The five strains of Al Khamsa in European writings
For a while now, I have been trying to compile as many first-hand accounts of Arab horses written by eighteenth and nineteenth century European travellers in the Levant, the Middle East, and Arabia as I can, and one of the things that I have found fascinating is the changing of the five strains listed as Al Khamsa over time, with the only constants being the Kuhaylan and the Saqlawi.
D’Arvieux’s Voyages dans la Palestine, published in 1717, is one of the earliest European works I have yet found to give an account of Arab horses in their homeland. He talks about the Kehhilan, contrasting it to the “ancienne race” Aatiq and to the Guidich, but does not mention any of the strains, save for Touysse, probably the Tuwaisan, which he gives as the name of a mare belonging to one Abrahim Abou Voüassés.
In his Beschreibung von Arabien (1772), Niebuhr gives rather more information on the strains of the Arab horse. Using the term Köchlâni to denote the breed as a whole, he refers to the strains as families, listing the most common strains of each area. Such familiar names as Dsjülfa, Mânaki, Seklaúi, Hamdâni and Daádsjani are listed, along with some rarer strains, such as Sáade, Toreífi and Challaúi – not to mention the unknown (to me) Dehälemîe and Frädsje.
The earliest European mention of five special strains (usually indicated by breed or race in these writings) I have found to date is in an 1816 article by Wac?aw Rzewuski, “Notice sur les chevaux arabes” in Fundgruben des Orients Vol. 5. His source is Carlo di Rosetti, appointed Austrian Consul General in Cairo in 1792. He is also one of the most sensible sources on the matter, as he points out that there is no agreement on the origin nor the strains which make up the five. He does, however, list the most common strains, which are “le Saklavy, Koheyl, Maneky, Djolfe, et Toucye”, and notes that the Koheyl and Toucye may be replaced in some lists by the Dahanye and Kachenye, and in yet a third list the Kobeyshe replaces the Djolfe.
So the earliest list comprises Saqlawi, Kuhaylan, Ma’naqi, Jilfan and Tuwaisan, sometimes with Da’jani, Ka’shani and Kubayshan being substituted in in place of other strains. Rzewuski and Rosetti’s list coincides with that given by Burckhardt in 1830, who gives as the five special strains “Taueyse, Manekeye, Koheyl, Sakláwye, and Dujlfe”.
Other European writers from the early part of the nineteenth century support the prominence of the Jilfan strain at this time. The 1814 Voyages d’Ali Bey El Abbassi, Vol. 3, which lists six strains or races, rather than five, calls the djelfé the best of the strains, though the author notes that the seclàoui is just as good and in some areas preferred. Writing in 1813, Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, consul-général of France in Aleppo, places the Djelfy second in his list of 18 renowned Arabian strains, after the Kuheil, and ahead of the Seglawoui (which follows the Scydi and the Ménaki). Toeyssan makes Rousseau’s list as well, though towards the end.
A very different list, though, is given in 1818, by John Macdonald Kinneir in Journey through Asia Minor, Armenia, and Koordistan. To quote:
“The whole however may be traced to five different sources, which have each given a name to a race, and to which all the breeds in Arabia owe their origin: these are Kuheilut el ajvez, Showeiman el subah, Uzithin el Khursa, Suglavie ben gedran, Dehma el naamir.”
Kuhaylan, Shuwayman, Saqlawi and what is presumably Dahman are all identifiable, but Uzithin el Khursa is certainly baffling. This list is unique as well in its composition – I have yet to see anything else quite like it. One possibility is that Macdonald Kinneir drew his information from a different area from Rosetti and Burckhardt, where different strains were prized.
