Of Fantasy Horses and Pendulum Swings
This article appeared in the Khamsat Magazine issue in tribute to Charles Craver.
I first met Charles (and Jeanne) in December 2000, when I took the train from Chicago where I was studying. It was a memorable visit, and we spent hours talking in their kitchen and looking at horses and old documents. Upon my return, Charles told a person whose identity escapes me now that “I had liked a very different set of horses than the ones other visitors typically liked.”
This was true for the most part, because in addition to perennial favorites Pirouette CF and Wisteria CF, several Davenport broodmares with straighter profiles, less classical heads, and less round, more sloped hindquarters had caught my eye, and I had commented favorably about them. They were built like tanks, with deep girths, broad rib cages and high withers. I cannot recall their names today, but all were very reminiscent of mares of desert-bred stock I had known and liked in Syria and Lebanon while growing up there in the 1980s. These Davenport mares were “diamonds in the rough”, and it’s that unadulterated, un-sculpted, pristine quality that attracted me to them.
The overwhelming majority of desert-bred mares and mares of desert-bred extraction consisted of mares like these. Here and there, in a group of some hundred such desert mares, three or four mares stood out, with ‘classic looks’, three-circle conformation and prettier heads that appealed more to Western eyes and conformed better to most Westerners’ idealized description of what an Arabian horse ought to look like. These three or four mares were the exception, not the rule, and even less the benchmark against which the other mares ought to be assessed and viewed. After three decades of observing and studying these outstanding (in the primary sense of the term) mares both in their native land and here in the United States, I have now come to realize that turning them into the standard of the breed, and trying to push the average Arabian horse closer to them, was a mistake, if not an aberration. I have also learned that these regular mares’ forming most the Arabian horse population at any given time had less to do with a ‘degenerescence’ of the breed away from a supposed ‘golden period’ when all horses were outstanding, and more to do with its reality, which was dynamic. Back then, I was of the belief that the broad majority of mares needed to be “improved” to rise to the standard of these exceptional mares, to return to this ‘golden period’. I no longer believe so, and Charles had something to do with it.
Not only had Charles Craver thought about these issues, as I were to learn from my interactions with him, he had even coined new terms for them. He spoke to me of the “pendulum swing”, his characterization of nature’s way of producing outstanding horses from time to time (my own Wisteria CF was one example he cited), that did not produce quite like them, but rather brought their lineage back towards the average, like the movement of a pendulum swinging back to the middle.
He also had a term for these outstanding mares. One day, as I was showing him the picture of Sayfia, a true desert-bred mare of the Ma’naqi strain from the Fad’aan Bedouins and one of the classically prettiest mares ever born in Syria in the 1980s (photo below), he exclaimed: “Oh, that’s a fantasy horse!”. By that he meant that she was the type of horses Westerners fantasized about, and around which they built the “ideal type”, which over the decades had become the “only type”. While Charles knew full well that these horses existed in the desert (cf. the Davenport 1906 import *Abeyah), and that their more accentuated characteristics were not inventions of romantic painters and lithograph artists, he also knew that they were an isolated phenomenon that Westerners extrapolated from to codify the modern Arabian standard.
A corollary to the “pendulum swing” effect was Charles’ belief that the outstanding mares, rather than being the product of other “fantasy horses” and forming an “elite group” within the broader Arabian population, tended to come from the breeding of “regular mares” to “regular stallions”. He took that belief to heart and maintained many stallions (Cf. Michael Bowling’s article), who were bred to different mares to allow both to express their full potential. This is how an outstanding stallion like Plantagenet came from a ‘regular’ stallion like Akmet Haffez, and how Javera Thadrian and his outstanding full sisters came from ‘regular’ Thane. Even more, in some conversations with me, where I was asking him whether such a thing as ‘too pretty’ existed, Charles advocated the need to build some measure of flexibility in the modern standard of Arabian horses to allow the breed to produce these ‘fantasy horses’ from time to time. His thinking of the Arabian horse standard as a dynamic spectrum that ebbed and flowed, as opposed to a discrete target that needed to be sustained once it was achieved struck a chord with me, building on my earlier observations of the breed in its native homeland, and continued to shape my thinking. I wish he had written more about that, and about so many other things.
In reading this post I could not help but observe that the two groups of horses that you compare, the horses in Syria and Lebanon and then the Davenport’s at the Craver’s were bred very differently. Yet they seemed to produce a few fantasy horses and a greater number of more “average” ones.
