When Davenport's desert importation of
1906 arrived in this country, it included seventeen stallions
and colts, eight mares, and two fillies. Davenport may not have
realized it at the time, but the proportion of stallions to
mares was not out of line for Arabian breeding here where plenty
of farms have more stallions than mares. For some strange reason,
a surplus of desirable males seems to be intrinsic in the breed.
There was a wide difference in age for
the horses imported. Some, such as *HALEB
#25 and *MUSON #27, were mature animals
of breeding age at the time of importation, and they were probably
intended to fill an immediate role as breeding stock upon arrival
in the U.S.
Most of the stallions, however, were
little more than colts. Eleven of the 14 imported males that
were ultimately registered were three or under at the time of
importation. The actual cost of importing an equine in Davenport's
day was not great. Young stallions in the desert were not expensive,
and costs of transportation itself were low enough so that several
donkeys were brought along on the trip home as well as one non-purebred
horse which had specifically been purchased for resale in the
U.S. (BEAMING STAR was purchased at dockside
by Jack Thompson, one of Davenport's party in the expedition.
He was not included in Davenport's count of the imported horses
and was apparently not considered by him to be a part of the
importation. He was shipped to America by separate vessel, arriving
several days after the other horses. He was not registered by
the Arabian Horse Club, but was registered without apparent
question by the Jockey Club as an Arabian.)
It is hard to know for sure why Davenport
purchased so many juvenile stallions. Several possible explanations
come to mind. In the first place, that may have been mainly
what he was able to choose from. Several writers and travelers
have commented upon the scarcity of adult stallions in the desert.
Another consideration is that he may have had a certain quota
of horses to fill. One of the purposes of the trip was to acquire
a nucleus of horses for the eventual establishment of a Cavalry
Remount Stud, a utilization which would have required a plentiful
supply of stallions. In this context, some of the stallions
may have been purchased with their eventual use as remount sires
more in mind than possible use in a purebred breeding program.
Davenport may have felt that by purchasing a relatively large
number of young horses in the desert he was bound to get some
good ones. He was surely enough of a horseman to know that judging
colts is a difficult matter under the best of circumstances.
In the desert, horses are raised on different rations and fed
differently than the ones he was used to seeing. He could reasonably
have selected a likely group of colts, expecting to keep a few
and to let the others go for remount service.
It would be nice if we knew more of what
Davenport looked for in an Arabian horse. He does comment that
most of the desert horses he saw were about 14.2 hands high
and that he wanted taller horses for this country, and also
that his party had seen several mares which it could not buy
and that colts had been obtained from such mares. Generally
speaking, the evaluations placed by the Bedouins on their own
horses were very important to him. There was obvious constant
deference to the opinions of Akmet Haffez, his Bedouin blood
brother and guide. He tells us frequently of the reactions of
others of his Bedouin contacts to the horses. Thus *ABEYAH
is more valuable because of the Bedouin appraisal of her head
and speed, *ENZAHI is retained rather
than sold because a Bedouin offers a good price for her, *RESHAN
is the more valued because the Bedouins have offered 30 camels
for her, (1) *URFAH
is prized because her owner refuses to sell her. He takes obvious
pride in the dismay expressed by Hashem Bey that *HALEB
is to be exported to America.
A related factor of importance to Davenport
was that his purchases should be acceptable to the Bedouins
for breeding purposes. Davenport writes that they called such
horses "chubby," apparently a term which is synonymous with
"asil." In describing the purchase process by which horses were
obtained, he tells how each Bedouin seller was required to take
an oath to God in the presence of his sheikh - and often others
as well - that the horse being sold was "chubby." The sheikh
then placed his seal upon the sales document. The importance
of the oath and seal in the semi-literate Bedouin society was
great. Davenport writes about one would-be seller of a pretty
filly who in great disturbance backed out of the sale when confronted
with the oath requirement, say that the filly was "chubby" for
Davenport, but not for God. (2) A somewhat
similar ceremony is followed in our own culture, where oaths
are taken upon the Bible.
