Tag Archives: Blunt

The Eternal Fascinators: Ali Pasha Sherif, Lady Anne Blunt, and Sheykh Obeyd Garden

Revised January 1998
Copyright by R.J.Cadranell
Used by permission of RJ Cadranell

Digging For Gold In The Raswan Index

Most Arabian horses descend to greater or lesser extent from the Arabian horse collection of Ali Pasha Sherif (d. 1897) of Egypt. Writers treat this collection of horses with awe and respect. The best of the horses still stand as examples of classic Arabians.

Crabbet Stud co-founder Lady Anne Blunt (1837-1917) seems to have made the greatest effort to acquire representatives of Ali Pasha breeding as his collection began to disperse in the last decade of the nineteenth century. On March 26, 1897 she and her 24 year old daughter Judith (later Lady Wentworth) attended the collection’s second and final auction sale. Also with Lady Anne was her sais, Mutlak, a former employee of Ali Pasha’s. Her published Journals describe the event:

“With Judith 7. 50 train, and Mutlak to sale of remnant of A.P.S. stud at the Serai. Did not begin till long after 9, the hour on bills, Aziz brought out first only Lb bid taken back. Then 2 year filly B.B. Azz grey fetched LBE 29. Ibn Johara 32, Ibn Zarifa Saghir 27, do Kebir 26, Ibn Bint Nura Saghir 56, do Kebir 43, Ibn B. Jellabieh Feysul 55, Ibn Bint Nura es Shakra 44, Ibn Makbula 63, Ibn Aziz Saghir 60). Johara B. Helwa (Seglawieh) 80, B. Horra and foal 125, B. Nura es Shakra 106. B. Makbula 255. Of these I bid for the grey 3 yr. Ibn Johara 31 – splendid colt but has been ill, severe cold (regret I did not go to 35). I bought B. Horra and foal and B. Nura es Shakra (regret I did not buy for 55 the ch. Ibn B. Jell. Feysul 4 years very beautiful—feared to add to number of stallions as we have enough). Sent Mutlak home with the 2 mares and foal, am delighted with them…”

Many of these horses were lost to Arabian horse breeding. Egypt’s first published stud book did not appear for more than fifty years after this sale, so details of these lost horses are available to us through scattered notes in Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals and stud books and also The Raswan Index. While the Index material on the Ali Pasha pedigrees is often difficult to follow and seems to come from secondary and tertiary sources, the Index is in general surprisingly clear about the horses going through this sale. Raswan’s information includes colors, foaling dates, and parents of the sale horses.

Internal evidence suggests that Raswan saw one of the bills which Lady Anne Blunt mentions as having been issued prior to the sale. He might have seen one during the time he spent with Lady Wentworth in 1926. He might have found one in Egypt, perhaps as part of the library of Prince Mohammed Ali to which Raswan also had access. The Index contains a number of alternative spellings of the names of the horses going through the sale. These transliterations use a system entirely different from those Raswan and Lady Anne Blunt used. They are consistent with themselves, suggesting that Raswan drew them from a single source. Certain spellings suggest that the original writer spoke French. For example, the name “Helwa” (“sweet” in Arabic) is rendered “Heloua,” the use of “oua” for “w” being typically French. “Shakra” (Arabic for “chestnut”) appears as “Chakra,” also a French spelling.

Raswan’s information about the horses going through the sale is in general agreement with Lady Anne Blunt’s. Using the two sources, it is possible to reconstruct a sale catalog:

1. Aziz was a chestnut Dahman Shahwan stallion Lady Anne Blunt first saw as a four-year-old in November of 1880, making Aziz about 21 at the time of the sale. He was a principal sire for Ali Pasha, and Lady Anne Blunt came to own many of his get: Mesaoud GSB, Antar, Jamil, Johara GSB, Bint Helwa GSB, Bint Nura GSB, Bint Bint Jamila el Kebira, Bint Fereya, Badia GSB, Bint Horra, Kerima, Aziza (1900), and Khatila GSB. (1) Aziz died in 1889. (Blunt quoted in Pearson/Mol p. 137).
2. Bint Bint Azz eventually found her way to Lady Anne Blunt’s stables at Sheykh Obeyd Garden near Cairo. She was entered as No. 23 in the Sheykh Obeyd Stud Book, renamed “Azz,” and described there as a white Dahmah Shahwaniyah mare foaled in 1895 or 96, by Ibn Nura and out of Bint Azz. Index entries 1415 and 1067 give variant spelling of her name “Bent Bent Ezz.” Entered in GSB as “Azz.”
3. Ibn Johara is described in Index entry 3998 as an 1894 grey stallion out of Johara (q.v.) and by “Ibn Mahroussa I.” Entry 4005 explains that “Ibn Mahroussa I” is the grey stallion more often known as Mahruss. The variant name and numerical designation appear to be Raswan’s own. Lady Anne’s Journal entry for January 22, 1902 mentions “the grey horse (now 7 years old) by Mahruss out of Johara” then owned by Ahmed Fathi and his son Mohammed Fathi. This is apparently Ibn Johara.
4. and 5. Ibn Zarifa Saghir and Ibn Zarifa Kebir appear to be the sons of a mare named Zarifa (“the graceful”), as their names imply (“the younger son of the graceful mare” and “the elder son of the graceful mare” respectively). Index entries 4040 and 4041, as well as 11242 and 11243, interpret the names to mean “the son of the younger Zarifa” and “the son of the elder Zarifa,” which is an unlikely interpretation since the words kebir and saghir take the masculine form and therefore seem to apply to the sons. Raswan says the sons were foaled in 1887 and 1888, were both grey, and both by Aziz.
6. and 7. Ibn Bint Nura Saghir and Ibn Bint Nura Kebir Raswan describes as chestnut stallions foaled 1892 and 1889, by Aziz and out of Bint Nura (index 3964, 3962). Entry 3964 gives variant spelling “Ebn Bent Noura El-Saghir.” Raswan’s attempt to determine which Bint Nura produced these stallions is similar to his treatment of the two Zarifa sons. These two sons of “Bint Nura” were probably out of the same mare. Ali Pasha owned numerous mares known as “Bint Nura” (see below for another). These two easily could have been full brothers to Bint Nura GSB.
8. Ibn Bint Jellabieh Feysul is in the Index ( 3957) as an 1893 chestnut son of Ibn Nura out of Bint Jellabieh Feysul. Date, name, and color agree with the Journal entry describing the auction. Raswan seems to have been unaware that this horse was Feysul GSB. Lady Anne Blunt acquired him “from Seyyid Mohammed Fathi December 7 1898. Mohammed Fathi had bought him from Saleh Bey Sherif, his purchaser at the 2nd Auction held in March 1897 (Lady Anne Blunt quoted in A,P & C, p. 97). The facsimile page of the Sheykh Obeyd stud book reproduced in Upton shows that Lady Anne Blunt originally entered Feysul as the son of “Bint Jellabiet Feysul,” noting that Feysul’s dam was also known as “the lame” (El Argaa) from having broken a front leg. She later changed El Argaa’s other name to read “Bint Bint Jellabiet Feysul,” implying that one of the “Bints” had been left out originally.
9. Ibn Nura es Shakra is in the Index ( 3963) as an 1890 grey stallion by Ibn Sherara (also spelled “Charara”) and out of Bint Nura es Shakra (Bint Nura GSB; see below). Sheykh Obeyd records state that Ibn Bint Nura es Shakra was bred to Johara in 1897. At that time Lady Anne Blunt described him as “Ibn Bint Nura es Shakra (white about 7 years) by Ibn Sherara…” (Pearson/Mol p. 139). In later years a grey stallion named Kaukab from the Ali Pasha collection was active in Egypt. He was the sire of Sahab, the grandsire of the Babson import *Bint Serra. *Bint Serra’s original pedigree, issued in Egypt, describes “Kawkab” as a white son of Ibn Sherara and “Bint Nura.” Lady Anne Blunt owned Sahab and knew his sire. In December of 1907 she referred to Kaukab as “a beautiful white horse about 15 years old” belonging to Ali Pasha’s son Yusef Bey (J&C p. 325). On February 19, 1914 she had a visit from Ibrahim Bey Sherif, another of Ali Pasha’s sons: “he says he has ‘taken’ Kaukab (sire of Sahab) from his brother (Yusef) and will bring that beautiful old horse to show me tomorrow.” The next day “Ibrahim Bey Sherif conducted by Ali the syce appeared on Kaukab, true to promise. That horse is indeed beautiful, light of bone as they say and pasterns rather too long, but what style, the quarter splendid (I wish Sahab had inherited that)…” Kaukab was apparently out of Lady Anne’s own Bint Nura GSB (shot in 1912). One might suspect that Kaukab and Ibn Bint Nura es Shakra were the same horse. However, notes of Lady Anne’s quoted in A, P&C ( p. 113) in connection with Sahab state that Yusef Bey Sherif had Kaukab “given to him by his father before the ‘interdict.’ ” This makes it unlikely Kaukab would have been one of the horses in the auction. If Ibn Bint Nura es Shakra and Kaukab are not the same horse, then it seems they were full brothers of roughly the same age.
10. Ibn Makbula is in the Index (4009) as an 1892 grey stallion. Variant spelling “Ebn Makboula.” Beyond this, his Index entry is particularly garbled. He is listed as being by a sire also named “Ibn Makbula” and out of a mare named “Nasrat.” There is no other “Ibn Makbula” in the Index, and the only “Nasrat” in the Index was a bay Ali Pasha stallion by Aziz and out of Bint Azz. Ali Pasha Sherif owned at least two mares named Makbula, and Ibn Makbula’s name implies he was the son of one of them. Index correction 888 changes the sire to Nasrat and the dam to Makbula. Like Raswan, Lady Anne Blunt says that Ali Pasha Sherif bred a bay stallion named Nasr or Nasrat, by Aziz and out of Bint Azz. She further records that “Nasr died of ‘the eye’ i.e. fell dead one day when being ridden out – this happened on a bridge. His only descendants were Kasida, Manokta and a colt ex Mukbula” ( quoted in Upton, p. 116)
Kasida ( 1891) and Manokta ( 1894) were foundation mares for Lady Anne Blunt, full sisters by Nasr and out of Makbula GSB. It seems that Ibn Makbula was their brother and the third Nasr foal.

Ibn Makbula appears in the Journals again, entry of November 20, 1909: “To the house of Mahmud Moharrem Rustem purchaser of … the colt by Nasrat out of Makbula … a handsome wreck, eyes sunk in and looks older than his age (16 to 17 years), is very like Kasida is grey, great bone, strange to say not yet white at that age.”
11. Ibn Azz Saghir is not in the Index, but there is an entry for Ibn Bint Azz As-Saghir ( 3954), with the telltale variant spelling “Ebn Bent Ezz El-Saghir.” The Index lists him as an 1893 grey stallion by Ibn Helwa (or “Ebn Heloua”) out of Bint Azz (“Bent Ezz”). It seems unlikely that Azz herself was producing as late as the 1890’s, but a Bint Azz daughter also went through the sale, so this might be another case of a dropped “Bint.” Index entry 3992 implies that Ibn Helwa was full brother to Bint Helwa GSB and Johara GSB.
12. Johara Bint Helwa has variant spelling “Goharra Bent Heloua” in Index entries 3081 and 4550. She is in GSB as Johara, and Crabbet records state she was also known as “Bint Helwa es Shakra” (the chestnut daughter of the sweet mare). Crabbet records further state that Lady Anne Blunt “[p]urchased [her] from Ibrahim Bey Sherif on April 19, 1897 for Lb 120. Ibrahim Bey had bought her at the Auction on March 26, for LbE 80 (quoted in Upton, p. 100). Johara was the daughter of Aziz and Helwa, and was foaled about 1880, making her one of the first Aziz foals.
13. Bint Horra also has a variant spelling in the Index ( 1456): “Bent Horra.” She was one of the three horses Lady Anne bought at the auction. Bint Horra is No. 9 in the Sheykh Obeyd herd book, and is described there as an 1889 grey mare bred by Ali Pasha, got by Aziz, her dam Horra. Bint Horra died at Sheykh Obeyd in September, 1897.
14. Fortunately, Lady Anne had also bought Bint Horra’s foal, a bay filly by Ibn Nura just 22 days old at the time of the auction. She was known as Bint Bint Horra, and Lady Anne Blunt named her Ghazieh. She is No. 15 in the Sheykh Obeyd herd book, and was the dam of ten foals for Lady Anne.
15. Bint Nura es Shakra was the third horse Lady Anne bought at the auction. She is in GSB as Bint Nura. Index entry 1477 has the somewhat predictable variant spelling “Bent Nour [sic] El Chakra.” She was a chestnut mare foaled in 1885, by Aziz, her dam Bint Nura. Lady Anne, with typical fastidiousness, notes that Bint Nura GSB’s name “should be Bint Bint Nura” ( see Upton, p. 108).
16. Bint Makbula brought the most money of any horse in the sale. She is better known as Kasida GSB. A Frenchman bought her at the auction and imported her to France in April, 1897. He brought her back to Egypt that winter, and Lady Anne Blunt was able to buy her from him in March of 1898 (Upton, p. 116). Kasida was originally named Bint Makbula el Shakra. She was an 1891 chestnut full sister to the grey Manokta (Bint Makbula el Saghira), by Nasr and out of Makbula GSB. Index entry 1467 for “Bint Makbula,” an 1891 chestnut Jallabiyah by Nasrat, appears to refer to Kasida GSB.

Lady Anne Blunt eventually owned seven of the horses sold through this auction. They and her other Ali Pasha horses were combined with bloodlines she and her husband Mr. Wilfrid Blunt had selected in Syria, India, and Arabia. This blending produced the famous Crabbet and Sheykh Obeyd Arabians of the Blunts.

Lady Anne Blunt: Preservation Breeder

Among the traditional questions Arabian horse writers debate is, To what extent did the best qualities of the horses the Blunts bred in later years stem from the Ali Pasha collection as opposed to the original “Blunt” desert stock with which Crabbet started?

Lady Anne Blunt herself repeatedly attributed an “indescribable air of distinction” and “style” ( J&C p. 214) to the “unmistakable Ali Pasha Sherif stamp of horse” ( J&C p. 236). Yet the Blunts did not discard the original Crabbet lines and breed only from Ali Pasha blood. Following the importation of Mesaoud, Merzuk, Khatila, Sobha, and Safra to Crabbet in 1891, most foals represented a combination of Blunt desert lines with Ali Pasha blood. Nejran (Azrek x Nefisa), sold to Australia in 1904, was the last “straight Blunt” (meaning, in this article, a horse tracing only to the Blunt acquisitions bred in the desert) stallion to stand at Crabbet, but the GSB does not record that he covered any straight Blunt mares. Crabbet’s last straight Blunt foal listed in GSB was Bozra’s 1901 effort by Ahmar. This foal died young.

Although Crabbet ceased to produce straight Blunt horses, it did maintain a small pool of unmixed Ali Pasha stock. The 1917 Crabbet catalog (prepared about a year before Lady Anne Blunt’s death) lists three remaining mares (Kantara, *Kerbela, and Hamasa) and three stallions (Feysul, Ibn Yashmak, and Zeydan). In 1916 *Kerbela was bred to Zeydan, Hamasa to Feysul, and Kantara to Ibn Yashmak. The latter was the only productive mating, responsible for the 1917 filly Kesratain. She was Crabbet’s last foal of unmixed Ali Pasha blood and the first since her full sister *Kerbela in 1911. Feysul was destroyed in 1917 and Hamasa (Mesaoud x Bint Helwa) was sold at about the same time. Clearly the production of straight Ali Pasha horses was neither a primary project at Crabbet nor one with the prospect of continuing much longer. Wilfrid Blunt sold *Kerbela to America in 1918, but Lady Wentworth was able to repurchase Kibla (Mesaoud x Makbula GSB). Though scarcely a saint, Lady Wentworth does not deserve the chiding she has received for Crabbet’s not preserving the Ali Pasha Sherif bloodlines in any straight form. ( 2)

At the time the 1916 Crabbet catalog was prepared the situation of the Ali Pasha stock at Sheykh Obeyd was not much better. There, Lady Anne Blunt had two pure Ali Pasha stallions, five broodmares, and three fillies. They are listed in the accompanying box. Journal entry for July 12th, 1916:

Stud notice. Jemla to Sahab. Zarifa to Jamil. N.B. If this fails it will be best to take Saadun for both of them. I try with Sahab & Jamil because the authorities here are so very keen about unmixed Abbas Pasha descent, as to which I know from experience that results are uneven. (J&C p. 377)

The sudden outbreak of straight Ali Pasha breedings in England during the 1916 season is likely not coincidental. The last phrase of the entry is perhaps the best indication of why Lady Anne Blunt did not pursue straight Ali Pasha breeding more vigorously. Despite the qualities which the best of the Ali Pasha horses exhibited, Lady Anne Blunt found the bloodline easier to manage as a breeding influence when outcrossed. In this way the Ali Pasha horses and the Blunt desert lines were able to improve one another.

UNMIXED ALI PASHA HORSES AT SHEYKH OBEYD, END OF 1916

All of these horses were bred at Sheykh Obeyd with the exception of the three oldest. Jamil was bred by Ali Pasha Sherif. Sahab was bred by a son of Ali Pasha’s. Kerima was bred by Ali Pasha and purchased in-utero by Lady Anne Blunt. Of the above mares, Kerima had been barren for the past eight years and Lady Anne Blunt sold her in 1917. She also sold Faiza in 1917. Lady Anne presented Ghadia, Jamil, and Jemla to the RAS in 1917. Ghadia had been barren for five years, although Lady Anne believed her to be in foal to Jamil at the time she left Sheykh Obeyd (J&C p. 382). The other five were still at Sheykh Obeyd when Lady Anne died at the end of 1917. Feyda produced in 1917 a filly (dead) by Sahab, and Zarifa produced a 1917 colt by Jamil. Zarifa was rebred to Jamil, though Feyda went to Lady Anne’s desert bred stallion Krush.