The first difference was the large number of stallions used. The Daveports in the US were bred in a closed herd that necessitated a large number of stallions in order to have enough permutations of different genes expressed through siblings and half siblings to keep the gene pool as large as possible. This is a characteristic of all closed herds.
The second difference was breeding within the strain. The Davenports were bred mostly, but not always, within the same strain, following Raswan’s pure-in-the-strain theory. Many other breeding groups in the US followed this concept to some degree.
In speaking to you and Basil about how people bred horses in Syria/Lebanon, and then observing the breeding patterns in Bahrain, it seems that these two characteristics of the breeding patterns A. Using a large number of stallions and B. normally breeding within the strain were not used in Syria/Lebanon and it seems in Bahrain. In fact, it seems the opposite was true.
In speaking with Basil about what Bedouins did with the colts they produced, he replied using an Arabic saying, as he often did to many of my questions: “the owner of the stallion is always tired.” How true. He indicated that the Bedouins sold their colts, gave them away, or in some cases killed them. They only kept the colts if they were needed for breeding. I took this to mean if they already had a stallion they did not need another one. If they normally kept only mares and used the stallion of another breeder then they did not need to keep any colts at all. This practice seems to indicate that only a few stallions were available to breed to at any given time.
In looking at the pedigrees of Syrian and Bahraini horses it appears that almost EVERY ancestor in modern pedigrees was a cross between horses of two different strains. This is going back many generations. This is fundamentally different approach to breeding horses than how people breed in the “west” which is primarily within breeding groups and not particularly strain focused.
Yet these two approaches to breeding seemed to produce horses that were of similar quality. There were many different horses on all points of the swing of the pendulum. Certainly, the more traditional breeding patterns in Syria/Bahrain were much simpler and less costly. I’m inclined to think the more traditional approach is better.
Come on … that is an argument that makes only sense for somebody who has average specimens.
in any horse breed on a hundred horses, you will find only a handful exceptional ones, a dozen good horses and a lot of average horses.
And yes if you breed between the average horses, from time to time genetics will pop-up an exceptional individual again.
If you read Guarmani and Rzewuski, basically the only westerners that ventured into Nejd before “Arab politics” between the Rashids and Sauds had an impact on horse breeding, the quality must have been exceptional.
In the next generation the impact of both Saud in the Najd as well as with the northern tribes the sale of the exceptional horses to the European royalty, to the ottoman royalty and to the Egyptian royalty has deprived the tribes from exceptional horses and left them mostly with the average ones. It was not only described by the Blunts in the generation there-after but the best example is probably El-Zahraa. They sold basically all their exceptional horses to the USA (a marginal number to Europe) and it took them a very long time to recover from that.
That the exceptionals were really not that exceptional is shown by the important number of outstanding stallions that made it through the breeding shed from India. They were colts bred in the Najd and sold to India for racing, cavalry and polo horses.
Of course only a small percentage of the horses are exceptional and the majority average. It’s like that with every breed
The best example of what leads by breeding with average specimens is probably us humans …
Patrick, I am pushing for a rethinking of what average means. The exceptional you are talking about is unreal, it’s a new breed of freaks, and your eye has become used to it. I admire strong, well built, beautiful Egyptian horses like those of the late Wegdan El-Barbary, and I don’t like ugly horses.
Lyman, yes Basil is absolutely right on stallion/mare ratios in Bedouin Arabia. Think of milk cattle breeding today. One male, hundreds of females.
Keep in mind Charles Craver did not have another option. He would have bred his horses into a corner in two or three generations had he used a small number of stallions, like Jabri did in the early nineties with Mahrous and Ihsan, an about 90 foundation mares.
Edouard-
If we follow the same breeding practices of the Bedouin, 1-2 stallions for several hundred mares, I don’t see how you can get breed yourself into a corner within a few generations. The Bedouin lived in a more dynamic and fluid environment that we do today which perhaps created opportunities for the mixing of bloodlines even with such a small amount of stallions.
Let’s take the Davenports for example. In the 1960’s there were mares from 4 strains left. 2 of which, the Haifi and Hadban were better authenticated than the Krush and what is now the Hamdani Simri. You could argue that the Haifi’s and Hadban’s could produce stallions for the herd while the other two could not. You could alternate between Haifi and Hadban stallions every generation and go for 5-6 generations it seems without an issue. 6 generations are around where the Davenports are today of course starting with horses bred by Charles.
