Nejd) Sabiya (Prince Nejd)

Sekh (Namusa)

      • ANCHOR (Harir) Sa-id (Harir)

          • Arabette (Raisuli)

            • ANOUK (Rakib)

        Tatima (Shahzada)

            • Zazouri (Mameluke) Motalga (Indian Light) ZATIM (Zarafa) Tazar(Zarafa) Tarney (Zarney)

        Hilwa (Prince Nejd)

    Salaam (Harir)

        • Ruala (Raisuli)

          • Shaniya (Prince Nejd) Rashidiya (Prince Nejd) Ruheym (Rakib) Ralla (Rakib) INDIAN MOONLIGHT (*SMoonlight)

      Salama (Raisuli)

          • JEDRAN (Prince Nejd) Sayif (Prince Nejd) ZADLAM (Zadaran) SALARAN (Zadaran) ZADOLPHIN (Zadaran) Atalanta (Zadaran) SARACEN (Zadaran)

      Yenbo (Raisuli)

          • Lohaya(Prince Nejd) Yenbo II (Prince Nejd) ZADARAN (Prince Nejd) Jeddah (Prince Nejd) Zuweida (Prince Nejd)

      Yussef (Raisuli)

        • Neyussef (Prince Nejd) Tafileh (Yazid) (Rakib) YARAL (Rakib) Yusuf (Rakib)

The chart shows descent from six RAFYK daughters. LABADAH and SAADE are out of SHERIFA; MECCA had a son KHAMASIN and a daughter ZEM ZEM. KUFARA and MECCA II are out of AL CASWA; RAISULI is a son of AYESHA; RABI has one daughter, ZARIF. SEKH has a son ANCHOR and two daughters, SA-ID and SALAAM.

“Leopard” and “Linden”, General Grant’s Arabian Stallions

HISTORY IN BRIEF OF “LEOPARD” AND “LINDEN,”

GENERAL GRANT’S ARABIAN STALLIONS,
PRESENTED TO HIM BY THE SULTAN OF TURKEY IN 1879.

ALSO THEIR SONS “GENERAL BEALE,” “HEGIRA,” AND “ISLAM,”

BRED BY RANDOLPH HUNTINGTON

ALSO REFERENCE TO THE CELEBRATED STALLION “HENRY CLAY”

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, 1885.

by Randolph Huntington
______________

GENERAL U.S. GRANT’S ARABIAN STALLIONS “Leopard” AND “Linden Tree.”

All my life, or for fifty years I had desired to see and examine genuine Arabian horses, such as I could know to a certainty were strictly thoroughbred Arabians. That they were rare indeed in any country I knew.
Leopard

Writers upon them were very superficial, being mostly tourists or travellers, interested in geographical matters, or in the people, customs, and relics, with traditional associations, seldom if ever being horsemen, capable of judging with just comparison, if I except Sir Wilfrid S. Blunt, of England, who, as an equine investigator of remarkable ability, in company with his wife lived with the Arabs of the desert for that express purpose, and to whom I am indebted for very much valuable information upon the subject.

Different Presidents of the United States, also Secretaries of State, have at various periods received splendid horses as presents from Arabia or Turkey; the last President receiving such a gift previous to General Grant being, I believe, James K. Polk. In 1860 the late William H. Seward, while Secretary of State, had two fine specimens sent to him from Syria; but after the novelty of their arrival wore off, none could tell what had become of them, while those loudest in condemnation or ridicule of Arabian horses could neither say they had ever seen one, nor speak with personal knowledge of the get by any thoroughbred Arabian stallion. In the matter of ex-Secretary Seward’s Arabians, while many were ready to condemn, few could remember having seen them; nor could any one point me to the get of either horse upon which to base credit or discredit.

Persistent inquiry, oral and by letter, after five or six years’ time, gave me the first and last of Seward’s two Arab horses, now dating back twenty-five years; and the information I obtained may soon startle such as are interested in “time standard” breeding rather than blood. Suffice it to say, however, that this information determined me to become personally interested in the two Arabian stallions presented to General Grant.

As General U.S. Grant outranked in the estimation of the people of the world any representative man America had produced, both as General-in-Chief of the victorious American army and as the unanimously re-elected President of our great Republic, it is but natural to suppose the Sultan of Turkey would honor himself and his Empire by presenting to the General the very choicest specimens of their idolized horses, the Arabian.

At the time of their arrival in this country I was compiling a work devoted to Old Henry Clay, to be entitled a “History of Henry Clay;” and for the purpose of having correct sketches of representative sons and daughters of the horse, had engaged Herbert S. Kittredge (since deceased), whom in 1876 I had encouraged to make horse portraiture his profession. Young Kittredge resided with me, as did later Andrew J. Schultz, who was to study under him.

When General Grant’s Arabians were thoroughly recovered from their voyage and acclimated, I sent Kittredge to sketch them, as frontispieces to my “Clay History.” also illustrative of blood influences; Henry Clay being a third remove from the Arabian upon the paternal side, and largely inbred to that blood maternally through imported Messenger, First Consul, and Rockingham, all of which were of Godolphin Arabian blood, and Messenger himself was inbred to it.

Young Kittredge’s success was wonderful. I presented copies of his sketches to General Grant, to General E.F. Beale, to Paymaster-General J. Adams Smith, and to Hon. Erastus Corning, also to one or two other gentlemen friends whom I believed trustworthy.

General Grant pronounced them “perfect to life.”

General E.F. Beale wrote me:

“I return you my thanks for the pictures of Leopard and Linden. They are the best horse pictures I have ever seen, and are the most faithful likenesses, being great credit to the gifted and talented Kittredge.

“Very truly yours,
E.F.Beale.
“Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C.”

As General E.F.Beale received the stallions and kept them at his place, “Ash Hill,” near Washington, for three years, he was a competent critic of Kittredge’s work. In a similar manner wrote Paymaster-General J. Adams Smith, of the United States Navy. General Smith being an expert horseman, and long having Grant’s Arabs in charge, his opinion is of equal value. Then again, Major J.K.Levitt, for fifty years known in Philadelphia as an expert horseman and judge of horses, pronounced the two sketches by H.S.Kittredge as the most perfect likenesses of the two stallions which he had at any time seen of any horses. Mr. Levitt was the man who first received the stallions to exhibit, which he did for three months after their arrival.

I am particular in quoting these criticisms upon my sketches as exhibited in this book, because I have seen numerous prints and photographs purporting to represent General Grant’s Arabian stallions, no one of which has been the least like them. My sketches are the horses to life, upon paper: and the proofs sent me by Messrs. J.B. Lippincott Company, of Philadelphia, were such excellent reproductions that I intrusted the publication of my work to them.

HOW I CAME TO ISSUE THIS BOOK.

