The Young Prince and
Princess by
Rimsky-Korsakov from Scheherazade
Windt im Wald Farm
Geauga County, Northeast Ohio
since 1995
El
Emir DB:
El Emir DB was anything
but "pretty", but the name and tribe of his breeder
are on record, as is his strain. Both he and his contemporary
Dwarka DB appear in some modern Crabbet pedigrees through
Dargee.
Dwarka
DB:
Dwarka DB was registered
as "a Kehilan bred by the Anazeh," which was not sufficient
for acceptance to the Blue List. Both the Asil Club
and Al Khamsa today accept him as "asil."
El
Deree DB:
Unlike El Emir or Dwarka,
the purity of El Deree DB was never seriously called
into question, although far less was known about his
origin. Neither his year birth nor his breeder are on
record.
Davenports:
The Davenports as a closed
breeding group have passed the test of time amazingly
well They probably have the most valid claim to being
"asil," and they are the closest thing to a "straight
American" Arabian, i.e., an Arabian bred in America
of original imported desertbred stock. Kuhaylat mares,
left to right: Soubrette CF, Cantabide CF, and Challis
CF demonstrate the uniformity of type in Davenport horses.
Palas:
The Russian-bred Palas
is a prime example of the way the Polish studs incorporated
imported sires into their own breeding program and developed
it without fundamentally changing it. To confuse things
a little more, Palas, though bred in Russia, was an
Egyptian.
Nazeer:
Hardly anyone would deny
that Nazeer was the most significant Egyptian sire of
the 20th century. But many Egyptian breeders don't realize
that he was 25 percent Crabbet through his maternal
grandsire Kazmeen.
Oran:
Oran, foaled in 1940,
was the last Crabbet stallion that traced exclusively
to the original horses imported by the Blunts.
Skowranek:
Skowranek was a major
influence in more than one way. Bred in Poland, he was
the only Crabbet foundation horse not imparted from
Arabia or Egypt; he significantly changed the look of
the Crabbet bred horse; and he sparked the controversy
about the Polish bloodlines that resulted in the Blue
List and its successors.
Dargee:
Dargee was the second
outside stallion brought into Crabbet Park during Lady
Wentworth's time. Although his pedigree was mostly Crabbet,
he also carried lines to El Emir DB, Dwarka DB, and
Mootrub DB, and to the mares Ishtar DB and Kesia DB.
His Crabbet-bred offspring are considered "pure Crabbet"
purely by virtue of having been bred there, as were
Skowronek's.
Mikeno:
Mikeno, bred at Hanstead
Stud, was of entirely Blunt breeding except for one
line to Dwarka DB and one to Maidan DB, in other words,
to an even larger extent of Crabbet breeding than Dargee.
He has the distinction of having sired the very last
asil (i.e. Skowronek free) Crabbet/OE horses in Britain,
who were out of a full sister to Dargee.
Darjeel:
British National Champion
Darjeel was sired by Dargee out of a mare tracing to
Nuhra DR, a Bahraini mare imported to Britain in 1939.
He was the first and last outside stallion used on Crabbet's
mares, bringing in yet another new bloodline during
the final years.
Padrons
Psyche:
Padrons Psyche carries
a high percentage of Crabbet blood, both through Padron's
dam Odessa, who was straight Crabbed/OE, and through
his Russian ancestors. He is also a perfect example
of Crabbet breeding with a size and type that very much
embodies what Lady Wentworth bred for.
The
Shah:
The Babson horses carry
a strong percentage of old Blunt breading. The straight
Babson stallion The Shah (Fabah x Blint Fada), when
bred to mares of Crabbet breeding often sired perfect
examples of the pre-Lady Wentworth "old" Crabbet type.
Nureddin
II:
The purity of *Nureddin
II has been called into question because of his size
and his plain heard. But as he was bred by the Blunts,
who never compromised purity, there should be no question
about this, and it should be remembered that many early
desertbreds and their descendants did not conform to
the modern ideal of extreme type.
When we speak about "preservation breeding"
today, we should remember that once upon a time, Arabian breeding by
definition was preservation breeding.
Not all that long ago, the Arabian horse was primarily an ingredient
that helped to shape other breeds, to the extent that there isn't one
light horse breed today which doesn't to some degree owe its existence
to the Arabian. The Thoroughbred, with its nearly all-Arabian background
but, through selection, totally different appearance, is the most prominent
case. It should also remind us that any horse breed is shaped first
and foremost by its breeders, according to the purpose it is bred for.
That is why the Thoroughbred looks the way it does: selected purely
for speed, it is the world's most efficient equine running machine.