With the example of Jabri, I’m not as familiar with his bloodlines as you are but it strikes me that he had a lot of material to work with. How many strains did he have? Were all of them able to produce stallions for the herd? Were Mahrous and Ihsan of the same strain? If he had 4-5 strains and all were well authenticated enough to produce stallions for the herd he could have easily went for 8-10 generations without needing an outcross by simply moving to a new stallion from a different strain every generation.
Of course, one could always outcross if it’s an a issue. You would probably get an “fantasy horse” as a result of an outcross.
It seems like regardless of the breeding pattern, you are going to get a few “fantasy horses” and a larger number of “average” looking horses, however you define “average.” “Average” is relative of course.
Lyman, what the late Jabri did is basically breed all his mares from all strains to all his stallions from all strains, without creating separate sub-groups within his herd. In two generations, everything traced to Mahrous, whatever the strain (and he had close to 30 strains), and every horse looked like the other. Diversity in phenotypes was gone, and they all converged toward one type. This is also what the Bahrain Royal stud seems to be doing too. This is what I meant by breeding themselves into a corner.
Other than that, I agree with you that the Bedouin exchange of horses in war or otherwise was such that new blood was constantly coming to the tribe, and spreading to others. Taken all together, the breed appears to have been a closed herd; taken tribe by tribe, new blood was coming in and out.
I re-read your post a couple times Patrick, with an open mind, and frankly I am less and less convinced by it each time I read it. It sounds attractive and bold but it does not stand a closer scrutiny, especially the chronology.
What is that impact of Saud-Rashid “politics” on Arab horse breeding you are talking about? Why would that have more of an impact than the devastating Wahhabi conquests of 1805-1809 (pre-Rzewuski and Guarmani)? Why would it have more impact that the Sharif of Mecca vs. Shammar and Bani Lam wars of the seventeenth century which lasted fourty years? Why would it have more impact than the Ottoman-Egyptian campaign in Najd and Hijaz of 1811-1816 (also pre-“exceptional quality” seen by Guarmani and Rzewuski)?
Why place the negative impact of the horse importation to Egypt and the Ottoman sultans after Rzewuski and Guarmani, when we know Tussun Pasha and Mohammed Ali in 1810-1820 imported up to a 1,000 horses if not more, so more than Abbas Pasha ever did?
My reading is that Western narratives about Arabian horses purity have always needed a “before” and “after”, where “before [insert whatever event you want here]” was better, and this moment somehow coincides with the visit of a Western traveler, along the lines of “I got the last of the best ones, and what now remains is trash”.
Anne Blunt fell into that “before and after” trap, and so did Carl Raswan, and now you are repeating that narrative.
Edouard: Cheers!
Editor Hat: Sounds like an article: The Before and After Trap.
First I don’t horses for showing and all my horses are ridden.
“Why would it have more impact that the Sharif of Mecca vs. Shammar and Bani Lam wars of the seventeenth century which lasted fourty years?”
That’s an easy one, because these horses stayed in the desert, they merely changed owners. They still fought with lances and horses didn’t get butchered by firearms like when the 2nd Saudi kingdom emerged and or machine gunned like when the Ibn Saud emerged.
“Why place the negative impact of the horse importation to Egypt and the Ottoman sultans after Rzewuski and Guarmani, when we know Tussun Pasha and Mohammed Ali in 1810-1820 imported up to a 1,000 horses if not more, so more than Abbas Pasha ever did?”
I’m not placing only negative impact of horse importation to Egypt after Rzewuski and Guarmani but they both described the quality & nobility of Nejdi Koheilan and at the time the Northern tribes still got their stallions out of the Nejd. I read Guarmani too long ago to remember in detail but Rzewuski clearly mentioned that it took the Saud’s a lot of efforts to build up a quality stable again after their stable was looted by the Egyptians.
It is described everywhere that the horses were rather scarce in the desert and that mares usually had multiple owners.
