Musings over skull measurements
I just bought Edward Skorkowski’s “Arab Breeding of Poland” from the website of a bookstore in Iowa. I read many excerpts of it before, but was never able to put my hands on a copy.
My first reaction was: “okay, so that’s where all these old photos of Polish Arabians on the Net comefrom..”. My second reaction while browsing through the book was one of astonishement at the enormous amount of information squeezed between the two covers. Then I started reading, and I was quickly turned off after a few pages. I need to vent my frustration on someone, and you, my patient reader, are going to be that someone.
So, what’s this whole business of linking strains to types based on skull measurements? “The family of Milordka is a Saqlawi judging from the measurement of the skulls”. Really? The last I heard was that Milordka was an indigenous Polish mare. Not a desert-bred mare. Not an Arabian mare. A mare with no origins. A kadeesh, in my language. Appending Arabian strains on indigenous Polish mares to turn them into Arabians, and using some pseudo-scientific way such cranial measurements to justify this new “metamorphosis”, is a smart trick indeed. Nice try. But it won’t fly.
Even by the loosest of Bedouin standards, all the offspring of Milordka, Szweykowska, Iliniecka (tail female of Skowronek), Ukrainka, Woloszka, Szamarowka, and the other local Polish mares bred at the Slawuta stud are “hajin”, the product of Asil Arabians mixed with horses of unknown origin. And a hajin is not an Arabian horse. There is no way around that, unless one makes the conscious choice of departing from the Bedouins’ definition of an Arabian horse (i.e., an Asil horse). Or unless someone invents a new definition for an Arabian horse. Let me offer this one: “An Arabian is the offspring of any unknown or mongrel mare bred to desert-bred horses imported from Arabia over many generations.” How about that? That’s exactly what a Polish Arabian horse is today. Stretch this definition a little, and you could even include Percherons as Arabians, on the basis of the amount of Arabian blood flowing in their veins for the past 1200 years. I am only half joking.
I will let you know my impressions as I read more. And more on kadeesh soon.
A lot of people, including the CMK’s, believe that Skowronek is a pure Arab as pure as the Davenport’s or Straight Egyptians. I respect their views.
But lets read together some information on Polish horses.
WAHO website provide valuable information ,especially in “Is the purity the issue”
Quoting WAHO website:
“In 1969, a year after its publication, a member of the AHRA board commissioned a study of it and of Polish pedigrees from Gladys Brown Edwards. Edwards’ report confirmed that “certain foundation mares are unknown”. The instructions given to Edwards are revealing of the AHRA attitude toward the need for secrecy: “If you decide there is reason to tabulate or refer to specific horses which have been imported, please do not refer to them by name, but use a code system of your own device.” The instructions also reveal that, rather than asking that purebred Polish pedigrees be traceable in every line to the desert, Edwards was specifically instructed to ignore any “unknown” blood in determining whether they were pure-bred or part-bred. (This is rather like saying that the offspring of an Arabian and a grade mare could produce a purebred Arabian, but the offspring of an Arabian and any recognized breed could not.)”
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“The 1937 acceptance of the Polish stud book covered the importation of 8 horses from Poland that same year by one of the registry directors (Dickinson), and 14 more horses the following year, also by registry directors (Dickinson and Babson
That none of these Polish Arabians were traceable entirely to “Arabia” or “the desert,” or even to the “orient” or “Arab world”, and that this was known to at least some of the registry’s directors is amply demonstrated by the published pedigrees in the 1932 Polish stud book and by the pedigrees and statements in registry director J.M. Dickinson’s 1937-1947 catalogs. By Dickinson’s own admission in 1947, Skowronek’s ancestress Matka “is simply known as an Arab mare of the Slawuta stud, her actual sire not being identified by name” (in point of fact he is not identified in any way at all; in any known record he is simply a blank), and “Matka’s dam, Iliniecka, was an Arab mare known to have been at Slawuta Stud in the eighteen twenties.” In his words, with respect to Iliniecka and other “taproot” mares from the old historical studs of Poland “something has to be taken on faith”. [A Catalog of Traveler’s Rest Arabian Horses, J.M. Dickinson, 1947, reprinted 1988 by ingArabian Horse Trust, pages 29 & 31]
Two other registry directors at the time of the Polish reciprocity agreement were also on record as being aware of the problems. The registry’s president from 1918-1939, W.R. Brown, was aware of them as early as 1926. In April of that year he wrote to W.K. Kellogg, who had just that month imported the first Polish blood to America, through 3 Skowronek offspring from England.
