Excerpts from Frederick Wrench, ‘The Sultan and his Horses’

The following passages on the imperial Ottoman stud during the reign of Abdülhamid II are taken from Frederick Wrench’s article, ‘The Sultan and his Horses’, pp. 782-85 in the 15 December 1900 issue of Country Life Illustrated. Abdülhamid II’s reign from 1876 to 1909 spanned the Blunts’ expeditions, the gifting of Leopard and Linden Tree to Ulysses S. Grant, the export of the Hamidie Society horses, and Homer Davenport’s expedition.

WHEN I wrote from Tiflis to our ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Nicholas O’Conor, to ask if he could obtain permission for me to see one of the Sultan’s best studs, I had no idea that I was making a request with which it might not be too easy to comply. As it happens, these State Departments in the Sultan’s dominions are jealously guarded against all intrusion, and no Englishman before this had expressed a desire to see His Majesty’s haras.
Fortunately for me, Colonel Ponsonby, the military attaché at Constantinople, had conceived the same wish, and through his friendship with the Minister of War had just obtained a special permit when my letter to the ambassador arrived; so Colonel Ponsonby kindly decided to postpone his visit until we
could go together. Our first inspection of Turkish horses was in the Sultan’s stables at Yildiz after watching the Selamlik, and for this a special permission had to be obtained from His Majesty himself. After the Selamlik was over we followed some of the Royal carriages into the sacred precincts of Yildiz and drove straight to the stables, where we were met by the German Master of the Horse. The stables are long straight buildings erected on no particular plan, very roughly constructed, and equally badly kept, and rough in appearance, both inside and out.
The 500 horses they contain are divided into harness and saddle horses, all of them standing in stalls with the exception of about six specially reserved for the Sultan’s riding, which enjoy the luxury of boxes. Only two of these special horses much impressed me, the one a bay Arab of unusual size and strength, the other a fine upstanding old white horse with rather a long back, bought in Germany, as many things now are since the German Emperor’s visit. I asked leave to photograph this horse, but was told that I should never have been allowed into Yildiz if the Sultan had known that I had a camera with me, an instrument of which he has a holy horror.
p. 782

The saddle horses were chiefly composed of Arabs, or half-bred Arabs, and the first stable was devoted to bays and chestnuts, the latter seeming a favourite colour; in the next stable were all greys—said to be pure-bred Arabs, though what struck one most in gazing down a row was the impression they gave of short straight necks and bad shoulders. However, among them were two or three really good animals, and these and four grey Spanish state horses, presented to the Sultan by the Emperor of Austria, and two Orloff trotters, a present from the Czar, were almost the only animals of any great merit among the whole lot … The Sultan was driven to the Mosque with a pair of chestnut horses with white stockings, and drove himself back in another carriage with a pair of nearly white Lippizaners, a colour of which he is said to be specially fond.
p. 783

Our next inspection of horses belonging to the Sultan was of a much more interesting description. Situated on the great plateau of Asia Minor, 3,200ft. above the level of the sea, and surrounded by mountains in the far distance that give a pleasing background to the scene, the Sultan’s chief haras (stud farm) presents features of considerable beauty, and even under the hot sun an invigorating breeze comes over the treeless plains, bringing with it a keen enjoyment of existence that one does not experience in the lower regions of this lovely country. The chief centre used to be at Tchifteler; this has now been changed to Mahmoudié …
There are seven stations scattered at convenient distances, and it was at the first of these, Azizsié, that we began our inspection on a glorious September day. The object of the stud is chiefly for the improvement of the horses of the army, and to induce the peasants, by giving them the free service of some of the stallions for their little mares, to breed a better class of horse than they do at present, a result which is still further encouraged by the introduction for the first time in 1898 of races in which only peasants can compete … The stud consists of the indigenous horse of Anatolia, a deep-bodied, short-legged, compact little animal rarely much above 14h. or 14h. 2in., but very enduring and capable of great fatigue, a large selection of Arabs, of which more anon, some Hungarian horses of the ordinary type, not at all equal to those I have seen in the good studs of Hungary, and a few very indifferent Russian horses that are not creditable to that country.
p. 783

The entire stud [at Mahmoudié] consists of 325 brood mares, nearly sixty stallions, of which about half are Arabs, and the balance young horses of various ages. Among these were sixty Arab colts, of two and three years old, that only some ten days before we saw them had arrived from Bagdad, after a walk of two and a-half months, and consequently did not look in very thriving condition, though among them were many animals of much promise. As every horse is only allowed to serve twenty, or at the outside twenty-five, mares, a good many of the stallions are kept at the stud, while others are placed at the disposal of the peasants free of charge, so as to encourage a desire to use them. The young horses are drafted into groups, and herded on the plains by mounted guards. Of the fillies the best are kept for the stud, the next best for working on the state farms, and the worst are put up to auction and are sold to the peasants without any reserve. Of the colts the best are also kept for stud purposes, probably not more than 10 per cent., and the remainder are sent to the army, but not until the final selection has been made when they are four years old.
…
The Arab horses are, however, the feature of the stud, and very different were the specimens of this high-caste breed that were shown to us here and those we had seen at Yildiz. There are but few Arab mares, as most of these are kept at the State stud of Bagdad, and even then consist only of such as have been given as presents to the Sultan by the different Sheiks, as the Arab will never sell his mares, and often a mare is owned by several different members of a tribe, each man having his particular share in her. The stallions have been greatly improved of late by a visit in 1898 to Bagdad and its neighbourhood made by Fuad Bey, the courteous Inspector of State Studs, whose kindness to us I shall not readily forget. Dressed as an Arab, and speaking Arabic, he paid a personal visit to many of the Sheiks in the best breeding districts between Bagdad and Neshed, and selected some beautiful horses, riding back with twenty-eight of them to Mahmoudié in about two months from the time he left Bagdad. He told us many interesting tales about the Arabs and of their fondness and affection for their horses, and mentioned a case, of which he had been an eyewitness, of an Arab woman suckling a foal that had lost its dam.
p. 784

The references to the Arab colts coming from Baghdad, the state stud at Baghdad and Fuad Bey’s visit to Baghdad and subsequent acquisition of twenty-eight horses indicate that the imperial studs under Abdülhamid II included desertbred horses. Wrench makes no mention of the Branicki horses bought thirty-six years previously by Abdülaziz.

A point that caught my attention is the observation that the Arab horses at the Yildiz stud in Istanbul and the Mahmoudié stud, some 300 km away in Eskişehir province, were “very different”, though Wrench does not elaborate on this.