Davenport's physical standards, for Arabian
horses were no doubt, rather complex. We know that he had read
some of the Blunt
writing, which was convincing, although much of it was written
when the Blunts themselves were beginners with Arabian horses.
There was other literature on
Arabian horses in his time, and he can be assumed to have been
familiar with that, too. More important, in his own stable he
had a number of Arabian horses. As far as knowledge is concerned,
one live horse's worth a whole shelf of books.
It is unlikely that
Davenport had any single mental pattern into which he felt
all Arabian horses should fit. His book, My Quest of the
Arabian Horse, and his later catalogs indicate that he was
well aware that the Bedouins divided their horses into different
families or "strains"
and that each family had its own distinctive characteristics.
Thus he differentiates among the various strains of horses in
his importation and gives differing type descriptions for them.
In his own breeding of Arabian
horses, there is evidence that he deliberately bred some horses
of the same desert strain together - obviously, the strains
were of importance to him years before
Raswan wrote on the subject.
In order of their registration, the imported
Davenport stallions are as follows:
*HALEB #25: A
Mu'niqi-Sbaili by a Shueyman-Sbah, born 1901. He is described
by Davenport as brown, but the stud book entry for him in Volume
IV describes him both as brown and as bay with black points.
At the time of the importation, he was a five-year-old. *HALEB
appears to have been one of very few stallions to have left
Arabia which were used extensively at stud by the Bedouins.
Davenport writes of this horse that he
"was a present...to the Governor of Aleppo in recognition
of his liberal camel tax, and a present from the Governor of
Aleppo to Mr. Davenport...More than 200 mares are due to foal
to this stallion within a year between Nejd and Aleppo. ...Owing
to the fact that his mother and grandmothers for hundreds of
years past have been the spectacular mares of their age, this
stallion was looked upon by the Bedouins as their best horse
at the present time." (3)
*HALEB's
desert authentication document bears Davenport's handwritten
notation, "HALEB our great horse...this
horse was fairly worshiped by the bedowen (sic) of the Anezeh.
He was their pride."
The pictures of *HALEB
for the most part are unfortunate. It is mainly by breaking
them apart mentally into separate units of conformation that
the concept of a good horse begins to emerge, and one can begin
to understand what all the admiration was about. He emerges
from this type of analysis as an extremely well-balanced and
correct horse of moderate size and admirable muscularity. According
to Davenport, George Ford Morris, the horse artist, wrote that
"HALEB was the only horse he ever
saw that he could not fault." (4)
Most of *HALEB's skeleton is preserved
at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Of particular
interest are his cannon bones, which are short and give the
impression of great density. Their diameter at midpoint is not
great: *HALEB was obviously not a "big-boned"
horse, which would seem to indicate something about Bedouin
taste in this aspect of horse conformation.
*HALEB's skull
gives a better indication of what his head was like than any
photograph of the living horse which has been preserved. He
had a well-placed eye, a definite jibbah, and an unusual amount
of dish for a stallion. Some recent writers have taken the position
that the Bedouins of Arabia did not particularly like the dished
head even in mares and would not tolerate it in stallions. The
skull of *HALEB would seem to disprove
this proposition, at least for the 'Anazeh Bedouins of 1906.
These were the same tribes and even the same families of people
who historically had furnished horses to the great Egyptian
collectors - including Abbas Pasha, the Blunts, and studs of
continental Europe. It is even said that the family of Hashem
Bey, whose seal authenticated several of Davenport's imports,
including *HALEB, had furnished the Darley
Arabian to England. (5)
In the United States, *HALEB's
excellence received appropriate recognition. Albert Harris comments
that "he was pronounced best of the importation by horsemen
here." (6) At the time of the importation,
the Morgan horse in the United States was at a cross-roads as
to whether to retain its established identity as a compact,
general purpose horse or to modify more towards saddle horse
type. The proponents of classic Morgan type apparently saw to
it that *HALEB was entered at their show
at Rutland, Vermont in June, 1907, in competition for the horse
most closely resembling the original Justin Morgan type, and
his winning of the Justin Morgan Cup was considered a plus for
both the purist Morgan breeders and for the Arabian breed. (7)
Unfortunately, *HALEB's
career in his new country was a short one, as he died early,
said to have been poisoned. He is represented in the Arabian
Horse Club studbooks by only ten foals. One of these, *ENZAHI
#46, was imported at her mother's side in 1906, and three
(MELEKY, SALEEFY,
and SEBHA) were foaled in 1907, apparently
having been bred during Davenport's time in Arabia. Only six
were actually bred in the United States, the last of them being
born in 1909.