Stallions:
Jamil Ch 20 Aziz x Bint Jamila
Sahab gr 13 Kaukab x Azz GSB
Mares:
Kerima ch 19 Aziz x Makbula GSB
Ghadia gr 12 Feysul GSB x*Ghazala
Jemla gr 10 Jamil x *Ghazala
Feyda bay 6 Jamil x Ghazieh
Zarifa gr 5 Sahab x Ghadia
Fillies:
Serra gr yearling Sahab x Jemla
Faiza bay yearling Sahab x Feyda
Falha gr 1916 foal Sahab x Feyda

FOOTNOTES

(1) The abbreviation “GSB” stands for the General Stud Book, in which the Blunt horses imported to or bred in England were registered. When it follows the name of a horse, it indicates the animal was registered in the GSB under that name. This I have tried to do in places where it might be necessary to distinguish it from horses having the same or similar name but not registered in GSB.

(2) Zeydan (Mesaoud x Kasida) was full brother to Kantara. His photo does not indicate he was one of Crabbet’s better efforts, and the “preservation” breeding to *Kerbela is the only record in GSB of his use at stud. Lady Wentworth sold Zeydan to the Egyptian government in 1920.

REFERENCES

A,P&C is Archer, Pearson, and Covey’s The Crabbet Arabian Stud, Its History and Influence, Heriot, Cheltenham, 1978.

J&C is Lady Anne Blunt, Journals and Correspondence 1878-1917, ed. Archer & Fleming, Heriot, Cheltenham, 1986.

Pearson/Mol is notes of Lady Anne Blunt’s published in Pearson and Mol’s The Arabian Horse Families of Egypt, Heriot, Cheltenham, 1988.

Upton is notes of Lady Anne Blunt’s published in Peter Upton’s Desert Heritage, Skilton & Shaw, London, 1980.

Photos originally from the Newbuildings Collection of the late Lady Anne Lytton, provided by Michael Bowling.

Strained Relations

“Strain” is defined courtesy of Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls as follows:

“1. Line of descent or the individuals collectively in that line; race; stock; also, a variety, especially when artificial and but slightly differentiated.

“2. Inborn or hereditary disposition; natural tendency; trace; an element or admixture; as, to have an heroic strain in one’s character.

“3. A special line of individuals belonging to a certain race or species and maintained at a high standard of perfection by selection; said of animals or plants.”

There are further definitions which do not relate to our animal breeding context.

The standard text, Genetics and Animal Breeding (Johanssen and Rendel, Stockholm 1963; English translation 1968) has this to say: “Very often a breed can be divided into different strains which from a breeding point of view are more or less isolated from each other due to geographic conditions or when in some respects the aim of breeding is different.”

An amazing amount of confusion has been generated on the Arabian scene by the fact that Bedouin breeding has been described in terms of “family strains” when no two speakers seem to have defined “strain” in quite the same sense. For that matter, “Bedouin” seems to have been used in a number of senses and it is not surprising that contradictions have arisen. “The horse breeding tribes” are not and as far as we can tell have never been a monolithic entity with entirely uniform horses or ideas on horse breeding. Since different travelers spoke with different tribes, different ideas as to the importance of the “family strain” concept and totally different ideas as to what the “strains” were like and which were more important or desirable have come down to us.

The only real certainty out of it all seems to be the fact that the Arabian horse was bred in the desert with attention to tail-female descent (this is all “family strain” in the Arabian breeding sense is; it is the eastern equivalent of the Western idea of placing emphasis in breeding on the tail-male line).

When the Bedouin Said “Strain”, What Did the Europeans Hear?

Before considering what the implications of emphasis on matrilineal (just another word for tail-female) descent might be, it could be instructive to consider the background from which the early European travelers were coming when they encountered the Bedouin. In some ways our experience is as foreign to theirs as theirs was to that of the desert raiders, so we can learn by trying to understand the differences.

The history of Europe is the story of small countries—often of individual tribes—warring among themselves for control of circumscribed areas which they felt to be especially valuable. The great empires which unified the scene were by comparison short-lived and even during their heydays they did not unify the people in the sense of producing a homogenized culture throughout their areas. This is the background from which the many local varieties—isolated from intercrossing by wars and war’s aftermath, suspicion and rivalry—developed into “nations” of humans and “breeds” of livestock, each closed among themselves.

Travelers coming from this history were not prepared to understand that the Bedouin “tribes” were nomads who wandered over vast areas in the course of a year, their paths crossing and sometimes running together. Even when individual tribes held themselves aloof from their neighbours they were not physically isolated like the citizens of little European countries barricaded behind their rivers and mountain ranges. Each tribe doubtless held that its warriors were the fiercest, its women the loveliest, its horses the swiftest and most enduring—they were nomadic, not inhuman—but they were saying and believing these things in a different context from the European experience.

When the Europeans heard the Bedouin describing the different lines of horses which they maintained, it did not occur to them to ask whether they could be, or ever were, inter-crossed. Such things were foreign to their ideas of stock breeding which could not conceive of a single breed spread over the Arab countries. Indeed, we are lucky that the terminology did not become set at the earliest stage for it would have us referring to Kehilan, Seglawi, Maneghi etc, as different breeds; even the Blunts made this error at first though they learned better soon enough.

There may be some significance to the fact that the American, Homer Davenport, when he journeyed with the Arabs buying horses for his 1906 importation, did not come home with the idea of strain separation or of “good” or “bad” strains. He recorded the strains of his horses and the information he was given on them but when reading his accounts one does not get the feeling he thought of this as anything but a source of knowledge of their background. Certain strains are spoken of as being prized in certain areas or by certain tribes but it is not with the feeling of metaphysical superiority. Rather, these became celebrated through the fame of celebrated individuals which happened to belong to them.

In summary, the Bedouin seem to have used a word which may be translated “strain” in the first sense of the dictionary definition at the beginning of this article. Perhaps it would have been better in a number of ways to have called these entities just “families” rather than “family strains” as we have come to do. European travelers who encountered this idea interpreted it more along the lines of definition 3 and of the animal breeding sense of Johanssen and Rendel. By questioning the Bedouin and sometimes by their own observation of such horses as they saw, the Europeans developed their own concept of “strain” or even “breed” and took it home with them because the Bedouin sense of “female family line” did not make sense to them. Only a few long-term observers carried their ideas beyond this preliminary level.

Because the casual observers outnumbered the careful ones and because even the careful ones could be misled by thinking one tribe had examples of strains that were like those of all tribes, the descriptions of “the breeds of Arabians” became current in Europe. In fact, what they were describing was not “the Seglawi breed” but “the Seglawis of this tribe” and interpreting this in light of their own experience (in which a breed name would not be used by two different groups for their stock unless the stock were indeed the same in type and by descent).

Implications of the Matrilineal System

Emphasizing tail-female inheritance is foreign to our Western way of doing things but indications are that it used to be rather general among the human family. It is the more primitive system and is based of course upon the fact that even members of groups which have not quite worked out yet how offspring are fathered are pretty clear on the fact that they have mothers (the women are anyway). At a slightly later period of cultural development, it still remains possible to wonder about paternity while maternity, until the era of embryo transplants, was a fixed and certain quantity defined by the legal phrase, “born from the body of”.

In our horse breeding example, it clearly must have appeared to the hard-headed Bedouin that the thing to do was to place emphasis on what you knew for certain. It may be going farther than the evidence warrants to suggest that at an early point in their tradition sires were not known or at least not recorded. Even had this been the case at some time, of course they were too sophisticated not to have come to the realization eventually that emphasis on sires was important in horse breeding. After all, aside from any traditions of maintaining “the right Arabian breed,” their success in raiding and at times their lives depended on the horses they bred. There is surely no question of ignoring sires in historical times—strains of both parents are almost always given on desertbreds that have come into our knowledge through being sold to Westerners.

It seems that as far back as we have any record, the Arabs used and emphasized the mares; stallions were a noisy but necessary encumbrance and the great majority of colts was sold. This implies that, with few stallions in each tribe, most of the young stock of any generation would be shared out among relatively few male parents. And it follows necessarily that much of the visible variation among the youngsters would be attributable to their dams. This would tend to reinforce the matrilineal emphasis.

We are told in the records of the Abbas Pasha purchases that certain strains (in particular one Seglawi family) were uniform when the mares were bred to stallions of the same strain but varied more in shape when the sires were of other strains. This is often quoted to show that the Bedouin crossed strains and as often used to show that they bred them within themselves to fix type. I think a much more interesting implication emerges if you consider the scarcity of stallions maintained for breeding in the desert along with this description of strain behavior when outcrossed or not. If much of the breeding of a tribe’s mares was done within the tribe, then a small choice of sires was available. If out of this small number a Seglawi was to be picked for the Seglawi mares, it was highly likely that all the Seglawi mares would be bred to one and the same horse. Naturally, if the mares were related by female line and they were bred to the same sire, the offspring should have been uniform. Since, further, the Seglawi stallion(s) of a tribe must have come from that tribe’s Seglawi mares, it suggests that mares were bred to their own near relations in female line if they were bred within strain within the tribe.

I sometimes get the feeling that modern Arab breeders think of “strain” almost in the sense of definition 2 of this article, as a mystical or metaphysical quality. I think it is important to keep in mind that if a strain type were fixed in any given situation, it was done so by the straightforward and comprehensible action of inbreeding and selection.

Maternal Inheritance

We have considered mammalian sex determination any number of times. Recall that sex is determined by chromosomal constitution. Normally XX individuals are female and XY individuals are male (where X and Y refer to the sex determining chromosomes). Recall too that chromosomal segregation is random. Genes from the other chromosomes of the individual do not travel with any particular sex chromosome. It is also completely a matter of chance whether a fertilized egg is XX and will be a female or XY and will be a male.

Figure 1 shows the consequences of this mode of sex determination on the sex chromosome make-up of sons and daughters of sires and dams. Only the sex chromosome are indicated as the others all assort at random compared with this pair. Note that the Y chromosome follows a patrilineal mode of inheritance; the Y chromosome of any male came from his sire, his sire’s sire, and right on back.

FIGURE I. Chromosomal Consequences of XY Sex Determination Mechanism in Mammals

Note that a male offspring always receives his sire’s Y chromosome and never receives the sire’s X chromosome. The female, of course, must receive one X from each parent. This means that the Y chromosome, because it is male-determining, always follows the “tail male” line. There is no such necessary pattern with the X chromosome; a female must receive an X from her own dam, but she need not receive one from her maternal granddam. (The numerical subscripts serve to distinguish one chromosome of the same type from another—they are not meant to have genetic significance.)

There is no comparable matrilineal pattern. Since each individual has at least one X chromosome, it is possible in as few as two generations to lose both X chromosomes of the original female founder. (NB: mitochondrial DNA is not mentioned because this was written about 20 years ago.)

In other words, any tail-male Skowronek stallion has Skowronek’s Y chromosome. A tail-female Bint Helwa mare is no more likely to have Bint Helwa’s X chromosome than she is any other chromosomes.

Two points here: firstly, there is little crossing over between X and Y and thus we can speak of the Y as being handed on as a unit unlike other chromosomes; secondly, the Y has little or no known function beyond sex determination. Having Skowronek’s Y chromosome implies only that his descendant will resemble him in being male, not necessarily in any other traits.

Something can be said for maternal inheritance in the sense that the egg is a much larger cell than the sperm and thus contributes much more mass to the earliest developmental stages. This becomes a case of splitting hairs in defining “inheritance” for it is just as true to say that the maternal parent has more environmental influence on the offspring than the sire. This begins from the moment of fertilization and continues at least until weaning. It might be best to formulate this as “the dam being the single most important influence in the offspring’s environment up to the time of weaning” rather than trying to define “maternal inheritance”. Chromosomally of course the two parents make exactly equal contributions to the offspring’s genotype.

“Family Strains” in Modern Breeding

Every modern Arabian has a strain except for a few whose strains were lost because early-day records were not kept as we might have liked before the founding of the various Studbooks. Of course those, the knowledge of whose strains is lost, still have them; we just don’t know what they are beyond the generic “Kehilan Ajuz” or “Old Thoroughbred”. It is interesting to speculate about the significance of strain names today, especially when there are relatively few sources of a particular strain name (as the Kehilan Dajani which seems to trace back in all cases to just two 19th century foundation mares, Dajania in England and Mlecha in Poland). As we understand the family strain system, this must mean that a Kehilan Dajani of one country is related to an individual of the same strain in another country. The question of course is, “How closely related?” and the answer is, “Probably not very.”

“Strain breeding” in a more specialized sense is practiced by those who attempt, by working within a limited group, to reconstitute separate strains by close breeding among the descendants of each foundation mare, or small group of mares of the same strain. This certainly is “strain breeding” according to the sense of Johanssen and Rendel—”the aim of breeding is different,” in this case in meaning to separate the strains—and it also agrees with all senses of the dictionary definition 1. We would like to hope that definition 3 would also be applicable here but of course the key is that the “high standard” is “maintained… by selection,” and that differs with the individual breeders involved.

Whether or to what extent modern “strain bred” Arabians resemble the original Bedouin versions of their named strains is a trickier question. We have seen that it is at least open to discussion whether the strains ever were uniform and bred to a certain general type in the desert. It is certainly difficult to accept that all the characteristics of the members of a given strain, as they existed 200 years ago in the desert, can be recaptured by inbreeding one family deriving the strain name from one or two mares and containing contributions from many other strains along the way. To risk being repetitious, this absolutely is “breeding a strain” or “strain breeding.” The questions are whether the Bedouin practiced “strain breeding” in this sense—and if they did how closely modern horses bred within a named strain resemble their desert progenitors.

What Strain Breeding Means to Me

I’m for it, every time, in the 3rd dictionary sense. If you aren’t trying to develop “a special line of individuals … maintained at a high standard of perfection by selection” then I don’t want you breeding Arabian horses. If thinking in terms of strains helps you to reach this goal, then go to it. On the other hand, of course, if confusion over “family strains” gets in the way of emphasis on the “selection” aspect, then give up family strains by all means.

The Bedouin seem to have done just fine without them until at least the 14th century when the Arab type was already numbering its age in the thousands of years.

The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition (Part II)

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition

Full Steam Ahead: 1899-1906

The 1898 Crabbet foal crop, which had jumped by 10 over that of 1897, marked a new peak in numbers and initiated an era of sustained production. The smallest foal crops at Crabbet would now hover around the pre-1898 record high of 14. In this period the new Ali Pasha Sherif mares were active, and the Mesaoud fillies came into serious production. The Rodania family was clearly established as the most numerous at Crabbet, achieving distinction in the 1906 season as the first to be represented by five breeding mares, even though Rose of Jericho, *Rose of Sharon and Rose Diamond had been sold; Dajania, Basilisk and Meshura were roughly tied for second. On the sire side activity was dominated almost entirely by Mesaoud and his sons although Ahmar and Nejran closed out the Azrek era, Mahruss GSB got one very significant foal and the newly-arrived Feysul sired his most important offspring in his first Crabbet crop. No one sire dominated the stallion battery in any year and the average foals per sire fell slightly to 11.5. The shape Crabbet breeding would take in the future was largely defined in this period, when Daoud, Rabla, *Astraled, Risala, Ajramieh, Rijm, *Berk, Riada, Riyala and Rasim were foaled. The number of Crabbet foals which would influence future breeding rose sharply, perhaps largely because stronger international demand was developing for stock to found stable new programs. The Crabbet foals reported dead in GSB fell to 10% of this era’s 149, and 33 made it into modern pedigrees.

The Blunts worked at maintaining tail-male descent from Azrek; when Ahmar was exported to Java they bought back Nefisa’s Azrek son Nejran and used him for three seasons, but he was to breed on through just one daughter. *Rose of Sharon had also produced a top-class Azrek colt in 1890; this was Rafyk, the foundation sire of Australian Arabian breeding and whose name is extensively repeated at the back of most traditional Australian mare lines. According to the 1924 Crabbet Stud Catalogue Lady Wentworth in her turn meant to reintroduce the Azrek sire line through the double Rafyk grandson Minaret, but if that horse actually reached England nothing came of the venture.

The remaining Ali Pasha Sherif mares proved uncertain producers at Crabbet; in no more than three seasons did as many as five or six of the 10 produce, although a few straggled out to 1910. Astonishingly, the crippled Bint Helwa overcame her broken leg to be the most reliable broodmare of the lot; she shares honors with Rodania as the only Blunt imported mare to leave family branches through three different daughters–hers Hilmyeh, Hamasa and *Ghazala, with the last-named bred by Ali Pasha Sherif but used at Sheykh Obeyd. Ironically this family did not persist at Crabbet though the Sheykh Obeyd and American daughters of *Ghazala, plus *Hazna, *Hamida and *Hilwe, all founded highly influential lines. When *Rose of Sharon went to Spencer Borden in 1905 she was in foal to Bint Helwa’s son Harb and produced *Rodan. That horse was to be the only link to Harb in modern pedigrees but he proved a strong one, siring such mares as Gulnare, Bazrah, Niht, Fath and Fenzileh and leaving a male line through Ghazi.

Makbula GSB left a branch through her daughter Kibla; this became an essentially American family when Kibla’s granddaughter *Namilla and great granddaughters *Kiyama and *Kareyma transplanted the line wholesale to the Selby Stud. Bint Helwa’s elder sister Johara left a small international family. Indirect lines breed on from Makbula’s imported daughter Kasida, Lady Anne Blunt’s favorite riding mare, in the important Egyptian mare sire Kasmeyn; from Fulana in her very handsome son Faraoun, another far back in Austalian mare lines; and from the magnificent Bint Nura GSB who had no fillies to live but produced the imported stallions Abu Khasheb and Mahruss GSB and the Crabbet colt Daoud. Daoud gave his dam indirect mare lines in spades; one Daoud son, Redif, survives in pedigrees through his own influential daughter Bint Ranya.