Combine that factor with the Egyptians looting the prime breeding stock in the early 19th century (that was looted by Saud in the 1st place), Egyptians there-after buying non-stop prime stock (paying exorbitant prices in gold to get them), followed by the tribal sheykhs gifting fine mares to Ottoman nobility for favors and relations and then again the Saud looting the finest horses in Najd during the 2nd Saudi kingdom, probably redistributed by the Ibn Rashids when they took power and then again Ibn Saud looting war mares all over Nejd (and describing that hundreds got killed by new warfare with machine guns) and western buying all the pure arabs they could get in Egypt and the cities of the northern desert. And the French did also their effort when the northern desert was under their “protectorate” after WO I to fill their Haras Nationaux.
Of course a century of loosing the prime breeding stock must have had a devastating impact.
Additionally I remember you writing of a major drought in the northern desert somewhere in the 1950’s or 1960’s and the Saud’s master of horse taking that opportunity to buy the best mares from the northern tribes previously unavailable for purchase.
Of course average remained, but probably with good enough genetics to breed back exceptional horses from time to time.
Even if the above is mere the summary conclusion of the ideas that I have sprouted from 35 years of breeding & reading about Arab horses, the documented facts speak for themselves:
Guarmani & Rzewuski that describe a different, more noble “Nedji Koheilan” in Nejd, way before the Blunts and other more recent westerns traveled on horse searches;
Both Rzewuski and Blunt document the impact of the Sauds, Egyptian & Ottoman acquisitions & looting;
By the time Blunt traveled in the desert, both the Anazeh had almost entirely and the Shammar partially migrated to the northern desert taking a part of the Nejdi Koheilans with them (good enought for Saud to sent his stablemaster to buy the lines when the northern tribes were in trouble)
Paintings of dozens of artists, including oriental, documenting not only the fine breeding stock but also paintings by the hundreds of fierce Mameluks on noble Arab steeds (with parallel writings that the Mameluks also bought colts in Najd)
After the Mameluks a new horse market emerged in Najd where they could sell their colts to India where they were picked up by the British for cavalry horses, polo and racing with many exceptional stallions being brought to England as breeding stock after their careers in India.
Egypt definitively was the hub, not only because of the major breeding stocks collected early 19th century but it remained the major trade center for desert breeding & race horses from the northen desert until mid-20th century. Long before somebody heard of horse shows, the prime of the desert horses were brought to Egypt, for racing and to be sold. The best race horses doesn’t mean the
None of us lived in the time of Guarmany, Rzewuski, the Blunts or even Raswan so what has been documented then is unfortunately all we have.
Maybe I jump to the wrong conclusions because I have not the same documentation as you.
On what 19th century writings, paintings or pictures do you base yourself to say the contrary (that is that the average horses remaining that you have seen in the 20th century were in fact the exceptional breeding stock all the way?).
It took btw today’s middle-eastern buyers only a decade to make an impact on straight Egyptian breeding in Europe. Not saying there are no fine straight Egyptian mares left but the good ones, combining athletic ability & type are contrary to a decade ago not so easy to find anymore …
Ok I think you make many good points here, and I agree with many of them. I will take them one by one over the next few days, and perhaps we can speak live some day.
First, just to clarify, I respect your knowledge, I enjoy discussing with you, even more when things get heated, and I admire that you actually think about the breed the way you do. So we are talking on the same plane here.
Yes, Egypt was a drain on the desert stock, whether Mohamed Ali or Abbas and even before that. Yes, Egypt was definitely the hub. Yes, India was a drain too. Yes, machine guns perpetrated massacres starting from the 1920s. Yes, the Saudi policy of demanding that horses be surrendered by all Bedouins then gathering them in royal studs and not breeding most of them had a bad impact. Yes, the drought of 1958-1961 in Syria had a bad impact, also the Ibn Saud envoy buying the best mares, and Sharif Nasser ben Jamil crossing his dozens of asil mares with Part-breds, and the iraq racetrack crosses with English TB, and the French mission buying sprees, etc, etc.
Despite all this, somehow, I don’t know how, the breed is resilient and manages to survive and reconstitute itself. In the 1990s, following WAHO registration, Syrian breeders from towns snapped the best desert mares for very little money, and yet when I would go back to the tribes, I would find them able to re-build the stock from scratch, until Damascus buyers came again and bought them, and the Bedouins would start all over again.
One reason I am skeptical of this “before and after narrative” is its constant repetition, which makes the argument internally illogical: Anne Blunt in her early years wrote that Abbas has purchased the best of the desert stock and that little remained; then in her later years she wrote that she had brought the best and that nothing was left (except with Ibn Derri ibn Sbeyni and a couple others she said), even writing that what Davenport had gotten after her was trash.