Some of the *HALEB
foals, notably SALEEFY, RHUA,
and MELEKY, appear in the pedigrees of
many of the finest current Arabian horses, but the unfortunate
truth is that he did not leave enough foals in this country
so that he could be fully evaluated as a stallion. In Arabia,
where he had been bred to many mares, evaluation would have
been easier. In fact, because so many mares had been bred to
him in the major horse-breeding area, between Aleppo and Nejd,
it is very possible that some more recent desert-bred imports
would show *HALEB as an ancestor if their
extended pedigrees were known.
*HALEB was one
of the Davenport stallions which were of the Mu'niqi or a Mu'niqi-related
strain. At the time of the importation, this was a strain of
horses which was especially prominent in Arabian breeding in
America through the development of the
Randolph Huntington breeding program
and its attendant promotion. Huntington was specifically interested
in the Mu'niqi strain, which he felt to be different from the
others and better. Davenport's Mu'niqi horses would have fitted
well into this program, and, in fact, two of *HALEB's
foals were out of Mu'niqi-strain Huntington mares, NAZLINA
#6 and NARKEESA #7. The NARKEESA
foal was a stallion, LEUCOSIA #50. He
in turn was bred to another Huntington Mu'niqiyah mare, KHALETTA
#9, to produce NARKHALEB #114.
Unfortunately, this extremely interesting example of stain breeding
in the Mu'niqi strain was not continued, although the descending
line does exist in current pedigrees.
The other of *HALEB's
foals from a Huntington Mu'niqiyah mare was METOECIA
#51. She seems to have gone to W.R. Brown's Maynesboro
Stud where she was bred to a stallion of her own strain (KHALED
#5) once. She had four other foals. None of her foals
reproduced, so that line, like so many others in early Arabian
breeding, came to nothing. The same essential result happened
with the other Davenport stallions of Mu'niqi or Mu'niqi-related
strains (*EL BULAD,
*KUSOF, and, probably, *GOMUSA).
They had foals, and they made their contributions to development
of an "American Arabian," but they did not have opportunities
to leave lines of their own strain. According to the theory
of strain breeding, one reason is probably that the Mu'niqi
type was not what American breeders found attractive, and consequently
selection operated against it.
*HALEB's surviving
lines out of non-Mu'niqi mares trace through one daughter from
*HADBA (Meleky) and two from *URFAH
(Rhua and Saleefy). These were discussed in detail in
"There is Nothing Like a Dame," in the January, 1981
issue of The Arabian Horse Journal, under the names of
the producing mares, and there seems little point in going over
the material again, beyond saying that he is represented in
current Arabian breeding by many beautiful animals tracing to
him.
*HOURAN #26, bay
stallion foaled 1904, "sire a Hadban-Enzekhi; dam a Kehilan-Tamri;
bred by the Gomussa Tribe of the Sebaa Anazeh." (8) *HOURAN
is something of a mystery horse. Several pictures have been
published of several different horses which were supposed to
be *HOURAN, but none of these really
fit his markings as indicated in his registration entry.
As a sire, *HOURAN
had 13 get, making him one of the more prolific of the imported
Davenport stallions. He is represented in modern pedigrees through
his daughters, BINT NIMNARAAH
# 452 and HAARANMIN #451, both out of
the Huntington Mu'niqiyah mare, NIMNAARAH
#129, to which numerous current Arabians trace. These
two mares are particularly evident in many pedigrees developed
at the Manion Canyon stud farm where the foundation mares YDRISSA
and OURIDA were daughters of BINT
NIMNARAAH and HAARANMIN,
respectively. Notable horses came from these bloodlines, including,
RIFRAFF, RAFOURID,
RADIO, and IMAGIDA,
recognized as one of the greatest daughters of IMAGE
and dam herself of RAFI, IMARAFF,
and GIDA. In recent years, Manion Canyon
has made extensive use of WINRAFF+, who
traces to *HOURAN through OURIDA.
