Dhari ibn Tawala of the Aslam Shammar and his tribesmen on horseback
This photo is from the World Digital Library “from a collection of 65 projectable lantern slides relating to the Arab Revolt of 1916?18.”
DOW readers and lovers of the true Arabian horse, click on the image to enlarge it, and please spend time gazing and squinting at each horse, and look at the chest, the eye sockets, the facial bones, the knees, the fine muzzle, and try to breed for similar traits to the extent possible.
The grey mare in the middle is truly beautiful – her face is lovely, and her expression so mild. Also, her profile is straight, and that does not harm her beauty in any way. The mare with a blaze on the far left looks to have quite a broad chest, broader than the others’, though she is also standing wide in front, which might help. I do like the fact that there are no itty-bitty hooves – despite being small horses, all of them appear to have feet that are well up to the job of supporting some 350-400kg of horse and rider.
All of the mares (I am assuming they are mares, they look like mares to me, but I shall stand to be corrected!) also have delicate muzzles, which taper, and have the nostrils set back, rather than blowing out from the ends of their faces. No parrot mouths here either! The two seen in profile also have chins, which is something that I have seen lacking on a number of more exotic-headed horses, and yet despite their chins they still have fine heads, with beautifully chiselled zygomatic ridges and jaws.
Wonderful! What Kate said. Plus with the fineness, they have lower jaws and teeth. Able to process whatever the desert throws at them. I’m in love.
Umm Kate- 350-400kg of horse and rider? That would come to about what 770 to 880 lbs? Did you mean 350-400 pounds?Even the lowest number would still be way more than most any horse could carry and still be a viable mount in the desert.
best
Bruce
Not much to add on top of what Kate has said, except that that grey mare is a horse after my own heart. And I love how relaxed all of the horses look.
I am also marveling that not one of the riders appears to have stirrups, and it doesn’t look like there are any bits, either. Do you know what method of steering they might have used? I can’t quite make it out, but it looks like there might be a sidepull mechanism.
Bruce, I meant kilos, and was thinking of the combined weight of horse and rider. Can’t imagine an Arabian-sized horse weighing much less than 300 kg; when my own mare is fit, she weighs roughly 350 kg, and is not quite 13.2 hands high. The average elite endurance horse weighs in the vicinity of 420 kg, according to Dr David Marlin; another source puts them at 380-420 kg. Skimming the Traveler’s Rest catalogue from 1943, and looking for the little ones, the 14.1 hand high mare Aziza weighs 1000 lb, the 14.1 hand Fadahmah is 890 lb, the 14 hand H. H. Mohamed Ali’s Hamida is 920 lb, the 14 hand Kadira is 800 lb (smallest and lightest of the horses in the catalogue), so I would figure that 350-400 kg is a fair estimate of the combined weight of the horse and rider?
Moira Walker: You steer with your *ass*. And your legs. You don’t need a bit to ride or steer a horse!
I find it hard to believe that 14.1 hand *Aziza weighed 1000 lbs. Maybe the livestock scale at Travelers Rest needed calibrating the day they weighed her, or maybe they had really bulked her up. The following is hearsay, but:
Charles Craver told me that Bazy Tankersley had told him, and this was probably in the 1950s or 1960s, that she had found that even with a rigorous training program, it was difficult to build an Arabian mare up to 1000 lbs. I am not sure whether that applied also to Bazy’s imported Wentworth Superhorse mares like *Crown of Destiny and *Silwa, or more generally to her Selby and Gulastra bred stock?
Charles Craver also told me that Alice Payne could never understand how *Raffles and *Aziza, two pretty little white horses, when she bred them together could produce Bint Aziza, who grew up larger and bulkier than either parent.
When Charles was showing Fairy Queen, she was about 14.2+ and hard as a rock, and weighed a 1000 pounds. I doubt *Aziza weighed that much.
Her son Julep (by Gulastra) was a tank, with a very deep body (VERY deep), and he would have been quite heavy in athletic condition.
Re the matter of the weights of horses at Traveler’s Rest, I have just seen a photo of H.H. Prince Mohammed Ali’s Hamama taken at Traveler’s Rest, and she is very round. All over. She looks squishy enough to poke through the photo itself. So I suppose it is possible that the day Aziza was weighed, she had been partaking from the same all day buffet table!