A similarly unique list is that provided by Mazoillier in Les Chevaux Arabes de la Syrie(1854), which is comprised of the Hamdanié, Abaian, Em–Arkoub, Rimeh and Maannaqui. The loss of the stalwarts Kuhaylan and Saqlawi is surprising, and is the only place I have seen this so far. As for the presence of the ‘Ubayyan and the Umm ‘Arqub strains, they are also found on Major Fridolin’s list, given in Von Hammer Purgstall, Das Pferd bei den Araben Vol. 2 (1856), which comprises the Nidji Saklavi dschedran, the Koheile Hadjuse, Aban Arkoub, Manekye and Ubeyan.
Guarmani is very critical of Mazoillier’s list, accusing him of writing nothing but errors and anecdotes in his 1862 book, El Kamsa. Instead, Guarmani provides two lists, the Kamsat el Ressul, the original list, and the Kamsat el Mascecur, which is apparently the result of crossing horses from the north and the south, and mixing in a miraculous sea horse. The Kamsat el Ressul is made up of the “Gilfi, Manaki, Makladi, Saklaui, e Koheilan”, where Gilfi is the Jilfan, and Makladi is said to be another name for Edregi, which I am guessing is the Ma’naqi Hadruji. The strains of the Kamsat el Mascecur are “Abeian, Gedran, Sueti, Daageni, e Kebescian”, or ‘Ubayyan, (Saqlawi) Jadran, (Kuhaylan) Suwaiti, Da’jani and Kubayshan. Notably, the Tuwaisan has vanished.
The heyday of the Jilfan as a strain of Al Khamsa was also over by the latter part of the nineteenth century, and by 1870 Captain Kerr was writing in the Oriental Sporting Magazine Vol. 3 that the five most prized strains were Seglawi, Abeyan, Hamdani, Hadban and Keheilan. Similarly, Roger Upton, in Arabia and Newmarket (1872), Lady Anne Blunt, in Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (1879), and Tweedie, in The Arabian Horse (1894), give the same five strains as the major divisions of the breed. This list has remained unchanged in many of the English popular sources on Arabian horses for more than a hundred years at this point, even though it is only a snapshot of one moment in time.
Interestingly, though, Upton, in Travels in the Arabian Desert (1881), records a more complex picture, with a variable list given by the townsmen and Europeans he consulted: “We noticed that the changes were always rung on the Hadban, Homdani, Manakhi, and Jelfon; they never took liberties with Keheilan, Seklawi, and Abayan.” So while the Hamdani and Hadban were rising to prominence among the strains of the desert, the memory of the Jilfan and the Ma’naqi being significant was still present. In some instances, the Kuhaylan is removed from the list and the Jilfan put in its place, reflecting the proper use of Kuhaylan as the term for all Arab horses, and the earlier importance of the Jilfan strain. In the same book, Upton also notes that another strain, Tanase, was sometimes found in the list of Al Khamsa, which must refer to the Tuwaisan.
To sum up, it seems that, in European texts, the evolution of the strains of Al Khamsa over the course of the nineteenth century went as follows:
- Early nineteenth century: Kuhaylan, Saqlawi, Jilfan, Ma’naqi, Tuwaisan. Jilfan ranked alongside Kuhaylan and Saqlawi in prestige.
- Mid-nineteenth century: Kuhaylan, Saqlawi retained; Jilfan and Ma’naqi variable; Tuwaisan dropped; ‘Ubayyan added.
- Late nineteenth century: Kuhaylan, Saqlawi, ‘Ubayyan the core strains; Hadban and Hamdani more common than Jilfan and Ma’naqi.
I do wonder to what extent this reflects the Bedouins’ own views, and how much of this is the creation of western lore on the Arab horse. Lady Wentworth, in The Authentic Arabian Horse, says, “The principal strains of Kehilan are not only five but many, and the Bedouins do not regard them as possessing any fundamental difference of type”, and adds further, “The plain, unromantic truth is that there is no such thing as El Khamsa”.
At any rate, whether or not these lists reflect the rise and fall of various strains at various times, in various places in the desert, it is still interesting to trace the evolution of the five most prestigious strains. What I also find interesting is that the list becomes fixed in the late nineteenth century, which coincides with Europeans increasingly valuing the Arabian for itself, rather than a means to improve local horses, as well as an increase in the number of European studs breeding it pure outside its desert home. As the Arabian became more popular, so a canon of knowledge was created, which forms the basis today of many popular views of the breed – including which strains were the most prestigious!
