Lady Anne Blunt on the origins of strains
Lady Anne made the following remarks in a letter to Spencer Borden dated January 26th, 1910:
At last I can send my Crabbet Stud List for 1910. You will see that I have altered the order of it, which was a good deal of trouble. I have put Kehilans first because in fact every strain harks back to Kehilan Ajuz, not only all the other Kehilans, but all those strains (Seglawi, Dahman, Manaki, etc) where for brevity the generic term Kehilan has been dropped. Of this my Manager here, Sheykh el Arab Mutlak Battal of the Mutayr tribe so famous for its horses, never ceases to remind me.
I think it interesting that Niebuhr uses Köchlâni for the breed, in opposition to Kadîschi (p. 161) (apologies for errors in the Arabic, they are all mine):
“Die Araber halten, wie bekannt ist, sehr viel auf ihre Pferde. Sie theilen sie gleichsam in zwo Arten. Die eine nennen sie Kadîschi, d. i. Pferde von unbekannter Abkunft. Diese werden in Arabien nicht höher geschätzt, als die Pferde in Europa, und man braucht sie Lasten zu tragen, und zu allen andern gemeinen Arbeiten. Die andere Art heißt Köchlâni oder كحيل Köhejle, d. i. Pferde, deren Abkunft man bereits von zwey tausend Jahren her aufgeschrieben hat.”
In English translations, Niebuhr’s Köchlâni is sometimes rendered Kocklani.
Rzewuski in his ‘Notice sur les chevaux arabes’ says:
“Je parlerai d’abord de l’origine du mot كحلان Kohlan, que l’on donne génériquement aux chevaux de race, que les Bédouins élèvent dans leurs déserts. Ce nom de كحيل Koheil, كحلان Kohlan ne me paroissoit d’abord avoir aucune analogie avec un cheval, et surtout comme nom distinctif d’une race. Il n’y a que les chevaux élevés dans les déserts, qui portent ce nom.”
Anonymous in the January to April 1833 issue of The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany says (p. 117):
“The collective term whereby the Arabs designate horses in general is khayl”.
I think this is possibly then confused with Kuhaylan in other writers, such as Andrew Crichton (1845), who synthesises earlier material; he says:
“The collective term whereby they designate them in general is Kohayl or Kochlani”.
APM page 405: “And the one known as Hamdaniyah Simriyah al Joway’ayah was called Hamdaniyah, but she is kadisha, which was bought from Homs”.
Confirmation, per the Bedouin strain naming system, that a mare, if kadisha, does not deserve a strain.