Early in May, 1885, I received a letter from a gentleman, introducing himself as a personal friend of General Grant and his family and, as such, requesting that I give him a transcript of my papers pertaining to the General’s Arabian stallions; as to their shipment from Constantinople, date of shipment, name of vessel, commander, port of entry and date of arrival, also consignment; referring me to General Grant or either of his sons as to himself. By the next mail another letter came from the same gentleman asking permission to publish extracts from my private letters to General Grant and his son Ulysses regarding the two stallions, and my stallions by them; also asking pictures of my young horses by Leopard and Linden.

While the refinement and courtesy of this gentleman’s letter was such as to assure me of his good intent, I felt obliged to decline his request. As pirating of my expensive sketches, with plagiarism of my public writings, had been the order of the day for the past three years, I had grown recluse.

Upon reflection, and knowing the condition of General Grant, I felt that it might be some pleasure to him to see in print the information I had obtained; also the result of my experiments in breeding to his two stallions; hence I wrote two articles, which appeared during the months of May and June, 1885, in “Dunton’s Spirit of the Turf,” published at Chicago, and in the “California Breeder and Sportsman.”

[…]

I will now devote my pen to the two horses Leopard and Linden Tree. The two names as I give them are the English translation of the Turkish; but in speaking of them, the word Tree is left off, making the names as given the two stallions, Leopard and Linden.

These two stallions arrived in this country May 30, 1879. They were first heard of in Philadelphia, where they were exhibited in General Grant’s name.

Early in the spring of 1880 I went to Washington, D.C., to see and to examine them, also to learn if I could breed to them.

General E.F.Beale, a lifelong true and warm friend of General Grant, also a great horse-lover, had the two horses upon his beautiful farm “Ash Hill,” just outside the city, and near to the Soldiers’ Home.

Unfortunately, General Beale was in California, looking after his large interests upon the Pacific; but I learned that Paymaster J. Adams Smith, of the Navy Department, had the Arabs in charge, and was also a most thoroughly informed horseman. I called at the naval Pay-Office, found the officer disengaged, and enjoyed a long and interesting conversation with him upon Arabian as well as other horses in the East, and all over the world in fact, for they seemed to have been a special study with him at every port he had visited.

It may surprise some of our so-called horse-breeders that a naval officer, who had spent most of his days at a naval academy or on board ship, should be better informed than some professional breeders upon land; but I have found it to be frequently the case with both naval and army officers. Men are born with the breeder’s gift, and no matter what their calling may be, that gift is there, waiting only the opportunity for development.

Thus, Paymaster Smith was born with this gift, which had been cultivated somewhat in boyhood; then through years of observation, with comparison in the mind, at different ports of the world, he had stored away information far richer than that of men delving a lifetime in “one rut,” with one idea, “upon one side of the fence.”

A breeder should be a liberally-educated man, and by nature a worker, which unfortunately few are. He should be a physical worker, also a mental worker, withal a thinker; and my word for it, there is not one moment for play or recreation, scarce even for social conversation.

Some of my very best correspondents upon the questions of animal life in years gone by have been officers in the army and navy.

The question of blood and breeding in horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs is of importance to all civilized nations, which these men know; and where a naval officer is interested, his opportunities for information are rare indeed. Naval officers, as a rule, are some of our best-educated men. The system of mental training in the navy tends to make strong-minded men with retentive memories. their restriction to confinement, I may say, in connection with study, breeds and encourages deep thought with after-reflection. Graduating from a naval academy, they visit by schooling-ships the different distant ports of the world, cultivating observation and memory. Curiosity prompts comparison, and the most important mental faculty, memory, is constantly worked. Cultivation of the three traits, observation, comparison, and memory, after the young mind and habits have been trained and cultured (refined), enhances the quality of the growing man, all being at any moment successfully applied to development of any special gift possessed, aside from the maybe forced legitimate calling. Thus, the merchant, the doctor, the lawyer, or the mechanic can become a successful breeder if he has the breeder’s gift; and his mental culture, with trained system, will give him a wonderful advantage over the yeoman who hates “book learning.”

Paymaster (later Paymaster-General U.S.N.) Smith was by instinct a breeder and handler of horses; or, as the saying is, “was all horse” when not otherwise engaged. He was a splendid driver, and superior to most landsmen in the saddle; indeed, I considered General Beale fortunate in being able to leave General Grant’s Arabians in charge of so able a gentleman, during his trip to California. Remember, this was the spring of 1880, and the horses had been at “Ash Hill” only since the fall of 1879.

I was impatient to see the Arabs; so after dinner Paymaster Smith ordered his light wagon, and as I write I think of that delightful ride to “Ash Hill.” Arriving there, the smiling, happy-faced little darkies greeted us with “massa” dis and “massa” dat, as in the old days, the happiest of my life.

In front of the stables, upon a beautiful table-land overlooking acres of meadow pasturage, with scattered barns and hay-ricks, was a level spot of close, fine turf, splendid to show horses upon. Upon this the colored groom Addison led out first the Arab Leopard. He was a beautiful dapple-gray, fourteen and three-quarter hands high; his symmetry and perfectness making him appear much taller. As he stood looking loftily over the meadows below, I thought him the most beautiful horse I had ever seen. With nostrils distended and eyes full of fire, I could imagine he longed for a run upon his desert home. Addison gave him a play at the halter, showing movements no horse in the world can equal but the thoroughbred Arabian. He needed no quarter-boots, shin-boots, ankle-boots, scalping-boots, or protections of any kind; and yet the same movements this Arabian went through would have blemished every leg and joint upon an American trotting-horse, even though he had been able to attempt the to him impossible activity.

He was now brought to a stand-still that I might examine him; not cocked on one leg, pointed in another, or straddled, as our horses would be after such violent exercise, but bold and erect on all fours, as when first led out.

I began at his head. The ear was very small and fine, much as Old Henry Clay had. The muzzle was small and fine, the mouth handsome, and lips very thin, as were the nostrils. Between the eyes he was full and broad, while the eyes themselves were large, brilliant, and of the speaking kind. I lifted the lids, and they, too, were thin and delicate, not coarse and heavy, as in our big-mouthed, thick-lipped, long, heavy-eared American horse. The jowls were very deep, but wide between (so much condemned in Henry Clay). The windpipe was large and free, running low into the breast. The neck was beautifully arched, giving the impression of a thin crest, which I expected to find, from numerous writers’ reports. Imagine my surprise when, upon running my hand from between the ears down, I found a big, thick, hard crest, as if a three-or even four-inch new cable-rope were inside. This was exactly such a crest as was in Old Henry Clay, which lopped over like a bag of meal with old age; and I remembered having an old Messenger stallion, years ago, with exactly such a crest, which, falling over in the same way with age, was a great torment to my pride. How I do punish myself in these days, to think of the green sheep-pelt sweats I gave this noble old Messenger stallion to get the crest so it would stay up in place! Verily, boys and young men are fools, but they do not know it.