Brown transmitted to Kellogg a quotation from a Dutch friend that Skowronek had “a lot of doubtful ancestors (which may be seen from the books of Lukomski, Verlag Schikhartt)”.
Three years later in 1929, Brown included Lukomski’s work, and that of Dunkelberg, another German who had studied the pre-WWI Polish studs and mentioned the native Polish elements in their pedigrees, in the bibliography of his own book. Kellogg joined the registry board not long after, and both men were still on the Board when the registry concluded its reciprocal registration agreement with the Polish Stud Book. [Private letter, W.R. Brown to W. K. Kellogg, April 24, 1926, File #00150, W. R. Brown Library, Arab Horse Owners Foundation]
However the registry directors might have misconstrued or overlooked statements in the Polish language in the Polish stud book, or in the German language in Lukomski’s, it would have been difficult to overlook or misconstrue the published statement in English by the President of the Polish registry, which appeared in the British Arab Horse Society magazine in 1935, two years before the AHRA board concluded its reciprocal arrangement with the Polish registry. According to Count Alexander Dzieduszycki, President of the Arab Horse Breeding Society of Poland from 1925 to 1945, “The basis of the Polish breed of full-bloods was therefore an Oriental material, attained by the crossing of imported Arab stallions with Polish mares, the breed of which had also been improved by centuries of intermixture of Arab blood”. [“The Breeding of Arab Horses in Poland”, The Arab Horse, An Annual Journal, Arab Horse Society, England, 1935.
End of WAHO quoting.
You have certainly noted that Count Alexander Dzieduszycki used the word “Full bloods” and not “Pure Breds” the difference is huge.
Please note that the Dzieduszycki’s where one of the most respected Arab horse breeders in Poland.
Once agian I think and repeat that I consider the Poles as great horse breeders and as Raswan said n “Skworonerk”
“he is the best part-bred in the world.”
okay, I don’t disagree. They are excellent horses, bred by experienced master breeders. But they are not Arabians. An Arabian cannot have non-Arabian blood flowing in its veins. It just doesn’t make sense, unless you change the definition.
Of course they are wonderful part-breds
Edouard, from what I’ve heard, Dr. Skorkowski knew all this. But he had to work with the horses that he had.
This is an old post, but I read it out of amusement. Even the Skowronek breeders, up close and personal, when I first started in the 1960’s, warned me,right from the beginning, that they thought that all was not right with Skowronek’s pedigree, but they were so far into breeding these lines, that they could not turn back – one of these was the famous Jimmie Wrench. Now, forty-three years later, it is easier to change the story, why? Because it is easier than just liking the horses for what they are.
Lorriee
We can like them all we want, but they have to be called for what they are. Part-bred arabs. And there is no stigma attached to that. Most horse breeds in the world have some measure of Arabian blood. Today’s Polish and Spanish and Crabbet horses just have more Arabian blood than the others.
Hello!
Easy to see you’re not a Polish Arabian friend… 🙂
But what you have written here is not fair to them. The fact that there is not “db”=”or.ar” abbreviation after the family founding mare’s name doesn’t necessarily mean that she wasn’t “pure” Arabian. Plase have a look at tragic Polish history and remember of many wars, revolutions and other tragic incidents that in many cases caused the damage of breeding documents, registers etc. Also notice that in XIX century (and earlier) running detailed written registers of the breed or studbooks as we do that nowadays was not common. Furthermore horses were given as gift, often were renamed after a change of an owner…
Polish magnates of these days were great funs of oriental horses in general and Arabian horses in particular. They had lots of funds to import very high quality breeding material straight from the desert and they did that.