A different line of breeding derived
from *HOURAN via BINT
NIMNARAAH and her daughter YDRISSA
is found in Mrs J.E. Ott's historic mare SIRRULLA
(Sirecho/Drissula). This pedigree has additional interest
in that it preserves the only line of descent from SULTAN,
an Egyptian-bred stallion of the 1930's.
*MUSON #27, grey
stallion foaled 1899, "Sire, a Shueyman-Sbah; Dam, a Kehilan-al-Maisan
bred by the Roala Tribe of the Sebaa Anazeh." (9) Of the
horses in the Davenport importation, *MUSON
was probably the most striking individual in that he
was a "listening" horse. Davenport considered this a strain
characteristic rather than an individual trait. He writes a
charming story about it to the effect that a certain mare in
an Arab encampment was observed by the Bedouins to be "listening"
to some unknown sound. That night the camp was attacked by enemy
raiders. Thereafter the mare's descendants were called "listening
horses" after her behavior. (10)
*MUSON apparently
showed the disposition to "listen" very strongly, George Ford
Morris, the artist, wrote of him
"...a beautiful and characteristic specimen of the
Kehilan al Maisan or Listening Horses strain of blood. Have
seen this stallion led out by his devoted attendant - the Nubian
slave boy that Homer also brought home with him from the desert
- and invariably assume the same pose. Head held high, ears
pricked forward, and the eyes intent on some evidently far-off
object, he would seem utterly oblivious of what was going on
in his immediate surroundings. I found him so interesting that
I took a number of photographs of him in addition to making
sketches and studies." (11)
*MUSON is an example
of the fact that there were types of Arabian horses in "Arabia
Deserta" which are seldom preserved in the Arabian horses as
known in this country and Europe. Many strains survive as names
only, scattered through pedigrees, and no longer correlating
in any systematic way to how horses actually appear. The Jilfan
type, for instance, is almost unknown in modern breeding. Typical
examples of the strain have been imported but, they have been
blended in with other bloodlines to the point of extinction
as a type.
In *MUSON's case,
the strain aptitude for "listening" was very strongly embodied,
and time has not completely blotted it out. In his catalog of
1909-1910, Davenport writes, "A few colts have been born,
sired by him, in America and they all bear traces of his marked
individuality." (12) In all, he only
had six foals, the last being the products of the season of
1909. Only one of these left progeny, that being LETAN
#86 (out of *Jedah #44), but LETAN showed
the *MUSON influence very strongly. Pictures
of LETAN indicate that he, too, was a
"listener," and the characteristic crops up from time to time
in his descendants, even when there is no reinforcing line-breeding
to bring it out.
It is probably that the "listening" attitude
has more to do with a usage pattern of nervous energy than it
does with conformation. Horses that do it are usually very quick
to respond to any physical stimulation. In *MUSON's
case, it was also associated with grey color and nicely notched
ears. These characteristics were often passed on to his descendents,
too, but they are not invariably linked to the "listening" characteristic.
The pictures of *MUSON
show that he had a much more erect head carriage than is ordinarily
expected in a Kuhaylan, which he was. His sire, however, was
a Shuwayman: according to Raswan, a Saqlawi-related strain of
the Kuhaylan group noted for its elegance and large eyes. (13)
It may be that part of the neck carriage came from this aspect
of his pedigree. Another possibility is that the neck carriage
may have been more a consequence of the "listening" posture
than of actual conformation. Because of the eye structure of
the equine, horses that look into the distance as "listening"
horses do are compelled to raise their heads and noses, placing
their necks in an upright position, regardless of any other
aspect of their conformation. Movies of *MUSON's
son LETAN, also a "listener," show him
to have had a rather typical Kuhaylan shoulder and neck.
*MUSON is represented
in current Arabian horses only through his son, LETAN.