Well, Leopard and his groom, Addison, remained perfectly still until I had run my hands over every part of the horse’s body, from the tips of his ears to the bottom of his feet, even to examining the texture of his skin or hide, to see if it contained any spots. No more perfect animal ever lived than General Grant’s Arabian stallion Leopard.

Now for his gaits. I had Addison lead him on the walk to and from me, say a distance of two or three hundred feet, that I might see the position of the feet in walking. There was no twisting behind, nor paddle in front, but straight, clean, elastic stepping. I now had him pass me at the side, that I might see his knee, also hock and stifle action. From the walk I had him moved upon the trot, and at either walk or trot every movement was perfect. The knee-action was beautiful: not too much, as in toe-weighted horses, nor stiff and staky, as in the English race-horse, but graceful and elastic, beautifully balanced by movement in the hock and stifle. To make Leopard a very fast trotting-horse nothing was wanting but the training from colthood, as is done with our colts of to-day. One thing we should gain by training such a colt as Leopard was, and that would be in the saving of boots with other mechanical contrivances. I could but say to myself, truly, “God has made all things perfect.”

I have been accustomed to handling stallions for the past thirty years, hence look first for the disposition. At this time Leopard’s disposition was excellent, or, as ladies would say, “lovely!” and “sweet!” Twice this horse has taken the first premium at the “National Horse Show of America” over his stable companion Linden.

Linden Tree (or Linden, for short) was now led out. This horse has been called a “jet-black” by some papers, which was a mistake never corrected by such journals. At that time, the spring of 1880, Linden was a beautiful, smooth, blue-gray, which this summer of 1885 has changed to a white-gray.
Linden Tree
In height he is the same as Leopard, fourteen and three-quarter hands, which is the usual height of the thoroughbred Arabian.

In build he was more compact than Leopard, being deeper and broader; of more substance, but with just as clean and fine limbs as Leopard had. The limbs, joints, and feet of both horses were perfect. The fetlocks could not be found; there were none. The warts at point of ankle were wanting, and the osselets were very small. Large, coarse osselets show cold, mongrel blood. The crest of the neck in Linden was thick and hard, the same as in Leopard. This fact will astonish some fancy horsemen, who are let to believe that a thin crest is evidence of fine breeding. My experience of late years is that a thin crest belongs to a long-bodied, flat horse, of soft constitution.

When Job said the “neck of the horse was clothed with thunder,” he had reference to the Arabian horse. As the shoulder possesses the greatest strength in a horse, it is reasonable to believe the neck, to which it is joined, should have strength in harmony therewith; and this bold, stout crest of the Arab was just as God wanted it. The mane in both horses was very fine and silky, falling over so as to cause one to believe the crest was a knife-blade, with blade up, for thinness. The head of Linden was the counterpart of Leopard in all ways; as in fine, thin muzzle, lips and nostrils; also small, fine, beautiful ears, thin eyelids; deep, wide jowls, etc.; but the face looked much older, although Linden was a year younger than Leopard.

There were two reasons for this difference in the countenance: First, the depression over the eyes in Linden was greater, which feature is said often to indicate advanced years in sire and dam when the foal was got. This would be evidence that the blood of Linden was very choice, for all breeders wish to get from their choicest-bred animals as long as is possible, even to extreme old age: and some of the finest horses I have ever seen have been produced by dams thirty-six and one thirty-eight years old. If I did not know these to be facts I would not repeat them in this book.

To intensify the effect of depression over the eyes in Linden were large black markings or rings around them, which at a little distance made him look at this time very old; with me, from what I now knew of Arabian horses, these marks intensified his blood value. I quote from Sir Wilfrid S. Blunt, in Lady Anne Blunt’s beautiful work entitled The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates:

“These black markings are held by the Arabs of the desert as evidence that the animal is of the thoroughbred Bint El Ahwaj breed, descending from the children of Ishmael, and from which breed came the Godolphin Arabian, and which Godolphin Arabian was in part founder of the French Percheron horse, also of the best strains of the English thoroughbred running-horse; and to which Godolphin Arabian imported Messenger was three times close bred, and very close at that in both sire and dam. Of course Arabian statements are traditionary, but facts in that country go strongly to support their traditions. This breed of which I am speaking, identified by the black markings around the eyes, are also known as the Kehilans, from these markings having the appearance of being painted with kohl, after the fashion of the Arab women; hence the desert name of Kehilans.

“The name of Kochlani is credited to King Solomon’s stud, but they have a breed in Persia by this name, which, although they are Arabian horses are impure.”

From all I have been able to learn from abroad, it is most likely that the two horses represent the two thoroughbred breeds of “Kehilan” and “Kochlani,” the two choicest of the desert.

I have tried to impress the reader with the feeling that I considered Linden the better horse of the two, and will give my reasons.

During the inspection of the Sultan’s choicest horses, General Grant, who had an excellent eye, with judgment, expressed great admiration for the beautiful colt Leopard, and it was presented to him by the Sultan. Of course General Grant did not understand the Turkish or Arabic language, and could not comprehend any breeding given to him. His choice or selection had been entirely governed by superior beauty with wonderful perfection in the colt. After having presented Leopard to the General, the Sultan desired to make a special present of his own selection; and holding General Grant in the highest possible esteem as General-in-Chief of the victorious United States army under him, and also knowing him to have been twice President of this great American people, the Sultan would naturally have an individual as well as a national pride that his special present should be the best possible specimen of blood and breeding to be had through his power; and he knew what General Grant could not understand, that Linden represented blood which time would prove of more excellence than in Leopard. Under the circumstances, does any man suppose the Sultan would insult himself and his power by presenting an inferior selection to General Grant’s necessarily ignorant choice? Every breeder can understand this argument from selections made by gentlemen fanciers from stock he has bred and raised. It is pretty hard work to tell a gentleman who at first sight “knows it all” that he knows very little; but General Grant was not of that class, to assume knowledge. Since arrival in this country, the superior beauty and grace of Leopard has had a tendency to dwarf Linden in public opinion, encouraged through the influence of printer’s ink. He has been credited with being vicious, which the newspapers were very noisy about at one time, in and over a suit brought against General Grant for keeping such a horse.

During the early spring and summer of 1880, also in 1881, I handled the two stallions many times in and out of their boxes at “Ash Hill,” at which time I had my mares there to breed, but never at any moment considered Linden vicious. I knew that he was all horse, and that as a stallion his disposition needed watching and nursing with a kind but firm hand. Petulant words, with habitual scolding, makes many a stallion ugly; and many a groom is more at fault than the brute. Arabian stallions are very sensitive to words, quickly appreciating the kind, cheerful good-morning. The human voice has a wonderful influence over the brute, and cross, ugly words they will in time resent.