Interesting.
I wonder how their answers would differ if the writers you mention above were asked this question: What makes an Arabian horse an Arabian horse?
Kate, thank you very much for this. The non-English sources are not all familiar to me, so this is quite helpful. Makes gears turn…
Lyman, I can probably find answers of a sort to that in those books, though it will take me a little while. I do think that the eighteenth century writers would be baffled, as the impression I have is that an Arabian horse is any horse that comes from Arabia, but they do distinguish between the asil horse (which they call Kochlani/Kocklani/Koheyl and other such variations) and the kadish horse, and note that the Kochlani are the highly esteemed ones, though the kadish horses may sometimes be more beautiful. Some writers list different terms as well for horses with one asil parent, depending on whether that horse was the sire or the dam.
As for the nineteenth century writers, well, that becomes very tangled. Judging by Rzewuski and the bits and pieces I have gleaned from an early book on Weil (I think it’s Weil, I haven’t looked at that book in a while, but it is definitely written in German), plus what you have shared from the Sanguszkos, I think that the Polish breeders and those from parts of Germany and Austro-Hungary had a clearer idea earlier of what was a genuine, asil Arabian horse than, say, the English, who were still baffled in the mid-nineteenth century by the relationship between the Najdi horses and those of the Anazah, though they did know that not all horses passed off as Arab were purebred – the infamous Gulf Arab label, for instance, applied to horses that they suspected were not ‘high-caste’ (which is a fascinating instance of the British slapping an Indian cultural term, however inappropriately, on the Arab horse).
Jeanne, I’m glad you find this useful! It’s been eye-opening for me, learning how the perception of the Arab horse has developed over time in Europe. It’s also been a lot of fun to work through these old sources, always trying to go back wherever I can to the original traveller’s account. Once you know who said what, when, you can see how later writers, without the firsthand experience, pulled things together from different sources, sometimes well, sometimes poorly – and it is always a treat to observe how the strain names mutate thanks to copying errors and faulty translations. I’ve seen Hedruji become Stedruji, and Moira turned up a very lovely example of the Sakla wooyeh strain.
Lyman, I suspect that if I went back to the books I could find the answers for most of the authors, though that will take a little digging and a little while. Off the top of my head, though, I think the eighteenth century authors would be perplexed by the question. An Arabian horse seems to them to be any horse that comes from Arabia; an asil horse would be the Kochlani (also seen as Kocklani/Koheyl and a variety of other spellings), which they know is esteemed above the kadish horse. Some early authors also provide different terms for horses which have only one asil parent, depending on whether the parent was the sire or the dam.
The nineteenth century authors are more complicated, from what I have seen so far. I am inclined to believe, from Rzewuski, what you have provided of the Sanguszkos’ writings, and from an early German book (which I think is on Weil but which I haven’t looked at recently), that the Polish breeders, as well as those from parts of Germany and Austro-Hungary, were more au fait with what was a genuine Arabian horse (i.e. asil) and what was not than, say, the British. I mean, in the mid-nineteenth century, the British were still confounded by the relationship between the Najdi horses and those of the Anazah (were they the same? were they different? was one superior to the other?), though they did know that not all horses passed off as Arabians were equal – the Gulf Arabs, for instance, were not considered ‘high caste’ (which is also an instance of the British slapping an Indian cultural term, however inappropriate, on the Arabian horse).
Jeanne, I’m glad you have found it helpful! It has been eye-opening for me, working back through the old sources to see how the perception of and knowledge about the Arab horse evolved over time in Europe. It’s also been a lot of fun. Once you know who first said what and when, you can see how later writers without first-hand experience drew on them, sometimes well, sometimes poorly, and how the original text is recreated and reinterpreted over time, with the aid of copying errors and faulty translations. Strain names are particularly entertaining to observe, as they can change dramatically from the original text to a copy of it – Hedruji becoming Stedruji, for instance; Moira turned up the rather delightful Sakla wooyeh as well, which is now a favourite of mine!