Among LETAN's sons were ORIENTAL
#529, whose son MUSTAKIM produced MUSTAFA,
sire of KIMFA; AKIL
#552, especially noted as a broodmare sire; DHAREB,
a central sire in current Davenport breeding; and KASAR,
sire of EHWAT-ANSARLAH,
NAHAS, SHAIBA,
and the historic mare, GAMIL. (Concerning
GAMIL, see under *URFAH
in "There is Nothing Like a Dame," January, 1981, issue,
Arabian Horse Journal.)
LETAN had several
daughters to note. Two that had particular influence on the
breed were MAKINA, dam of ALLA
AMARWARD, and BABE
AZAB, through which the line of
*WERDI comes into prominence in current
show horses, such as THE JUDGE,
FAME, SAKE and
her produce, and FERANAKA+ and her produce.
(Concerning BABE
AZAB, see under *WERDI
in "There is Nothing Like a Dame," January, 1981 issue,
Arabian Horse Journal.) Another branch of he BABE
AZAB line preserves the Kuhaylan-Krush
group within 100% Davenport breeding.
*MUSON is represented
by several currently active sire lines including those through
ORIENTAL, AKIL
and DHAREB.
*HAMRAH #28, bay
stallion born 1904, by a Hamdani-Simri out of URFAH
#40, a Saqlawiyah-Jidraniyah. *HAMRAH's
dam was a distinguished mare in the desert. Akmet Haffez told
Davenport she was the finest Saqlawiyah-Jidraniyah owned by
the 'Anazeh, and, in fact, she was not parted with willingly
by her Bedouin owner, but only by force after Davenport had
already bought her two sons, *HAMRAH
and *EUPHRATES. Davenport speaks of *HAMRAH
as having a "racy" appearance and comments that, "He seemed
finer than others we had of the same age. There was an inherited
dignity which the rest did not have." He took pride that
*HAMRAH and his brother, *EUPHRATES,
were both "sired by the great Hamdani-Simri chestnut horse
that the Anazeh are so proud of and thus combined the two rare
breeds of the desert, the Seglawi Jedran and the Hamdani Simri."
(14)
In the Davenport catalog 1909-1910, *HAMRAH
is described as he was closer to maturity.
"This young horse is rapidly rounding into one of the
best of the entire importation....He is a horse of immense power
and the finest possible action under saddle in the gallop. He
would impress you at once as being a race horse and in an impromptu
trial of a mile he ran the last quarter in twenty-nine seconds
as a three-year-old without a day's preparation and in fact
never having run before at top speed. Many visitors prefer him
to any of the importation..." (15)
The picture of *HAMRAH
in the catalog shows him to have had a short back, sloping shoulder,
long forearm, close coupling, and a very long hip. *HAMRAH
was by far the most successful of the Davenport stallions. He
sired 53 foals - a phenomenal number for that day.
Although *HAMRAH
had sons which were successful at stud, he is chiefly
noted for his daughters, of which there were 34. Mainly through
them, he seems almost everywhere in American pedigrees. In a
randomly selected sample of 80 pedigrees from the Arabian Horse
Registry studbook, Vol. XXX (1976), he was present in 69 pedigrees.
Of these, only 18 had four or less lines to him. Thirty had
five to nine lines, five had 15 to 19 lines, three had 20 to
29 lines, and one had 38. In a genetic study of the Arabian
horse in America through 1946, Dr. Ameen Azher calculated the
relationship to the breed of stallions and found that *HAMRAH
had the highest relationship to the breed of all stallions
studied. (16)
Most of *HAMRAH's
breeding career was at the Hingham Stock Farm of Peter Bradley
- Davenport's partner in the desert horse venture. At Bradley's,
he sired 44 of his 53 foals. To select one superior stallion
and then to stay with that horse consistently was something
new in Arabian breeding in America, but Bradley did it although
he had a number of alternative stallions that could also have
been used. It was through the breedings to *HAMRAH
at Hingham that most of the key Davenport mare lines were perpetuated,
and possibly one of the reasons for *HAMRAH's
great success was that the mares to which he was bred were such
a sound foundation for Arabian breeding. The other great stallion
of that day, *ABU ZEYD # 110 - also imported
by Davenport but from England - had about the same number of
foals as *HAMRAH, but much less impact
on the breed. Perhaps part of the difference was in the mares
to which he was bred.