As I have remarked, I put these two stallions through their gaits many times, finding Linden the best at walk or at trot, because more even and steady.

At the “National Horse Show” in New York City, I have said Leopard was twice awarded a first premium over Linden, to which by individual comparison he was entitled.

The judge who would pronounce otherwise before four or five thousand people would be called very incompetent: but looks are deceptive.

I bred six mares to these two Arabian stallions in 1880 and 1881, getting three horse colts and one filly. I selected kindred blood as found in Old Henry Clay’s daughters and inbred granddaughters. I handled the foals from the time they were born. Three were by Linden and one by Leopard. Not one of them is ugly or inclined to be vicious. All are broken, and not one has at any time offered to kick or to strike, although the dams of each one were high-strung, high-tempered mares, two of them particularly so. I found these Arab colts, while very small, required different treatment from mongrels, hence haltered and handled them myself up to this present time, in and about the stable, for that is the place the disposition is improved or spoiled. When two years old, my daughter could drive the son of Leopard anywhere, for he was fearless and reliable.

I will now speak particularly of the colors of Arabian horses. I have before said that one of General Grant’s stallions had been reported through a leading daily paper as “jet-black.” Hundreds who read that, will believe it and report it for fifty years to come, until it becomes traditional. It is a bad mistake, as a black Arabian is an unusual color, and denotes inferiority. I will quote again from Sir W.S.Blunt:

“Bay with black points, and with generally a white foot, or two or three white feet, and a snip or blaze down the face, are prominent among the Anazeh or Bint El Ahwaj breed. Grays are also common, then chestnut of different shades. The spotted, or piebald, or parti-colored horses are unknown among the pure Arabs. The pure white is very highly prized.”

At birth, the gray horse is black; and the true black horse is born of a brown shade. In the first moulting, the proper color shows itself to the breeder. the dapple-gray will carry a black coat into the second and third moulting, the black hairs always shedding first, so that the novice is frequently puzzled to tell what colored horse he is to have at maturity. The blue-gray grows to a white gray, but the dapple-gray holds its distinctive color longest, as a rule.

Having bred my mares to General Grant’s Arabs in the spring of 1880, I became quite anxious to know all particulars relating to them, lest in future days some as yet unborn writer should tell his readers that General Grant’s horses were genuine imported Barbs, or maybe Andalusian horses, when any old man knowing to the contrary would be disputed into silence. The pedigrees of our horses credit Arabian blood frequently in some of the fastest and most valued animals; but attempt to unravel such breedings, and one lands among the “said to be’s,” which is not the case in England, or in Russia, or in France. They breed thoroughbreds of various kinds, and tell you how they are bred to a certainty; while with us, the time standard for the present generation settles it all, in which blood is of no value except in the black article known as printers’ ink.

In fifteen years after Seward’s Arabs were imported, any authentic information as to their blood and breeding, their whereabouts, or their get, was a difficult matter to get at. The same was the case with those of James K. Polk, and so it has been in many instances where I have investigated. If Arabian blood was of value to England, to France, and to Russia, so it could be to America, for certainly we have not the self-sustaining types in horses to do credit to any civilized country as have the nations cited. Should we export our present horses?

Having obtained all I could from Paymaster Smith, I awaited General E.F.Beale’s return from California. From him I did not get what I wanted. I then wrote to General Grant himself, and give below his reply.

    “Long Branch, N.J., July 28, 1882.

    “RANDOLPH HUNTINGTON, Rochester, N.Y.

    “DEAR SIR, — About my Arabian horses, I cannot answer all your questions, but what I know I will give you.

    “I was in Constantinople in March, 1878, and visited the Sultan, and with him his stables.

    “All of his horses were of the most approved and purest blood (and there were about seventy horses in the stables I visited). I was told that the pedigrees of all of them ran back from five to seven hundred years (in breed).

    “Two of the horses that I then saw were sent to me as a present from the Sultan by the first steamer directly to the United States from that port. I do not know the name of the steamer, nor the date of its departure or arrival. They (the horses) were consigned to General E.F.Beale, of Washington City, who can probably inform you upon those points. Leopard was five years old when I first saw him, and Linden four, I think. I am certain as to the age of the first, and think I am right about the age of the second. The fact of these horses being from the Sultan’s own private stables, and being a present from him as an appreciation of our country among the nations of the earth, is the best proof of the purity of their blood.

“Very truly yours,

“U. S. GRANT.”

I now knew that neither General Grant, General Beale, nor Paymaster-General Smith could give me the identifying facts I wanted for fifty years hence.

I remembered hearing my cousin, Mrs Dr. Anderson, of New Haven, Connecticut, say to me one day while visiting there, that General Grant had two horses arrive at that port by a foreign vessel, and that they were said to be Arabians. Upon which she went to the Doctor’s desk and took out some nails his blacksmiths had given him when they removed the shoes to re-shoe the stallions.

As these remarks were incidental with other subjects at the time, I paid no special attention to them; but memory often comes to our help, so I addressed a letter to William D. Anderson, M.D., New Haven, Connecticut, and below give his reply:

    “RANDOLPH HUNTINGTON, Rochester, N.Y.

    “DEAR SIR, — I would say in reply that the Arabian stallions for General Grant were shod by my blacksmiths, Messrs. Palmer & Bishop, in this city of New Haven, Connecticut, on May 31 1879; that they (the horses) having arrived the day before direct from Constantinople by the steamer Norman Monarch, Dunscomb, commander. The steamer at that time was chartered to freight cartridges, guns, etc, to Turkey, from the Winchester Arms Company in this city.

    “She (the Norman Monarch) made the trip direct, entering and clearing at this port. My blacksmith went on board and removed the shoes from the horses, then took the stallions to his shop, where they were re-shod and kept in his stables until delivered to Mr. J.K.Levitt, of the Blue Bell, Darby Road, Philadelphia, Pa., and from where he exhibited them until delivered to General E.F. Beale at Washington City, for account of General U.S.Grant.

“Truly yours,

“WILLIAM D. ANDERSON, M.D.

“NEW HAVEN, CONN., August, 1882.”

I next called upon Major J.K.Levitt, of Philadelphia, who told me that in June, 1879, while driving a race at the Belmont Park, Mr. Edwards called upon him with a despatch from General Beale, requesting that he should go with Mr. Edwards to New Haven for two weeks at Suffolk Park, then at their fair, which association paid him for the exhibit. Next the fair at Dover, Delaware, gave him two hundred dollars and expenses to exhibit there. He then exhibited them a week at the Washington, D.C., Agricultural Fair; then at the fair at Alexandria, Virginia. Next at the fair at Cumberland, West Virginia, and lastly at the Doylestown Fair of Pennsylvania.