Mesaoud established his male line more firmly before his 1903 sale to Russian Poland, though not via Daoud; *Astraled, Nejef, Harb and Nadir joined Seyal among the future sire branch founders. *Astraled, half-brother to Ahmar and Asfura, was the last foal of Queen of Sheba, who had become the most highly regarded of the Blunt desert mares. She lived to 25 and produced 10 foals but had only two daughters of record. Queen of Egypt died as a yearling; Asfura’s daughter Ajramieh did establish the family as a respected one that has always been small in numbers. Queen of Sheba has strong indirect influence; besides the Ahmar daughters already named, *Astraled and his sons Rustem, Razaz, Sotamm and Gulastra all were top sires of broodmares. Queen of Sheba’s name is another to be repeated in pedigrees with remarkable frequency, and the most international Mesaoud sire branch, that of *Astraled via Sotamm to Riffal and Oran, was notable for its Queen of Sheba reinforcement. Mesaoud had one major son outside Crabbet; the beautiful Azrek mare Rose Diamond was sold to the Hon. George Savile in 1903 and duly presented him the next year with Lal I Abdar (*Abu Zeyd), another from whom the male line persists.

Two new Ali Pasha Sherif sire lines were established at Crabbet in this phase. Mahruss GSB, chiefly a riding stallion, bred just four Arab mares in England; he sent *Ibn Mahruss to America en utero and got one Crabbet foal: *Rose of Sharon’s mighty son Rijm. That massive chestnut was admired for his scope, presence, freedom of stride and excellence of shoulder, back and loin. Before his sale to Spain Rijm contributed to the Crabbet tradition as sire of the breeding stallions *Nasik, Fakreddin and *Nureddin II; of the widely influential daughters Nessima, Fejr, *Noam, Belka and *Rijma; and of the great early endurance gelding *Crabbet. *Noam and Belka also distinguished themselves under saddle. Feysul came from Sheykh Obeyd with his son Ibn Yashmak late in 1904 and promptly sired the impressively smooth 1906 chestnut Rasim. Rasim served as a riding stallion for his first 11 years and narrowly missed going off as a charger with Neville Lytton in the First World War. His two eldest daughters were key figures of the Kellogg importation and Rasim became extremely influential in the Wentworth years.

The important mares foaled in this era included Ahmar’s Hilmyeh and Namusa, Rish by Nejran, and good daughters of the Mesaoud sons Rejeb, Seyal and Narkise, but if this was the dawn of a new day the sunlight radiated from superb daughters of Mesaoud and *Astraled. Feluka, dam of the Rijm siblings Fejr (to produce *Felestin; *Sulejman’s and Rasim Pierwszy’s dam Fasila; Faris, sire of Rissalix; Ferhan, sire of Indian Gold; and Fayal) and the Australian sire Fakreddin; of the greatest Kellogg foundation mare, *Ferda; and after her sale to H. V. Musgrave Clark of Fasiha, established the Ferida line with a vengeance. If Narghileh was not the greatest Mesaoud daughter then that honor must go to Ridaa’s 1900 filly Risala, dam of Rasim, *Rijma, Rissla, Razieh (Bint Rissala), Risfan (South America) and Rafina, a line foundress in Australia; few sires have ever had the equivalent of an *Astraled and a Risala in the same crop, as Mesaoud did in 1900. Rosemary produced two full sisters, the bay Rabla and brown Riada; the former founded an exuberant family still noted for action horses and the latter died of twisted gut, leaving just one breeding offspring, but that was Rayya, dam of *Raseyn. The records of the handsome grey Kibla, Ajramieh and Hamasa look pale in this company but each founded a major line in the breed.

A case could be made that Daoud and *Astraled, with fewer daughters, were better mare sires than Mesaoud. It must be remembered that all three were extensively used on mares of, by this time, highly selected Crabbet families; and above all that their daughters profited from a coherent, established context in which to operate. Riyala, the most important *Astraled mare of this period, produced Ranya, dam of Bint Ranya and the persistent Spanish influence Razada; Rafeef, sire of Nezma, *Rasafa and the superlative Risslina; the prolific Risama (Bint Riyala); the Hanstead matron Razina, the broodmare of her generation in England, granddam of Indian Magic, *Serafix, *Silver Drift, *Iorana, Bright Shadow, Namilla, Oran, Sala and *Count Dorsaz just to start the list; Ramayana, sold to Poland with Fasila and represented by Polish and Russian families today; Ruellia, who sent a son Riyalan to Australia and then went to Tersk; and Raftan, sire of Naseel, Ariffa and Doonyah. Rokhama by *Astraled bred on through just one daughter but that was *Rokhsa, who founded one of the greatest Maynesboro and Kellogg families.

Partition and The War Years: 1907 – 1918

The first foal crop for the partitioned Crabbet and Newbuildings mares arrived in 1907. Wilfrid Blunt’s chief sires in the Newbuildings half were to be *Astraled, Rijm, Harb, Ibn Yashmak and Rustem; Lady Anne at Crabbet had Feysul, Daoud, *Berk, Razaz, Sotamm and *Nasik (not all these were active as early as 1907). Blunt breeding presents a considerably more complicated picture from this point. Under the terms of partition, Crabbet and Newbuildings mares could be sent to sires standing in the alternate half, and no breeding animal (current or potential) could be sold without approval of the other side. In practice it developed that when Blunt needed money, Newbuildings horses which Lady Anne would be unwilling to see sold appeared on his sales list; and when Lady Anne wished to use a Newbuildings sire she bought or traded for him or one of his sons.

The foals reported dead in GSB for this period fell to just over 8% (14 out of 167) and 54 of the remaining 167 are in modern pedigrees–some of them very prominently indeed. Rodania now reigned supreme; Dajania’s family was a distant second while the Seglawi Meshura and Basilisk lines were fading as Sobha picked up speed. Average number of foals per sire at this period was still about 13. With substantial numbers of mares in production and some of the great sires of its history at their peak of activity, and with the individual geniuses of the two Blunts operating independently from a base of nearly 30 years’ observation of Crabbet breeding trends, it would be surprising if this period did not turn out some of Crabbet’s greatest products. Do not expect to be surprised.

One major sire exported in this period was *Astraled, who went to Lothrop Ames in Massachusetts in 1909; American Arabian breeding was not ready for a sire of this caliber and *Astraled landed in Oregon as a Remount sire, leaving just a handful of foals in New England. *Astraled became a legendary sire of crossbred using horses in his new home only to be called back to the place that had been prepared for him by W.R. Brown in 1923, in time to sire the great Gulastra in his last crop. Note that for the Blunts *Astraled got Riyala, Rustem, Rim and *Ramla from *Rose of Sharon’s daughter Ridaa; the only breeding *Astraled offspring from his early New England years was Kheyra, out of Ridaa’s half-sister Rosa Rugosa; and at Maynesboro Gulastra came from a daughter of Ridaa’s half-brother *Rodan.

It was during the years of partition that *Astraled got his important Crabbet sons, Razaz, Rustem and Sotamm. Rustem remained at Newbuildings where he got Rustnar, *Ferda, Arusa, Rayya and *Simawa. Rayya produced *Raseyn and *Ferda is in a class by herself among the Kellogg matrons, while *Simawa proved one of the best mares of the Maynesboro importation. Lady Anne used Razaz and Sotamm; the former sired important mares while the latter got the Australian mare sire Rief and Kasmeyn, a mare sire in his own right in Egypt (maternal grandsire of *Bint Bint Sabbah and Nazeer just for two), and Naufal who sired other foals beyond Riffal though that was his great success. Riffal left the important sire Oran in England along with the good mares Samsie, Nariffa, Quaker Girl (herself exported to Australia), Rubiana and *Mihrima (Canada); his sons The Chief and *Victory Day II bred on in the Netherlands and Canada respectively while the Riffal influence through his Australian get is incalculable.

*Astraled could have sired no colts and done very well for himself through daughters; his post-partition Newbuildings fillies included Rim and Selima, two of the breed’s dynastic matrons. Rim produced the likes of *Ramim, dam of Rehal and Ramghaza; *Rifla, dam of *Rifda, Rifnas and Shemseh; the ill-fated *Raswan, sire at Crabbet of Ferhan, *Rose of France and Star of the Hills (his only get), “World’s Champion” Raseem, one of the great mare sires of British history, though at Tersk he was surpassed by his daughter Rixalina; Naharin’s dam *Rimini; the Selby import *Rahal; *Rimal, a colt of remarkable beauty, gelded after his Kellogg importation; Rix, sire of *Ashan, *Crown of India, Radiolex and Shimrix; and *Nizzam’s and Niseyra’s sire Rissam. Selima’s noted foals do not match Rim’s for numbers but their influence spread extravagantly; all her breeding offspring were exported but her British influence remained substantial. Shareer, another “World’s Champion,” left Rythal, Rytham, Rythama and Sharima behind when he went to Russia accompanied by his great daughter Rissalma (in fact Rythal already was in Holland and Rytham went along on the Tersk trip but left the tremendously influential Sharfina, his only British foal, at Crabbet en utero). Shareer’s sister Sardhana produced *Crabbet Sura in England and founded a mare line in Poland when she accompanied Rasim, Fasila and Ramayana to Baron Bicker’s stud. Star of the Hills left Starilla to represent her in England (which she did ably through her son Saladin II) when Star traveled to Russia, where she founded one of the most important Tersk families. The Selby colt *Selmian was not used in England – he was sold at age three – but he got Selfra, Selmiana and Ibn Selmian among others.

(Appendix: Minor Pedigree Lines from Imported Blunt Mares)

The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition: Appendix: Minor Pedigree Lines from Imported Blunt Mares

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition

Minor Pedigree Lines From Imported Blunt Mares

Hagar, a dark bay without markings and with a “strange, wild head,” distinguished herself as a riding mare on the Blunts’ first desert journey: she was not considered a first-class mare at Crabbet but came to have first-class descent. Her great-granddaughter Howa was the foundation mare for Miss May Lyon’s Harwood Stud, still maintained today by Miss Lyon’s heirs, the Calvert family. Hagar was among the mares sold by the Blunts to the Hon. Miss Ethelred Dillon and she produced at Miss Dillon’s Pudlicote Stud *Hauran, sire of *Nessa and for Spencer Borden of Bazrah’s dam Bathsheba; *Hail, sire of Riad; and Zem Zem, whose daughter Zimrud is widespread including a tail female branch in the important modern British family of Bint Yasimet. The Zimrud line later returned to Crabbet in the person of *Nurreddin II’s show-jumper son Jeruan, sire of *Rishafieh and *Jerama before his sale to Tersk. Another Zem Zem branch descends from Hilal, sire of *Ibn Hilal.

Jerboa, bright bay with three white feet and a star, was the first of several mares to attempt to found a “J” family at Crabbet, where initial J did not prove a lucky letter. Jerboa is in modern pedigrees through her son and daughter Jeroboam and Jerud, full siblings by Pharoah. Jeroboam got Rodania’s daughter Rosemary and so is a widespread influence. Jerud produced at Crabbet and for Miss Dillon and from the latter connection is responsible for Jamrood by Maidan, sire of Hagar’s son *Hail and of Zem Zem’s daughter Zimrud.

Wild Thyme, bay with a star, was purchased because it was thought her strain, Kehilan Ras el-Fedawi, was also that of the Thoroughbred founder the Darley Arabian; the Blunts also imported a Ras el-Fedawi colt, called Darley. They later found that the original Darley had been a Maneghi; the Blunt Darley was a washout at stud and Wild Thyme was not much more highly regarded. She produced for the Blunts and for other owners, and her daughter Raschida (originally Wild Honey) was another to produce for Miss Dillon. Raschida produced Riad and has a substantial family in this country through her daughters *Nessa and *Mahal, imported by Borden before the Darley connection was disproved.

Sherifa, a white mare, was the senior individual of the first importation and probably the most highly esteemed, for the beauty of her head and for her character. She lived to an estimated age of 30 and left an active family at Crabbet, but the line trailed out around 1907 and she is represented in modern pedigrees only through her daughter Shemse by Pharaoh. Shemse had been sold from Crabbet in foal to Azrek and produced a grey colt, Ben Azrek, who got two registered daughters; Ruth Kesia from the non-Crabbet Borak [(Boanerges x Kesia II) and so blood sister to Borden’s import *Imamzada]; and Sheeba, whose dam Riad was 87.5% Blunt breeding. Ruth Kesia is widely influential through Shahzada by Mootrub and *Nuri Pasha by *Nureddin II; the latter’s sister Krim left a family in England. Sheeba breeds on through the mare sire Nuri Sherif, also by Nureddin II.

Dahma, a dark bay with star, snip, some white on all four feet, though not a familiar name in England or America, cannot be dismissed as a minor influence internationally for her daughter Dahna’s is one of the most extensively branched families in Australian breeding.

Jedrania, a bay, was the second J mare; she and her daughter Jebel Druz produced for the Blunts but she breeds on only through her Dillon son Jezail by *Imamzada, the sire of Hagar’s son *Hauran.

Meshura, a bright bay with four white feet and a blaze, was a distinguished individual and half-sister to the Blunt sire Pharaoh; their half-sister was dam of Azrek and Basilisk was from the same immediate family. Meshura founded a female line which reached several generations at Crabbet and outside, but is present today only through indirect lines. Her daughter Mansura (only offspring of Ashgar in pedigrees) produced Mareb by Mesaoud and he left descent through one daughter, Mareesa. Mabruka by Azrek produced Marhaba, dam of the Selby mare sire *Mirzam. Maisuna by Mesaoud was responsible for the male-line founder Joseph, sire of Rosh and Manasseh and of good mares.

Jilfa, again a bay with a star, was the third of the J mares. Her influence persists only through Jamusa, sold to the Hon. R.E.L. Vaughan Williams along with Mareb. That pair had a string of offspring in GSB but the line was founded by the filly Mareesa, who visited *Berk and Rasim at Crabbet to produce the glamorous Alfarouse and the less noticeable but more productive Yaquta respectively. Alfarouse breeds on through her sons Almulid, Ajeeb and Azym; there is a thin modern female line from Jilfa via Yaquta (thanks to Nyla Eshelman for pinning this line down).

Fulana, a dark brown with off hind sock and near fore coronet, was another who seemed for a time to be founding a Crabbet family. Her English branches all failed, and Fulana’s only descent today is through her very handsome Mesaoud son Faraoun with two important daughters in Australian pedigrees.

Johara, chestnut elder sister of the “broken legged” Bint Helwa, was marked with blaze, near hind sock and a small mark outside off hind. Two daughters produced at Crabbet but the thin lines from Johara today all descend from her great-granddaughter Jawi-Jawi.

The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition (Part I)

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition

“The great tales… never end… But the people in them come, and go when when their part’s ended.” — J.R.R.Tolkien

We see the names of such Crabbet founder animals as Azrek, Mesaoud and Skowronek so often at the backs of extended pedigrees, it is difficult to appreciate the expanse of time stretching from the purchase of the filly Dajania on Christmas Day, 1877 to March, 1990. It may help to consider that Crabbet history breaks naturally into three major periods. Blunt breeding begins in 1878 and runs (with minor ambiguity over the break point) to 1919. Lady Wentworth’s firm hand is on the helm from 1920 to her death in 1957 when Cecil Covey inherits. The Crabbet Stud continues until 1971 but the reduction of stock necessitated by 80% death duties completes the transformation, begun in the earliest years and accentuated during the Wentworth phase, of Crabbet breeding into a world community. Long before 1971 “Crabbet” has larger implications than any individual breeding program can contain; nearly every modern breeding tradition has been enhanced by contributions from Crabbet and a robust Crabbet heritage maintains its own identity, as straight Crabbet or–like a varietal wine–blended yet retaining predominant Crabbet character.

The exuberant and expansionist Blunt period laid the foundation for all that was to follow at Crabbet and internationally. The Blunt imports were chosen over the course of nearly 20 years from hundreds of horses that might have been bought. The criteria for selection were authenticity of origin and individual quality; to remain in the Crabbet pool an influence had also to demonstrate compatibility with the breeding group. The scope of the pedigree base at Crabbet in the Wentworth years was continually reduced; many lines, lost at Crabbet and even in England, were to remain active in Australia and North America and so of major importance to the Crabbet tradition. An important development of the modern international era of Arabian breeding has been the genetic reunion of previously sundered Crabbet branches. Lady Wentworth’s introduction of the Skowronek outcross and its overwhelming success particularly in America can color one’s appreciation of what went before, but Her Ladyship made it plain that

“Skowronek was mated exclusively to mares of pure Crabbet blood so that the fame of his illustrious progeny is exactly halved by Crabbet mares, from which his blood cannot be divorced.”

The Partition Agreement

Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt were essentially disparate personalities; their grandson pictured the partnership “as though an eagle had wedded with a turtledove,” describing Blunt as a man of vision and enterprise and crediting his wife with immense attention to detail and mathematical precision. They held individual and frequently contradictory views on most aspects of life and not least on horse breeding and stud maintenance. The Blunts agreed in 1906 to live apart, and with the importance of the horses in their lives it is not surprising that they also chose to partition the Crabbet Stud. Not all details of the division are precisely recorded but we can follow in a broad sense. Thus in terms of their influence on Crabbet history, beginning with the foal crop of 1907 we can distinguish in most breeding decisions the planning of Blunt or of Lady Anne (toward the end of the Blunt period the distinctions become fuzzy). The record shows that both “Crabbet” and “Newbuildings” bred individuals of the very highest distinction; if today’s students of Crabbet breeding would like to have seen more use of Newbuildings sires with Crabbet mares and vice versa, still we would not choose to give up the results of either program.

Crabbet and Newbuildings were ancestral properties in Wilfrid Blunt’s family; Blunt lived at Newbuildings and Crabbet was the home of Judith Blunt Lytton (later Lady Wentworth) and her young family. Lady Anne chose to settle in Egypt at the garden of Sheykh Obeyd, near Cairo (historical note on the Victorian position of women: In order to have a home of her own it was necessary that Lady Anne buy from her husband land originally purchased and improved with her money). The Blunts had founded a stud at Sheykh Obeyd about 1890; it was reorganized in 1897 and provided a rallying point for the remmant of the famed breeding programs of Abbas Pasha and Ali Pasha Sherif. The original intent had been to exchange stock between the English and Egyptian studs, but when the stallions Rataplan and Jeroboam died at sea on the way to Egypt the enthusiasm for two-way transfers was greatly reduced; late in her life Lady Anne introduced two stallions and four mares at Sheykh Obeyd directly from Arabia. Her Egyptian stud came to have its own importance to Lady Anne Blunt and though it had no influence at Crabbet after 1904, it remained an aspect of Blunt breeding and horses bred there have been internationally significant through Babson and EAO Egyptian breeding.