Among the *HAMRAH
daughters of particular note were MOLIAH
(dam of
HANAD, MONICA,
FERDIRAH, NIRAH,
and KIRAH), HASIKER
(dam of MAKINA [dam of ALLA
AMARWARD], and ANTARAH
[dam of DHAREBAH,
DHARANAH, EL
ALAMEIN, DHARANTEZ,
and TARA]), MORFDA
(dam of STAMBL), SEDJUR
(dam of AKIL and
BINT SEDJUR),
ADOUBA (dam of ORIENTAL),
FASAL
(dam of MARKADA, KASAR,
SALAN, FASALINA,
and CARAVAN), KOKHLE
(dam of KOKHLESON), TAMARINSK
(dam of BABE
AZAB), POKA
(dam of AATIKA and TRIPOLI).
If these and others of *HAMRAH's get
were taken out of the breed, there would be little left, and
what there was would be missing some of the brightest ornaments
of American Arabian breeding.
Through multiple crosses, *HAMRAH
is strongly represented in all presently living 100% Davenport
Arabians. There is also a *HAMRAH sire
line today in American Arabian breeding, through his son, KILHAM,
to NAZEROUX to ASIL.
*EL BULAD
#29, grey stallion born 1903, "Sire a Kehilan-Ajuz, Dam a
Julfan Stam al Boulad." As Davenport was on shipboard en
route to Arabia, he wrote to a friend, "I am going to bring
some of the greatest Jelfons that run the 5 hour races."
(18) In *EL BULAD
he had his Jilfan. He wrote of him,
"This young horse is one of rare beauty and conformation.
Indeed his well-formed body threatens to eclipse even that of
HALEB. His lines are extremely pleasant
and his bone is good and flat. He has shown great ability at
the trot though a frictionless galloper. His mother was a war
mare of much repute and it took a great deal of influence on
the part of Akmet Haffez to persuade the branch of the Anezeh
near Membij to sell him. He had been in war as a scant two-year-old
and as a result will always carry a scar on his right jaw...The
Jilfans are noted for the peculiar slant of the shoulder and
hip and this horse is a striking example of that peculiarity."
(19)
EL BULAD
eventually ended up in the ownership of Albert Harris. Mr. Harris'
1922 catalog, "The Arabian Horses of Kemah," has some
observations about him as a 19 year old:
"A few years ago on a mountain
road in Virginia a motor truck rounding a bend struck him in
the flank, tearing a hole that would have put most horses out
of commission forever. Since then, he has played polo, besides
being hard ridden and driven for many years, in the stud has
sired many wonderful colts, and today stands straight and clean
without a puff or blemish, except for the scars on his cheek
and flank, and still has the courage to do it all over again.
A child is safe in his stall and anyone can ride or drive him.
He is the head of our stud." (20)
Elsewhere, Mr. Harris tells of a Scottish
horseman -- probably a new farm employee -- who "had been
handling and training other horses for years" and was starting
with the Harris Arabians. When Mr. Harris asked him,
"'What do you think of
our little horses, Mac?' a sly smile stole over his face as
he replied, 'They are not so little as they look.'
'Well, no, perhaps not,' I said, 'but there is that stallion,
EL BULAD; you
must think he is small.' Yes,
I did until I rode him and then I thought him as fine a gentleman
as I had ever met.'" (21)
*EL BULAD
sired 15 registered Arabian foals, and enough of them were used
in Arabian breeding so that he is present in numerous pedigrees
of current production. By all means, his best-known foal was
DAHURA #90, out of NANSHAN
#13, by Garaveen out of Nejdme. DAHURA
produced 17 foals and through them became one of the most widely
distributed foundation mares in American breeding. In an examination
of the pedigrees for a randomly selected sample of 80 registrations
in Vol. XXX (1976) of the Arabian Horse Registry studbooks,
she was present at least once in 37 pedigrees (or 46.25% of
the total examined), and in 20 of 37 (25% of the total) she
was present at least twice.