If you look far enough back in its pedigree, you will find that it is
almost totally Arabian - what little there is in the way of non-Arabian
blood hardly signifies. Yet it does not look like an Arabian - with
a few exceptions, because the blood is there and will from time to time
assert itself. Mostly, it looks like a horse made to run fast. And,
incidentally, those who complain that French racing Arabians tend to
look like Thoroughbreds should keep that in mind. If you select horses
by speed only, that's what you get - even when their pedigrees are pure
Arabian. I am certain that it would be perfectly possible, by selection
only, to breed a pure Arabian draft horse. Only who would want to? And
eventually, if selected purely for strength of bone and the ability
to pull heavy loads, it would no longer look like an Arabian.
If you're still skeptical, take a moment to remember that all dog breeds,
no matter what shape or size, ultimately trace in all lines of their
descent to wolves. That should tell you something about the power of
selection for a purpose.
The very first breeders of Arabian horses outside the desert didn't
just breed Arabians for their own sake. Their chief aim was to create
a nucleus of pure Arabian blood for upgrading local stock. Wilfrid and
Lady Anne Blunt, for example, whose Crabbet Stud influenced Arabian
breeding around the world more than any other private Arabian stud in
history, didn't at first set out to breed Arabians. Their original intention
was to bring in fresh Arabian blood to cross into the Thoroughbred breed.
After getting to know the Arabian horse, they became so convinced of
its superiority that they changed their minds - and history. You might
say the Blunts were the first preservation breeders.
In many other countries, there were people like this, though few of
them had a similar impact. But this is where the power of selection
comes once more into the picture. Different breeders have different
ideas, and as a result, different types of Arabian developed in different
countries.
Now a newcomer may well say "Huh?" to that, but yes, there was a time
when you could tell a Polish, a Spanish; an Egyptian, and an English
Arabian apart just by looking at them. Something that, with the rapidly
increasing interchange of breeding stock between countries and even
continents, is becoming more and more difficult. The Arabian is fast
developing into an international show horse with a melting-pot pedigree
and standardized looks that mostly include a dished face, a long neck,
a flat topline, and thin legs. Why? Because the same group of international
judges who judge all over the world, tends to put this type first. So,
naturally, this is what everybody who wants to win, tries to breed.
This is where preservation breeding comes into the picture. All preservation
breeders, whatever they call themselves and whatever their preference,
have two things in common: they don't run with the crowd, and they see
the need to preserve something that is rapidly getting lost. This "something,"
however, can vary. Some groups, like Germany's IGMAL, may simply be
concerned with preserving the essential qualities of the Arabian horse
rather than specific bloodlines, but most "preservationists" focus on
particular bloodlines.
This is where the problems start.
The very first preservation group was defined by the Blue List, today's
Al Khamsa, and its European-based cousin, the Asil Club. The aim here
was pretty straightforward: purity of blood. Pedigree research had came
up with the fact that if you go back far enough, many Arabian pedigrees
most particularly those of Poland - ended rather abruptly somewhere
in Poland with horses whose origin was not known. So, said some people,
how do we know these horses were actually Arabians? They could have
been anything. Some researchers even went so far as to claim that these
were local Polish horses, from which it followed logically that Polish
Arabians are not purebred. I don't want to repeat the whole debate here,
which is largely a matter of faith anyway; I would merely like to point
out that the obvious answer to the above question "How do we know these
horses were Arabians?" is quite simply: "Because their breeders and
the owners of their descendants at the time said they were." But the
fact is, due to the scarcity of surviving records of that time, it is
impossible to prove they were purebred (or, for that matter, that they
were not). As a result, those people who needed to be absolutely certain
that their horses traced to the desert in all lines of their pedigrees
started to register those where this was possible, and to breed them
"pure."
Again, this isn't as straightforward as it sounds. For one thing, the
various "asil" groups never managed to agree on which desertbred horses
to accept and which not. You may well ask what makes one desertbred
horse more acceptable than another, but I shall leave that problem to
those who deal with that sort of thing on a regular basis. The Blue
List, for example, excluded several quite well-documented horses purely
because of their looks, including the English foundation stallion El
Emir DB (who was spectacularly ugly but whose credentials were better
than those of some accepted horses) and the Crabbet-bred Nureddin II,
who should be above reproach since he was bred by the Blunts, who were
absolute sticklers for purity. Another British foundation stallion,
Dwarka DB, was accepted by some groups, but not by others. Oddly enough,
the Egyptian foundation horse El Deree DB, whose background was equally
muddy, was never even questioned. Or not so odd, because excluding El
Deree would mean excluding most of the really good straight Egyptian
horses, who make up the biggest part of the asil gene pool ....
