The various catalogs prepared by Davenport
for his horses provide valuable information which is supplemental
to this book. There are several of these known to the writer.
The first, titled "The Davenport Desert Arabian Stud,"
is copyrighted 1906 according to its
cover page, but it has entries for several foals of
1907, so apparently the cover page is
used from a previous catalog. From the text of this catalog,
it would appear to be an explanation of an exhibition of Davenport's
1906 imports at Louisville, Kentucky.
The concluding paragraph is of interest to Arabian breeders
for the light it casts on why Arabian horses were imported to
America in the first place:
"Having decided to submit our imported
Desert Arabs to the judgment of Kentuckians, who are perhaps
the most critical horsemen in the world, we wish to explain
briefly that as yet these horses have not become fully acclimated,
some of them having been very sick a month before shipping to
Louisville. They have not been handled in this country for either
speed, action or show purposes of any kind. They have not even
been accorded the attention ordinarily given show horses. You
see them simply as they came from the hands of the Bedouins
with whom their sole merit lay in their weight, gallop and endure.
We ask you to bear these facts in mind in passing judgment upon
these horses. to judge them by the standards and under the classification
of a civilized horse show would be doing them an injustice.
We know however by experience and by the history of the accomplishments
of Arab blood that they are the most adaptable horse in the
world, and we believe that from the loins of this importation
will spring horses that will be champions of American horse
show rings in future days."
A second catalog of 1906-1907
is titled "The World's Fair Arabians," and is primarily
concerned with Davenport's horses that were not from the
1906 desert importation. Most of them
had ties to the Hamidie Society importation for the Chicago
World's Fair, 1893.
A third catalog for the years
1906-1907 is titled
"The Davenport Desert Arabian Stud 1906-1807,"
bearing on its cover a head picture of a grey horse framed in
oval lines. It contains much of the basic material used in the
subsequent catalog of 1909-1910.
The catalog of Davenport's horses most
commonly available at the present time is titled "Davenport
Desert Arabian Stud," On the upper left corner of the cover
page 1909 appears. On the upper right
corner, 1910. It was a fine service for
the Arabian breed when this catalog was reprinted in 1967 by
Best Publishing Company. This catalog appears to cover all of
Davenport's horses including the ones of Hamidie Society bloodlines,
but its primary concern, in general preservation as well as
individual horses, is with the 1906 importation.
Much of the introduction and many of the entries - especially
those concerning the imported mares - is identical with the
1906-1907 catalog.
the special value of these entries is that they were written
while the trip was still fresh in Davenport's mind.
Their shortcoming is that they do not
reflect modifications or corrections that might have been in
order because of contemplation or increased knowledge. Certain
of the stallion entries, however, notably of *HAMRAH,
*HALEB, *MUSON,
and *EL BULAD,
were expanded appropriately. One wishes the same could have
been done at least for other key individuals.
The Davenport importation documents:
When the Arabian Horse Club Registry was still located in Chicago,
the writer visited them with the hope that many questions could
be resolved by examination of original importation documentation
of early horses. The office staff was very cordial, but it seemed
that very little of such material had been preserved by the
Registry. Some years later, it developed that Mr. and Mrs. H.O.
Bell of Missoula, Montana, through a contact with the estate
of Peter Bradley, Davenport's
partner in many horse ventures, had possession of much of the
documentation for the Davenport horses, as well as a scrapbook
prepared by one of the participants in the trip. The writer
visited the Bells, who were most gracious, in February of 1968,
and was privileged to examine their material. The documentation
for the Davenport imported horses consisted of certificates
of desert origin and photographic copies of such certificates.
These were in Arabic and were not translated, but there were
notations on the backs of some of them containing pedigree information
which had apparently been done at the time of the expedition.
It was not practical to copy these notations completely, but
notes were made concerning them. Some time later, the writer
was furnished photocopies of the faces of the documents themselves
by Mr. M.G. Hickman, who had them from Mr. and Mrs. Bell. These
photocopies were subsequently translated as regards pedigree
information by Mr. M.A. El-Fouly, Ain Shamsa University, Cairo,
U.A.R., at that time doing graduate work at the University of
Illinois. (For information concerning verification of these
documents at the time of the Davenport importation, see "At
the Beginning." Arabian Horse News, May,
1974 issue.)
So, there are a number of primary sources
concerning the pedigrees of Davenport horses: (1)
the book, My Quest of the Arabian Horse, (2)
Davenport's catalogs of his desert horses, (3)
the notations on the back of the desert documents, and (4)
the El-Fouly translations of these documents.
In general, these sources agree pretty
well, but they do not agree completely. The strain of the sire
of *KUSOF, for instance, is given as
Mu'niqi-Hadruj on the back of the importation document, as Jilfan
Stam el Bulad in the catalogs, and is absent in the El-Fouly
translation. The studbook shows it to be "Maneghi Hedrug," It
is tempting to take the El-Fouly translation of the pedigree
as authoritative, but this may not be completely fair because
the other sources were written either during the trip or shortly
thereafter, and may well contain information which is not included
on the importation document itself.
A final source of information on the
Davenport pedigrees is Carl Raswan, most easily available as
an authority in his Index. He had direct personal knowledge
of many of the early Davenport horses, including one and possibly
more of the imported animals. He had apparently had contact
with the Bradley breeding establishment where many of the early
Davenports were kept and bred from. During an expedition to
Arabia in 1927, he had close contact
with the family of Akmet Haffez and even employed as a guide
a son of Akmet Haffez who had accompanied the Davenport party
in 1906. (43)
On the same trip he discussed the pedigrees of the horses obtained
by Davenport with the same Hashem Bey who had certified a number
of them and, in fact, had even owned *WADDUDA.
With several exceptions, Raswan confirmed the pedigrees of the
imported horses as registered by the Arabian Horse Club, and
frequently he gives interesting supplemental detail. As has
been noted, however, he is sometimes rather significantly in
contradiction with the importation documents and other sources.
It is difficult to make any simple, generalized
summary about the stallions of the 1906
Davenport importation. Most of them were juveniles at the time
of acquisition by Davenport. They were selected by a person
who did not have professional expertise as a horseman. There
were pedigree relationships between some of them, but for the
most part they appear to have been chosen as representatives
of differing strains of Bedouin horses. They were selected from
the relatively small number of "asil" horses in use by the Bedouins
in Davenport's time.
In America, a few did not leave enduring
lines, but most of them did. Some made major contributions to
the breed, most notably *HAMRAH, whose
daughters are a vital foundation of American breeding. Some
of the stallions *HAMRAH, *MUSON,*DEYR,
and *ABBEIAN - established sire lines
which are still active today, 75 years after their importation.
This is especially remarkable in the context of the historical
bias in American Arabian breeding in favor of the newly imported
sire. Out of fairness, it should be observed that there were
numerous excellent stallions of different bloodlines contemporary
with the finest Davenports which have unfortunately vanished
or dwindled in their influence.
The breeding history of the Davenport
stallions was so inseparable linked with that of their companion
mares of the importation that it is impossible to separate the
influence of the two groups. One of the greatest values of the
breeding resource which they jointly represented was that it
combined so well with non-Davenport bloodlines. Not their least
service was that matings by these animals with such bloodlines
sometimes provided the main opportunities for these bloodlines,
too, to be preserved as an American heritage.
A final contribution of the Davenport
stallions was that they projected a force within the limits
of the Davenport importation that continues the Davenport breeding
group into our current American Arabian breeding as a cohesive
genetic element containing the essentials of desert type and
character.
