A Simple framework for assessing the purity of desert Arabian horses

In the interest of practicality and of getting things done, I suggest the following simple framework to assess the eligilbility of desert Arabian horses in any future Global Asil Horse Registry (GAHR).

It consists of three levels of eligibility in the form of concentric circles [Jane Ott’also had three levels: BLUE STARS, Blue Lists, and Sublists, but mine are different]. There are specific eligibility criteria attached to each level of course, and a lot to say about who has the privelege of fixing these criteria, but lets hold on to that thought for later. Note that these criteria apply for those Arabian horses of desert bloodlines, currently living in Arabia Deserta (Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabian, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Lebanon).

So, here goes:

Level A: These are the purest of the pure, and include any or all of the following criteria:

– the ones there is a broad consensus about in their place of origin

– the ones we are fairly certain (as certain as one can be in an oral culture) can be traced back to a long time

– the ones bred by the owner of the strain

– the ones kept in relative isolation

– the ones not bred to outside stallions except very choiced ones

– the ones we know for a fact don’t have an admixture of foreign blood.

Level A horses are comparable to the best-authenticated Al Khamsa Foundation horses (for example: Queen of Sheba and Sherifa of the Blunts, Urfa, Reshan, and Haleb of Davenport, and Jalam al-Ubayan and Turfa of the Saudi Arabian imports to the USA). These are few and precious.  
 
Level (B):  These are the ones we guess are pure, or should be pure, or rather about which there is no reason to think they are not pure, although:

– they no longer belong to the original owner of the strain

– they changed owners and tribes frequently (thus maximizing the risk of exposure),

– they have been bred to stallions outside the tribe, etc.

This is the category the wide majority of the Syrian horses falls in. They are comparable to the average Al Khamsa Foundation horse: many Danveports (Kusof, El Bulad, Houran, Farha, etc) many BLUE STARs (such as those “said to be from Ibn Saud”), many Egyptian horses (El Samraa, El Shahbaa, El Deree), etc.
 
Level (C): These are the ones we need to learn a lot more about so they gain Level B status. They are comparable to the Al Khamsa horses we know little about (e.g, Maidan, Kismet, Dwarka, Mameluke, etc)

Of course, there is an additional level. which consists of the ones we know are not pure, or we seriously doubt are not pure, and these have no place in the registry. Let other worry about them.

Should I take the next step, and just list which ones I feel belong to each category. No, not before we discuss this more thoroughly. But I will tell you that such lists do exist somewhere in my computer, just in case…