Some people tried to go even further, creating several "purer than pure"
groups who focus on preserving only certain bloodlines - Abbas Pasha,
Blunt, Babson, and so on- from the asil group.
All perfectly legitimate; of course, but the problem should be glaringly
obvious. The asil group is limited right from the start, and, with the
Bedouins of Arabia no longer available as a source of new blood, it's
going to stay that way. Sooner or later, you end up inbreeding; even
sooner if you limit the bloodline pool even more. Purists usually argue
that asil Arabians are resistant to inbreeding, meaning that they can't
breed on undesirable characteristics because they have none. But even
if this is true, it still doesn't eliminate the basic problem, and the
smaller the group gets, the greater the problem becomes. Some exclusive
groups, like the Davenports, appear to function surprisingly well, possibly
because the original group of foundation stock wasn't too closely related
in the first place, and the horses certainly look more like the original
desert Arabians than our modern show horses.
On the other hand, I have seen representatives of another preservation
group, probably the smallest in existence, which was built up on the
basis of just two horses who were already closely related. Their descendants
sure look very much like their foundation ancestors - the question is,
however: is this desirable? It isn't as if every foundation horse, purely
by virtue of having lived a hundred years ago, is the epitome of Arabian
type and quality. This kind of preservation strategy leaves no room
for improvement.
Another problem that arises is that all these preservation groups tend
to exist in a kind of splendid isolation. We should ask ourselves, what
is the sense in preservation? For its own sake, it doesn't do any good
on the larger scale. Even the above-mentioned, extremely inbred individuals
of that small preservation group might actually be interesting as outcrosses,
but is anyone doing that?
In all the cases mentioned above, the uniting factor is "purity of blood"
- seen that way, at least the aril groups make sense; as long as you
believe that the Bedouins or the Egyptians are more trustworthy than,
say, the Poles. But the smaller splinter groups usually center on one
particular breeding program as their target for preservation, and this
has also been carried over into the non-asil population. We all remember
the days when "pure Polish" or "straight Russian" was the order of the
day, though this was more in the line of fads than of preservation,
since these groups hardly need such efforts - though there are pure
Polish fanciers who try to stay clear of later Russian imports to Poland,
like Palas.
The case in point here is, specifically, Crabbet. For one thing, it
needs preservation - more than any other bloodline group. The other
aspect is that preservation is getting increasingly more difficult.
In fact, it is a group that best exemplifies both the basics and the
problems of preservation breeding.
Crabbet Park was, without doubt, the most influential privately owned
Arabian stud farm in history, on a worldwide scale. None of today's
major breeding groups would be what they are now without Crabbet. Not
Egypt, not Russia, not Spain, not Poland, certainly not the United States.
Without Crabbet Park, there'd have been no Khemosabi, no Bey Shah, no
Padrons Psyche. Of all the great horses of the last century, there are
only a few Polish-bred horses that had no Crabbet blood at all. Nazeer,
the most influential Egyptian sire of the twentieth century, was 25
percent Crabbet-a fact conveniently forgotten by many straight Egyptian
breeders who are often the most violently anti-Crabbet. Because the
strange fact is that these bloodlines, which helped to shape Arabian
breeding around the world, went totally out of fashion within a bare
decade after Crabbet Park itself closed down for good.
The reason for this is the gradual shift in the direction of Arabian
breeding, on a global scale. Crabbet Park closed its gates in 1972;
it took another 10 years for the initially small world of Arabian horses
to expand into a worldwide "industry." Before that, each of the major
breeding countries had its own distinctive breeding group and there
were fairly few imports, resulting in the distinctive "national" types
mentioned earlier. In Britain, the breed was at this point totally dominated
by Crabbet bloodlines; the few imported horses were either absorbed
into that pool with barely a ripple, or kept rigidly among themselves.
These imports, most of them from Poland at the time, were already indicative
of a reaction by breeders who simply didn't like the prevalent type.
Like many other countries, Britain had remained almost unaware of the
fact that there were purebred Arabians in other countries as well (other
than the Crabbet "colonies" in Australia, America, or South Africa),
and once they noticed that there were, indeed, other and different types
of Arabians around, they divided into two groups: the Crabbet aficionados
who didn't think anything of the others, and those who experienced some
sort of epiphany at seeing a different type of horse, and turned away
from Crabbet for good.
Now everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, and both attitudes
are perfectly valid; the problem is that the second group slowly gained
the majority. As the world of Arabian horses began to be dominated by
halter shows, which called for a certain type of horse, more and more
owners wanted that particular type of horse in order to be able to compete;
and whatever the Crabbet horse is, it usually isn't that type of horse.