The Crabbet Foundation

My objective here is to outline 40 years of the Blunt breeding program as recorded in England’s General Stud Book (GSB). There will be space to do little more than touch on general trends; the treatment will follow approximate chronological order.

Table 1: Mares imported by the Blunts
Year	Name (Alternate names in parentheses)	color	year foaled	key, see below
				[Mares of the line to produce at Crabbet by 1920, counting the imported mare herself, in brackets]
				“//” indicates no registered descent
				“F” indicates a female line persists
1878	Babylonia (“Blot”)	b	1875	[died 1878] //
	Dajania (Jasmine, Lady Hester)	b	1876	[8] F
	Damask Rose	ch	1873	[1] //
	Hagar	b	1872	[3] F
	Jerboa	b	1874	[5]
	Purple Stock	b	1874	[2] //
	Sherifa	gr	1862	[6]
	Tamarisk	ch	1867	[1] //
	Wild Thyme (“Darley Filly”)	b	1876	[2] F
	Zenobia (Burning Bush)	ch	1869	[1] //
1879	Basilisk	gr	1875	[8] F
	Francolin	gr	1875	[1] //
	Queen of Sheba	br	1875	[5] F
1881	Canora	ch	1874	[1] //
	Dahma	b	1876	[4] F
	Jedrania	b	1875	[2]
	Meshura	b	1872	[7]
	Rodania	ch	1869	[18] F
	Zefifia	gr	1873	[1] //
1888	Jilfa	b	1884	[2] F
1891	Ferida	b	1886	[5] F
	Khatila	ch	1887	[3] //
	Safra	gr	1885	[2] //
	Sobha	gr	1879	[10] F
1897	Badia	ch	1884	//
	Bint Helwa	gr	1887	[3] F
	Bint Nura GSB (Bint Nura es Shakra)	ch	1885	[1]
	Fulana	br	1893	[4]
	Johara (Bint Helwa es Shakra)	ch	1885	[1]
1898	Jellabieh	gr	1892	[2] //
	Kasida	ch	1893	[3]
	Makbula GSB	gr	1888	[5] F
1909	*Ghazala	gr	1896	[Imported for Borden] F
1910	Azz	gr	1895	//

Table 1 lists the imported Blunt mares and summarizes their breeding opportunity; only those whose influence persists are mentioned in the narrative. The GSB records 34 mares imported to England from 1878 to 1910 by the Blunts. Of these 21 were of desert origin; 13 came from Sheykh Obeyd and represented the historical programs of Abbas Pasha I and Ali Pasha Sherif. Thirty-one can be considered Crabbet founders (Babylonia died soon after her arrival; *Ghazala was in transit to Spencer Borden in Massachusetts; Azz had proved barren at Sheykh Obeyd and was sent to England in the vain hope of returning her to production with more sophisticated veterinary attention). Of the 31 mares, four left no live foals; among the remaining 28, 18 are desert imports and 10 are Egyptians. Eight of the desert mares and five of the Egyptians have left tail-female families in world Arabian breeding; six more desertbreds and one from Ali Pasha Sherif are still represented through indirect lines.

Table 2: Stallions imported by the Blunts
Year	Name	color	year foaled	key, see below
				[Males of the line in use at Crabbet by 1920, counting the imported horse himself, in brackets]
				// indicates no registered descent
				M indicates a sire line persists
1878	Kars	b	1874	[3]
	Darley	b	1876	[1] //
1879	Pharoah	b	1876	[2]
1884	Hadban	b	1878	[1]
	Proximo	b	1875	[1] //
	Rataplan	b	1874	[1]
1887	Ashgar	ch	1883	[1]
1888	Azrek	gr	1881	[3]
1891	Merzuk	ch	1887	[1]
	Mesaoud	ch	1887	[12] M
1892	*Shahwan	gr	1887	[1]
1897	Mahruss GSB	ch	1893	[4] M
1898	Abu Khasheb	gr	1894	//
	Ibn Mesaoud	ch	1892	//
1904	Feysul	ch	1894	[3] M
	Ibn Yashmak	ch	1902	[1]
	Ibn Yemama	b	1902	//

Table 2 similarly treats the imported Blunt stallions of which GSB records 17, a ratio of one sire prospect for each two mares. Abu Khasheb, Ibn Mesaoud and Ibn Yemama were sold without being used; Proximo left no live foals and neither of those by Darley bred. Jedrania was bred once to the gift stallion Abeyan; Makbula and Jellabieh came from Sheykh Obeyd in foal in Ibn Nura and Antar; none of these matings had long-term influence. Only three direct male lines persist from Blunt breeding; these lines are outlined in Table 3.

Table 3: The Sire Lines Persisting from Blunt Breeding
Sueyd	->Sottam	->Ibn Nura	->Feysul	->Rasim	->Sainfoin	->Rheoboam
						->Bahram
					->Raseem	->Grey Owl
Zobeyni	->Wazir	->Mahruss	->Mahruss II	->*Ibn Mahruss	->El Jafil
				->Rijm	->*Nasik
					->*Nureddin II
	->Harkan	->Aziz	->Mesaoud	->Nejef	->Firuseh
				->*Abu Zeyd (Lali Abdar)	->Bazleyd
					->Gharis
					->Sher-i-Khurshid
				->*Astraled	-> Sotamm
					-> Gulastra
				->Harb	->*Rodan
				->Nadir	->Joseph
					->Rishan
				->Seyal	->*Berk

Crabbet: The First Years: 1879-1888

More than half the eventual imported sources (20 mares and eight stallions) were introduced at Crabbet in this first decade. The Blunts were in and out of England and horse care was not given sufficiently close attention (attested to by the fact that up to half the foals in some of this period’s small crops, and 23% overall, died before registration). This period saw 60 live foals registered, of which 12 mares and only one stallion are still in modern pedigrees. Kars and Pharaoh were the most used sires and were assisted by Darley, Rataplan, Hadban, Proximo, Abeyan and the home-bred colts Faris, Jeroboam and Roala. The average number of foals per sire was just over eight (counting dead foals); apart from Kars the other nine averaged only about five apiece.

An observer would have accounted Basilisk’s and Rodania’s the most successful of the mare lines in terms of numbers. Eighteen of the 20 mares imported in this period produced live foals at Crabbet; fully half of those (and the unlucky exported Tamarisk) were sold on and only 11 were to leave registered descent. Dajania and Basilisk were used for crossbreeding after they left Crabbet; Damask Rose, Canora and Dahma had no further report after producing the foal each was carrying at time of sale. Hagar and Jedrania were among the mares sold to the Hon. Miss Ethelred Dillon and left no straight Crabbet descent though they are represented in Crabbet/Old English lines. Sherifa’s daughter Shemse, and Wild Thyme with one daughter Raschida, are similarly placed in modern pedigrees.

The record shows that Kars and Rataplan were to breed on through a few mares (four daughters for Kars and two for Rataplan, both his out of Kars daughters), and Pharaoh through a son and three daughters. The Sherifa female line would fail by 1907 leaving her just one thin presence in Crabbet/Old English pedigrees. The Basilisk family, while a major one in the world context, would not survive at Crabbet in the long term. Dahma’s influence persisted only through two mares sold to Australia, though hers became a successful and extensively branched family down under. By far the most influential individuals bred at Crabbet in this decade have proven to be *Rose of Sharon (Hadban x Rodania), Nefisa (Hadban x Dajania) and Rosemary by Jeroboam (Pharaoh x Jerboa) out of Rodania.

Rodania, the only Blunt desert mare with female lines through three different daughters (and they by three different sires), has proven far the most influential foundation mare of the stud and is generally accepted as having the most extensively branched family in the breed. Her line is the most numerous in modern Egyptian breeding and is also strongly represented in Russia and Poland, apart from its obvious dominance in England, Australia and America. That does not even touch on the multiple ties to Rodania stallions.

Dajania, Lady Anne Blunt’s 1877 Christmas present to us all, left just one producing daughter at Crabbet but the incomparable Nefisa was dam of 21 foals and founded a mare family still widely sought after, and responsible for some of the greatest sires of Crabbet–or world–Arabian history. No breeder has ever made a more serendipitous first purchase; the repetition of Dajania’s name in modern Crabbet-derived pedigrees reaches astronomical proportions and the thought of what she might have achieved had she remained at Crabbet boggles the mind.

The Transition 1889-1898

The greatest record of all the Blunt desert stallions was achieved by Azrek, a horse imported in 1888 who stood at Crabbet just four seasons and got almost as many foals as had Kars in eight. How much of his success was luck–due possibly to more experienced management and certainly to the fact that the Blunts had fillies from the previous decade ready to go into production–and how much must be attributed to appreciation of Azrek’s own unquestioned excellence is difficult to judge. Azrek has more than twice as many sources in modern pedigrees as does his predecessor Kars, and he got the only major home-bred Crabbet sire of desert breeding in male line. This was the impressive bay Ahmar, who has no sons in pedigrees himself but is responsible for a notable lineup of daughters: Selma, Siwa, Bukra, Bereyda, Hilmyeh, Namusa.

Azrek’s brief tenure as head sire came to an end with his sale to Rhodesia in 1891, a year of major transitions; the last of the Blunt desertbred mares, Ferida, arrived at Crabbet in company with the first of the Egyptian transplants from Sheykh Obeyd: the young stallions Merzuk and Mesaoud and the mares Khatila, Sobha and her daughter Safra. Ferida had two Mesaoud daughters to produce at Crabbet but in the end only the branch from Feluka bred on. Khatila and Safra did not leave descent but Sobha, sold at an advanced age to Russia, left at Crabbet the line foundresses Selma (dam of Sotamm and Selima, and second dam of *Selmnab); Siwa who produced Sarama (dam of *Simawa) and Somra, dam of Safarjal, Seriya and Silver Fire; and the good colt Seyal, sire of *Berk, *Butheyna and *Selmnab’s dam Simrieh.

The record of Mesaoud already has been touched upon; he is one of the key founders of modern Arabian breeding, leave alone the Crabbet tradition. Merzuk was promptly exported to South Africa but he left *Rose of Sharon in foal with her greatest daughter, Ridaa, dam of the good sires Rustem (England and Egypt) and Rief (Australia) and of the tremendously successful mares Risala, Riyala and Rim, major architects of the Crabbet heritage. *Shahwan got 10 foals at Crabbet and departed without lasting influence there; his Sheykh Obeyd daughter Yashmak would later send a son to England. Ashgar, who had played second fiddle in the Azrek years, managed to leave a thin line through one of his five get. Even setting aside the prolific Mesaoud and Ahmar, whose tenures at stud overlapped into the next decade, the number of foals per sire rose to nearly 13.

The second decade of Crabbet breeding produced 122 foals; only 19 of them (just under 16%) were reported as dead in GSB. Of the surviving 103, 21 are in modern pedigrees. Ahmar and Rafyk were the most widely influential stallions. Nejran, Rejeb, Mareb and Seyal each left three or fewer breeding offspring, but Seyal achieved distinction as the first colt foaled at Crabbet whose tail-male influence persists to the present day. Fifteen mares from this period are still in pedigrees. Besides Ridaa and the Sobha daughters already noted, important dams include Rose Diamond (she produced *Abu Zeyd and Rose of Hind); the Bozra daughters *Bushra, Bukra (dam of *Berk and *Battla) and Bereyda (dam of *Butheyna, *Baraza, Miraze and Belka); Narghileh, possibly the greatest of all the Mesaoud daughters, whose sons included *Nasik, *Nureddin II, Naufal and the lesser known Rustnar (South America) and Najib, who got *Hilwe and the Tersk line foundress Ruanda. Narghileh numbered among her daughters the likes of the Australian dynasty builder Namusa; *Narda II, dam of two famed early endurance Arabians, the gelding *Crabbet and his sister *Noam who produced in turn the Maynesboro and Kellogg matron Nusara; and Nessima, dam of *Nafia and Nax and foundress of the mare family responsible for Naseel, General Grant and Masjid.

1898 marks the end of the transitional period; all the Blunt foundation mares had reached England, and all the stallions had been purchased though Feysul was still at Sheykh Obeyd.

Sources and Further Reading

History and Biography:

The Sheykh Obeyd Studbook in The Arabian Horse Families of Egypt, Colin Pearson with Kees Mol, Heriot, Cheltenham 1988

Lady Anne Blunt: Journals and Correspondence 1878-1917, Edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming, Heriot, Cheltenham 1986

A Pilgrimage of Passion: the Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Elizabeth Longford, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1979

The Crabbet Arabian Stud Its History & Influence, Rosemary Archer, Colin Pearson and Cecil Covey, Heriot, Cheltenham 1978

M. Bowling articles giving more detail on the influence of individual Blunt animals:

Rose Diamond, The CMK Record, VIII/2 Fall 1989

*Berk 343: A heritage of “magnificent action” (two parts), The Crabbet Influence, March/April and May/June 1989

*Nasik 604, The CMK Record, VII/3 Winter 1988

Rosemary, four-part series, The CMK Record, IV/I-IV/4 1984

Keene Richards’ Arabian Importation part I

Articles of History:

Keene Richards’ Arabian Importations

By Thornton Chard

from The Horse Nov/Dec 1934 Part I Part II “After God, the horses” Thus Cunninghame Graham, in his “Horses of the Conquest,” interprets the chroniclers of the Cortez Mexican conquest as to the victorious part played by the horses. (1) And if you will afford yourself the entertainment of reading his book you will be convinced that it was more than the physical prowess of the eastern blood that evoked the above exclamation.

Over three hundred years later there was to be another spontaneous eulogy, born of battle experience, by another soldier and again in Mexico. It runs thus: —

“During the war between the United States and Mexico I rode a horse by Medoc–1st dam by imported Amurath (Barb), 2nd dam by imported Stamboul (Arabian).“

“For style, courage and endurance he took the palm from all others but was unfortunately killed by a lance thrust at battle of Buena Vista.”

Who this soldier was will appear later; but enough has been said, aside from the title of this article, to show the trend, so the story may as well begin here.

Back in the 1880’s when the late Randolph Huntington (2) sought to develop a national horse for the United States he was well aware of the vital part that the eastern horse had contributed in the foundations and creation of the national horses of fixed type of England, France, Hungary and Russia. Accordingly he interested himself intensely in the Arabian and the Barb to futher his laudable purpose. He knew that at various times, from 1750 to the arrival in 1879 of General Grant’s Leopard and Linden Tree, quite a number of eastern horses and mares had been imported to North America, so he decided to investigate those importations that were not too far in the distant past, to get information as to the result, if any, of such eastern blood on the American horses and to find out if any descendents of such importations were still alive that might be available to assist him in his objective.

It was common knowledge among horsemen, for example, that Secretary William H. Seward had had presented to him, in 1860, two Arabian horses (3); and after a search of eight years Huntington traced them through the efforts of Hon. John E. Van Etten of Kingston, N.Y., to find that there was just one descendant there, a mare bred by the late Judge Westbrook; also that a man in Ohio named Meyers had a granddaughter of one of the Seward horses; “and she proved the blood.”

Not discouraged by so meagre a result both as to information and to the fact that the Seward Arabians had been practically lost through ignorance of their blood value as a benefit to the American horse, Huntington always kept his eyes and ears open and his pen active in hopes that, at some time, more information might be obtained about the Seward and other importations.

So it was that Huntington tried for several years to get exact and useful information from Kentucky about the A. Keene Richards Arabians, which were, by far, the most important importations of eastern blood, both for quality and quantity, that had ever been made in the United States; “but they knew absolutely nothing. All efforts failed.” As Huntington wrote to a friend in 1888, “There is a great difference between knowing facts and telling stories. I gave it up.”

This failure is the more remarkable because the arrival of the Richards Arabians was an event which provoked wide discussion among racing men, in hte public press, and there were contemporary relatives of Richards still living in Richards’ own town in Kentucky.

Evidently this Arabian blood, like that of the Seward Arabians, had not been conserved or used to advantage, though, if only one excuse is offered, it is enough and is the one usually given for the loss of the Richards Arabian blood–the Civil War–for this North and South upheaval began so soon after the importation (1853-56) of the horses that there was hardly time to form a settled plan of breeding to test out, in the right way, their benefits.

Now, it often happens that the most energetic search for information, as in this case, will result in finding none; yet, without effort, the information was finally obtained, also the fact that some descendants of the Richards horses were still alive in 1888 and that their blood had done good service in Kentucky, in Canada and in far-off Texas and Mexico.

Since the unexpected manner in which this information came to light reads like an Arabian Night’s dream, it will be set down verbatim as written by Huntington to a friend in Chicago. (4)

Before beginning to quote it should be stated that Huntington had, at Rochester, N.Y., a number of colts and fillies, the result of breeding his selected Clay mares — strong in the Arabian blood–to Gen. Grant’s Arabian horse Leopard and Barb horse Linden Tree. This young stock naturally had eastern blood characteristics that made them stand out markedly from the regular run of American horses. It was the observaton of these blood traits that led to the information. But this anticipating the story so I will quote Huntington:–

“Colonel G —-, who is my neighbor, was, all through the (Civil) war, stationed in Louisiana and (in) that district during the Butler, Banks times and later, His servants, male and female are from that country. My Arabs stood at his farm on our Lake —- (to take care) of his mares and mine, also one or two others.

“His colored groom and special servant, said to me one day, “Massa Huntington, your Arab stallions make me feel as though I was down in my old home in Texas.” (He was born and grown there, but got away during the war.)

“I asked him how so? and he replied that ‘Old Dr. Paris, one ob de bes men in Fort Bend (where he was raised), had de finest horses’ he ever saw in his life, ‘and dey call em Arabs’; that my horses ‘look jes like dem and act jes like dem.’

“Well now, ‘Dr. Paris’ and ‘Fort Bend’ were pretty blind information; but I knew there was fire where there was smoke. I spoke to the Colonel about it, but he could not help me. He said that Tom had been for years telling about some wonderful Arab horses in Texas where he was raised, but that he could never get any starting point.

