Some thirty years ago, an aprocryphal story spread in Arabian horses circles about a purported conversation between a senior Western official and a Saudi prince (their names are not the point of the story). It goes that the Western official pleaded for the Prince to register his large herd of Arabian horses — two hundred of them. The prince retorted: “who are you to register our horses? we (I guess meaning Arabs) should be the ones to register your horses, not you registering ours”. I don’t know if the story is true, as I only heard it third hand.
“Nowadays breeding of the Arabian in the Middle East has concentrated on race horses for the Beirut and Cairo race tracks. However this breeding has been tainted by the intrusion of English Thoroughbred blood in the Arabian horses of Iraq. The Iraqi Arabian is bigger and runs faster — but he has lost the look of the desert bred pure Arabian — that pristine beauty and lead toughness of the desert horse is disappearing alas too fast.” When living in Lebanon before the year 2000, I have seen, owned, and bred from some of these Iraqi horses. They are beautiful horses but they are not Arabians. A few years ago, some high profile Iraqi breeders have engaged ina full-blown communication effort aimed at claiming asil status for these Iraqi “Arabians”. I call it “asil-washing”. Progress in DNA analysis (Y-DNA, mtDNA and autosomal) will uncover these bogus claims.