Which, in turn, makes it more valuable today than ever.
Confused? We'll get back to that in short order.
As I have already mentioned in passing, the Blunts, who founded Crabbet
Park back in the nineteenth century, originally intended to import Arabians
for use in Thoroughbred breeding. They became confirmed pure Arabian
breeders because they came to appreciate the qualities of the Arabian
horse- emphasize "horse." Back then, horses, and that includes Arabians,
were meant to be used, and the Crabbet horses were. They were ridden,
even driven, and some of them even raced (against Thoroughbreds, too).
They also won at shows, but those were real breed shows, where the horses
were judged on their merits as riding horses and breeding stock, not
on the way they were conditioned and posed. It wasn't enough to be pretty;
it was more important to be a good horse. And no, some of those old
Blunt horses weren't at all what we call pretty - though I suspect that
modern conditioning and photography would have made them look considerably
more attractive.
Britain, perhaps more than some other countries, kept the emphasis on
riding, and it still has the largest, and best, ridden classes at the
shows within Europe. And more often than not, it's Crabbet or Crabbet-type
horses that win those classes. And in many cases, those same horses
get left in the second row in halter competition. Because, as opposed
to the current fashion, their heads are too straight, their bone too
strong, their hindquarters not level enough. It is also easy to get
them too fat, and when they are, they look like overweight cobs. And
some judges dislike a lot of white, which most of them have. So, if
a judge has to decide between a basically correct horse that shows nice,
ridable movements, is a little too fat, and has four white socks, and
on the other hand, a slim, well-conditioned, pretty-headed, straight-backed
individual with matchstick legs and a spectacular, but totally unridable,
trot - well, you get the picture. And because those pretty horses that
have little outside the showring have all but taken over the scene that's
why we need those others even more. If we don't watch out, we'll end
up with a gorgeous Arabian show horse that may have the beauty, but
none of the other essential qualities of the original Arabian horse,
which was, after all, an extremely tough and athletic war horse. Which
gets us right back to the subject of preservation; why it is necessary
and why it is not easy.
Preserving the Crabbet horse is an especially difficult business, and
a prime example of what sort of muddy waters you can get into when trying
to define your gene pool.
For one thing: where does one draw the line between what constitutes
"straight Crabbet" and what doesn't? Or, more pertinently: does it really
matter?
The original foundation stock of the Crabber stock consisted of a group
of desertbred horses imported directly from Arabia or via India, and
a second group of horses bred in Egypt from Abbas Pasha stock. So, if
you wanted to be very precise, you would have to limit "pure Crabbet"
to horses tracing entirely to the original imports of the Blunts.
Unfortunately, the last horse to fit this description, at least in England,
was the stallion Oran, who died sometime in the 1960s. Yes, there is
a tiny group of straight Blunt horses in the U.S., and one British breeder
actually imported two mares, but they are being bred to Egyptian stallions;
another imported a stallion, but his stock is never seen. In any case,
these horses are simply too few, and their pedigrees represent only
a very small part of the foundation stock.
The reason for this situation is that the Blunts' daughter, Lady Wentworth,
added the Polish stallion Skowronek to the Crabbet Stud, with the result
that, with the few exceptions mentioned above, there are no straight
Blunt horses. In other words, "pure Crabbet" usually equals "Blunt plus
Skowronek." But that's not the last of it. Lady Wentworth also added
the stallion Dargee, who was mostly of Blunt descent, but also carried
lines to a few other desertbred imports that had nothing to do with
Crabber Park, like Dwarka DB, Mootrub DB, and El Emir DB. Dargee's Crabbet-bred
descendants are usually regarded as pure Crabbet. But what about horses
that carry those lines in addition to Blunt-Skowronek, but not through
Crabbet-bred horses? A case in point is the stallion Mikeno, who was
pure Crabbet (in fact, pure Blunt, no Skowronek) with the addition of
the same non-Crabbet DB lines that Dargee carried.
That's still not all. During the last years of Crabbet Park, an outside
stallion was used, Darjeel, who was by Dargee out of a mare descended
from the mare Nuhra DB, who had nothing to do with Crabbet. So, since
Nuhra's blood got into Crabbet, does that qualify other Nuhra descendants
as Crabbet?
This serves to show how tricky this kind of "straight" thinking can
get. Someone came up with the handy term of "Crabbet/Old English" to
define all these horses, which was actually a very good idea and sums
all these horses up neatly.