“I questioned the negro (and he is a light yellow man with a good head) until I gathered from him that he was born near a place called Richmond, ‘but dat Fort Bend was de name ob de place.’

“I turned to my postal guide, and found Richmond in Fort Bend country; then opened correspondence with the Postmaster.

“In due time I got a .. reply in pencil, from a man signing Keene Feris, saying ‘he supposed I referred to his Father.’ I could feel a bitterness in the lines; but no man in the South suffered more from the war than I did, so I knew how to take them.

“I now had the initials and proper name of the man I wanted, so wrote a long … letter to Dr. Geo. A. Feris. I was educated in a military school where all but six were from S.C., N.C., Va, Ga, and Ala. (Later) I was put into a Drug house in New York City.

“It was purely a Southern house with branches in (the south) …; so that my association from boyhood up to the breaking out of the war, had been exclusively Southern; and there was no portion of that country I was not familiar with; also her institution of slavery. I let Dr. Feris know me. I let him know that all the property of that old New York House was confiscated by the Confederacy. I let him know how friends of the South had suffered here at the North and this broke the ice. … He has confidence in me and that is sufficient.

“No man in Ky. or elsewhere at the North knows what I do about A.Keene Richards importations.”

What Huntington learned was from the Feris letters that follow: —

“Richmond, Texas Nov 30th [18] 77 [1887] Randolph Huntington, Rochester, N.Y.

Dear Sir

Yours of 25th inst. just read–In answer thereto–I am the veritable old Dr. Geo. A. Feris for whom you enquire–still living, (but rather shaky as you will see in my chirography) at the advanced age of 78 years–

You ask how I became interested in Arabian horses?…My Father born in France–my Mother a Frazer-Bruce from Scotland and I born in Lexinton-Ky. in 1810: with this pedigree and raised in an atmosphere vibrating with the neighing of the Blood horsee and the discussions of Horsemen I became saturated, (by inhalation and absorbtion) with love of the grandest gift of God to man, the thoroughbred Horse–and he has been my constant and ever faithful companion from childhood to the present time– At this moment an orphan filly of the Blood Royal–thrusts her head into my window and asks for her rice and syrup which she claims of me as a tribute to her beauty and love of myself–I must go for her plate of dessert at once–All right now, and as it was not my autobiography which you desired but the “History of the Arabian Horse in Texas,” you shall have it–During the war between the U.S. and Mexico I rode a horse by Medoc (5) 1st dam Imported Amarath [Amurath] (6) (Barb) 2nd dam by Imported Stamboul (7) (Arabian).

For style–courage and endurance he took the palm from all others, but was unfortunately killed by a lance thrust at the battle of Buena Vista. Being an early Texas settler (50 years ago) and always a soldier engaged in repressing Indian and Mexican incursions I knew how to appreciate the value of my lost comrad and conceived the idea of supplying my country with the same noble race–

This was the germ of the Richards importations (8)– An interview was arranged between A.K.Richards and myself at New Orleans to discuss the matter and took place [1855(9)] (10) during race week of the old Mettaire (Metairie) club.

Present at the meeting — Richards — Buford and Viley of Ky. — Bingaman and Minor of Mississippi — Wells — Kerner and Lecompte of Louisiana. What memories of the grand olden South are evoked by barely writing these names —

But I am writing to a Northern man and dare not trust my pen farther in my present mood.

If I could reconstruct astronomy I would make place in a conspicuous portion of the Heavens for a constellation–call it “Equus” and christen the largest star that composed it in the name of the above mentioned gentlemen —

I can say no more today but merely add, that if you knew you were corresponding with a broken down Southern officer and a classmate of Jefferson Davis, perhaps this letter would be burnt.

Yours respectfully, Geo. A. Feris.”

Fortunately, the above letter and those that continue the narrative were never burnt for, of the scores of references to the Richards Arabians, by many writers, I know of none but this that is as full and authentic. Furthermore, it is written in the time when racing was a sport and not a business, by a successful breeder and a participant in the events narrated.

“(Continued” [Postmarked Richmond, Texas, Dec. 1-1887]

The abrupt break in my letter of yesterday was caused by the visit of an aged gentlemen who before the war numbered his acres by the thousand and his slaves by the hundred. he came to rent a small house for himself and wife with a lot of ground to cultivate–“

[Some observations about the social results of the Civil War have been omitted.}

“We will resume the Arabian Horse as more interesting and agreeable than reminiscences of rapine and carnage or forebodings of their repetion.

At the conference of horsemen in New Orleans all present except Richards and myself vigorously opposed the fresh importion of Arabians and cited English writers to prove the failure of oriental lines since the Godolphin and Darley era.–We met this by showing that all importations of modern date (English) were mere commercial speculations and managed by unscrupulous men who knew no more about horses than I do about Federal politics–‘Hine illae lachrymae’ (11)

Nevertheless, the expedition to interior Arabia was planned and carried out successfully–with results which I will state in my next as I am again interrupted and compelled to close.

Respectfully Geo A Feris.”

After my rambling Tristram Shandy introduction I at last reach the horse and will mount him and gallop away from all interuptions.

The expedition to Arabia was composed of A. Keene Richards and Morris Keene of Ky, and the great horse-portrait painter Troye [Edward Troye] of England [also of France and America]–of their journey and adventures we will not speak now but will deal with the successful results: After an absence of 14 months they returned with the following prizes viz:

(1st) Hamdan (Dr. Feris owned him. R.H.) Gray colt 2 years old–from Nesjd, of the pure ‘Koheyl” [Kuhaylan] race–purchased from the Sheik of the Rouibah tribe of Bedouins, in whose family the stock had been kept pure for more than 300 years (12)

2nd Massoud Chestnut horse–fifteen hands high, purchased of the Anayza [Anazeh] tribe of Arabians. (13)

3rd Mokhladdi Gray horse fourteen and 1/2 hands high, bought of the Zarabine tribe of Bedouins in Arabia Petra [Petraea(14)]

4th Saklowie Bay horse–fifteen hands high–bred by the Anayza [Anazah] Bedouins.

This horse was selected by Mr. Troye, the great painter, on account of his resemblance to the English racer of the present times. (15)

5th Fysaul Chestnut horse fourteen and 3/4 hands high and of the ‘Koheyl [Kuhaylan] and Saclowie [Saglawi] race and bought in the Desert from the bedouin chief who bred him. (16)

6th Lulie Grey mare of pure ‘Koheyl’ [Kuhaylan] race bred by the Anayza (Anazah) tribe of Arabians. (17)

7th Sadah (Dr. Feris took. R.H.) Gray mare–bred by Anayza (Anazah) tribe of Bedouins. She was my favorite of the entire importtion. (18)

7th (8th) Zurufa [Zareefa. (19)] Gray mare–a Barb from the desert of Zahara.

This comprises the list of our importations. (20)

On next page I will give you the produce of the pure stallions and mares if agreeable.

Geo. A. Feris”

“(Continued) [Postmarked Richmond, Texas, Dec. 3-1887]

The produce of my favorite mare Sadah (Imported) was (pure Arab R.H.)

1st (Dr. Feris) Abdel Kadir [pure Arab R.H.]

Gray horse by Imported Arabian Mokhladdi.

2nd [Dr. Feris R.H.] Boherr.

Foaled at sea (on the Atlantic) and got in Arabia by a favorite stallion of the Wahube [Wahabi] tribe of Arabs and she [Sadah] had many other foals but they did not belong to me. (21)

Abdel Kadir was my choice of all the stallions and I owned him and Hamdan, Boherr and Bazar who was by Imported Fysaul and out of the Imported Barb mare Zurufa [Zareefa], born in Kentucky and brought to Texas.

Abd-el-Kadir–known as the ‘Feris Arabian’ is the horse who made his mark in Texas by his produce. He was ‘par excellence’ the grand gentleman of his race.

The colts of this horse were sold at enormous prices to Mexican stockmen.

Druse [Dreuse]–gray colt for $1600, he was out of Hagar (22). Two others, one out of ‘Betsy Hardin (23), the other out of Rehab (24) were sold together for $3600.00.

The gray colt Sheik (25) 2 years old brought $3000.00 (26).

I am compelled to cease writing by Rheumatism in hand and wrist.

Will continue at some other time if desired

Respectfull Geo. A. Feris”

Then followed a letter from Miss Sallie Feris saying that her Father had been injured by a fall but hoped to resume the correspondence. he did so in a letter dated

“Richmond, Texas Jan 29-88

Thanks for your last kind letter–I am still suffering from my R. Road ‘smashup,’ but am able to write with a pencil. I send you a brief notice of my relative A. Keene Richards deed compiled from his diary–It may prove interesting–If agreeable I will send you crayon drawings (27) of the Feris Arabians Hamdan and Abd-el-Kadir taken form oil paintings (destroyed by fire)

Respectfully Geo. A. Feris”

Enclosed in the above letter was the press notice which is so interesting and authentic, having been compiled from Richards diary, that it is copied here verbatim. (28)

“Mr Alexander Keene Richards died of pneumonia yesterday at his farm, called Blue Grass Park, near Georgetown, Ky., in the fifty-fourth year of his age. He was born in Scott county, Ky., on the 14th of October 1827. Mr. Richards passed through all the scientific departments at Bethany College, Virginia, and a full term in the celebrated Alexander Campbell Bible classes. When through with his college course Mr. Richard’s grandfather gave him means to travel in foreign countries for his health, he having been an invalid almost from infancy. Instead of spending much time in the gay capitals of Europe young Richards adopted the idea of making a specialty of studying the different breeds of horses of every country. He went first to England, and no kind of horse escaped his notice, from the heavy draft animal used by the brewers of London to the Derby winner. The first Derby race that he saw was when Teddington won in 1851. (29) He timed this race, and was at once impressed with the idea that a first-class American-bred colt could win the Derby if the pace was made strong throughout and not a waiting race, as is usually the case for this great event. (30) After leaving England he went through France and examined the Norman horses. Then he journeyed over Spain, where he gave especial attention to the Andalusian horses, and examined a number of Arabian animals just then imported by Queen Isabella from near Bagdad. From Spain he crossed over into Morocco and rode through the country on some of the best Barbs. From Morocco he went nearly the whole length of Algeria on horseback, and as he traveled part of the time with a French passport he had every facility to inspect the different horse-breeding establishments then under the control of the French Government, as well as those horses owned by the native chiefs who had been long in service with the renowned Abd-el-Kader, then a prisoner in France. Mr. Richards then passed from Algeria to Tunis, where he made diligent search for any trace, in shape or quality, of the Numidian horses which Hannibal made so famous for cavalry. Mr. Richards afterward in a sailing craft went to Malta and from there by steamer to Egypt, where he made preparations to cross into Arabia Petrea by an entirely new route, and he was with the first party of Europeans that crossed directly through the Desert of Paran to the ruins of Petrou [Petra]. During this journey through the wilderness, Mr. Richards learned to break-in the dromedary to ride himself, and for amusement he frequently rode races on the regular “deloul” of the desert. The deloul is the swift dromedary used in the wars of the desert and for courier service, where great speed and endurance are required. From Petrou [Petra] Mr. Richards passed on to Hebron and thence to Jerusalem, where he made arrangements to visit all the interesting localities in Palestine and Syria, but especially those districts where good horses were to be found; for, by this time Mr. Richard’s experience with horses of Arab blood had given him an admiration for them. After spending some time in Damascus he sought an interview with the celebrated Sheik Midjuel, of the Aneysa [Anazah] tribe of Bedouins. Although the American and English missionaries and consular agents thought the attempt at the time a hazardous one, Mr. Richards induced the Sheik to take him as far east from Damascus as the ruins of Palmyra. The danger in this was that Midjuel had to pass near the Shammer [Shammar] tribe, with whom he had a feud, and had Midjuel been captured by them, his head would have been the forfeit. The journey was successful. Before leaving the East, Mr. Richards selected and purchased several stallions and a mare of the best Arab blood, (31) and shipped them by a careful groom to America, by the way of England, soon following them himself, stopping on the way and seeing what the Austrians and the Prussians called their best, including a look at the Orloffs of Russia. Mr. Richards, soon after his arrival at home, purchased some good mares to breed to his Arabians, and the famous mare Peytona (32) was one of his first fancies. he paid a high price for her, and bred her to Mossoud [Massoud]. He added many good mares to his list. Mr. Richards from this gave great attention to breeding and training, and every season–spring and autumn–had horses trained, and ran them in all parts of the West and Southern country. Mr. Richards made a second visit to Arabia, where he purchased more stallions and brood mares, but the war coming on in this country the last experiment was not much known to the public. During the war Mr. Richardards purchased the colt War Dance (33) for $5000, when a two-year-old, from Jeff. Wells, his breeder, and when the war was over the colt was taken to Kentucky to the Blue Grass Park, and since that time the horse has kept his produce before the public. Mr. Richards went early into the war, and later on was the friend who took Gen. Breckingridge out of Kentucky so fast behind his Arab team when the latter gentleman supposed he would be arrested. Mr. Richards afterward served on the staff of Breckinridge. Although Mr. Richards had been on the turf thirty-five years and was seen in the judges’ stand on every prominent race-course in America, no one can say that they ever heard him use an oath or make a bet of any description.

It is interesting to note and Americans should take pride in the fact that the two expeditions that Richards made to the desert preceded by ten years both the Upton and the Blunt journeys, both of these important to England through the high class desert horses purchased and sent there and because Lady Blunt in her “Bedouins Tribes of the Euphrates” and “Pilgrimage to Nejd” gave to the world one of the best modern accounts of the desert and its horses thereby creating a revived interest in the desert-bred horse upon which all worthy breeds are founded.

Now follows a letter, of more recent date, from another cousin of Keene Richards, commenting on the press notice clipping, the Arabian importations and verifying the well known Breckinridge incident.

“Georgetown, Ky. 24th Mch 1900

Mr. Randolph Huntington: Yours in reference to Arab horses &c recd–I am 83, with bad eyes, and memory–A. Keene Richards and Maurice [Morris] Keene were cousins of mine, both dead–Your memory of events as narrated, is correct–You will find a record of Mr. Richards importation of Arabs in Bruce’s Stud Book Vol. 1st pages 146-150–My impression is, the modern Arabian horse is a failure as a race horse–I know of not one animal bearing the blood of Mr. Richards’ Arab importation (34)–At his death they sold one by one and I know of none being tried for racing–

Richards carried Breckinridge out of Ky. behind two beautiful white match Arab mares–They went out the fall of 1861–I believe I have answered all your questions as far as able–

Mr. Richards as you suppose was a well informed and travelled gentleman, with pleasant manners, and a fine conversationist. He left a widow, and three daughters–all living–Two daughters married.

He may have lost money in his experiment with Arabs, but undoubtedly the destruction of property in the South by reason of the war was the main cause of his financial ruin.

Respt. &c S.Y. Keene

(P.S.) Mr. Richards was at the battle of Shiloah, and was taken through the lines after the battle to identify the body of Geo. W. Johnson then provisional Governor of Ky.”

Considering the comment, in the above letter, on the Arabian experiment, an interesting rejoinder by Speed, a Kentuckian, helps to clear up some of the breeding principles involved and warns against a too hasty judgment on the apparent lack of success.

(Concluded in next issue)

Image notes and footnotes:

ALEXANDER KEENE RICHARDS (1827-1881)

Richards came of a long line of distinguished ancestors. His mother, Eleanor Keene, was a direct descendant of Richard Keene who in 1641 came from Surry, England, to Maryland. His father, Dr. William Lewis Richards, of the Virginia Richards, was through his mother a descendant of the Marquis de Calmes, a Huguenot emigrant to Virginia.

Richards was a man of exceptional culture, and conversational charm. Possessed of large means he was widely travelled and thus able to inform himself at first hand on the subjects that interested him, especially blood horses of which he was a successful breeder and racer, owning many of the most renowned sires and dams including “Glenco” and the famous mare “Peytona.” Realizing that the Eastern blood was the fountain head of all excellence in horses he determined to go to Arabia for pure desert-bred blood to strengthen that on which the Thoroughbred was founded.

From a photograph of a colored crayon drawing made from life in Rome. Reproduced through the courtesy of Mrs. Edward G.Swartz and Mrs. John Pack, daughters of A.K.Richards.

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1) Spanish horses were largely of Arabian and Barb blood. During the sixteenth century every important stud that could procure Andulusian stallions made use of them. T. C.

2) The late Randolph Huntington (1828-1916) was an internationally known breeder of horses. He saved the Clay blood from extinction; brought the Arabian blood to public attention by using the Grant stallions and by importing from England examples of the purest Arabian blood there. Descendants of his breeding stock are in almost every present-day Arabian stud in the United States. He created the American-Arab; and for more than fifty years he wrote profusely, advocating pure blood versus “time-standards,” for breeding. T.C.

3) Maanake Hedrogi; red horse 7-8 yrs. old, from Beyroot 1860, Siklany Gidran; 2 yrs. 2 mo. old, from Syria 1860. Bruce A.S.B.

4) Letter to J.W.Harvey, Feb 16, 1888.

5) Medoc, foaled 1829; by Eclipse. Died by accident at Col. Buford’s, Ky., 1839. Bruce A.S.B.

6) Amurath at one year of age was imported to New York in 1833 from Tripoli. He was brought from Nubia to Tripoli in 1832. Bruce A.S.B.

7) Stambul, Ch. h. of the Ugedi tribe was selected from Sultan Mahomoud’s stables inConstantinople and presented to U.S. Minister Rhind. The horse was sold [about 1831] for the benefit of the U.S. for $575. Bruce. A.S.B.

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Image:

GEORGE A FERIS, M.D. (1810-1891)

Dr. Feris of Huguenot stock was born in Kentucky and at eighteen years of age got his degree from the Kentucky Medical College. He was a Texas pioneer and a soldier, having fought in the Mexican War as well as in the Civil War in which he was medical director of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederate Army. A man of courage, education and refinement, a true southern gentleman, beloved of his family and as a citizen. It was he who lent his moral support to the project of going to Arabia for fresh original blood to infuse into the Thoroughbred and who after Richards’ successful importations of Arabian stock took some of these horses and mares to Fort Bend and to Richmond, Texas, where for many years he was a successful breeder.