Then fast forward to Fadllallah El Hedad from Babolna in the 1900s, and Raswan and Zietarski in the 1930s, who all wrote that they got the best of what remained. Then again to Farhan al-Olayyan (1960s 1980s) and Yusuf Rumaihi the Qatari consul in Syria (1980s-1990s) who again snapped the best mares and said nothing was left. Yet, all these best horses over two hundred years were of comparable quality. The best mare Rumahi or Olayyan got in the 1980s was no different from the best mare from Ali Pasha Sherif of Abbas stock that we have pictures of (say Ghazala or Bint Fereyha).
My main point remains simple, and tell me if you agree with it: extreme horses of today (the freaks) make regular, beautiful horses of today and yesterday look “average” by comparison. This is not because there are more average horses following the deterioration of the breed, but that’s because the standard has shifted towards the more extreme. The current “average” is good enough for me. It has all the characteristics of the breed. I maintain that the extreme was the exception in the past in the desert, and that it was much less extreme that the extreme of today, and more in fact like the average of today.
Also, I think the 19th century paintings were really exaggerated especially Vernet and Victor Adam.
The Craver’s and Jabri are a great comparison: each a product of their time and location, both doing what they thought was most correct in breeding their horses, but both breeding very differently than the other. Each produced beautiful horses. I would venture to guess that if preservation breeders in the US in the 1950s and 1960’s knew what we know today, mostly thanks to your blog, they would have bred their horses differently than they did. The Cravers, Pritzlaff, and my grandfather were all broadly influenced by Raswan’s ideas. Jabri influenced by the deep horse breeding tradition where he lived. Let’s look deeper at each case:
Let’s say hypothetically, that the Kuhaylan Haifi pure Davenports of today, instead of 6 generations pure-in-the-strain Haifi, each had 1-2 crosses to Hadba? Would there be more or less diversity of phenotype within the Haifi strain than there is today? Or about the same? The same number of “fantasy” horses or fewer?
If Jabri had 30 strains I still honestly can’t see how he could breed himself into a corner. He appears to have followed the exact breeding pattern the Bedouins who regenerated their stock each time it was depleted by large purchases from foreign buyers and wars and still were able to produce “fantasy” horses, no? It also seems all strains are not equal in their ability to reach far through the generations and still put their stamp on an individual horse. Perhaps he was using stallions that came from an exceptionally potent strain?
Both the Cravers and Jabri were inbreeding in their own way. If continued over time it would naturally turn up differences as opposed to similarities, no? It seems the breeding method Jabri used was less costly (fewer stallions), perhaps simpler, and perhaps more closely mirrored what they Bedouins themselves were doing.
Regarding the Bahraini horses I actually had the opposite view when I visited. Perhaps it was the way they paraded the horses strain by strain out in front of us, but it seemed there were distinct differences in how the strains looked. For example, the Shawaf, Rabdan, Tuwaisan, Saidan, Mlolshan, Kuhaylan Umm Zorayr and Maniqi looked pretty distinct to me. The Saqlawis and Hamdanis were more similar to each other but with slight differences. The Jellabi Musannan and Shewayman were more similar to each other but with slight differences. The Obeyan was somewhere in between the previous two groupings. Even within the Saqlawi’s there were differences. Back to your point about “average,” even in Bahrain, while I assume we were shown the horses our hosts thought were the best, there were hundreds of horses in paddocks nearby that looked perhaps more “average.”
“One reason I am skeptical of this “before and after narrative” is its constant repetition, which makes the argument internally illogical: Anne Blunt in her early years wrote that Abbas has purchased the best of the desert stock and that little remained; then in her later years she wrote that she had brought the best and that nothing was left (except with Ibn Derri ibn Sbeyni and a couple others she said), even writing that what Davenport had gotten after her was trash.”
I personally have always felt a bit disappointed by the writings of the Blunts. They did travel the lands near the northern desert a lot but never ventured too far in the desert and never in the Najd itself. Although I have no idea how big the “horse country” was and what the Blunts traveled, I suspect they have probably only seen a small fraction of the horses around. I suspect it was more a commercial argument: don’t waste your time in the desert, the finest specimens can be found at Crabbet with much less effort.