This also gets us to another problem that I regard as the basic fallacy
of all strict bloodline preservation programs. If you insist on breeding
"straight" according to some no longer existing breeding program, you
suppose that the original program would never have added any outside
blood. This is neither true nor practical, and Crabbet demonstrates
this perfectly. Lady Wentworth added both Skowronek and Dargee, adding
(in Skowronek's case) totally new genes to the program, and taking it
forward a step. One can hardly argue the point that the Crabbet horses
after Skowronek were more beautiful than those before him; whatever
one may think of him, he added much in the way of type. If Crabbet Park
still existed, I have no doubt that in time, other bloodlines would
have been introduced. This is true of most other programs targeted for
straight breeding. Poland's state studs have always brought in new blood,
beginning with Negatiw and *Naborr, continuing through Palas and Parma
right down to Monogramm and, most recently, Sanadik El Shaklan. Are
the descendants of these horses pure Polish? It's up to the individual
breeder to decide. Does it matter? No, not as long as they're good horses
and embody what the Polish Arabian has become famous for. And they do,
no doubt about that.
Which gets me to the final, and central point: what is the goal of preservation?
More precisely: what do we want to preserve? In too many cases, it has
become simply a matter of the right pedigree; never mind the horse.
But breeding pedigrees seems, to me at least, to be beside the point.
Yes, it is the easiest way to go about it: collect horses with the right
pedigrees and breed them, and you automatically get more horses with
the right pedigree. Which is all very well; but what use is a good pedigree
if it belongs to a substandard horse? Preservation shouldn't be about
preserving straight pedigrees, but about preserving those qualities
the bloodlines were famous for. These qualities often appear in horses
that may not be straight, but strongly influenced by those bloodlines.
Many Russian horses, for example, are wonderful examples of Crabbet
type; which isn't all that surprising, since they carry a strong percentage
of Crabber blood. I personally suspect that Lady Wentworth, were she
alive today, might want to use a horse like Padrons Psyche. The older
Crabbet type, favored by the Blunts, still tends to turn up in Egyptian
horses, thanks to the Blunt-bred horses that were imported to Egypt.
The Babson imports had a lot of this blood; and it isn't surprising
to find that the Babson stallion The Shah, who was imported to Britain
back in the 1970s, in combination with Crabbet mares got some very Blunt-like
stock. That is to say, there are qualities of Crabbet Park which are
more easily found today in horses that are not necessarily pure Crabber
or even Crabbet/QE. It's a sad fact that the remaining actual pure Crabbet
stock, at least in Britain, is very much reduced in numbers as well
as in bloodlines. There has been a strong shift in British breeding;
many of the old Crabbet breeders have either died or stopped breeding.
During the last few years, many of the mainstays of British breeding
simply vanished from the scene, while new breeding farms shot up all
over the place, all based on imported stock. Some of the remaining older
breeders started to breed their English mares to imported stallions.
In recent years, a few dedicated Crabbet breeders have got together
to register and promote the remaining horses, but these horses are too
few, and mostly of similar breeding, with an overemphasis on the two
lines of Indian Magic and Bright Shadow. Actually registering these
horses and getting the breeders organized is a start, but it has to
go on from there. Other countries have other Crabbet stock- Australia,
for example, probably has the largest number of Crabbet horses in the
world, including some lines that are lost in Britain. If the Crabbet
horse is to be preserved, two courses could and should be followed.
In breeding pure Crabbet horses, there should be some international
cooperation and an exchange of bloodlines; in these days of frozen semen,
this could be done even without expensive importations. Such an exchange
could also involve horses of predominantly, but not all, Crabbet breeding
that have the right characteristics, as exemplified by the CMK group
(Ben Rabba, who was leased to England for exactly such a project, is
a good example, but it takes more than just one horse to get there).
The other course would be the use of carefully selected stallions with
the right characteristics on Crabbet mares, the next step being to breed
the resulting stock back into the Crabbet gene pool. In short, a horse
suitable for this kind of preservation project should never be excluded
simply because his pedigree might contain some "wrong" blood. What we
need here is not "pride and prejudice," but "sense and sensibility."
It would be a long-term project, it would take a lot of people to work
together on a worldwide basis, it would need some sort of coordination
- a kind of International Crabbet Studbook, perhaps- and it would also
need the promotion to accompany it and get the Crabbet horse back into
the spotlight.
Sound impossible? I don't think it is; but it would be very difficult.
But then, preservation isn't easy; just as breeding good horses isn't
easy in the first place. Having a specific goal in mind, and being limited
in your gene pool, doesn't make things easier.
Breeding "paper horses" is easy- preservation breeding, if it is supposed
to mean something, is not. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work
and more than just one lifetime, because you're working for something
that hopefully will last longer than you do. Remember, what the Blunts
started back in the nineteenth century has survived until the present
day.
