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here was a time — way back somewhere in the antediluvian, approximately, when I became interested in Arabian horses — when Arabian breeders used to know their horses’ pedigrees. In fact, it was unthinkable not to. In this respect, they were true to the tradition of the Bedouins, the original creators of the breed. The Bedouins had no written records, and to them, pure descent was everything, so of necessity they knew their horses’ lineage by heart. Most particularly, they knew their dam lines, identified by the various strains. You might say a horse was identified by its maternal descent and its strain. These days, strains have gone out of fashion to some extent, with the notable exception of straight Egyptian breeders who still place some emphasis on strain and family. Some studbooks have even stopped listing them. However, any Arabian horse, Egyptian or not, has a family descended from a foundation mare, usually somewhere in the 19th century, even if we do not always know the strain. In some cases, it was for some reason not handed
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down; in others, it was lost. These cases include a number of acknowledged desertbred mares, such as Weil’s Murana I (1816), but also the Slawuta mares of Poland, of whom nothing is known but their names, or the Veragua mares of Spain, whose identities were lost in the civil war. Although some might argue that strain affiliation is outmoded and a thing of yesteryear, its significance has been unexpectedly supported by modern science. The discovery of mitochondrial DNA proved once and for all that there are actually genes that are passed on exclusively through the female line, mother to daughter (or son). The Bedouins may have had something there, after all!
Left: EKS Alihandro (*Marwan Al Shaqab x OFW Psylhouette). Facing page: Blömmerod in the 1960s. The mare on the extreme right is Alfa, the great great great grandam of EKS Alihandro.
82 ▪ ARABIAN HORSE WORLD ▪ JULY 2015