Doomsday
I have one thing to say to those Arabian horse breeders around the world who cheated by replacing a mare with another, and registering the progeny of the second mare as being from first: with mtDNA scientific progress on your doorsteps and the genetic tracing of female lines, you are doomed. You, your horses and your reputation.
For those who did a similar deed by registering one stallion’s progeny as another’s, your turn is coming soon.
The only question I have is how soon can this type of testing be implemented? Shouldn’t it be made mandatory for all of the waho show horses?best wishes
Bruce Peek
Do you really think WAHO will kick them out? Their hands are probably already tied legally the moment they accepted proven partbreds such as the South-American shagyas.
Use Al-Khamsa en Asil Club to start a real asil studbook that kick-outs the cheaters without pardon and no matter who looses when a non-asil is discovered, that’s the only way.
and this will eventually happen, take my word for it. As a breed, and when compared with other breeds, the Arabian horse cannot continue to capitalize on being “the purest of all breeds” with such blatant and easily detectable flaws in some horses as in the South American Shagyas, the Skowroneks, the French pseudo-Arabians, the post Soviet Russian Terskys and others.
Are all horses imported from Egypt realy asil arabians?
The “shagya” arabians from south america have honest pedigrees as I know.
The question is how to go about it. Lets see it would take a database of Al Khamsa, and Asil club horses plus the cradle country asils. And then you would simply have to list the horses so qualified. Then obtain some of the horses with the objected to bloodlines and test them, after which you would publish the results. You really wouldn’t even have to have a select comittee composed of auguste personages to pronounce guilt or innocence, just let the science speak for itself. Of course we’d need to make sure the science is fool proof before proceeding.
Best wishes
Bruce Peek
All good ideas suggested, but it will be an enormous challenge to create a “studbook or registry” to draw a “line in the sand” for the original type Arabian horses. It can be done but cannot escape being an opinion-based entity not unlike the Blue Arabian Horse Catalog. In the mid 1990s a first attempt was negotiated for an “Asil based studbook” but did not succeed over problems finding a common defining criteria.
What is inescapable is that there can be no black and white definition. One has to make reasonable assumptions regarding a group of Arabian horses that are most likely to descend from original horses used or representative of the kinds of horses from the Bedouin horse breeding tribes. Al Khamsa’s definition is based upon this and the concept of “reasonable” is not concrete and has been subject to the eb and flow of thinking at any particular point in time. Added to this is the reality that Al Khamsa already lives with some ancestors who, from MtDNA studies, are of a different lineage than what was recorded in the records. In some cases “reasonable” assumptions have supported speculation as to who the real ancestor(s) is, but usually without concrete certainty. When it becomes more vague than that, one has to hope that the unknown is at least from the same sources that are already accepted. Al Khamsa appropriately footnotes these exceptions and any new idea of an “asil studbook” can do no more than that technically.
The reality is that, in the mechanics of breeding horses over a very long period of time, there can be mistakes of record or substitutions in ancestry intended or not which are also not in the tail female line but elsewhere in the pedigree not yet identifiable by DNA science. I am not trying to defend mistakes or willful misrepresentation but this topic must be viewed in the bigger picture. As I have said before there are also cultural issues (my Shammar Muniqi-to-Rabda experience) that can reformat how an ancestry is described even by the Bedouin and for that reason I am not yet ready to rely solely on DNA issues as the definitive benchmark for defining the original Arabian horses. Maybe science will be more helpful in the future but there are many factors that describe the creation of the original type Arabian horses beyond science.
One is inevitably left with the responsibility to learn all they can about the ancestry of their chosen breeding group and then choose from within that knowledge the ancestors of interest to them. Each person’s choice will have to be what is right for them. In the bigger picture, beyond the persistent unanswered questions, one should learn all they can about the types of traditional Arabian horses that served to create this breed and then remain relatively faithful to this “Bedouin” kind of horse in all its versatility. That helps keep the breed true to its origins.
For WAHO it is a different story in that its primary purpose is to unite the various national and cultural identities of Arabian horses formed over a very long time and fit them into an agreed upon “livestock” definition of a breed so that there is unfettered commerce and industry for the breed. This is what most formal registries of all breeds have been focused on for a very long time. And they all use the term “purebred in this “livestock” sense. It is clearly a different system than the culture of Al Khamsa, the Asil Club and similar groups.
To return to what Edouard originally posted, human error can be forgiven but outright fraud is a different matter…
I just want to rejoice in and voice my agreement with Joe’s answer: “I am not yet ready to rely solely on DNA issues as the definitive benchmark for defining the original Arabian horses.”
Not to sure where DNA became the word for Asil.
As to Al Khamsa, It is and has always been a bench mark for Asil.
Especially for those who honor the system forwarded by the Bedouin Tribes. To think otherwise is to be foolish. It is an on going registry, changing as information as to factual becomes available.
I am sure some day some groups will find them self separate as facts are discovered, hopefully not. But Al Khamsa will not stray from the known facts to opinions.
In this sense I find myself viewing Al Khamsa, different then most. Yet, I view Al Khamsa’s role much different then Joe’s.
A very different kind of Registry, one that tries to remove opinion based information. And shows the information known to each horse that is Al Khamsa.
Any and all information is open for review, and that is the high mark for Al Khamsa. No one is above new facts as they become
known.
Will the registry do this, no.
There is the difference and remains. The raising of the hand and swearing to God, this horse is Asil, by Bedouin standards!
As long as Al Khamsa holds to these truths, Yes, Joe it is more then a Registry, it will
protect this group of animals
called the horse of the desert and the Bedouin.
JMH / Bedouin Arabians