From a photograph reproduced here through the courtesy of Dr. Feris’ only surviving child, Miss S. lavinia Feris.

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8) Italics are mine. T.C.

9) As nearly as I can find out. T.C.

10) There must have been a lapse of several years between Dr. Feris’ resolve to encourage Arabian importations and Mr. Richards’ expedition which was his second. T.C.

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image:

“MASSOUD”

This horse was foaled in 1844 and imported in 1853. He was the sire of a number of high class horses and of the mare “Transylvania,” the dam of “Limestone.”

“Massoud” with “Mokhladdi” and the mare “Sadah” were the result of Richards’ first expedition.

Edward Troye’s paintings of horses appeal to the horseman for he brings out the racial traits of the breed and the subject’s individuality. Note the angle of the hock which is not so wide as that of the thoroughbred but insures greater durability.

The original of this picture was painted in Arabia, and has the added interest of showing a portrait of Mr. Richards’ dragoman in authentic costume.

Note manner of tethering Desert horses, so that the head is free.

Reproduced here by permission of Mr. Walter M. Jeffords, who owns the painting, and through the courtesy of Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, who possesses the photograph.

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11) Note similar comment by an English writer is legend for illustraion No. 14, which will appear in next installment.

12) Foaled in 1854 and imported by Richards in 1856. Stood the season of ’59–at stable of Dr. Feris, Richard, Texas. R.H.

The finest that could be found in the tribe. Bruce. A.S.B.

13) Foaled in 1844. Imported by Richards in 1852 R.H.

The import date indicates that Massoud was the result of Richards’ first expedition. T.C.

14) Foaled in 1844. Imported by Richards in 1853. R.H.

The import date, 1853, indicates that Mokhladi was the result of Richards’ first expedition. T.C.

15) Dr. Feris is referring to the 1850’s when the English Thoroughbred was still thought of as the Anglo-Arab, although this title was officially discontinued after about 1830. T.C.

Sacklowie was foaled in 1851. Imported by Richards in 1856. Died in 1860. R.H.

16) Foaled in 1852. Bought and imported by Richards in 1856. R.H.

An Arab stallion from Nesjd. Bruce. A.S.B.

17) This mare was imported in foal to Ahzee Pasha’s chestnut Arab Bagdad. This colt foal was lost. Later she produced gr. f. Mahah by Fysaul; ch. f. by imp. Thoroughbred Micky Free; fr. f. Hopsie by Mickey Free; gr. f. Kaffeah by Fysaul. Bruce A.S.B.

18) Imported 1853. Bruce. A.S.B.

The import date indicates that Sadah was the result of Richards’ first expedition. T.C.

19) Imported in 1856. Bruce. A.S.B.

Zareefa’s produce: b.c. Bazar by Fysaul; b.f. Benica by Fysaul; gr. c. by imp. Thoroughbred Michey Free. Bruce. A.S.B.

20) Results of Richards’ two expeditions, which Dr. Feris lumps together giving the impression that all the horses were imported after the new Orleans meeting. But Mr. Richards had already made his first expedition and importation as will appear later. T.C.

21) Produce of Sadah: gr. c. Boherr; gr. f. Zahah by Mokhladdi; gr. c. Abd-el-Kadir by Mokhladdi; ch. c. Yusef by Massoud; gr. c. by Thoroughbred Knight of St. George; gr. f. Haik by Fysaul; gr. f. by Thoroughbred Mickey Free; —-by Thoroughbred Mickey Free. Bruce A.S.B.

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Image:

“FYSAUL” WITH ARABIAN MARE (Probably “Lulie”)

“Fysaul” stood 14 3/4 hands high; was foaled in 1852; and with “Sacklowie” and “Hamdan” and the mares “Lulie” and “Zareefa,” was the result of Richards’ second expedition.

Edward Troye, who painted the original picture in Arabia, shows the horse to have been of beautiful conformation and carriage.

Reproduced here by permission of Mr. Walter M. Jeffords, who owns the painting, and through the courtesy of Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, who possesses the photograph.

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22) Hagar by Hamdan.

23) Hardin by Sultan (Son of Am. Eclipse).

24) Rehab by Hamdan

25) Sheik out of Rehab.

26) These horses were sold on their blood, though not for the purpose of racing. T.C.

27) Illustrations No. 9 and No 10, which will appear in next installment; photographic copies received from Miss Feris 46 years later. T.C.

28) There is nothing to indicate from what paper it was cut, but the date can be fixed as 1881, the year Mr. Richards died. T.C.

29) This date places the first expedition. T.C.

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Image:

“HAMDAN”

“Gray Arbian stallion from ‘Neijid’ of the pure Koheyle race; foaled in Arabia, 1854; purchased in the desert from a Sheik of the Rouiba tribes of Bedouins & imported by A. Keene Richards in 1859 [56]; brought by me to Texas in 1859; died December of the same year at my place in Ft. Bend Country. I regard his death as a public calamity. He was 15 hands high, with the finest head, neck, shoulders, loin and legs I ever saw, but was too light in the quarters. I regard his premature death as a public calamity. His descendants should be crossed with the heavy muscled Glencoes.”

“Exact copy as my Father had it in his register. S.L.F.” [Daughter of Dr. Feris.]

Photograph from a crayon drawing by Guy F. Monroe and copied from a painting unfortunately destroyed by fire. Both the photograph and the legend are reproduced through the courtesty of Miss S. Lavinia Feris, only surviving child of Dr. Feris.

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30) The first American-bred horse to win the Derby was Lorillard’s Iroquois, in 1881. T.C.

31) Massoud, Mokhladdi and mare Sadah.

32) Peytona ch. m. f. 1839, by imp. Glencoe. In 1855 she produced ch. f. Transylvania by Richards’ Massoud. Transylvania produced the celebrated race horse Limestone by War Dance. T.C.

33) War Dance, ch. c.f. 1859 by Lexington out of Reel by Glencoe. T.C.

34) He did not know of those in Texas. T.C.

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image:

“ABDEL KADIR” (Known as the Feris Arabian)

“Gray stallion bred by A. Keene Richards, Scott County, Ky., 1856; was got by his Imported Arabian ‘Mokhladdi’; dam his imported Arabian mare ‘Sadah,’ and brought to Texas by me in November, 1860. He remained my property and stood in Ft. Bend Co. until his death, which occurred in June, 1866. He was drowned in the Brazos river; was 15 hands high, perfect in form & was ‘par excellence’ the ‘gentleman’ of his race. He won the love & admiration of all who knew him. We will never see another like him.“

“Exact copy as my Father had it in his Register. S.L.F.” [Daughter of Dr. Feris]

Miss Feris, who was in and out of “Abdel Kadir’s” stall daily, wrote me that the drawing is a perfect likeness.

Photograph from a crayon drawing by Guy F. Monroe and copied from a painting unfortunately destroyed by fire. Both the photograph and the legend are reproduced through the courtesy of Miss S. Lavinia Feris, only surviving child of Dr. Feris.

The Bedouin of Arabia and His Horse: from Upton’s Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia

THE BEDOUIN OF ARABIA AND HIS HORSE

Excerpts from Upton’s Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia compiled by Jeanne Craver used by permission of Jeanne Craver

“AL KHAMSA is an organization of people devoted to furthering the survival of the asil* horse of Bedouin Arabia by means of education and research in a social climate which draws the owners and admirers of such horses together in a friendly and cooperative way.”

“The following list of migratory, horse-breeding tribes of Bedouins have provided the ancestors of AL KHAMSA ARABIANS: The Anazah confederation, consisting of the Amarat, the Fid’an, the Ruala, the Saba, the Wuld Ali, the Wuld Sulayman; the Shammar (northern and southern branches), the Ajman, the Atayban, the Banu Hajr, the Banu Khalid, the Dhafir, the Dawasir, the Muntifiq, the Muteyr, the Qahtan.”

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These two quotes from the reference book Al Khamsa Arabians, pages 8 and 16 respectively, bring up the questions: Just who were these migrating, horse-breeding tribes of Bedouins? and why, if there were “Arabian horses” all over the middle east, does Al Khamsa list these tribes as sources of their horses? To present some answers to these questions, we turn to Maj. R.D.Upton, who, in his Gleanings, gives us one of the best accounts, although certainly not the only one available, of these people and their horses. Written about Upton’s journey to Arabia in 1875, Gleanings was originally published in 1881. Upton had passed away earlier in the year, and perhaps for that reason, only a very small printing was made, and it has been very difficult to find a copy of this valuable book. Fortunately, Olms Presse, Hildesheim, West Germany, has reprinted this important work and it is available in paperback form at very reasonable cost.

Excerpts from Upton, Maj. R.D.: Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia, originally by C.Kegan Paul & Co., I, Paternoster Square, London, 1881, reprinted by Olms Presse, 1985, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York.

THE PEOPLE pp. 205-211:

“The Badaween of Arabia are neither savages nor barbarians…they are not poor, miserable outcasts…The tribes of Badaween are very numerous, some poorer, some very rich and powerful; collectively they are a great, free, rich, pastoral, and at the same time a warlike people, and have no exact parallel in history. The Badaween have laws of their own, a traditional code of morality strictly kept, a policy as between tribe and tribe, and a system of government in each tribe, and alliances, which are faithfully observed. Besides single tribes, small or great, each under the guidance and rule of its own Shaykh, there are confederations of tribes, over which the Shaykh of one particular tribe holds, to a considerable extent, great influence, if not actually supreme authority. Such a Shaykh can summon the others to councils for deliberation, or collect the tribes of the confederation for war.

“There are many families which have become so numerous or important that they constitute tribes within their own parent tribe; some of these have separated from the parent tribe and formed confederations; yet, after the lapse of generations, intercourse and alliances with their ancestral people are kept up. “… among some tribes and confederations there is perpetual and hereditary hostility; such, for instance, exists to only between the whole race of Anazah and the Shammar Arabs, but between every individual Anazah and Shammar Arab. Some tribes which are less powerful, especially those who are to some extent located in the northern parts of the desert, ally themselves with greater tribes…By this arrangement the weak tribes have the benefit and right of protection when attacked by tribes hostile to the protecting tribe …

“The Badawee, although free and independent in thought and action, and ill brooking restraint, has great respect for his laws. When the Shaykh enters his tent, where scores of his people may be collected (they look upon the Shaykh’s tent as a kind upon being told by him to do so. When he is once seated, he rarely rises to received any one. I heard that a singular exception to this custom exists, and that the mark of respect of rising is usually shown to the possessor of any celebrated mare, when such a one enters the tent of the Shaykh…The real armour of the Badaween horseman, offensive and defensive, is the speed of his mare.

“The office of Shaykh is not hereditary … but is usually held for life. When a Shaykh dies, his heir may be set aside, and the most worthy or popular man in the tribe appointed his successor; it is generally some member of the late Shaykh’s family … A Shaykh is generally a wealthy man, so that he may be able to exercise hospitality to strangers, and help or maintain the poor of his tribe … In certain tribes there are persons of acknowledged penetration in legal matters, and such, by common consent, are allowed to act as judges…

“The Akeed is the military leader of a tribe; he is also elected for life by popular vote. The two chiefs, the Shaykh and Akeed, rule in turn, as their tribe amy be at peace or war. But there are instances of both offices being vested in the same person, as in the case of … Jadaan ibn Mahaid of the Fadan (Anazah)

“… The Badaween … are not naturally aggressive, but wonderfully tenacious, and, except under the influence of great excitement — such as was the case after the death of Mohammed… — the Badaween are more inclined to hold their own than to become a dominating race…Their intelligence is undeniable, their perception quick, their imagination lively, their wit keen…

“The Badaween, for the convenience of description only, may be divided into three classes: those who migrate but little, and are to be found in the desert bordering upon Yaman, Hijaz, Palestine and Syria, and along the right bank of the Euphrates; those who have crossed the Euphrates; and those who migrate or roam all over the deserts. To those who migrate but little must be added the Badaween of the Najd and central province of Arabia.”

pp. 246-249:

“All Badaween as a rule, are free from many of the maladies incident to settled populations, whether civilized or uncivilized; their habits, their mode of life, their exclusion from other nations and people, the absence of illicit connections, all tend to keep them sound and healthy, and marrying among their own people preserves not only the purity of their race, but by it their characteristics are retained. The customs observed among all Badaween are even more rigidly kept among the Anazah; they are more exclusive, more conservative. .. the Arabs, and especially the Badaween tribes of the desert, require to be understood (which at present they are not) before attempting to interfere with them… Faults they may have, both many and great — what people has not? — but they have many and great virtues, and are of a noble and generous character. Let it be remembered that for centuries their worst features have been called forth and noised abroad, their excellences have been hid among themselves in the desert. Not only this, but the crimes and faults of other nationalities have been heaped upon their heads; for in the ignorance which has existed in Europe among highly civilized communities, Arabs have been confusedly mixed up and classed with Turks and other races and peoples of the East in general, which are not well known, or may possess the religion, not of Islam, but what passes for it generally.”

THE ARABIAN BREED pp. 269-272:

“The term ‘Arabian horse’ expresses a breed or race in a restricted sense — the horse of the Arabs. Horses of other countries cannot be defined in the same manner… but among the tribes of the desert of Arabia, the Arabian is the only horse. He is one by himself…What general knowledge there may be of the Arabian horse has been, for the greater part, acquired from horses in India, Syria, and Egypt, or from horses occasionally sent to this country as presents from Constantinople or elsewhere – indeed, from horses, or accounts of them, from very many countries, districts, and peoples, rather than from actual acquaintance with the horses of Arabia, and more especially with those tribes of the interior desert, who have the best horses …

“Horses are not numerous in Arabia, certainly not in proportion to the size and extent of the country, and the supply, I consider, is not greater than to meet the demand of the country. There are many parts of Arabia in which the horse is rarely, and perhaps some in which he is never seen. Although of Arabia alone, the Arabian horse may be said to belong rather to certain families or tribes in the desert of Arabia, than to the country or people at large.”

pp 353-354:

“Allusion has been made by certain authors to ‘studs’ in Arabia. This may cause misapprehension, as it is inferred that there are different breeds of Arabians, and that these breeds have their several and separate localities. I never heard of any such existing, unless, indeed, the system of collecting and breeding horses in Erack by the people who supply the Indian market, can be considered in the light of a breeding stud. The Imam of Muscat, the family of Ibn Sawood at Riad, and the Sherif of Mekka have private establishments of horses, but these are more or less supplied or replenished by horses from the desert tribes. In the desert, and in certain portions of the Badaween race, lies the real home of the Arabian horse, and this is especially so in the case of particular tribes of the great Anazah family. In Arabia itself, among the Badaween, the horse is indigenous. A variety of different breeds are not to be found there; the Keheilan is the only horse. The Keheilan is to be found in such tribes as have horses. In some tribes there are very few, the Shaykhs and leading men being the only ones possessed of horses — a mule or two each, and perhaps a horse for the use of the camp or tribe. It is in certain particular tribes of the Anazah race that horses are chiefly reared and to be found; these are the property of private individuals, and a poor man, or a poor family, may often have the best. It by no means follows as a matter of course that the Shaykh of a tribe has the best mares…”

pp. 272-275:

“In certain towns…Arabian horses may be found in the possession of families or persons of good social standing, or of officials of high rank; but these, for the most part, are acquired from the neighboring deserts … That horses are to be found in a wild state in the deserts of Arabia is a fallacy. I never heard of such a thing hinted at in the desert.

“In the whole of Arabia, the Anazah, a great race of Badaween, dating back to remote antiquity, composed of many tribes…the most powerful, the most important in the country, have the best horses. This is by the general consent of all Arabs, and of all conversant with the subject. Another general impression, urged by several writers, that there are many breeds of Arabian, has, I suspect, arisen from mistaking the various distinguishing names of strains of the same blood for separate or distinct breeds. Such are often only the names of owners, and some have been given or added from some feature or incident which caused an animal to be peculiar, or which had rendered him or herself famous, and which names are applied to the offspring generation after generation…

“I consider there was but one breed or race of horses in Arabia, i.e. the Arabian horse, so called from the country, or, with more truth, from being the horse of the Arabs, is of one origin, and was derived from several later varieties of the horse family.

‘The Arabian horse is of the Kuhl race. Keheilan is the generic name of the Kuhl or Arabian breed of horses. Thus a true Arabian horse is a Keheilan, and a mare a Keheilet — fem.”

