Windt
im Wald Farm Geauga County, Northeast
Ohio since 1995
Articles of History:
From the Khamsat Vol 9, Num 4, Nov/Dec '92
Cover Story:
excerpted from THE
ARAB
HORSE
Spencer Borden, New York, 1906
Maidan is the last of the great horses that came
to England from Arabia through India, whose name can have our especial
attention. Many who knew him, including Lady Anne Blunt and the Hon.
Miss Dillon, place him even above Kismet, and the opinion is concurred
in by others who knew him only by his offspring. Maidan was foaled in
1869 in Nejd, a chestnut (as was Kismet), said by some to have been
a Manakhi Hedruj, though this was doubted by others because of his great
beauty, the Manakhi being a family of rather plain appearance, though
great race horses He was brought to Bombay by Abdur Rhaman in 1871,
and sold to Captain Johnstone, who immediately commenced racing him,
though the colt was but two years old. Captian Fisher and Major Brough
were also interested in Maidan; and as these English officers had tested
him they were free in taking the long odds which were laid against him
by the Australian sports who came to the races and were ready to lay
against an untried colt. It is said that after Maidan won the Punjab
Cup, the Australians had hardly money enough left to pay their passage
home. For three years, from 1871 to 1874, Maidan continued his winning
career, until no further matches could be made for him. Then, at 5 years
of age, he was sold to Lieut. Col. Brownlow of the 72d Highlanders,
as a charger. Brownlow was a heavyweight of nineteen stone (266 lbs.)
with his equipment, yet Maidan carried him for twelve years in campaigns
through the mountainous regions of India and Afghanistan, until the
soldier was killed in the fight at Kandahar, at the end of the famous
forced march of Lord Roberts's Army from Cabul, three hundred miles
distant. After carrying Brownlow for ten years Maidan won the Ganges
Hog Hunt Cup, and also a four mile steeplechase across difficult country.
At seventeen years of age, on the death of Brownlow, Maidan was bought
by Lord Airlie who again put him to racing where he won a number of
races both on the flat and steeplechases. He was then sold to Captain
the Hon. Eustace Versey, who bought him to take to England. Leaving
India on the troopship Jumna Maidan got as far as Suez, where
the ship met the expedition going to the relief of Suakim, where Osman
Digna was harassing the garrison, and was pressed into service as a
transport for troops to Massowah, near the lower end of the Red Sea.
So it happened that the old race horse and charger
had his journey lengthened, to the degree that he stood on his feet
one hundred days without once lying down, before he reached Marseilles.
Yet Capt. Vesey raced him successfully at Pau, and afterward in England.
He won a steeplechase when twenty-two years of age. When he had to be
destroyed, because of a broken leg, at twenty-three, he was absolutely
sound. In 1890 he was described in the London Live Stock Journel,
as
"fresh and well, with immense
bone below the knee (he measured eight inches) and as clean in the
legs as a four year old, notwithstanding the fact that he was hunted
in Suffolk last year."
[ED NOTE: Maidan is an
Al Khamsa Foundation horse. He is the sire of the imported mare *Nazli
(x *Naomi) who was imported by Randolph Huntington in 1893. That same
year Mr. Huntington also imported *Nimr, a son of *Nazli sired by the
Al Khamsa Foundation horse, *Kismet. Mr. Huntington proceeded to line
breed to *Nazli and her blood forms a strong basis for the Drissula
family in Al Khamsa breeding (See Khamsat Anthology, page 28). The foundation
horse information on Maidan in AL KHAMSA
ARABIANS (1983) is as follows:
MAIDAN cb
1869 chestnut stallion, imported in 1871 to India by the agheyl, Abd
Ar-Rahman. Imported in 1885 to England by the Hon. Eustace Vezey. Sire:
db, Dam: a Mu'niqiyah-Hadrujiyah. Strain: Mu'niqi- Hadruj. Maidan is
the sire of *Nazli.
According to the registration application for
*Nazli at the Arabian Horse registry, Maidan was said to be a "Managhi-Hedruj."
This agrees with Randolph Huntington, who imported *Nazli, and Carl
Raswan. No strain is given for Maidan in the General Stud Book, which
does give the following transfers of ownership: purchased "of Abd er
Rahman, of Bombay, by Colonel Brownlow in 1871 ... He was then sold
to Major Brough, who sold him to Captain Fisher. He won the Kadir Cup
(the blue ribbon of Pigsticking in India), and was then purchased by
Lord Airlie. He was three years in Afghanistan, and was imported into
England by the Hon. Eustace Vezey." HUNTINGTON
ancestral element.]