The blog entry “Amer: a Saudi race stallion” and the ensuing online conversation has generated a heated debate, with potentially explosive consequences for many involved. To summarize using politically correct language: the stallion Amer, currently owned by Umm Qarn farms of Qatar, is an extremely controversial horse, owned by extremely powerful people. He has dozens of offspring around the world. Many people have questioned Amer’s purity over the years, more or less openly. Many people have written to WAHO about him (good luck with that…). There is lots of big money involved, and a lot of vested interests at stake. Fraud, when it does take place, takes place behind closed doors. You will not see the real pedigree in any WAHO-approved studbook records, and I don’t imagine anyone putting their lives and jobs on the line to enter a royalty-owned stud (how?), ask for DNA sample from Amer and his likes (how?), receive it, compare it with DNA sample from English Thoroughbreds in Jordan or elsewhere (which ones? how? culprits died long ago), send the whole package to labs for analysis (which labs?) and publis the results somewhere (where?). So all that’s left is people word, good faith, reputation, and…
This 1997 article by Michael Bowling and R.J. Cadranell mentions the Babolna-bred mare 125 Ghalion (b. 1975), which has only one distant cross to the English Thoroughbred mare 30-Maria, her tail female ancestor (scroll down to the middle of the article for the question about 30-Maria). RJ and Michael calculated that after 125 years and 12 generations of breeding to Arabian stallions, 125 Ghalion was left with 0.024% English Thoroughbred blood. 125 Ghalion is not registered as an Arabian mare. That’s probably because her cross to 30-Maria is in the tail female, which Arabian horse breeders pay particular attention to. (What’s her strain? “Kuhaylan Maria”). Now someone please tell me why Skowronek, with his 9 non-Arabian crosses, would be considered an Arabian horse.
I love the website allbreedpedigree.com . It’s one of those wikis that let you do whatever you want. Readers’ comments on the last entry I posted just put me in a subversive mood, so I went and changed the race of the mare Polka from “Arabian” to “Thoroughbred”. For those who are not aware of the facts, the stallion Skowronek has multiple lines to the English Thoroughbred mare Polka, and so does everyone of his descendents. One of these several genealogical paths is as follows: Skowronek –> his dam Jaskolka –> her sire Rymnik –> his sire Kortez –> his dam Gonta –> her dam Helada –> her sire Szumka III –> his sire Szumka II –> his dam Polka, an English Thoroughbred. This makes Szumka II an Anglo-Arab (even if he is not registered as such), and someone needs to change that in allbreedpedigree too (I hope I am not starting a war). Now comes the million dollar question: if you cross the descendents of an Anglo-Arab like Szumka II to Arabians for several generations, do they become Arabian horses or will they always and forever be Anglo-Arabs? [okay, partbreds]. To be sure, this question is worth much more than a million dollars, if the prices of…
On paper, this stallion looks okay. I mean he has the pedigree of an Arabian horse. But he is not. He is an Anglo-Arab in disguise. Ba-Toustem (Djerba Oua x Bacchantara, at least that’s what his papers say) was born in France, at a time when Arabians raced in the same same races as Anglo-Arabs and English Thoroughbreds, with a weight “discount”. Ba-Toustem (check out his picture on allbreedpedigree.com, pretty typey, eh?) is the result of what French purist breeders call the “midnight breedings”. Arabian mares mated to Anglo-Arabian stallions. Their products registered as Arabians, with Arabian sires as a fig-leaf. Raced against Anglo-Arabians, and English Thoroughbreds [correction: only against anglos; thank you Jean-Marc di Francesco]. Then used as stallions on pure Arab mares. And the story goes on, and on, and on. The few French purist breeders that stood against such widespread practices were silenced. And WAHO accepted these horses. What a shame. From now on, “Daughter of the Wind” will seek to escalate the debate on purity by featuring a regular series called “This is not an Arabian horse”, with the aim of “naming and shaming” those horses that should not even be called Arabians. Photo of Ba-Toustem courtesy of Pierre-Henri…
Just came across an interesting article from 2005 in the New Scientist: Irish researchers analyzing Y-chromosome sequences in the DNA of a sample representative of the 500,000 or so English Thoroughbred racehorses alive today found that 95% of these horses traced to a single horse in the tail male: the Darley Arabian, born in 1700 (who by the way, was a Ma’naghi from the Fad’aan Bedouin tribe, which makes this strain one of the oldest recorded). I wonder how many different sire lines a similar study could identify within the Arabian horse population…