I always wonder with all resources available today nobody is able to pick up old middle-eastern writings on Arabian horses?
The famous libraries of Bagdad and Cordoba were of course destroyed but there must be records remaining from the 18th & 19th century of middle-eastern people dealing with the bedu? In Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul/Constantinople, Muscat …?
I think the real trick is being able to access them. Unless you are able to go there in person, there’s probably very limited options for researchers afar, the bulk of which appear to be based predominantly in Europe and the US.
I suppose one could always reach out to the various museums and libraries and see what their options for digitization of records is, but that’s quite a labor-intensive process to engage in without having a very specific idea of what records too look at.
Thanks Kate for this wide overview. It is interesting to me (as a Bedouin) to see how the West perceived and recorded our breeding traditions over the course of the past three centuries. You asked about a Bedouin sources and I will refer you to a famous Arabic book by Mohammed Pasha son of Prince Abdel Qader Al-Jazairi (1840-1913) who was raised in Syria and is considered an authority in the subject with wide connections to the Bedouin tribes. The book was released around 1876. He sets the five strains as follows: Saqlawi, Um ‘Aarqoub, Shuweima, Kuheila Ajuz, Ubayya. These are the strains that were attached with the legend of the five mares captured by the Bedouins in the middle of the desert. It is of course a kind of a myth while in the daily practice there were more strains. But many of the other strains are actually branches of these strains. As per Mohammed Pasha, Tuwaisan and Maanqi are branches of Kuheilat Ajuz. While Jilfan is independent. At the end the strain system was created and developed by the Bedouin at a certain point of the history of Arabia to serve as a classification system to eliminate individuals of unknown sources. The system was arbitrarily created and is not a genetic taxonomy. I always say strains started as a cultural rather genealogical fact but it then developed into a genealogical system that served as a defense mechanism to protect the purity of the breed.
This is the most fascinating article i have read on this issue in a while.
Uzithin el khursa is presumably the old strain of wadhnan el khursan, and fradsje is the even older strain of fraydjan, gone in the 1970s in the homeland in asil form. Makladi is not Manaqi but rather Mukhalladi (see merjane line in france as mokladie)
Kate-
I think perhaps they might have been perplexed at the question because it was the wrong question to ask.
Often times the most simplest and meaningful way to define something is what it is not. What would they have said when asked the question: What did the Arabs not consider an Arabian horse?
A bit of context, my daughter is half white American and half Chinese. When Chinese people see her, usually the first thing they say is the Chinese word for “mixed blood.” When her maternal grandfather pats her on the head and plays with her light brown (NOT black hair) I’ve heard him say, “not Chinese” or “foreigner.” This perspective comes from someone with a strong race based identity. I suspect the Bedouin had something similar to describe this concept. This term would have likely been used after their own sense of identity as a group had developed.
Yasser/Edouard-
Since you guys speak the language, know the culture, and may have more immediate access to the texts in question, I wonder if you could help me understand two questions:
First, where and when was the first written record in Arabic, to classify a horse of mixed blood by a certain term? From previous things you guys have written I understand that general term to be Hajin, or but I’m not clear when it first arose.
Second, where and when was the first written record in Arabic, to use the word
“Asil” applied to horses?
Thanks,
Lyman
An arabic source on al Khamsa not yet cited is the Abbas Pasha Manuskript from around 1850. In it you find many different lists and surprisingly it differed from tribe to tribe.
Second, Mutlak Batal, studmaster at Sheykh Obeyd of Lady Blunt, told her, that al Khamsa is an invention of townsmen. He referred to the tradition of the five mares of the prophet.