Don’t remember where but I also read somewhere that the horses might just have been a pretext in the beginning and their main interest might have been espionage for the crown on the Ottomans which could be an explanation for her interests with the Anazeh and Shammar (the two main tribes who could muster a significant cavalry). Could be wrong but is it coincidence that their roads concede quite a lot with the British protectorate after WO I.
“Then fast forward to Fadllallah El Hedad from Babolna in the 1900s, and Raswan and Zietarski in the 1930s, who all wrote that they got the best of what remained. Then again to Farhan al-Olayyan (1960s 1980s) and Yusuf Rumaihi the Qatari consul in Syria (1980s-1990s) who again snapped the best mares and said nothing was left. Yet, all these best horses over two hundred years were of comparable quality. The best mare Rumahi or Olayyan got in the 1980s was no different from the best mare from Ali Pasha Sherif of Abbas stock that we have pictures of (say Ghazala or Bint Fereyha).”
I guess that is partially genetics and partially horse breeders wickedness …
15 years ago I traveled professionally basically monthly to Andalucia for projects in Malaga, Seville and Cadiz. The weekend I usually spent in my favorite city Granada. At the time I had the opportunity to buy a magnificient mare at the Yeguada Militar in Vigo and a year before or so I had been impressed by Yeguada Alitaje’s stallion Salao that would make a nice match for that mare (although the guy owned according his daughter 60-70 Arabians, only Salao and his other main stallion Punto could impress me). So one Friday with too much time to spent I caled Moreno only 15 minutes away from his home if I could drop by to see Salao again and my oh my I couldn’t believe what I found there in the pastures at his home … a handfulso of the most beautiful mares I had ever seen. I had forgotten everything about the mare at the Yeguada Militar but his daughter told me that he would never sell them. He apparently kept his stallions + sale horses at his home and his broodmares in the hills but some of his best mares would also be at his place for his joy but he always kept them well hidden when there were visitors. It was typical like that in Spain, with Nicolas Domecq or Ybarra. They only showed you the stock they wanted to sell with the excuses that the mares where far out in the countryside. I imagine it was not any different with the bedu.
Here is a video of Alitaje https://vimeo.com/69170431 in the heart of “al-Andalus” just outside Granada. Although the horses are not asil, I guess the scenery could have been taken somewhere in the middle-east – there was a reason the moors wept when they had to leave). The stallion at 3:00 is Salao, all by all a fairly “average” horse as such but I have never seen a horse with such impressive gallop. It felt like a train passing by, by its regular ritm and power. al-Andalus Another video in the hills https://vimeo.com/35873938 and of horses under saddle https://vimeo.com/12250852. Although the horses were not asil it was a special place. I don’t know if his daughter continued the stud.
“Also, I think the 19th century paintings were really exaggerated especially Vernet and Victor Adam.”
I don’t know, they are the only visual impressions that remain of that era and there are multiple artist depicting the same type of Arabian horses in completely different contexts (outside the horse context, just think of the numerous paintings of Napoleon and his staff, on the know paintings you can differentiate at least 20+ different Arabian stallions boasting their presence when they were most certainly not the focus of attention).
Unfortunately I don’t know any other comparisons, for that I find Rzewuski’s drawings interesting – he was not a painter and you can see clearly how he tried to show the main characteristics of the horses in his drawings.
I’m not surprised that the tribes were able to re-establish or regenerate their stock. Besides keeping horses stashed away it is also a matter of genetics. After 30 years I can tell exactly how a mare descending from my foundation mare will breed. For this line it are the grandparents that determine the foal 100%. If I would have kept an average mare of this line, I can perfectly imagine that I would be able to breed an amazing filly with the right stallion. My wife can still not belief how I can predict a chestnut foal out of 2 generations of greys. Unfortunately I can do it only for this particular line 🙂
I also remember a fragment in one of Raswan’s books where he describes his quest to find his fantasy horses like in an old painting or statue of his youth, how he met up with an old bedu who gave him a chestnut stallion Ghazal to ride into many adventures and how in the end the bedu showed that Ghazal, after being grain fed for a couple weeks, had turned into his fantasy horse after-all. Maybe Raswan’s story was here in part fiction but maybe there were more fantasy horses than you remember with the bedu and it took a buyer from the city to grain feed it before they really became fantasy horses 🙂
I think we all have a certain fantasy horse in our mind when we breed and the eternal quest for that fantasy horse is probably also the reason why we probably keep on breeding 🙂
The obvious missing detail- or elephant in the living room if you will can best be dealt with by asking which tribes stayed in the Nejd..Uh, well as it turns none did. The wandering Nomads that comprised the Bedouin horse breeding tribes went where recent rains had provided pasturage. The Central parts of Arabia were used by them to hide out from the Turks and forces of the Sharif of Mecca. In this way they turned the murderous heat and arridity against their pursuers and escaped punishment. In a like manner the Russians turned the local weather against the Nazis in ww2 eventually defeating something like 78( really!) German devisions, simply by stringing out and attacking their opponents supply lines. The point is no one stayed in the Nejd. There were no cities to speak of there and what little pasturage was there was transitory with the seasonal rain.. When the Bedouin got near the fixed habitation zone they sold their colts to the horse dealers who sold them to the British who liked them because they were acclimated to the heat- or they robbed who they could and stole what they wanted and retreated back in to the emptyness of the Nejd while their pursuers rode their horses to death trying to catch them..