They were buying both pure Arabian mares and stallions, but were kind of obssesive about desertbred sires. There were a belief that one have to add the desertbred Arabian “blood” to the Arabian Horse breed(and that was so much easier with the stallions…)on and on to prevent loosing quality(health, stamina, refinement etc.)in the offspring.
This is why they never paid attention to maintain sirelines.
They found imported stallions as more valuable than those bred by themselves. And this is the reason you can easily find many “db”=”or.ar” males in Polish Arabian horses pedigrees.
This was different with mares. Their female lines usually traced much further (than those of sires)and it was much easier in these cases to loose the name of female desertbred ancestor during the years…
I don’t really think these snob and extremely rich aristocrates would let melting the “blood” of their Arabian treasures with that of domestic ones and still call the product of this match “Arabian Horse”. They were very devoted and passionate to the their Arabian breeds.
Partbreds were bred separately. As well as other breeds. Remember they had enormous amounts of money and really could afford any extravagance… 🙂
It’s more probable that “misalliances” might have had place in small breeds. But you only mention S?awuta horses…
I don’t know if Skorkowski is a good source. As far as I know his statements about Arabian types was rejected by other Polish authorities of his days and still aren’t popular.
I would be more doubtful about the “purity” of some of that imported as desertbred Arabians…
If there is no doubt about the purity of desertbreds why did WAHO close the STUDBOOKS???
Regards,
Anna
P.S. Please note it is “Szamrajówka” not “Szamarowka” 🙂
Hi Anna, I happen to agree with most of what you say, but there is also evidence to the contrary (that is, to some Polish nobility introducing non Arab blood, e.g., the contemporary account of Lady Anne Blunt, in the “Noble House of Sanguszko” at the end of her Journals and Correspondence), where he cites first hand evidence of foreign blood into a lot of the mares she saw, which are the ancestors of many modern day Polish horses…
The Ursula Guttman book, Lineage of the Polish Arabian Horse, can give you much detail. There was also an article (that I can’t locate now) on the WAHO website that explained things. Perhaps someone else has that link, or that article.
I wish we could rewrite history but.. ultimately Edouard is right, as evidenced by the contemporaneous notes of Lady Blunt, Ursula Guttman’s work etc. However Anna is right too, in my view, in as much as war and upheaval have done a great deal to obscure the probably extremely noble origins of many Polish mares… Poles had been importing Arabian horses in numbers for hundreds of years prior to Lady Blunts visits, so….. many of the Polish ‘native’ or country mares were probably of very high % Arab blood AT LEAST, if not purebred and in that sense to use words like mongrel seems a bit pejorative.
However Asil is Asil and Kadish is Kadish and I for one accept that my Crabbet/Courthouse/Davenport/Egyptian ARABS, my beloved horses, are not (thanks to Skowronek) Asil, (though I find it impossible to refer to them using the ‘K’ word!!)
I actually think there IS a difference between a truly Asil horse and my Arabs but there is an absolute ocean of difference between my Arabs and a PERCHERON!!! :0 ! 🙂
Joe Achar recently referenced some interesting Polish genetic work showing that at least SOME Polish ‘country’ mares trace in terms of mtDNA (ie , obviously, MARE line) to the desert.
While I agree with anna fact is it does NOT matter. These bloodlines have been accepted as ARABIAN bloodlines end of story. There is no difference in my opinion of a “desertbred” of unknown origin or of the Muniqui line that was developed in the DESERT to the mares by the polish. If the Poles did not value the tail female like the bedouin did, how do we not know that it is just an error in book keeping. And who is to stop someone from giving a mare a stain and calling it desert-bred? Fact is that whatever transgressions may or may not have occured are far enough back in the pedigree that they would be considered pure in any other breed. If you feel that only the Egyptian breeding is Asil and your horses are superior then go form your own registry. It is time to get off your high horse. I know many breeders who refuse to touch egyptian breeding just as you feel the Polish-breds are an abomination. And maybe there is a difference in type however the egyptian breeding is responsible for lavenderfoal syndrome so your lines are not superior.