Unconventional thoughts about a Global Asil Horse Registry

The idea of an international registry for Asil Arabian horses has been gaining momentum over the last few years, not only within Western Asil breeeders’ circles, but among Arab breeders as well.  Such a registry is long past due and would be the purists’ answer to WAHO.

Several Western organizations have come close to establishing such a registry. The largest effort so far is that of the Asil Club, which in addition to bloodlines represented in Western breeding [Egyptian bloodlines, various bloodlines from the USA, the Asil remaining lines from Crabbet in the UK, Weil-Marbach in Germany and Babolna in Hungary] also includes the horses of the Royal Arabian Studs of Bahrain and those of the Saudi Arabian government stud of Dirab.  In the 1970s, the Asil Club has also considered adding the Tunisian horses to its list, and is currently considering adding the Syrian horses (more on this move later, and what I think of it).

Then there is Al Khamsa. While their roster is not the most inclusive (indeed, they tend to consider only those horses whose descendants came to the USA or Canada), it is without a doubt the most serious effort at researching the horses’ background and establishing their authenticity.

Most recently, the Institute for the Desert Arabian Horse has been trying to establish such a global registry of Asil horses, but I am not abreast of the latest developments on this front [I need to call Anita].

A few years earlier, US and European preservation breeders like Rosemary Byrnes Doyle and Hansi Heck-Melnyk to name just a few, gathered in Abu Dhabi during the WAHO conference there, to discuss the idea of an International Registry of Desert Arabian Horses (not sure if that was the exact name they gave it). They got a lot of initial traction, but the effort ultimately faltered because of the difficulty to reach an agreement on what is the definition of an Asil horse. The reason why they felt that a definition was important was because it allowed to determine which bloodlines were Asil and which ones were not.

The matters was an easy one as long as  Asil Arabian bloodlines bred in Egypt and in the West are concerned.  Al Khamsa and the Asil Club, and other too, are in near complete agreement about which horses are Asil or Al Khamsa eligible, and which ones are not.

But what about the others, the ones still in the countries of Arabia Deserta, the original homeland of these horses? What about the Bahraini horses? It is complicated. What about the North African horses? It gets more complicated. The Syrian horses? Even more complicated. And the Iraqi horses? Here ones reaches levels of complication never attained before. And I am not even mentioning potential Asil horses from Iran, Turkey, Libya, and other countries on the fringes of Arabia Deserta.  

How can one ascertain the purity of these horses in an environment where, until recently, such knowledge was transmitted orally, and where opinions and sources of information differ tremendously?  One cannot help being drawn into issues of legitimacy, which complicates the task even further. You’d hear things like: “Who are Western breeders to determine if our horses are Asil or not?” or even better: “We Arabs know more than Westerners do, because these are Arabian horses”.  

In my opinion, both Arabs and Westerners are equally well positioned to do the job of identifying and preserving the world population of Asil Arabian horses. This is why they need to work hand in hand, and why they need each other. Westerners are well positioned because they already undertook this registration effort in their own countries, with some success (e.g., Al Khamsa, Asil Club). Arabs are well positioned because their standards of purity are different from those of the Westerners, and because one needs to abide by these standards if one wants to preserve the horses of the Bedouin the way Bedouins did for centuries. That said, not all Arabs are Bedouins (far from it), and Arabs do not have the monopoly of knowledge on Arabian horses..  

That said, debates about definitions are endless. One could discuss forever what purity means, and if desert-bred automatically means Asil, and what is Asil, and who decides what is Asil and what is not, and according to what criteria, etc… The discussion is fascinating, but there is a point of diminishing returns, a tipping point where discussion need to end and action needs to start, even at the expense of precise rules of the game.

My next post will offer a simple framework which we can use to assess the purity of desert-bred Arabian horses, for inclusion in a Global Asil Horse Registry. Feedback is welcome.