It now being late in the fall of 1879, Major Levitt ceased to care for the horses, delivering them into the possession of General E.F. Beale at Washington, D.C., to remain.

I have been particular in following up these two Arabian stallions presented to General Grant. I deemed their blood of important value to us. I would not condemn such breeders as ridicule Arabians, but would ask questions.

If Arabian blood is of no value, why does England go back in her records to so many importations of Arabian horses to create and sustain her national thoroughbred running-horse? Why does Russia take pride in referring to her Orloff trotting-horse as of Arabian origin? Why does France, through government statistics, show that her famous Percheron draught-horse is moulded from the pliable blood of the Arabian?

When men condemn Arabian horses, let them cease to extol Messenger, Diomed, Duroc, American Eclipse, Sir Archy, Boston, or Lexington, each of which owed its greatness to Arabian blood ; Diomed and Messenger being, as the reader knows, close-bred to the Arabian, and Messenger, which name has been the mouth-piece for our breeders and horsemen for seventy-five years, was three times inbred to the Godolphin Arabian.

A digitization of the entire book can be found at: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433000743835

Arabian Blood For Stamina Part I

Articles of History:

ARABIAN BLOOD FOR STAMINA

Keene Richards’ Own Account of His Two Desert Expeditions and His Arabian Importations.

Edited by Thornton Chard

With illustrations and notes collected by him from The Horse Nov/Dec ’35 Part I Part II Since writing the article which appeared in THE HORSE, (1) on Keene Richards’ Arabian importation, I found, unexpectedly, a letter, written in 1906, by the late Homer Davenport to the late Randolph Huntington in which this paragraph appears: “I have been fortunate enough to get hold of A. Keene Richards’ catalogue, – – – . Keene Richards has never received justice; instead of his plant being a failure, the very first colts that he had born in Kentucky, won every time they were shown, against all competitors.” (2)

Here was a clue to additional original information. I hunted high and low for this catalogue, but without result till I finally stumbled across a photostatic copy deep in the archives of the New York Public Library. (3)

It proved to be much more than a catalogue. (4) In fact it is such a unique review of the much discussed problem of the value of the Eastern blood for infusion on the Thoroughbred; the necessity of using only the purest Arabian blood to get an improvement; the great difficulty of securing such blood and the probability that very little of the purest blood was ever permitted to leave the Desert for the use of any country; the fact that Richards was a great stickler for the purest blood and insisted on a very high standard for his own breedings and that he was satisfied with his results, — puts this entire question, — which, heretofor has been surrounded by a mass of prejudice unfavorable to the Arabian, — in a new light.

As Richards himself wrote the “Catalogue”, and as no one had more experience with the best Thoroughbreds than he and as few had more experience with Arabians in their native Desert, I am quoting excerpts, that bear on the breeding problems, as follows:

KENTUCKIANS’ LOVE OF HORSES

“Kentuckians have become as famous for their love of horses as the Arabs; and our breeders of Thoroughbred horses pride themselves in having their stock well known all over the Union. The Arab, however, when he possesses an Arab of purest blood and unrivalled speed, cares only for it to be known in his tribe. He breeds and trains his Thoroughbreds for his own use, and not for the Turk and ‘Frank’ whom, he believes, know nothing of blood. (5)

“Having inherited a love and admiration for the horse, and a desire to possess the highest bred and noblest type of his race, I determined to examine for myself the most authentic history of the horse, and without prejudice, select from the stock I preferred — whether it might be at home or abroad. — from the aristocratic paddocks of England, the mountains of Morocco, the sandy plains of the Sahara, or the rocky deserts of Arabia.”

DETERMINES ON THE THOROUGHBRED ENGLISH HORSE.

“I soon determined that the Thoroughbred English horse was the best horse for all works, and in tracing his history a few generations back, we came to the Arab, Barb and Turk. But the most of the English writers seem to favor the idea that it was the triplet cross, with English skill and English climate, that produced the unrivalled English blood-horse.” (6)

“A closer examination proves that some of the best English horses had not this triplet cross.”

“The true origin of the Byerly Turk, Darley Arab, and Godolphin Barb (the great Shem, Ham, and Japheth, of the English horse aristocracy), has not been discovered by the compilers of the English Stud book.” (7)

“Many have been the theories as to the origin of the English blood-horse; but the definition as given by the Stud Book is generally taken as authority. The Stud Book implies that all Thoroughbred horses should be able to trace their origin to Eastern sires and dams –.”

INFERIOR QUALITY OF ARABIAN IMPORTATIONS

“For years the English have tried the modern Arab cross, but with not much success. After having examined the Arabs imported into England, as well as those on the Continent, the question arose in my mind — has the failure been owing to a degeneracy of the Arab, or has it been because so few pure Arabs have been imported!”

“Investigating the character of modern importations, I found that the most of them had been purchased on the coast of Syria, in Egypt, and some from India — besides, few, if any, of the modern importation have been well tested on account of the strong prejudice existing in England against the Arab. This prejudice is founded upon the fact of the failure of the Arab cross for more than fifty years; (8) and even in the time of the three great progenitors of the English horse, hundreds of so-called Arabs were imported which were worthless. (9) It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr. Darley brought his selection into notice and as for the Godolphin, his merits became known by mere accident. This noble animal had the form of a race horse, as any judge may plainly see from Stubbs’ picture; (10) but at that day English breeders knew very little as to what the form of a race horse should be. They had bred at random, until Flying Childers, and Leth called their attention to the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin. The forms of these horses were a mystery to them; they supposed that it was the Arab blood that gave to Childers and Lath their wonderful powers; (11) and again Arabs, Turks and Barbs were imported into England, with the hope of surpassing the Darley and Godolphin; but in vain, — even to this day they ae unrivalled in the annals of the Stud Book. With these facts before me, I determined to import the best Arabs that could be found in the East, and cross them with our best mares. (12) I made myself acquainted with the modern importations, by going [1851] to England, France and Spain, examining the best Arabs belonging to the governments, visiting Morocco, and going through the interior of Algeria, I went to Tunis — thence to Egypt, and from Egypt through Arabia Petra (13) and the desert east of Damascus as far as Palmyra [see map]. During this tour [1851-1853] I selected Mokhladi, Massoud and a gray mare [Sadah] – – – – ”

FIRST GET OF THESE HORSES SATISFACTORY

“They arrived safely, and I immediately made arrangements to select some of our best mares to breed to them. The result was quite equal to my expectations, (14) and I commenced preparing to make another trip to the East, determined to spare no trouble or expense (15) in procuring the best blood, as well as the finest formed horses in the desert.”