best
Bruce
Bruce, I think you are mistaken the Nejd with the main deserts Al Nafud and Rub al Khali (the Empty Quarter)? Which run partially through the Nejd including another long narrow one connecting both deserts but which name escapes me at this moment.
Nejd is a region (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najd#Geography) consisting of much more than just desert (although almost half of it probably is desert) and has always been the main territory of the Sauds…
Dirayah, the ancient capital of the Sauds is in the Nejd region (as is present Riyadh)
Emirate of Diriyah = first Saudi state
Emirate of Nejd = second Saudi state, map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Nejd#/media/File:Second_Saudi_State_Big.png
Emirate of Hail (Ibn Rashid, Shammar) also included a major part of the Najd region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Jabal_Shammar#/media/File:Alrasheed_hail_english.png
After Saud reconquered on Ibn Rashid: Emirate of Nejd and Hasa & foundation of present day Saudi Arabia, reformed as the Sultanate of Nejd and after conquering the Kingdom of Hejaz it became Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Saudi_Arabia_-_Kingdom_of_hedjaz_a_Nejd.png and finally Saudi Arabia.
In the 1924 Crabbet Stud Catalogue a reference to Nejd as source can be found with Mirage:
“Mirage. Lady Wentworth has also at Crabbet a very fine white stallion imported by King Faisal of Irak from the Denednasha tribe, to whom he paid £500 for the horse through General Haddad Pasha, who identified the horse and his history in 1922. He is a Kehilan Ajuz of the Denednasha nejd strain, but will not be incorporated in the Crabbet Stud until King Faisal’s signature has been obtained.”
but with all due respect to Lady Wentworth, Mirage was not from Najd. He was a Saqlawi al-Dale3, a branch of the Saqlawi Abu Snun, itself related to the Zubayni branch, from the ‘Anazah in North Arabia. Al-Dale3 was a trader (very wealthy) from a family with Jewish roots, who organized caravan trade between Najd, Bagdad and Aleppo, who bankrolled Ibn Saud in the early years of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I know some of his relatives.
About biodiversity : the environment made it possible to inbreed again and again because epigenetics would correct many things, and the environment would kill the weak colts and horses. About outcrossing : the environment (again ) would bring them back to a certain Middle type, just like wild animals.
We are talking about average animals and extreme ones. Is it only about type, Dish etc , or about performances ? Asking myself : what were the arabian morphologic criterias to classify à horse as good, excellent or bad ? Did they have , as in the saluki, and as Rszewuski said, “secret points” they checked ?
I don’t think it is meant Mirage came from Nejd. I read it more as this strain of the Denednasha’s originally came out of Nejd (as did basically all Anazeh). In the (later) Crabbet history book he was described as a “Seglawi Jedran Dalia”
I have always found Mirage a strange story, he was fairly well documented and yet Wentworth was not able to register him in UK but got registered without any problems in the USA. Also, personally I think that some Skowronek offspring were in fact from Mirage.
Check the article and comment of RJ Cadranell here: http://daughterofthewind.org/arabian-visions-magazine/
Yes I have read about “Miraze” but I think there are even Skowronek offspring that resemble Mirage more than Skowronek. Like Raffles (Skowronek on his own daughter Rifala when she almost never did such direct inbreeding or was it Mirage on the Skowronek daughter Rifala? Or Naziri (croup just like Mirage)