Photo: GOMUZA (aka Gomussa), stallion exported to Chile
Shared by Miguel – this is Gomussa (or Gomuza), the son of Naomi and Kouch*, born in England in 1884.
* Spencer Borden appears to have attributed Gomussa’s sire as the bay stallion Kars, which I find myself curious about, now – Naomi was red, and Kouch was grey, but Gomussa is bay. Kouch was probably heterozygous grey, but I have no idea what his base color was – black or bay**, if he is in truth the sire of Gomussa. I can’t find any discussion on this, though – anyone want to spitball?
** Interestingly enough, Kate and I were speculating a little bit ago that perhaps one of the reasons that black was seen so infrequently in the desert was not that it was necessarily ‘rare’, but because because black was generally not bred for, those born with black pigment were winners of the genetic lottery in that they had both a recessive ‘aa’ agouti expression AND at least one copy of grey. After all, all horses are born with either black or red as their base extension, with the agouti controlling whether a horse is black, or bay – with most non-grey horses presenting phenotypically as red or bay. It’s entirely possible that hitting the double recessive agouti for uniform black pigmentation also coincided a lot with hitting heterozygous grey, or even homozygous grey.
I think the main reason Westerners did not see a lot of black horses in the desert is that Ottoman sultans who were the ruling authorities on the fringes of the desert were fond of that color, and so were the Pashas in the larger cities around the desert, especially Bagdad and Mossul. Black horses would go straight to them from a young age.
An unlucky color, indeed.
Edit: Upon checking something, I noticed that Wilfrid Blunt mentions a visit to the Sultan’s Arab Stables in his “1888-1900, The scramble for Africa” recollections – 150+ mares, and many of them were black. He says that one such black mare even came from the marbat of Ibn Rashid.
(It occurs to me – and I realize that this is probably my own pet crusade of inquiry – that Linden Tree was described as being an iron grey horse, the kind of grey that usually manifests from a black or very dark bay coat. Not that that’s anything conclusive, BUT ANYWAY.)
Since Moira started uploading articles with the material I sent her, I have been surprised by what they have taught me with yours comments and complementary information. It has made me rethink that the great base stone for the raising of Chilean Arabs is Nathaniel Cox with his imports, several of you have seen very surprised! But I must add that later on, besides imports from Argentina without so much value, there were three for my fundamentals:
1.- In the year 1940 Manuel Correa imported the colt Zizi (1936) from France, which gave a new impetus to the breeding by bringing refresh to the genetic pool, among others was paternal grandson of Denouste. He was imported for the breeding of Las Palmas de Quimavida.
2.- Imported from Crabbet Park in 1959 by Enriqueta Huneeus (great-granddaughter of N. Cox.): two mares; Nasiya (1957); and Shamarina (1955), pregnant by Bhright Shadow, the foal was later exported to Argentina to the well-known breeder Julio Méndez. These imports would give the beginning of the raising of “Las Cabañas de Bucalemito”.
3.- In the Conference of the WAHO held in Calgary in 1982 Douglas Marshall donated the Pure Egyptian stallion Adel (1981) to Fernando Sáenz to give him a refreshing contribution to the existing blood. And so it was, a tremendous contribution of Gleannloch Farms who came to Chile in 1983. Later in 1990 again Mr. Marshall would give another Pure Egyptian stallion to his friend F. Sáenz, The Arabii (1988 ).
And Edouard remembers that the biggest problem for Westerners beyond not seeing is seeing what they want to see. Who explains to me those paintings of Arabian horses with heads that they never had and so many other classic things of the western Arab?
That’s extremely interesting, Edouard; a history of siphoning off the homozygotes would explain why the black horses were rare in face of the fact that the allele continues to turn up in every breeding group of Arabians. (Everyone knows there’s never been a straight Crabbet black, but there are a few with a straight Crabbet parent; I think Queen of Sheba, or possibly Merzuk, brought it in.)
Kouch is Gomussa’s sire in the GSB Vol. 15 and 16. He was definitely heterozygous grey, as he was also the sire of the chestnut Trigonia out of the bay mare Aurora (cannot currently find the colour of her full sister Columbine II, nor of another daughter of Kouch, the 1879 mare Flash, out of Puff), so he had at least one recessive allele e at the Extension locus. I will see if I can turn up any other bay foals by Kouch out of chestnut mares in the GSB.
So the 1879 mare Flash had to be bay, as she produced a bay filly in 1885 to the cover of the 1875 chestnut stallion Misenus (GSB Vols. 15 and 16). Her dam Puff, however, was a brown daughter of the bay stallion Musket out of the bay mare Astonishment, foaled in 1876 (GSB Vol. 13), so Flash could very well have inherited her E allele from her dam Puff. It’s worth noting that Astonishment had a chestnut filly, Eddie, by the bay stallion Childeric, in 1880 (GSB Vol. 15), which means that Puff could have been Ee, and that Flash could have inherited her E from Kouch … but again, there’s no way of telling, especially as Puff was sold after Flash was weaned and disappeared from record, and Gomussa is the only recorded Kouch foal in the GSB who is bay out of a chestnut mare.
Kate found evidence that both Vidal and Huntington was also reporting that Kouch was the sire of Gomussa. Both mention Gomussa and Kushdil in the same breath while writing about the mare, *Naomi, the latter horse being also out of Naomi but by the stallion Kars rather than Kouch – which lends itself to the supposition that Mr. Borden was mistaken in his assertion.
Of course, in one of the very same articles that we looked at, it was claimed that *Naomi’s third foal was the mare Ishtar, a chestnut by Miss Dillon’s El Emir, when it was in fact the bay filly Naama by El Emir; likewise, it claimed her fourth foal was the chestnut colt Anazeh, when it was in fact the red filly Nazli, by Maidan.
And then you have another Borden article, where instead of being grey, Vidal apparently says that Kouch is blood bay.
So. Hm. Grain of salt, there.
Michael, wasn’t Merzuk a chestnut, though? My (admittedly limited) understanding was red horses were ‘ee’ and that they could never produce a black horse without being paired with another horse that had the dominant ‘E’ agouti allele.
Yes, Merzuk was chestnut.
Did Michael mean Mahruss, son of Mahrussa, who traced to the black Wadna of Bandar ibn Saadun?
Separately, that does not look a *Kars son to me.
I’m not suggesting there could be E at the extension locus from Merzuk, but a at the agouti locus, which is routinely carried but not expressed in chestnuts because they have no black pigment for it to affect. I included this possibility because Rustem appeared to be the only source of the a allele from the *Astraled progeny, until it occurred to me that Chrallah might have gotten it from him in Domow.
Oh, right. That makes a good deal of sense – black requires the right cocktail of both extension and agouti. (Def mixed the two in my previous post, thank you for understanding me!)