RICHARDS’ CAREFUL STUDY OF THE SUBJECT

“For two years I made this subject my study, consulting the best authors as to where the purest blood was to be found, and comparing their views with my own experience. I found that most authors who have written on the subject differ materially as to facts; and that those who have seen the Arab on his native soil, knew more about the idle legends of the country than about the fine points of the horse.”

“Layard, (16) surely has claims to be the best authority among English writers. Although prejudiced in favor of the English horse, he says: “I doubt whether any Arab of the best blood has ever been brought to England. The difficulty of obtaining them is so great, that they are scarcely ever seen beyond the limits of the desert’.” (17)

RICHARDS’ SECOND EXPEDITION

“After two years spent in close investigation as to the best means of obtaining the purest blood of the desert, I matured my plans and started again [1855] for the East, accompanied by Mr. E. Troye, the artist, my cousin M.H.Keene, and a Syrian who had been with me since my first journey to the East. Soon after our arrrival in Syria, he died very suddenly, and Mr. Keene had to commence the study of the Arabic language, as we could find no one to trust in interpreting, to carry our our plans among the Bedouins. He was in Damascus seven months studying the language and informing himself as to the best way of getting to that tribe of Bedouins in Arabia which had the type of horse we were seeking.” (18)

“- – – – This last importation consisted of the bay Sacklowie; a chestnut Faysal, (19) supposed to be the best young horse in the Anayza tribe; a grey colt, two year old [Hamdan]; a mare [Lulie] and two dromedaries.” (20)

COLTS TAKE PRIZES

“In making both of these importations, I determined not to offer the services of any of the stallions to the public until they had shown some evidence of their merits. The colts of two of them having borne off prizes, last fall [1856], over the best Thoroughbred stock in Kentucky, (21) I was induced by some friends not to wait longer, but to give the breeders in Kentucky an opportunity to try the cross with some of our fine mares. I well knew the injury that has been done our stock by experimenting with such horses as the Winters Arabian, Zilcadi, (21) Stamboul, (23) and a number of black Barbs that have been presented from time to time by Sultans, Bays and Consuls. One who has seen the horses presented to Napoleon [III] by the sultan of Turkey can form an idea of the quality of horses that these orientals are in the habit of giving to ‘Franks’.”

ENGLISH HORSE NEEDS NEW INFUSION OF ARABIAN BLOOD

“That the English horse of the present day [1857] is inferior to what he was in the days of Eclipse, no one will doubt who examines the performances of that day. The present race of horses are fleet and many can carry their weights; but how few remain on the turf; and one hard race of four miles would injure the best horse in England.” (24)

“Some writers contend that a degeneracy is taking place; and that the best Arab blood must be resorted to. In crossing the Arab upon our stock we must not expect the first cross (25) to equal such prodigies as Lexington and Bonnie Lassie; but this cross will not deteriorate, and fine bone with vigorous constitiution, free from hereditary defects (26) will be the result. I have confidence in the result as to the improvement of our fine stock for the turf, for harness and the saddle.” (27)

NIMROD’S OPINION

Mr. Richards then relates at some length “Nimrod’s’ good opinion of the value of the best Arabian blood, after his “German Tour,” and says of him:

“You will remember that “Nimrod,’ in his hunting tour, believed that the English horse was the only horse for the turf, the hunter or the road. Yet after seeing the success of the cross at Newstad, he favors the opinion that the cross of some Arabs would do for the Derby, for hunting and fast coachers.”

ALREADY GOOD RESULTS IN AMERICA

“Some of the Arabs in this country have not failed to produce racers as well as trotters. The grandsire of Pacolet, on the dam’s side, was the Lindsay Arabian. (28) The granddam of Sidi Hamet, the sire of Bethune, was an Arab mare, got by an Arab horse sent to President Jefferson, and out of the Arab mare that came with him. Rhoderic Dhu, a good race horse up to four miles, (29) was out of a Bagdad (30) mare and many others could be cited. In the fall of 1854, on the Lexington course, Mr. Clay’s Raffle, by Yorkshire, granddam of [by] Kochlani, one of the Rhind Arabians, forced Ellen Swigert (31) to the stand in 1.46–1.47 1/2.”

“Recent investigations show that the renowned Flora Temple goes back with a few crosses to the Arabs; (32) while in Pennsylvania, we have that superb race of trotters, the Bashaws, descended from an imported Arabian or Barb of that name — introduced in 1826.” (33)

HARDY LEGS AND SPRINGY ACTION

“The Bagdad stock were in great demand in Tennessee at one time, on account of their legs standing the hard pikes better than any other stock. Massoud, Mokladi and Sacklowie are remarkable in this particular, as their legs did not swell any during their long sea voyage, on different vessels, to America. (34) Massoud goes all the fashionable saddle gaits; and Mokhladi has fine action for a trotter. The Bedouins do not train their horses to these gaits, but some of them are easily broken to pace or rack. The trot of the Arabs is so easy and springy, that no one who mounts them would care for them to go any other gait. Can this be said of our crack Thoroughbreds? Peytona or one of the long striding sons of Melbourne would be about as pleasent over a rough road, as a dromedary or a Brahmin Bull. The early English and American horses were far superior under saddle to the present style of ‘slashing goers.’ ” (35)

___________________________

Footnotes and illustration descriptions

(1) Nov.-Dec., 1934 and Jan. -Feb., 1935, issues.

(2) In the Kentucky show ring for breeding classes. T.C.

(3) Since preparing this article I note that the “Catalogue” is listed in the bibliography of W.R.Brown’s “The Horse of the Desert.” Mr. Harry Worcester Smith has been kind enough to call my attention to an article, in the “Spirit of the Times” of Aug. 8. 1857, p. 366, which appears to be a partial review of the “Catalogue” though it misses much of the essence. T.C.

(4)The Arab horses, Mokhladi, Massoud, Sacklowie. Imported by A. Keene Richards, Georgetown, Ky., 1857.

(5) “The Viceroy of Egypt, Abbas Pasha who about twenty-five to thirty years ago, undertook to breed arabs, thinking Egypt could supply the great and constantly increasing demand from nations in the old world, expended much money — in purchasing — Arab horses and mares through agents, then intrusted the handling, care and breeding to servants; and results were of such great uncertainties in sizes, colors and character, that he gave it up, disposing of his entire plant to such as wanted, because from Abbas Pasha’s stud!” “When gone he said to England’s minister, “that only the Arabs of the Desert could breed and grow Arab horses’.” “I had this from Maj. Gen. W. Tweedie, C.S.I., for many years H.B.M’s. Consul general at baghdad –.” Randolph Huntington to T. C., June 2, 1903.

