16 minute read
by Yasser Ghanim al-Tahawi
Why Purity is an Issue?!
An Essay by Yasser Ghanim al-Tahawi
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Studying the different episodes of the Arabian breed’s history is a very rewarding and enlightening process. Even for me as an Arab, I am still learning. I had some core knowledge driven from my culture as an Arab in general, and specifically of Bedouin origin, but there is a lot of historical context that I am still learning and trying to understand in a better way. Thanks to the research of Edouard Al-Dahdah and other Arab researchers, we are building a better understanding of the parameters that formed and maintained the culture around the breed, and allowed for the breed to survive many turbulent periods in its long history. It is a miracle that such a breed could remain largely pure and distinctive not only for a few centuries but for millennia, considering how widely celebrated and traded it was all over the ancient world over at least the last 14 centuries!
Is Purity the Issue?
A question was raised before during the famous dispute between the WAHO and AHRA around the purity of some WAHO horses imported to the US. At that time Kees Mol, the famous WAHO thinker, wrote in the 1998 WAHO official report: “The WAHO definition of a purebred Arabian was not a
‘compromise’ at all. It was adopted as the only possible definition of a purebred Arabian which could ACCURATELY
AND HONESTLY reflect the reality of existing breed purity in any of the voting member registries, including the AHRA.”
Just to recall together the mentioned WAHO definition, that Kees Mol mentioned, is:
“A PURE-BRED ARABIAN HORSE IS ONE WHICH APPEARS IN ANY PURE-BRED ARABIAN STUD BOOK OR REGISTER LISTED BY WAHO AS ACCEPTABLE.”
The report continues to justify this ambiguous definition by stating: “Our investigation revealed that even the simple requirement of pedigrees which trace in EVERY line to ‘the Orient’, could not be met by any of the 7 studbooks initially approved by WAHO.”
Going through the introduction of this official WAHO report, we find more elaboration in statements like: “The Arabian horse always has been, and still is, surrounded by myths and fantasies, many of which were invented in the 18th and 19th centuries …” “The most persistent myth is that purity of blood as we now know it was always meticulously controlled from the time of the domestication of the first horse, and that the interior of the Arabian subcontinent was completely closed off to the rest of the world.”
“The nomadic horse-breeding tribes did have very strong beliefs in purity and were undoubtedly master breeders. To them, their horses were a necessity, their strength and powers of endurance were vital lifelines. Pedigree aside, if a horse looked, performed and above all survived like an Arabian, then asil it must be.” “Every story has a beginning, and to go even further back in history, the uncompromising truth is that idea of the ‘purebred Arabian horse’ as a completely separate pure breed is simply not scientifically acceptable, on zoological, biological, archaeological, historical or geographical grounds. The lands from where the ‘breed’ is said to originate were never isolated.”
This is the logic upon which the WAHO definition was made by the founders, and the philosophy behind a completely new world that was started by the WAHO in 1974 and allowed horses with proven impurity to become the vast majority of the so-called WAHO Arabians today. The report includes many examples of these horses with proven impurity!
In this article I am not going to argue with every point in the WAHO report. I fully understand where they come from. Kees Mol in his frame of thought could not be more honest and true to his beliefs and cultural background, and so were the other WAHO founders, I assume. This is exactly the problem when cultural constructs are interpreted out of context through different cultural frameworks with insufficient knowledge and understanding of the original culture that created and shaped these constructs.
In this article I am going to speak from the side of the original cultural framework of the Arabian horse. I will try to provide brief analysis of the values, drivers and the historical context that surrounded the breed over history. The reader can then relate this to some of the above arguments and try to find out for himself the key misunderstandings that led to the wrong conclusions about the notion of purity.
Note: You may refer to a related article published in both the Khamsat magazine in the US and the Arabische Pferde magazine in Germany under the title “The Origin of the Strains”. Another article published on the Daughters of the Wind blog was titled: “The Reestablishment of the Arabian Breed” for more detailed analysis of the historical context.
1. Cultural Values
Culture is key in this discussion. The Arabian horse is the product of the Arab Bedouin culture. This must be an axiom, which I think no one would deny. It is culture that should serve as our primary reference for understanding the background of the breed.