THE HORSE pp. 330-343:

“In the Keheilan or genuine Arabian horse (speaking in general terms from seeing a number of horses and mares at one time), setting on one side what may be called their great personal beauty, you are at once struck by the general appearance of character, of blood or high breeding — which features are very conspicuous — and their great general >length. ‘What reach, what stride these horses must have! They are natural born racers,’ we both exclaimed at once. (Ed. Upton was joined on this trip to Saba Anazah by Mr. Skene, at that time HM Consul in Aleppo. Mr. Skene later helped the Blunts decide to begin their Crabbet stud.) One is equally struck by the perfectly natural appearance of the Keheilan: he presents in his form of undisturbed structure the evidence of his origin from an uncontaminated stock, in the same manner as do lions, tigers, and other animals which have been left undisturbed in a free and natural state and have not come under the destructive influence of man…

“The head is very beautiful — not only pleasing to the eye in its graceful outline, but beautiful from its grand development of the sensorial organ, and the delicacy of such parts as are more subservient. It is not particularly small or short in its whole length, in proportion to the size or height of the horse, but it is large above the eyes, small and short from the eyes to the muzzle. The centre of the eye more nearly divides the length of the head into equal parts than is observable in other horses…The head of the horse of the Anazah especially tapers very much from the eyes to the muzzle, and the lower jaw does so equally or even in a greater degree to the under lip, and if these lines were prolonged, they would meet or cut each other at a short distance only beyond the tips of the nose. The nostril, which is peculiarly long, not round, runs upwards towards the face, and is also set up outwards from the nose like the mouth of a pouch or sack which has been tied. This is very beautiful feature, and can hardly be appreciated except by sight; when it expands, it opens both upwards and outwards, and in profile is seen to extend beyond the outline of the nose, and when the animal is excited the head of this description appears to be made up of forehead, eyes, and nostrils…

“The frontal and parietal bones, or walls of the skull above, are large, bold, well developed, and often prominent. The brain cavity is capacious, giving an appearance and power almost human. The nasal bones, on the other hand, are fine and subservient to the frontal, and of a delicate and graceful outline. The orbits of the eye are large and prominent; the eye is full, large, and lustrous. It is very beautiful; the beauty is not so much dependent upon the size of the eye visible through the eyelids, as it is derived from its depth and expression. The part of the eyeball seen between the eyelids may not be so large as is often to be seen in other horses, but it is very full; standing on one side of the animal, and a little behind, the fulness of the ball and its prominence are very observable, and when the animal is excited the eye displays much fire, but it is seldom that any of the white is seen. The lids are particularly fine, the eyelashes long and silky. The face is lean and full of fine drawing. The muzzle is particularly fine; the lips long and thin (not fleshy); the upper lip well cut or chiselled; the lower lip small, well formed, compressed, and terse. The nostril in a state of repose is very long, beautifully curled, delicate, and thin: when the horse is in action or excited, the nostril opens very wide, and gives a bold, square, sharp and vigorous expression; the lower jaws are fine, clean, and set wide apart; the cheek-bones are sharply cut; the ears are beautifully shaped, pointed, and well placed, and point inwards in a marked and peculiar manner, which is considered a point of great beauty, and a great sign of high or pure breeding. The neck is of moderate length, and of a graceful curve or gently arch from the poll to the withers; it is neither a light, weak neck, nor a heavy neck, but it is a strong, light, and muscular neck, with the splenius muscle well developed. The junction of the head and neck is very graceful; the head is well set on. The withers are high and run well back, are well developed and not too narrow or thin. The back is short; the loins are powerful, the croup high, the haunch very fine, the tail well set on, and the dock short. The quarters are both long and deep; the gaskins sufficiently full and muscular without being heavy, ponderous, or vulgar; the thighs are well let down; the hocks are clean, large, well formed, well placed, and near the ground. The shoulders are long and powerful, well developed, but light at the points; the scapulae are long and of a good slope, and broad at the base. The arms are long, lean, and muscular; deep square and deep; the trapezium, or bone at the back of the knee, is very prominent. The legs are short, deep, and of fair-sized bone; the tendons and ligaments large and well strung. The fetlock-joint is large and bold; the pasterns are long, large, sloping, very elastic, and strong; the feet wide and open at the heels, and not very high in the desert. The chest is both deep and capacious…His body, or trunk, behind the chest is small, but formed like a barrel. He is essentially short above, but long below…The skin is fine; the hair is short, soft, and silky: the skin is seen through the hairs to a greater degree than in other horses. The mane and tail are long, and hair often very fine. The whole of the hinder parts, from the haunch to the heels, taken collectively or in detail, show great length. there is also a width of haunch noticeable indeed not only in the horses of the Anazah, but in most desert-bred Arabians in so marked a degree as to be almost a distinguishing feature…

“The Arabs are very particular with regard to three points in connection with the head of their horse: the Jibbah, or forehead; the Mitbeh, or form of the throat at its junction with the head; and the shape, size, direction, and attitude of the ears.

“The Jibbah, or forehead, can scarcely be too large or too prominent to please an Arab… The shape of the Jibbah in which the Arab delights, gives a large brain cavity, adds greatly to the beauty of the head, and gives an expression of great nobility…The Mitbeh is a term used to express the manner in which the head is set on to the neck, and especially refers to the form of the windpipe, and to the manner in which the throat enters or runs in between the jaws, where it should have a slight and graceful curve…This, of course, gives great freedom to the air passages: and the Keheilan is essentially a deep-breathed and a good and longwinded horse.

“The ears to be perfect should be so placed that they point inwards, so that the tips may almost touch; the outline of the inner side of the ear should be much curved, and, as it were, notched about halfway down. In the horse the ears are generally smaller and more pricked; in the mare they are usually rather longer and more open…

“It is not uncommon for Arab horses to stand back, more or less, at the knees. Many are stag-legged, in fact. There is no prejudice among the Arabs against such a formation; many do not like it in England…All desert-bred Arabs, at least, have a long, striding, free walk. When trotting…the hind legs of the Arabian appear to be, and often may be, too long, and there is too much reach for a pleasant trotting pace; yet with good riding, some will trot grandly: but it is far more labor to the Arabian than galloping, who from the present length of the hind extremities, and his reach, is essentially a galloper by nature…

“In height…the Anazah horse ranges from about fourteen hands one inch and a half to fifteen hands, but generally just under the latter height. We remarked that we did not see any that we thought as low as fourteen hands, or even, perhaps, fourteen hands one inch; some we measured proved to be fourteen hands three inches, which is a very general height; and several would be found, I have no doubt, quite fifteen hands. The height hardly varies a hand.”

From: CHAPTER X The Court of Ri’ad — Journey to Hofhoof

Voices of the Past:

Arabia in The 19th Century — Excerpted from:

THE BOOK OF THE HORSE Edited by Samuel Sidney, London 1875 Buying Arabian Horses from the KHAMSAT Volume 10 Number 1 March 1993

“All the horses offered to us for sale by the Bedouins were stallions. I do not at this moment remember having seen a gelding in their possession; and although they frequently rode mares into our camp, they never offered any to us.

(MAMELUK’S CHARGER 19th century engraving by J. Greenway)

…”The huffiness exhibited by Bedouins in their horse-dealing transactions, in a great measure the outburst of an insolent, overbearing nature, is seldom able to stand its ground permanently against the greater strength of their passion for money. Of a hundred bedouins that ride off in a fury as resolved never to set eyes on you again, ninety-nine will come back again. Perhaps the hundredth will not. A Bedouin brought a horse of extraordinary size for an Arab into the camp. I did not much admire the animal, but a sum equal to LB100 was offered for him. the owner, a breechless savage, in a sort of dirty night-shirt, rode away in wrath, and we never saw him again.

“The sum total of horses bought by us in the desert was one hundred. Of these seventy-two were Anazeh, from the Qulad Ali and the Rowallas; the remainder from the tribes of Serhan and Beni Sakhr, and from men of doubtful tribe. The following statements refer to the Anazeh alone. The highest price paid was LB71, 17s. This was given for each of two horses bought by private hand, of which one was the finest that I saw in the desert. Putting these aside, the highest price was a little more than LB50, and the average price about LB34. The average height was 14 hands 1-1/2 inches, and the commonest age four and five years; but this would be an over-estimate both of the height and age of the mass of Anazeh horses offered for sale, as we selected the biggest and the oldest. Many of the horses brought were two and three years old, and might have been brought at much lower prices. Of the different breeds, the Kahailan seemed to be the most numerous, the Soklawye the most esteemed.

“The Anazeh inflict a temporary disfigurement upon their young horses by cropping the hair of the tail quite short, after the cadgerly fashion creeping in amongst English hunters, but leave the tails of the full-grown animals to attain their natural length. They denied being in the habit of making, as they are commonly believed to do, fire-marks on their horses for purposes of distinction; and denied also all knowledge of grounds for a report which I have seen brought forward very lately, viz., that English horses had been used to improve the breed. The foals, the said, though dropped most frequently in spring, were yet produced all the year round, in consequence of which the age of their horses dated from the actual day of birth, and not from any particular season of the year.

“With the exception of one Anazeh vicious at his pickets, I remember no instance of an Arab horse showing vice towards mankind.

“We had an Italian horse-dealer with us, a great black-bearded man, one Angelo Peterlini. He was a good and useful man in his way; well acquainted with the dodges and mysteries of Bedouin horse-dealing; cunning in guessing the price that an Arab would take for his horse, and careful to offer him only the half, that he might work up the other half in process of bargaining; sharp-sighted in detecting the two or three “unlucky” hairs which in the Bedouin estimation might lower the value of a horse, and as pernicious in making them tell upon the price as if he believed in them; in fact, altogether well acquainted with the Bedouins, and monstrously polite to them before their faces, but with, at heart, a horror of them unspeakable (by anybody of less gifts of eloquence than himself), and with the intensest aversion to anything of the nature of what he called a ‘baruffa’ with them. Dogs, thieves, hogs, canaille, people of the devil — I wish I could convey the magnificent and sonorous emphasis with which he rolled out these and other epithets upon them behind their backs, or the ingenuity with which he framed speeches setting forth their precise relationship with the fiend, and the exact nature of a most curious connection with the hogs which he attributed to them.

“I must add a postscript. Do not let any man, because I have rated the average price of an Anazeh horse at LB34, suppose that LB34 is to buy him a striking specimen of the race; or, because I have described the Anazeh horses as fine, imagine that the very fine ones are anything but the exception to the rule. With the Arab horse, as with everything else in the world, the average is grievously removed from the ideal, and all that you want above it you must pay for. Finally, let any one who may be tempted to seek for an Arab horse in his native deserts remember that though we, buying horses by the hundred, could attract numbers of sellers to our camp, it does not follow that he, in search of a solitary animal, could do anything of the kind, or, indeed, that he could draw together a sufficient number to offer him a reasonable choice; and above all, if he wish to avoid tribulation, let him receive as great truths all Angelo Peterlini’s remarks upon the Bedouins, and shape his course so as — if he will take any advice — to keep perfectly clear of them.”

Having given an extract which conveys so unfavourable an idea of the moral qualities of the Bedouin, of whom we have been accustomed to read such picturesque and romantic accounts, it is right to add that the British cavalry officer’s admiration for the Anazeh as a horseman is unbounded; and I give his description here, although the subject does not properly come within the contents of this chapter.

“His horsemanship, when he chooses to display it, is very striking and curious. He puts his horse to the gallop; leaning very much forward, and clinging with his naked legs and heels round the flanks, he comes past you at speed; his brown shanks bare up to the thigh, his stick brandished in his hand, and his ragged robes flying behind; then, checking the pace, he turns right and left at a canter, pulls up, increases or diminishes his speed, and, with his bitless halter, exhibits, if not the power of flinging his horse dead upon his haunches, possessed by the Turks and other bit-using Orientals, at all events, much more control over the animal than an English dragoon attains to with his heavy bit. On theses occasions, it appears to me that the halter served to check, and the stick to guide; but I have seen the same feats performed when the horseman was carrying the lance, and, consequently, was without his stick. Our purchases in the desert amounted to one hundred horses; amongst all I saw tried, I never saw one attempt to pull, or show the least want of docility.”

****************

“Most horsemen will admit that this is an extraordinary performance, and that none will allow it more readily than those who are acquainted with the Arab horse as he appears in our hands in India, where-so far as I may trust my own experience-he is hot, and inclined to pull. Why should he display this failing with us, and not with his original masters? My own impression is that the secret lies in the different temper of the English and the Bedouin horseman. The Bedouin (and every other race of Orientals that I am acquainted with seems to possess somewhat of the same quality) exhibits a patience towards his horse as remarkable as the impatience and roughness of the Englishman. I am not inclined to put it to his credit in a moral point of view; I do not believe that it results from affection for the animal, or from self-restraint; he is simply without the feeling of irritability which prompts the English horseman to acts of brutality. In his mental organization some screw is tight which in the English mind is loose; he is sane on a point where the Englishman is slightly cracked; and he rides on serene and contented where the latter would go into a paroxysm of swearing and spurring. I have seen an Arab stallion broken loose at a moment when our camp was thronged with horses brought for sale, turn the whole concern topsy-turvy, and reduce it to one tumult of pawing and snorting and belligerent screeching; and I never yet saw the captor, when he finally got hold of the halter, show the least trace of anger, or do otherwise than lead the animal back to his pickets with perfect calmness. Contrast this with the ‘job’ in the mouth, and the kick in the ribs, and the curse that the English groom would bestow under similar circumstances; and you have, in a great measure, the secret of the good temper of the Arab horse in Arab hands.”

[ED NOTE: It is interesting to note in this excerpt the lack of trust and also contempt for the Bedouin on the part of these particular European horse purchasers. This, however, was not the case for Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt, Homer Davenport and his party, and Carl Raswan among others. Each of these people by establishing respect and trust with the Bedouin resulted in a number of important foundation horses we are now the beneficiaries of in Al Khamsa.]

The Arab: the Horse of the Future (Part III)

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series The Arab: the Horse of the Future

Articles of History:

FROM THE PAST: Excerpted from

THE ARAB THE HORSE OF THE FUTURE

by Hon. Sir James Penn Boucaut The Khamsat Vol 10 Num 4 Nov 93

Edward III. was a great warrior.

Captain Thomas Brown, 1830, says in his book that the Turkomans trace all their best horses to Arabian sires. They believe that the race degenerates unless ‘refreshed,’ and they are therefore most anxious to obtain fine Arabian horses. They live upon plunder, and march from 70 to 105 miles a day for twelve to fifteen days together without a halt. They have been known to go 900 miles in eleven successive days. Yet a sprinter would run away from them for a sprint — but for a sprint only. Where would be the sprinter at the end of the fifteen days of 100 miles a day?

The use of the Arab by the Turkoman is further alluded to by Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., in his book on ‘All the Russias,’ fifty years after Captain Brown wrote. He says that the Cossacks on the Armenian frontier are supplied with rifles by the Government; their wiry little horses are their own. Russia has imposed peace on the Turkoman, so, in spite of Imperial commissions and the importation of Arab stallions, the fleet and tireless Turkoman horse, with his flashing eye and scarlet nostril, is extinct for ever. Alas that it should be so! All honour to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt for his keeping the pure breed alive!

Captain Brown says that the horses of Turkey are principally descended from those of Arabia, Persia, and Barbary, have great fire and spirit, are extremely active, and he cites Mr. Evelyn as describing one sent to England as a perfect beauty, spirited, proud, nimble, turning with swiftness, in a small compass, and then quotes great authority as saying that nothing can surpass the Arab’s gentleness, and that his obedience to his master and groom are very great.

Captain Brown also says that in the Mysore country the Princes and people of rank have a superior breed sprung from Arabian blood, and that the Mahratta country has also long been celebrated for its horses, which have much of the Arabian blood in them.

He refers to the East India Company as keeping very fine stallions, generally of the English blood. He says that the produce of these are good parade horses, with more show than the Arabians, but they were unable to stand the same fatigue, nor had they the same mettle. This is corroborated by the Australasian, March 2, 1904, fifty-four years afterwards, which states that at the great Durbar at Delhi there was a ten days’ polo meeting, that the English ponies first gave in, the Australian lasted a day or two longer, but the only ones who stayed throughout the match were the Arabs! Yet they have neither staying power, courage, nor docility! O tempora, O mores.!

And Captain Brown sums up by saying that of late too little attention has been paid to the introduction of foreign Arab or Eastern stallions, asks where can we find such horses at the present day, either as racers or stallions, as Eclipse, Childers, King Herod, Matchem, and others; and attributes the present failure to the departure of our present racers from the foreign blood — in other words, that since racing men have abandoned the use of the Arab their horse is failing.

Sir Samuel Baker, in his ‘Tributaries of the Nile‘ writes;

‘Never was there a more perfect picture of a wild Arab horseman than Jali on his mare. Hardly was he in the saddle than away flew the mare, whilst her rider, in delight, threw himself almost under her belly while at full speed, picking up stones from the ground. Never were there more complete centaurs than these Hamran Arabs: horse and man appeared to be one animal, of the most elastic nature, that could twist and turn with the suppleness of a snake.’

Further, in speaking of a particular horse Aggahr, in hunting a lion, who flew along as easily as a cat, he says that Aggahr’s gallop was perfection, and his long easy stride as easy to himself as to his rider; there was no necessity to guide him, he followed an animal like a greyhound, and sailed between the stems of the trees, carefully avoiding the trunks, so as to give room for the rider.

‘And once a Hamran,’ so Sir Samuel relates, ‘who was hunted by a rhinoceros who unexpectedly charged, clasped his horse round the neck, and, ducking his head, blindly trusting to Providence and his good horse, over big rocks, fallen trees, thick thorns, and grass 10 feet high, with the infuriated animal in full chase only a few feet behind him, the horse doubling like a hare.’

that is nearly as bold and as manly and as dangerous a sport as to run 800 yards on a smooth level sward for a ladies’ purse, with silks and satins fluttering along the lawn!

Sir Samuel also describes a lion-hunt, where his horse Tetel stared fixedly at the lion and snorted; but Sir Samuel patted and coaxed him, when within about 6 yards from the lion, the horse facing the lion with astounding courage, both keeping their eyes fixed on each other, the one beaming with rage, the other with cool determination. Sir Samuel then dropped the reins on his horse’s neck — a signal which Tetel perfectly understood — and he stood as firm as a rock, for he knew his rider was about to fire. Tetel never flinched, Sir Samuel fired, and the lion dropped dead. But what is that compared to the noble achievement of a jockey in winning a town plate?

Yet one more incident from Sir Samuel’s book: ‘Roder Sheriff, on a bay mare, facing an old bull elephant waiting a good chance to charge, slowly and coolly advanced till within about 8 yards of the elephant’s head, who never moved; the mare snorted, gazing intently at the elephant, watching for his attack. Sir Samuel for an instant saw the white of the elephant’s eye, and called out, “Look out, Roder — he’s coming.!” as, with a shrill scream, the elephant dashed upon the mare and her rider like an avalanche.’ Roder sheriff had never won a Derby, so, of course, you suppose the benighted man was killed! Not so, however. In Sir Samuel’s words, ‘Round went the mare as on a pivot, and away over rocks and stones, flying like a gazelle.‘ For a moment Sir Samuel thought that all must be lost; but he describes how Roder watched the elephant over his shoulder, and lured him on till the horsemen behind came up and hamstrung him. Yet of such mares we are gravely told that they have neither speed, stamina, nor docility!
Caulincourt, Duke of Vicenza, when ambassador to Russia in 1807, saw a review of the Horse Guards raised by Paul I., the finest corps of horse in Russia, and reported that their Arabian horses ‘were of immense value.’