Abbas Pasha’s stud was sold at Cairo in 1860 so it was gathered somewhat earlier than stated in the above quotation. T.C.

(6) McKay advances the theory that the cross of the Arabian on the native English mares created a sudden mutation which he is warranted in calling a new “Elementary Species.” W.J.Stewart McKay. “Staying Power of the Race Horse,” p. 71.

(7) McKay states that the Darley Arabian was bred in the Desert of Palmyra. Ibid. p. 59.

(8) “The late General Angerstein spent Lb 10,000, and devoted many years, in trying to improve the English blood-horse by crosses of Arab blood, without ever succeeding in producing either a race-horse or a good hunter.” S. Sidney, “Book of the Horse,” p. 12.

(9) “From 1680 to 1800 England imported for stock and blood purposes, 300 Arab stallions and mares.” Randolph Huntington to John T. Bramhall, 1889.

“But, it is said the late importations of Barbs and Arabians to England and the United States have done no good. Perhaps they were not well selected, and some of them have got one or more good ones; and take as exceptions the same dozen or a score of the nearly 400 imported English horses [to the United States], and what have the rest done?” “Crofts” in “Porters’ Spirit of the Times,” February 20, 1858.

(10) See “Sporting Magazine” (English), November, 1812, pp. 63-6, for verification of the correctness of the Lord Townshend portrait, of the Godolphin, from which Stubbs drew his famous copy. The same article also comments, as does Mr. Richards, that Stubb’s portrait shows the true form of a race horse. T.C.

(11) The mere fact of the Eastern blood regardless of form and quality. T.C.

(12) Thoroughbred mares. T.C.

It is interesting to compare the result of Mr. Richards’ researches with those of a later student and scientific breeder of the horse, the late Randolph Huntington, who wrote to a friend thus: “As – – – all three, Morgan, Clay and Pilot, were the base of all trotting speed, and were all three close to the Arabian, and all three were diluted in blood influence, still able to carry dunghills to the front, I decided to reinforce it with its blood cause, hence began to breed to Arabians in 1880” From Huntington’s letter–press copy in the possession of T.C.

(13)The name Arabia Petraea was derived from Petra, the capitol of the ancient Nabataean kingdom and of the Roman province. International Encyclopaedia.

“In 1812 the Swiss traveller, John Lewis Burckhardt, disguised as a Bedouin sheik, reached it [Petra] and returned to tell of its mysteries. It had become sacred ground to the Arabs, and danger menaced any Infidel who approached it.” National Geographic Magazine. February, 1935, p. 130.

(14) Italics are mine. T.C.

(15) Mrs. John Pack, a daughter of Mr. Richards, wrote me November 28, 1934, “My understanding was — from my mother — that the expense of all trips was borne entirely by my father, who spent a fortune on these importations.” T.C.

(16) Sir Henry Austen Layard (1817-94), traveller, writer, archaeologist, spent some eighteen years in the Near East, where he made a study of the tribes near the Tigris; also he identified Kuyunjik as the site of Nineveh. From the famous Library chamber of the palace of Assurbanipal, Layard and George Smith brought the tablets, now in the British Museum, containing the account of the Deluge. Encyclopaedia Britannica.

(17) “There is blood and stride in the desert which has never been seen out of it.” S. Sidney, “Book of the Horse,” p. 25, quotting a Scotch correspondent of the Sporting Magazine, 1864.

“Indeed, Prof. Charles Du Hays, Master of Horse [for the French Government], wrote me three years ago, ‘that there was not a pure Arab in all France’.” Randolph Huntington to Capt. W.A.Kerr, V.C. April 4, 1890.

(18) Please note the exceptional preparations tht Richards considered requisite to get access to the purest bred Arabians. T.C.

(19) Generally known as Gysaul. T.C.

(20) Although not mentioned here, the Barb mare Zariphe [Zareefa Bruce A.S.B.] is listed in another part of the “Catalogue” as imported from the Sahara [1856]. T.C.

(21) Italics are mine. T.C.

(22) Zilcaadi (usual spelling) may not have been an improving factor in the Thoroughbred running horse, but the fact that he was the sire of the dam of Dorsey’s unbeaten Golddust gives him a secure place in the trotting world. Golddust was not foaled till 1855, so he was but two years old when Richards wrote. T.C.

(23) Stamboul may not have gotten improved speed at the run, but he must have imparted other desirable qualities for Dr. Geo A. Feris who had several of Richards’ Arabians refers to him with pride as the sire of the 2nd dam of a horse by Medoc, that he rode in the Mexican War . Dr. Feris to Randolph Huntington, November 30, 1887.

(24)In 1878 there was a pamphlet published and dedicated to the Earl of Rosebery, “On the Deterioration of the British Horse.” S. Sidney “Book of the Horse,” p. 111.

(25) “—It is in the second remove that the blood [Arabian and Barb ] tells, after which you will do well to double it back upon itself.” Rudolph Huntington to Gen. L.W.Colby (who had Gen. Grant’s horse Linden Tree). June 11, 1888.

(26) Glencoe and Boston went blind; the latter’s best son, Lexington went blind. — The Derby winner, Priam, had intied legs below the knees. T.C.

Another writes [1874]: Out of six thoroughbred stallions in one district [England] (whose sire were, respectively, Kingston, Newcaster, Lord Clifden, Ely, Rataplan and Macaroni) four are unsound two blind, three roarers, one has ring bone, two have spavins and ringbone. S. Sidney, “The Book of the Horse” p. 110.

(27) This confidence was justified in the famous horse. “Limestone.” bred by Mr. Richards, and whose grandsire was Massoud, and in many others. Italics are mine. T.C.

Please note that Mr. Richards had in mind the breeding of stallions and mares that would improve not only race horses but also horses for all light purposes. Many authorities including von Oettingen believe that this point of view has been neglected in the breeding of the modern sprinters. T.C.

(28) Lindsay’s Arabian (called Ranger): a white horse of most perfect form and symmetry, about 15 hands. Presented by Emperor of Morocco to Captain of a British frigate who gave him to the Captain of a United States boat, who landed him in Connecticut, 1766 — then four years old: stock very valuable. Bruce. A.S.B.

The belief has been advanced that some of the Lindsay blood helped to make Justin Morgan. T.C.

(29) Only four miles! T.C.

(30) Bagdad was imported to Tripoli from Aleppo; to New York 1823 by way of England. Sold in 1823 for $8,000 by George Barclay to John Harding, representing a company of Nashville men. J.D.Anderson, “Making the American Thoroughbred,” p. 63. Bagdad died February, 1836 Frank Forester, p. 142.

(31) Ellen Swigert. gr. m. f. –, bred by John L. Howard of Missouri: owned by John Harper, Woodford do., Ky. Sire Bulwer (son of Grey Eagle), 1st dam Cora by trumpator, 4th dam by tippoo Said. Bruce A.S.B.

