Musings over skull measurements
By Edouard
Posted on November 25th, 2008 in Poland, Strains
I just bought Edward Skorkowski’s “Arab Breeding of Poland” from the website of a bookstore in Iowa. I read many excerpts of it before, but was never able to put my hands on a copy.
My first reaction was: “okay, so that’s where all these old photos of Polish Arabians on the Net comefrom..”. My second reaction while browsing through the book was one of astonishement at the enormous amount of information squeezed between the two covers. Then I started reading, and I was quickly turned off after a few pages. I need to vent my frustration on someone, and you, my patient reader, are going to be that someone.
So, what’s this whole business of linking strains to types based on skull measurements? “The family of Milordka is a Saqlawi judging from the measurement of the skulls”. Really? The last I heard was that Milordka was an indigenous Polish mare. Not a desert-bred mare. Not an Arabian mare. A mare with no origins. A kadeesh, in my language. Appending Arabian strains on indigenous Polish mares to turn them into Arabians, and using some pseudo-scientific way such cranial measurements to justify this new “metamorphosis”, is a smart trick indeed. Nice try. But it won’t fly.
Even by the loosest of Bedouin standards, all the offspring of Milordka, Szweykowska, Iliniecka (tail female of Skowronek), Ukrainka, Woloszka, Szamarowka, and the other local Polish mares bred at the Slawuta stud are “hajin”, the product of Asil Arabians mixed with horses of unknown origin. And a hajin is not an Arabian horse. There is no way around that, unless one makes the conscious choice of departing from the Bedouins’ definition of an Arabian horse (i.e., an Asil horse). Or unless someone invents a new definition for an Arabian horse. Let me offer this one: “An Arabian is the offspring of any unknown or mongrel mare bred to desert-bred horses imported from Arabia over many generations.” How about that? That’s exactly what a Polish Arabian horse is today. Stretch this definition a little, and you could even include Percherons as Arabians, on the basis of the amount of Arabian blood flowing in their veins for the past 1200 years. I am only half joking.
I will let you know my impressions as I read more. And more on kadeesh soon.
November 26th, 2008 12:28 am
A lot of people, including the CMK’s, believe that Skowronek is a pure Arab as pure as the Davenport’s or Straight Egyptians. I respect their views.
But lets read together some information on Polish horses.
WAHO website provide valuable information ,especially in “Is the purity the issue”
Quoting WAHO website:
“In 1969, a year after its publication, a member of the AHRA board commissioned a study of it and of Polish pedigrees from Gladys Brown Edwards. Edwards’ report confirmed that “certain foundation mares are unknown”. The instructions given to Edwards are revealing of the AHRA attitude toward the need for secrecy: “If you decide there is reason to tabulate or refer to specific horses which have been imported, please do not refer to them by name, but use a code system of your own device.” The instructions also reveal that, rather than asking that purebred Polish pedigrees be traceable in every line to the desert, Edwards was specifically instructed to ignore any “unknown” blood in determining whether they were pure-bred or part-bred. (This is rather like saying that the offspring of an Arabian and a grade mare could produce a purebred Arabian, but the offspring of an Arabian and any recognized breed could not.)”
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“The 1937 acceptance of the Polish stud book covered the importation of 8 horses from Poland that same year by one of the registry directors (Dickinson), and 14 more horses the following year, also by registry directors (Dickinson and Babson
That none of these Polish Arabians were traceable entirely to “Arabia” or “the desert,” or even to the “orient” or “Arab world”, and that this was known to at least some of the registry’s directors is amply demonstrated by the published pedigrees in the 1932 Polish stud book and by the pedigrees and statements in registry director J.M. Dickinson’s 1937-1947 catalogs. By Dickinson’s own admission in 1947, Skowronek’s ancestress Matka “is simply known as an Arab mare of the Slawuta stud, her actual sire not being identified by name” (in point of fact he is not identified in any way at all; in any known record he is simply a blank), and “Matka’s dam, Iliniecka, was an Arab mare known to have been at Slawuta Stud in the eighteen twenties.” In his words, with respect to Iliniecka and other “taproot” mares from the old historical studs of Poland “something has to be taken on faith”. [A Catalog of Traveler's Rest Arabian Horses, J.M. Dickinson, 1947, reprinted 1988 by ingArabian Horse Trust, pages 29 & 31]
Two other registry directors at the time of the Polish reciprocity agreement were also on record as being aware of the problems. The registry’s president from 1918-1939, W.R. Brown, was aware of them as early as 1926. In April of that year he wrote to W.K. Kellogg, who had just that month imported the first Polish blood to America, through 3 Skowronek offspring from England.
Brown transmitted to Kellogg a quotation from a Dutch friend that Skowronek had “a lot of doubtful ancestors (which may be seen from the books of Lukomski, Verlag Schikhartt)”.
Three years later in 1929, Brown included Lukomski’s work, and that of Dunkelberg, another German who had studied the pre-WWI Polish studs and mentioned the native Polish elements in their pedigrees, in the bibliography of his own book. Kellogg joined the registry board not long after, and both men were still on the Board when the registry concluded its reciprocal registration agreement with the Polish Stud Book. [Private letter, W.R. Brown to W. K. Kellogg, April 24, 1926, File #00150, W. R. Brown Library, Arab Horse Owners Foundation]
However the registry directors might have misconstrued or overlooked statements in the Polish language in the Polish stud book, or in the German language in Lukomski’s, it would have been difficult to overlook or misconstrue the published statement in English by the President of the Polish registry, which appeared in the British Arab Horse Society magazine in 1935, two years before the AHRA board concluded its reciprocal arrangement with the Polish registry. According to Count Alexander Dzieduszycki, President of the Arab Horse Breeding Society of Poland from 1925 to 1945, “The basis of the Polish breed of full-bloods was therefore an Oriental material, attained by the crossing of imported Arab stallions with Polish mares, the breed of which had also been improved by centuries of intermixture of Arab blood”. [”The Breeding of Arab Horses in Poland”, The Arab Horse, An Annual Journal, Arab Horse Society, England, 1935.
End of WAHO quoting.
You have certainly noted that Count Alexander Dzieduszycki used the word “Full bloods” and not “Pure Breds” the difference is huge.
Please note that the Dzieduszycki’s where one of the most respected Arab horse breeders in Poland.
Once agian I think and repeat that I consider the Poles as great horse breeders and as Raswan said n “Skworonerk”
“he is the best part-bred in the world.”
November 26th, 2008 12:45 am
okay, I don’t disagree. They are excellent horses, bred by experienced master breeders. But they are not Arabians. An Arabian cannot have non-Arabian blood flowing in its veins. It just doesn’t make sense, unless you change the definition.
November 26th, 2008 1:03 am
Of course they are wonderful part-breds
November 27th, 2008 12:54 am
Edouard, from what I’ve heard, Dr. Skorkowski knew all this. But he had to work with the horses that he had.