In the ‘Souvenirs of Military Life in Algeria,’ by the Comte De Castellane, he says of a hawking-party that ‘the Arab horsemen were mounted on the fleet mares held in unbounded estimation.’ Of one mare he says: ‘Her action was so light that she might, according to the Arab phrase, have galloped on a women’s bosom.’ Of course, a jockey or a racing trainer would sneer at this, naturally: he is so wise in horses — ‘one of the knowing ones.’ Yet I think that the opinion of a French officer, often dependent on his horse for his life, engaged in war, with as brave warriors as there are in the world facing him, might be fairly considered to be rather more valuable than that of men engaged only in sprinting races, as to which horse is the better for the ordinary purposes of humanity.

Mr. George Flemming, in ‘Travels in Mantchu Tartary,’ says that the Russian courier used to ride one pony 500 miles to Pekin in twelve days, rest a day, and return in fifteen, on the most unfavourable sort of forage. He relates that their own rides had been long and without intermission, and their ponies looked none the worse, though they were eight or ten hours in the saddle daily, doing forty or forty-five miles a day, and travelling nigh 700 miles of rough country, nothing less than that average on miserable fare — bran and chopped straw.

Whether Tartar or Turkoman or Mantchu, all those ponies have been indebted to the Arab cross.

Mr. John Hill, in the Live Stock Journal Almanack, 1903, writes that he was much impressed by the foals and young stock of, amongst others, the Arab Mootrub, and, again, that it is surer by far to breed up from the beautiful little Exmoor mare with th eMootrub cross on top. Further, that two very beautiful younsters were shown from Exmoor dams and an Arab sire. He speaks of a beautiful little pony as a typical Arab in miniature, a clear proof of the Eastern ancestry of the Welsh mountain pony. In ‘The Breeders’ Directory’ and in the advertisements of the same book are several announcements as to Arab sires.

Mr. Winwood Reade says that Cyrene, in Northern Africa, was ‘famous for its Barbs, which won more than one prize in the chariot-races of the Grecian games. ‘ Further on he says that the Berbers of the Carthaginian army were a splendid Cossack cavalry.

I give in Appendix II. the testimony of several large horse-breeders in the interior of Australia to the excellence, docility, and endurance of Arab stock got by pure stallions.

Sir Edward Creasy, in his ‘History of the Ottoman Turks,’ relates that when Mahomet II, heard in 1451 of the death of his father, Amurath II, ‘he instantly sprang on an Arab horse and galloped off towards the shore of the Hellespont.’ and he says that the Sultan Amerath, when making in 1638 a triumphal entry into Constantinople,’ rode a Nogai charger, and was followed by seven led Arab horses with jewelled caparisons.’ Nogai is between the Caspian and the Black Sea, in the country of the Kirghiz, whose horses were partly Arab.

The first of these extracts from Sir Edward shows the reliance placed by the successsful Sultan on the Arab horse at a great crisis, for often, if not mostly, many of the candidates were massacred straight away by some rival claimant. The second extract proves the admiration shown for him, and the honour always done him by a great conquering race, who conquered by the endurance, the speed, and the docility of their horses.

General Sir Thomas Edward Gordon, Military Attache at Teheran, says that the Persian horses are small, but very wiry an enduring, capable of very long journeys. On one occasion, owing to some great man having got the post-horses ahead of him, he was driven to continue the use of those he had been using for ninety-six miles right away, with only three hours’ rest at one place and one hour’s rest at another.

He was shown the Royal Stud racehorses, Arabs from Arabia, and riding horses, deer-like Arabs of the best blood.

According to Madame Waddington, wife of the French Ambassador, the Russian Emperor Alexander III, always rode his little gray Cossack horse. He rode it at his coronation, and some days afterwards at a review.

Lieutenant-Colonel Prejevalsky, a Russian, says the Mongol riders go at full speed across the desert like the wind, and their horses possess wonderful powers of endurance on very indifferent feed; they will live where other horses would perish. The great traveller, Captain Wood (J.N.), says the same.

Colonel Ramsay says that the Parsees give immense prices for high-caste Arabs, and that Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy has superb English carriage horses, but they cannot stand work in the Bombay climate. That is what Mr. Carwardine, a well known Australian stock-owner, tells me of the Kimberley climate in North-Western Australia — that only Arabs can stand work there. Colonel Ramsay also describes the funeral of a grandee of Spain at Valencia, where ‘there were some splendid turn-outs — Arabs of the purest breed.’ And he speaks of his own regiment, the 14th Light Dragoons, as ‘splendidly mounted on Gulf Arabs.’

Colonel Durand describes a horse he had in India as perfectly untiring, having sinews of steel, a bold, intelligent eye, and feet of flint – he never rode his equal on a hillside — and he goes into ecstasies over his other wonderful qualities, with his ‘easy wolf’s canter, eating up mile after mile without a check, a present fit for a king.’ He says that none but the Arab could show such a combination of courage, fire, endurance, and general temper. His bold heart was the only one he trusted in implicity.

Mrs. Frances Macnab, in her ‘Travels in Morocco,’ writes that she could not say that she ever met with a horse in Morocco which had any faults or ill-temper to be compared with other horses, and they would walk all day without food. In her own horses there was not a scrap of vice in his whole nature.

Mrs. G.R.Durand, wife of the British Minister to the Shah of Persia, in her book writes that the Bakhtiari horses are often beyond price, of pure Arab race, as hardy as beautiful; quite extraordinary in the way they carry their riders over rocks and stones — they scarcely ever make a mistake, and their legs seem to be as hard as steel. A little black mare ‘carried her rider as if she had wings.’ Mrs. Durand herself had a little gray Arab, who used to come into her dining room and stroll round the table, pushing his head over their shoulders and whinnying gently for bits of bread. At a Simla dinner-party he came round the table just like a big dog.

Mr. J.H.Sanders shows that tradition had always affirmed that the Percheron, the most active and beautiful of all heavy breeds, is indebted to the Arab for his good qualities, and that recent research in France proves it. What the Darley Arabian was to the thoroughbred, that, says Mr. Sanders, was the gray Arabian Gallipoli to the Percheron. The American Percheron Stud-Book attributes the starting-point of the breeed to the overthrow of the Arabs by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in the year 732, which left the fine Arab and Barb steeds of the defeated Arabs in the hands of the victors. It also show that the infusion of Arab blood was strengthened by the finest of Arabian stallions brought back by the Crusaders, and was kept up at irregular intervals by many Franch nobles down to 1820. the form and other distinctive marks of the Arab, says Mr. Sanders, were thus stamped upon the Percheron.

The Arab breed, he says, was also the foundation of the celebrated breed of Orloff trotters established by Count Orloff, who imported a gray stallion named Smetauxa, from Arabia, to whom a Danish mare was bred, from the progeny of which cross the breed was founded.

And the now equally celebrated breed of American Morgan trotters is also mostly indebted to the Arab blood for its excellence, through Grand Bashaw, a Barb imported into America from Tripoli. In fact, says Mr. J. H. Sanders, this Oriental blood, wherever introduced, in all nations and all climates, has been a powerful factor in effecting improvement in the equine race. Yet, says Mr. Day, for practical purposes this same noble creature is as extinct as the dodo. O tempora, O mores!

Marco Polo noticed the superb qualities of the Arab in A.D. 1260. He says that excellent horses were bred in Yemen and taken to India, and numbers of Arab chargers were despatched from Aden to India, and ‘fine horses of great price‘ were sent to India from Persia. Colonel Yule has a footnote that these latter horses were probably the same class of ‘Gulf Arabs’ that are now sent, which, as the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica‘ says, are not equal to the pure Arabian.

Old Marco also speaks of the great excellence of the horses of Turcomania and Badakshan, remarkable for their speed, which go at a great pace even down steep descents, where other horses neither would nor could do the like, which subsist entirely on the grass, and are very docile. And he describes how the Turkomans pretend to run away in battle, turn in the saddle and shoot, the horses doubling hither and thither, just like a dog, in a way that is quite astonishing.

He also mentions several instances of the marvellous endurance of these Eastern horses. One accomplished 900 miles in eleven days, and another went from Teheran to Tabriz, returned, and went again to Tabriz, within twelve days, including two days’ rest, a total of 1.100 miles. And he tells us that the Tartars, from converse with the Assyrians, Persians, and Chaldeans, acquired their manners and adopted their religion. He should have included the Arabs, for the religion was certainly theirs; and he might also have added that the Tartars acquired many of the Arab horses. In truth, I rather think that it was the Arabs, and not the Assyrians, Persians, or Chaldeans, that Marco ought to have referred to.

And Laurence Oliphant says that these Turcoman and Badakshan people attained to some degree of civilization by reason of their commercial relations with the Arabs, and that his experience proved that their ponies possessed great pluck and powers of endurance.

Long before Marco Polo’s time far Easstern Asia was on the watch for Arab horses. Knei Shan (probably Khojend towards Merv) was ‘celebrated for its horses of divine race.’

China went to war with the Great Wan in 104-103, and again in 109-98 B.C., for the possession of this country and its horses, which were undoubtedly Eastern horses — most probably Persian Gulf Arabs.

In ‘The History of Russia‘ (Bohn’s Library) the success of the Tartars is attributed partly to their ‘being masters of the provinces which produced the finest horses.’

Mr. Shaw, in his ‘Visits to High Tartary,’ frequently refers to the handsome horses. He describes a sport where a dead goat is thrown on the ground, and the horsemen try to pick it up without leaving the saddle; when one succeeds he is chased by the others, doubling and turning, their hands seldom on the reins, banks and ditches jumped while they are half out of the saddle, galloping with one another, trusting entirely to their steeds when tugging with both hands at the goat. But, says he, ‘the Toorkee horses seldom make a mistake.’

The Rev. Dr. Henry Lansdell(1893) writes of his travels in Central Asia, that, fearing his horse would slip, he dismounted, but found that was for the worse, since the horse proved the surer footed, and he had to remount and trust to the animal.

Sir Henry Layard describes clouds of Bakhtizari and Arab horsemen in mimic fight, pursuing each other, bringing up their horses on their haunches at full speed, firing guns as they turned in their saddles, and performing various feats.

Sir Henry was once chased, and his horses were weary, having been nearly twenty-four hours without rest; but, says he, ‘they were sturdy beasts, and eluded their pursuers – it was wonderful!” The horses were able to bear great fatigue, and required little nourishment. Could Carbine have saved him?

He describes Mehemet Taki Khan’s magnificent and beautiful Arab mare of pure blood, and the exercises of his horses of the finest Arab breeds — galloping to and fro, wheeling in narrowing circles, while their riders, discharged their guns from behind, picked up objects at full speed, or clung at full length to one side of their horse, in order not to offer a mark to the enemy, and so on. How would these exercises suit your thoroughbreds, or your cavalry horses which ran into the streets at Winchester, and into the sea at Southampton?

Mr. Selah Merrill, of the American Exploration Society, writing of his journeys in Syria and Palestine, says that on one occasion he was ten hours and forty minutes in the saddle, and that on another occasion he was seventeen hours in the saddle one day, and fifteen hours the next; that the horses had a remarkable faculty of finding the way, and that, when riding in a difficult place, if you trusted entirely to your horse, you were almost certain to pass it in safety.

The Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, describing his journey to Jordan and the Dead Sea, writes (1901) that his chief dragoman was ‘magnificently mounted,’ as also were the four Arabs who were his escort. They put their splendid Arab horses through pretty and skilful performances.

A recent special correspondent writes in the Land of Arabia– Ararat, that the region was celebrated for its breed of horses, high-spirited, well bred, and noted for great endurance.

Disraeli writes in one of his letters:’Hunted the other day, and was the best man in the field, riding an Arabian mare.’ They rode much more cruelly in those days.

The Hon. Sir James Penn Boucaut, 1905.

Some Last Words, Chapter VI of The Arab Horse by Spencer Borden(1906)

Articles of History:

Excerpted from: THE ARAB HORSE, CHAPTER VI – SOME LAST WORDS by Spencer Borden, New York, 1906 from The Khamsat Volume Seven Number Four Oct/Dec 1990

No person who reads the books from which much of the information conveyed in these pages has been obtained can fail to be impressed with the idea that the blood of Keheilet Ajuz is a preponderating influence in the best Arab horses. The animals possessed of this blood are not a separate breed among Arabs–all pure Arabs are of one breed. but, as we know of the old Morgans in America, there were separate families, for example, Woodburys, Giffords, Bulrushes, and all were Morgans, so in Arab horses there is a choice; and of them all the descendants of Keheilet Ajuz are the first. Upton says in “Gleanings From the Desert” (p. 320):

“It appears to me that although there are numerous offshoots from the Keheilet Ajuz, each with a specific name, there is still a main line or strain of descent carried on of Keheilet Ajuz is sufficient to mark any such horse or mare.”

He also explodes the tradition that mares are not to be had of the Arabs, and makes evident the fact that if a man knows what he wants, and has the money to pay the price; he can get it, or could at the time of his visits (p.p. 365-6).

“Before leaving this portions of-the subject, it is convenient to allude to an assertion which has been made, and so oft repeated that it has been accepted as an established fact–that it is impossible to obtain an Arabian mare; that the Arabs will not part with a mare; that they will sell horses, but nothing will tempt them to part with a mare. The least informed on the subject of Arabians will tell you this as glibly and with as much assurance as if he had been brought up in the desert. One certainly announced that there was a law forbidding the export of an Arabian mare; Now, I can assure my readers that it is not by any means impossible to obtain a genuine Arab mare. We visited the most exclusive of all Badaween tribes and never heard of such a law. If any law did exist, it would be against selling, not exporting; but we never heard of such a thing in the desert. I can assure my readers that among the genuine Badaween of the Arabian desert we found no prejudice against parting with or selling a mare. Difficulty there certainly is to induce such people as the Anazah to sell either horses or mares, for they do not traffic in horses; but if there be any difference, you might get a good mare with less trouble than a good horse.

“I have the best of possible authority for refuting the statement that mares are not to be got, for mares were not infrequently offered to us, and among the Anazah (not the wandering people of Erack) we obtained both mares and horses, and the former without more difficulty than the latter.”

The idea has also been given currency that Manakhi Hedruj was a strain so rare as to be seldom seen in these days, was no longer to be had even for large sums of money, and that they are always chestnuts, of a sizes o much above the other Arab families that these others are merely “pony Arabs.” Upton says of them (Gleanings p. 321):

“The Manakhi appeared to us a favorite strain, for both horses and mares of this family are to be found in most tribes of the Badaween; and we thought, with the exception of Keheilet Ajuz, there were more horses and mares among the Anazah, certainly among the Sabaah, of the Manakhi family than any other.”

The Blunts, four years after Upton, had no difficulty in securing several animals of the Manakhi family, which they brought with them to the Crabbet Arabian Stud. Of their colour and size Upton remarks (Gleanings p. 321):

“There was a nice clean-made, lengthy, useful, and racing-like dark grey three year old filly of the Manakhi Hedruj family which belonged to Shaykh Jedaan ibn Mahaid. There were four mares of Suleiman ibn Mirshid picketed in front of his tent, the best of which he considered to be the bluish-grey (Azzrak) mare, four or five years old. She was also of the Manakhi Hedruj family, and stood fourteen hands, three inches high.”

Finally, the question seems pertinent — Why, if Arab horses are so valuable, their value so well known, and they can be procured, have they not become more widely distributed?

Various answers, all good, may be given to this question. In the first place the average horseman has come to believe their qualities and reputation to be figments of the imagination, like the Arabian nights tales, and having similar origin. He has never seen one of these wonderful horses, and none of his friends have seen one. Therefore, the horse as he is represented does not exist. Again, even if he becomes convinced there is such a horse he does not know where to look for him, does not feel certain he can secure the genuine article if he parts with his good money to obtain one, and if he does find what he becomes convinced is what he wants the price is sure to be a stiff one. The fact is the whole business involves the question of supply and demand, which is the key to all economic calculations.

From this time forward it will pay less and less to breed anything but the best horses, and those which will yield the safest return will be such as will be best adapted for use under the saddle, either for pleasure or as cavalry mounts. In either of those forms of utility no horse that ever lived can compare with one of Arab blood, and the supply of animals of that kind is extremely limited. The people possessing them, whether the Bedouins or those who have bought from them, have never had an over supply.

A reason for this is perhaps to be found in one statement of conditions for which Mr. Wilfrid Blunt is authority namely: that the pure Arab is not a prolific breeding animal. He thinks one cause for this may be his intense inbreeding. Inbreeding is the only way to secure fixity of type in any form of animal life; but the penalty carried with it is limitation of the reproductive tendency. Mr. Blunt informed one inquirer that if fifteen mares out of twenty-five produced offspring each year at Crabbet Park, he felt satisfied.

The tendency of this condition of affairs is to make the supply of pure Arabs always short, and the price high. A careful study of the lists presented to the readers of this book, however, will show that certain mares have been consistent and uniform producers of numerous and valuable offspring.

CMK Arabian Horses

The Arabians of written record

Tag Archives: Blunt

The Eternal Fascinators: Ali Pasha Sherif, Lady Anne Blunt, and Sheykh Obeyd Garden

Digging For Gold In The Raswan Index

Lady Anne Blunt: Preservation Breeder

FOOTNOTES

REFERENCES

Strained Relations

When the Bedouin Said “Strain”, What Did the Europeans Hear?

Implications of the Matrilineal System

Maternal Inheritance

“Family Strains” in Modern Breeding

What Strain Breeding Means to Me

The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition (Part II)

Full Steam Ahead: 1899-1906

Partition and The War Years: 1907 – 1918

The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition: Appendix: Minor Pedigree Lines from Imported Blunt Mares

Minor Pedigree Lines From Imported Blunt Mares

The Founding of the Crabbet Tradition (Part I)

The Partition Agreement

The Crabbet Foundation

Crabbet: The First Years: 1879-1888

The Transition 1889-1898

Sources and Further Reading

Keene Richards’ Arabian Importation part I

The Bedouin of Arabia and His Horse: from Upton’s Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia

From: CHAPTER X The Court of Ri’ad — Journey to Hofhoof

The Arab: the Horse of the Future (Part III)

Some Last Words, Chapter VI of The Arab Horse by Spencer Borden(1906)