(32) Although there is no documentary evidence of the breeding of Lora Temple, John Wilder Taylor who bought Flora and her dam — (from the farmer at Clinton, N.Y., who bred and raised her) — for R.A. Alexander, told Randolph Huntington in 1855 “that the mare [the dam, Madam Temple] showed more arab blood than anything else.” Randolph Huntington to John Gilmer Speed. December 20, 1903.

As Flora was the first trotter to beat 2.20; and, from 1853 to 1859, best all the good horse in the country, it is not hard to believe that she was close to the Arabian or Barb. T.C.

In an interview with Major C.A. Benton, November 13, 1934, he said that Tib Hinman was the first mare to beat 2.20; that his father had timed her in St. Lawrence Co., N.Y. Although authentic, it does not appear that this time was an official record. T.C.

(33) Young Bashaw, by imp. Grand Bashaw, was the sire of the unbeaten Andrew Jackson, who got Henry Clay the founder of the famous Clay family. T.C.

Matt Davis, foaled 1856, was one of the best race horses ever run in America. He and his full brother, W.R. Davis, were out of the Mae Rally, who was sired by the imported Arabian, Kochlani, one of the four Oriental Stallions presented to Minister Rhind. From “Spirit of the Times,” November 24, 1883.

(34) “Many of the horses had stood on their feet from the 28th day of August until the 8th day of October. Yet when they were led off the boat onto the docks, they played and pranced. With legs free from any swelling whatever. On reaching the farm one stallion stood up in his box for another twenty-four hours before he lay down.” “My Quest of the Arabian Horse.” Homer Davenport, p. 222.

“—a cubic inch of the tibia of a horse so reared [like the Desert bred] weighs 20 per cent moe than stabled stock.” S. Sidney. “Book of the Horse,” p. 25.

(35) “There is all the difference in riding the Arabian and the ordinary English hunter or half bred, that there is riding in a well hung gig. or a cart without springs.” W.S.Blunt to Randolph Huntington, who quotes this in a M.S. sent to Scientific American, September 6, 1887.

Continued in the next issue)

*****

image: GODOLPHIN BARB

“This noble animal had the form of a race horse, as any judge may plainly see from Stubbs’ picture.” Quoted from Richards’ “Catalogue.”

This horse was foaled in 1724 and died in 1753. His height was 15 hands. He is considered one of the three most important Eastern horses in the creation of the Thoroughbred. While sometimes referred to as an Arabian and sometimes as a Barb it is now generally conceded that his conformation was more Barb than Arabian and Mr. Richards concurred in this belief.

Photographed from an engraaving in Tattersall’s “Pictorial Gallery of English Race Horses,” in the New York Public Library.

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image: MAP SHOWING APPROXIMATE ROUTE TAKEN BY MR. RICHARDS ON TWO EXPEDITIONS FOR STUDYING AND PURCHASING HORSES

“I made myself acquainted with the modern importations, by going to England, France and Spain, examining the best Arabs belonging to the governments, visiting Morocco, and going through the interior of Algeria. I went to Tunis — thence to Egypt, and from Egypt through Arabia Petra and the Desert east of Damascus as far as Palmyra.” From Richards’ “Catalogue.”

“The trip from Jerusalem to Petra and back once required about a month of ardous caravan travel through country infested with lawless Bedouins.” National Geographic Magazine, Fegruary. 1935, p. 130.

Sheik Midjuel, of the Anazeh, guided Mr. Richards from Damascus to Palmyra. From newspaper obituary of Mr. Richards, 1881.

The direct distance from Damascus to Palmyra is about 150 miles.

Besides visiting all the interesting places in Palestine and Syria he studied the horses in Austria, Prussia and Russia.

The following notes are from a book kept by Troye on the Second Expedition: In September, 1855, they were in Constantinople. In November in Damascus. In Bayrout, “October 13, 1855,: as Troye wrote that date on the back of his portrait of the white mare.

“We pitched our tents on the 6th and commenced painting the ‘Dead Sea,’ March 6th, 1856.”

“We raised our tents on the morning of the 21st to rreach Jerusalem. It took ten days from Damascus to jerusalem [about 159 miles direct]. we had four mules to carry our baggage — a horse apiece — four horsesd — and one for our servant Yuseph.”

“Arrived at Barjyrout, April 3rd, 1856.”

The Troyue notes are used through the courtesy of Mr. Richards’ daughter, Mrs. E.G.Swartz.

The route, from London to Palmyra, of the First Expedition, is over 4,000 miles.

From a National Geographic magazine Map to which Richard’s route is added. Published by permission of National Geographic Society. Copyright 1932.

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photo: “MOKHLADI” WITH A.KEENE RICHARDS IN ARAB COSTUME

Quoting Richards: ” ‘Mokhladi’ is a gray, 14 hands 1 inch, and was bred by the Tarabine tribe of Bedouins, in Arbia Petra. He is the sire of the colt* that took the prize last fall at Lexington, in the ring of Thoroughbreds under one year old.”

“Faithful portraits of three of my stallions are introduced in this pamphlet, and those who are judges of form, can see for themselves and compare their points with other importations. The portraits are photographed by Elrod of Lexington, Ky., from sketches by that eminent artist, Edward Troye. The proportions are strictly correct, and any one who has the curiousity, may measure the comparative points with any thoroughbred of known merit. The height of each horse is given accurately, and not in the usual way of measuring part of the stallion’s neck for his height.” **

*The dam of the colt was a “chestnut mare, by Gray Eagle, out of a Bertrand mare.” “(This mare is the dam of Mokhladi’s colt which took the prize. She goes back to the same stock which produced Grey Medoc and Minnehaha).”

**From Mr. Richards’ own account of his horses, printed in 1857 at Lexington, Ky.

Reproduced here through the courtesy of Mr. Richards’ daughter, Mrs. Edward G. Swartz, who has the painting in her possession.

A small reproduction of this Mokhladi portrait appeared in my article in the Horse, January-February issue, before this present article was contemplated, but it should be included here as it is one of the three illustrations in the “Catalogue.” T.C.

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photo: “MASSOUD”

Quoting Richards: ” ‘Massoud’ is a rich chestnut, 15 hands, bred by the Anayza Bedouins. He is the sire of the filly that received the first prize last fall [1856], both at Lexington, and at the State Fair at Paris [Ky.], in the Thoroughbred ring for yearling fillies.”*

“Massoud” was the sire of the mare Transylvania who produced the famous steeplechase and flat racer, “Limestone,” by “War Dance.”

All these horses were, at one time, owned by Richards.

*From Mr. Richards’ own account of his horses, printed in 1857 at Lexington, Ky.