Purity: To understand the term purity of blood correctly, one needs to put it in the right cultural context. Purity is a cultural notion rather than a biological or genetic one. It represents an ideal which the Arab Bedouins always strived to maintain. I agree with Kees Mol when he said: “The nomadic horse-breeding tribes did have very strong beliefs in purity,” and yes, they did — but the question is: How did this work?
Preservation: The Arab Bedouins were great preservationists by their cultural beliefs! The cultural values embedded in their breeding practices turned the breeding of the Arabian horse into a large preservation project. These values were driven from their original perception of the breed, a perception best represented in the concept of Atiq. The term atiq appears in the Arabic literature in the 7th century AD at the beginning of the Islamic time. It was used by the early Muslims to refer to the ancient Arabians from the chronological perspective of their time. They traced the Arabian horse back to some early prophets many centuries before Islam. The Arabian horse was perceived by them as a divine gift through the prophets. The Arabs genuinely believed the Arabian horse was created in perfection and required no modification or improvement. Whether we agree with the religious mythology or not, it remains part of the culture.
Atiq: The term atiq carries multiple overlapping meanings. It means ancient, precious and free [of flaws] all at the same time. The cultural perception of the breed was not only derived by celebrating its natural characteristics and excellent functional qualities for the desert life. An important driver was the mystical beliefs, as mentioned above, that shaped the Arab’s breeding practices and constraints. An atiq is pure by definition, and from the Arabic cultural perspective, an Arabian can only be atiq. There is no nonatiq Arabian. Authenticating a horse as Arabian (atiq) means the firm conviction (based on cultural measures) that it purely traces to those ancient and preserved sources from the time of the prophets.
Asil: The term asil developed later in history and appears in literature in the 13th century AD by non-Bedouin writers. It meant “of known noble origins.” The term was later adopted by the Bedouins usually in the plural form (asayel). Another similar term that became common in the Bedouin literature was safi (pure). None of these terms indicated a subset of Arabians, but described what an Arabian is. Terminology and language change, but the concepts and cultural values remained the same; Arabian is asil and nothing but asil. There is no such thing, from the Arabic cultural perspective, as a non-asil Arabian. You lose the purity, you lose the Arabian status, and here came an array of Arabic terms like Hajin (impure dam), Muqrif (impure sire), Kadish (a more recent term for unknown origins), etc. All of these terms indicated impure horses with small or big amounts of Arabian blood; it does not matter.
The Arabian horse did not survive because the Bedouins were isolated, as the above argument intrigued the readers. It survived because of the strict cultural values. Two horses could exist in the same one square kilometer at the heart of Arabia, one Arabian and one hajin. The hajin would not get qualified as a mating stallion under the cultural values, and would not carry the name Arabian in the first place. Should it get used, the offspring will automatically become hajin! Very strict but necessary. If we think of anything else, while rejecting the false assumption of isolation, a slow and inevitable process would largely contaminate and transform the whole breed over centuries into some new heterogeneous product.
From a practical point of view, the strictness of cultural values is the only way to understand the survival of the breed with the same traits and characteristics over very extended and successive eras. We are not talking centuries here, but rather millennia. Should the Bedouins have the slightest tolerance deviation from their cultural values and beliefs, we could only have horses with varying degrees of Arabian blood mixed with Turkmen, Barb and Persian blood from the surrounding breeds who were not far from the reach of the Bedouins.
The scientific unacceptability of having a separate pure breed — which Kees Mol pointed out in his report based on the following logical input: “The lands from where the ‘breed’ is said to originate were never isolated” — actually missed another unavoidable logical consequence of this inference. A breed that was never isolated cannot remain largely distinctive over such extended eras. Fractional changes based on loose breeding restrictions would accumulate, the distinction with the surrounding breeds would fade out, and homogeneity between all these adjacent breeds would grow over time. So, solving this paradox lies in one simple conclusion: Cultural boundaries and strict constraints, rather than geographical and political isolation, were the reason for the assumed purity of the breed. We do not presume it was a watertight process; it did not have to be. “Purity is a cultural notion rather than a biological or genetic one,” as mentioned above. It is the strict striving for maintaining purity that counted, regardless of any natural inbound leakage. Conserving the Arabian horse for the future must always continue to adopt the same motivation and scrutinized striving to maintain its purity. Known impurity or loose measures are totally against the cultural framework, which was always the true cradle for the breed. 2. Historical Context
In several previous articles I proposed that we live in a moment very similar to what happened 800 years ago when the strain system is believed to have started. I will try to give a quick historical flow that shows this similarity.