Lyman, both your questions are of such tremendous importance to this discussions that we will try to address them in separate entries. Yasser as an author on DOW can dedicate a blog entry to these, and so can I separately.
@Patrick : i am doing a PhD on 8-10th century Arabic writings on horses.
@ Kate, can we get in touch? i have a few questions for you 😀
Patrick, I have neglected the Middle Eastern sources mostly because I can’t read Arabic (yet), and would very much like to remedy that one day! There are some archives online with Arabic manuscripts freely available (the World Digital Library is a good resource) and I imagine that in time, as more texts are digitised, so access to rare manuscripts will become easier. To that end, though, thank you, Yasser and Matthias, for your recommendations.
Also, Yasser, I’m very curious as to what is meant by Mohammad Pasha when he says that Jilfan is independent – the European writings that I’ve read, when they use Kuhaylan as an umbrella term, claim it is the term for all asil Arabs. Is this a misunderstanding on their part? Or does the Jilfan being separate simply reflect the cultural rather than genealogical origin of the strains?
Edouard, thank you for the extra information on the strains and the correction of Makladi; goes to show how much more there is for me to read (and in how many different languages). I have never heard of Fraydjan, but will certainly be on the lookout for it now in the older texts.
Oh gosh, Lyman, I think that question becomes even bigger when turned into ‘what is not an Arab horse’. Different authors had different views (some Turks imported into England were probably Arabians, and the identification of the Godolphin Arabian as a Barb is just a mess) and used different terms for various Arab crosses, and then you come to the early twentieth century and suddenly there is ambiguity in some western writers about the status of the Ma’naqi as an Arab horse or a Turkoman cross (no thanks to Raswan there), and then there is the kerfuffle over the Polish horses, and so on.
I don’t really think that European/western writers are necessarily the best sources to consult for a definition of what is/is not an Arabian horse, because there’s a distinct difference between the western notion of purebred and the Bedouin notion of asil. That said, it is certainly interesting to read their views on the horses they saw, whether they were geographers dutifully noting down the fauna and flora of the region, or people with a genuine interest in the horses (and often their own agenda with respect to them).
Hylke, sure, you can send me an email at kathryn.mclachlan@uct.ac.za.
Jenny Krieg sent me to the bloodlines.net website to look for the pedigree of Whistlejacket, and in poking around that delightful rabbit hole, I found some very early evidence of strain names. Chillaby (Jallaby?) c1695, aka King William’s White Barb, who sired a horse named Greyhound c1700 out of “Natural Barb Mare” Slugey (Slaji? Saluki?). Lord knows what else you might find in there, but I ought to get some work done today!
Neither are strain names IMO. Chillaby = Shalabi, a turkish term, and Slugey is the north african greyhound..
Oh, also found the Bloody Shouldered Arab, from Aleppo, was from the “Gordeen” strain. My imagination isn’t covering that one.
One day I would love to compile a list of the Arabs, Barbs and Turks in the GSB; TB pedigrees were my first love, and I sort of fell into Arabians partly through them.
King William’s White Barb was not the only horse called Chillaby to make it to England – there was a later Chillaby, an Arabian, who was alive during the 1770s, and a notoriously vicious horse, so much so that he was kept chained to his manger. He was later rehabilitated and performed in the circus! He’s also found in the 1858 edition of the GSB as the sire of a colt by the Regulus daughter Flora, Regulus being a son of the Godolphin Arabian.
As for the Chillaby Barb, he may also have been known as the Woodstock Arabian, the Honywood Arabian, and the Williams’s Turk, which goes to show how utterly hopeless it is to disentangle some of the early TB records – and how confused the English were about Barbs, Turks and Arabians. I confess I did some gnashing of teeth earlier this week when reading Leo Africanus’ Della Discrittione dell’Africa and coming across his section on the Barbary horses (in Book 9), which he says are called Barbary horses in Europe, but are actually Arabians.