Fourteen centuries ago, the Muslim Arabs conquered the ancient world. The Arabian horse went in all directions from central Asia to Spain with the armies and with the migrating tribes. It was prized and celebrated by everyone for its extraordinary athletic qualities and unmistakable nobility. The Arabian horse was in the stables of every sultan and amir from India to Marrakesh — a far cry from the assumption of being isolated inside Arabia! Owned by Arab nobility at the beginning, and shortly after by Turkish and Persian sultans ruling Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Persia and even most of Arabia, the Arabian horse became a fashionable international commodity in the Islamic world. This vast geographical territory was the modern globalized market of the Arabian horse in the sense of those days, quite similar to its modern global market that developed over the past two centuries.
This new heterogeneous breeding community did not strictly abide by the scrutiny of the cultural values of the Arab conquerors described above. The horses that filled the stables of those “modern” owners had indeed a lot of Arabian blood but were not necessarily pure. Those owners proudly continued to call their horses Arabians for decades and centuries. Just like Godolphin Arabian, Darley Arabian and Byerley Turk, which were labeled Arabians in
the 18th century, but appeared later by the means of DNA testing to be of the same sire lines as Turkmene horses!
One can very much expect that in this kind of global and open marketplace, purity can no longer be maintained. It was even worse than the situation under the above WAHO definition with no central registration authority. It was beyond control by any group or even state to maintain this purity. But the Bedouins had another say. The original owners of the breed had to step in and declare their stand toward all these purported Arabians all over the place. The Bedouins started a newly devised and innovative system driven from their “pure culture,” and created the revolutionary system of strains. That was a big thing at a very transitional point of time between the 12th and 14th centuries AD, around six to eight centuries after Islam arose.
The Bedouins did not try to classify all those “Arabian” from India to Morocco whose authenticity and purity they knew nothing about. They did not ask anyone to prove any of these horses. They simply said we do not recognize these horses as Arabians any more. Full stop. The Arab Bedouins who still have the culture and values started a completely new game with new rules. They identified the purest of their horses (not even all the Bedouin horses) in the possession of some eminent and culturally loyal tribal leaders with the new strain system and rejected everything else. The Arab Bedouins inside Arabia did not have the luxury of worrying about all the sultans and amirs or even the other tribes around the Muslim world who are proud of their horses with very apparent Arabian descent. The Arabic Bedouin tribes inside Arabia had to do what they were obliged to do. With simple statistics one would expect that more than 95% of the horses that were assumed Arabians around the Muslim world at that time were disqualified as Arabians by the original legitimate owners of the breed, the Arab Bedouins. The non-Bedouin owners were not the only losers in these new game-changing rules. Even some big Bedouin tribes inside Arabia incurred a loss, and we have a very famous example.
Shammar, the great Arab Bedouin tribe of the finest Arabians in modern history, whose horses were celebrated and mentioned in high esteem by every Western traveler, and sought after by every devoted owner like Abbas Pasha I of Egypt. The horses of Shammar were not recognized as Arabians some 500 years ago under the Bedouin strain system. Shammar had to fight the strong alliance of the Sherif of Mecca and Anazah tribe in a famous battle circa 1600 AD to win seven authentic strains. Those strains were the sole foundation horses of Shammar Arabians. ALL the older (previously Arabians) of Shammar were abandoned because they were not qualified under the strain system. They are not Arabians anymore, but Shamalyat (Northern), another term for horses with unproven purity.
The same story repeated again, this time with my tribe, the Tahawies. We migrated from Arabia to North Africa circa 1000 AD with our pure Arabians of the great tribe of Banu Sulaym. We returned to Egypt circa 1700. We went with Mohammed Ali to Syria and Arabia in the 1830s. We were confronted and struck there by the pure and strict culture of the Arab Bedouin tribes who maintain the strict strain system. We decided to abandon all our old “Arabians” that came with us from North Africa and we reestablished our lines based on the Arabian horses of Anazah and Shammar who carried recognizable strain names. The horses that came with us from North Africa were considered kadish, no matter what percentage of Arabian blood they carried.
Now think of all the sultans, amirs and pashas who owned “Arabians” in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, etc. over the past millennium. They probably continued to call their horses Arabians. Pretty much like many modern breeders of the WAHO Polish or Russian lines. But the Bedouins moved on with their own rules.
Among all the sultans, amirs and owners who continued to think of their poorly authenticated horses as Arabians came Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun from Egypt’s Mamluk dynasty (died 1341), who decided to respect the new Bedouin system. He ignored all the assumed Arabians of 14th-century Egypt and reverted back to the Bedouin sources through Al Mehena and Tai tribes to import authentic Arabians. History speaks about some several thousand horses brought by him from Arabia to Egypt — a sufficient number to start a fresh new and sustainable Arabian population in Egypt. But the cultural system had no mercy and no exceptions. These horses were not maintained under the strict cultural values and constraints of the Bedouins that mandate absolute purity. These horses gradually became kadish and shamalyat again.
Now comes Abbas Pasha I in the 1850s, who was raised amid the Bedouins with his father Tusun Pasha during Mohammed Ali’s campaigns in Arabia. Similar to his Mamluk predecessor, Abbas Pasha decided to follow the Bedouin system and refused to accept Egypt’s local population of 99.9% Arabian blood in the early 19th century. He reverted to the Bedouin system and brought authentic horses with strain names. We all know the rest of the story.
The large community of horses today with proven impurity that are considered Arabians under the WAHO studbooks as exhibited by the WAHO 1998 report is not a new and unique case in history. There had been many WAHO-like worlds before. However, these worlds had to surrender to the determination and strong cultural values of the legitimate owners of the breed. Only horses that can be authenticated as atiq / asil and assumed to be pure under the cultural measures are to carry the name “Arabian.”
I quote Edouard Al-Dahdah on his Daughter of the Wind blog:
“To me, the offpspring of a hajin and an Arabian is always a hajin, meaning hujna is transmitted indefinitely. And a hajin is not an Arabian but a partbred, even if the percentage of non-Arabian blood goes down to infinitesimal proportions. And a hajin has no strain, also by definition.”
This is not discrimination against the non-pure horses. Many of these horses are great horses and carry a lot of value, whether Polish and Russian WAHO registered, or Shaqya, Appaloosa, Thoroughbred, etc. They are all great and valuable horses for what they are. We the Arabs should be proud of the Arabian legacy they carry. But in the Arabic cultural system and Bedouin values, purity is indeed an issue, and so it shall remain!
It is important to deal with the Arabian horse as a cultural product that deserves to be preserved as it is. It has become a valuable cultural heritage for humanity. A lot of care and modesty are required in dealing with unrepairable cultural constructs, especially those embodied in genes and blood. Yet, more efforts are needed to study and understand its identity from different perspectives. Scientific tools such as archeological and genetic research can provide great additions to our knowledge. Culture and science together can help us set a viable plan for the future, instead of creating intrusive measures that mess with breed identity.
Lothar *Fadl x Habba
Ibn Lothar Shar Sabbah Negem x Gammousa Abbas Ibn Lothar Mah Hab Mahrouf x Bah Habba Bint Roulett
Roulett Mahrouf x Roulena
Fa Lothar Azaba
Saafaddan Faddan x Saaba Ibn Saafaddan Daal Aba Daaldan x Fay El Aba Almoraima Neblina Mahrouf Fabah x Aaroufa Marlaroufa Bint Bah Roufa Ibn Fa-Serr x Bah Roufa
Taliid Faye Neblina
Fleet-Foot Khebir x Nadra Sera DahmanSabbah Khezera Ibn Faddan x Aradan
Bedu Sabir
Aareebah
Negem Fa-Serr x Fay-Negma
Shar Sabbah Gammousa *Fadl x Fay-Sabbah
Ibn Fa-Serr Fa-Serr x Fa Deene Midbar Fa Rabdan Aroufina Fabah x Roufina Almoraima Alegria Mahrouf Fabah x Aaroufa Fa Mahrouf Bint Bahretta Serr Rou x Bahretta