The strain names in English works can really stretch the mind, I have discovered. Monaki Shaduki is one which has me stumped for the substrain, and then I think I have seen a strain called Igithimieh or something like that, but have misplaced the chapter/article where I found it and can’t confirm at this point in time. But, yes, I definitely want to mine the GSB for Arabians who contributed to the development of the Thoroughbred!
(And don’t get me started on the Godolphin Arabian/Barb confusion – I have strong and vocal opinions about that.)
Kate: Ran across an interesting study just by googling different haplotypes for Thoroughbred and Arabian Y chromosomes. The author provides a reasonable answer to the confusion between Turkoman and Arabian descended bloodlines by simply positing that European horse dealers might simply not have been able to tell the difference between a Turkoman and a Purebred Arab. Interesting
Best
Bruce Peek
Bruce: But they also confused Barbs, and those horses looked quite different. I think they may have named them (at least sometimes) by the area or peoples from which they obtained them.
Kate, there is a list of foundation sires of the Thoroughbred here:
http://www.tbheritage.com/HistoricSires/FoundationSires/FoundSiresChron.html
Thank you, R. J.; tbheritage is a fantastic site. I also like the bloodlines.net site and used to use highflyer as well, but the latter seems to have disappeared, which is a pity, as it had some very interesting research on the early Oriental stallions and mares imported to England.
I meant to bring this point up earlier, but Jeanne’s comment is significant: at least in the western European breeding tradition, breeds were associated with geographic origin more than with distinctions of pedigree or ancestry. Think of virtually any breed name, from Hereford to Pekin to Hanoverian.
A horse from North Africa with two Arabian parents would be called a Barb when he arrived in England.
In a sort of reverse play, if your Shires were getting a bit heavy, you’d go to Scotland and bring back a stallion with more style and action; if your Clydesdales were a little light of bone you brought in one from Yorkshire. They retained their breed identities because they were bred in the relevant region.
Kate, I wonder if one of the web archive sites might not have that highflyer site you are missing. I’ll have a friend search.
Thanks, Michael. That says clearly what I was trying to say!
Jeanne, if your friend can find an archived version of highflyer, I would be thrilled; I couldn’t find one on the Wayback Machine myself, so I’m fairly sure it’s gone for good, but hope springs eternal!
Michael, yes, there is definitely that geographic link to breeds, which certainly lies behind some of the confusion (I wonder how much of the confusion comes from the shift from breed = country of origin to breed = ancestry and the resulting re-evaluation of the various imported horses). Of course, this practice of naming by geographic origin leads to some real headaches – take the case of horses labelled as Turks. Gervase Markham in Cavelarice (1607) dismisses from consideration as a Turk “those horses which haue beene bred in the Turks first dominions, as in the vpper parts of Scithia, Tartaria, Parthia, Medea, Armenia, Capadocia, & other his Asian countries”, and resolves instead to “write of the horse of Greece, which for as much as it is now vnder the Turkes gouernment, the Horses that come from thence are called of vs Turkes”. So that certainly makes it clear that a Turk did not necessarily mean a Turkoman, but any horse that hailed from the Ottoman Empire!
Aaand I coincidentally stumbled across the highflyer site this morning, as it had been shifted to a new address and is now part of the bloodlines.net site. So Jeanne, there is no longer any need to look for it, but nevertheless, thank you!
Looking forward to more information, then, Kate! Share a link to it?
Here it is, Jeanne: http://bloodlines.net/highflyer. Scrolling down to the section on Thoroughbred Breeding and Early Ancestors is where it becomes of relevance re Oriental horses. Highflyer makes a case for the Taffolet Barb being the same horse as Darcy’s Yellow Turk, imported from Morocco, and digs up information to determine the age of the Godolphin Arabian at his death (32). Probably best read with multiple tabs to bloodlines.net and tbheritage open to keep track of all the names!
Bruce, what study was that? I’d love to read it.
Kate, all I can say is thank God I am not seriously interested in researching the history of Thoroughbred racing as I am in the history of the Arabian breed. I would have drowned before I could walk!