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Beneath : Mustafa imp Germany (Hadban Enzahi x Masarrah) photos : Pat Slater kindly supplied by K & C Gordon, Cameo Arabians		a look at the importance of a pedigree by Betty Finke Pedigrees, or so it sometimes seems, have gone out of fashion. There used to be a time when every owner of an Arabian horse was able to recite his horses' pedigrees forwards and backwards, but nowadays some owners just about manage to know the names of their horses' parents. It is even easy to understand why. If your main interest is showing, the important thing is the horse looks good and moves well. If you ride, you look for performance, gaits, and comfort. In both cases, the horse's pedigree is irrelevant. In addition, while each country used to have its own gene pool, today's trend towards globalisation has created a kind of international Arabian that combines bloodlines from all sources to an extent where it has become nearly impossible to know them all. So why bother? It's not the pedigree that wins a championship or carries you across country, is it? But when it comes to breeding, things look very different.The point here is what you see is not necessarily what you get. We have all known cases of great show champions that were a major disappointment as breeding horses, and conversely, of average-looking individuals that never won anything themselves, but consistently sired or produced a quality above their own.
		Scratching the Surface or the Horse You Don't See The point is that every horse is really two horses: one you see, and one you don't. What you see is the phenotype -the horse's own outer appearance. This is what wins the shows and what carries the rider, but it doesn't always follow that this is what he or she passes on. For beneath the phenotype, we have the horse you don't see, the genotype, which is all the genetic information the horse carries and passes on to its offspring. Unless you have a very dominant horse, the offspring may turn out totally different from the horse itself. Also, not necessarily consistent. I personally know a case where the same mare was bred to the same stallion five times in succession, resulting in five totally different foals, each of which looks exactly like one particular ancestor - a different one in each case. This particular sire, I might add, has near-faultless legs and a perfect neck. In fact, he is one of the best Arabian stallions I have ever seen; yet his get have all sorts of leg faults and mostly not very good necks. However, this horse also has two full brothers, of whom one has a very heavy, thick neck, and the other has crooked legs. In other words: while this horse is much better looking than his brothers, he still carries the same faults in his genes and passes them on to his offspring. The only way to get any idea of what may be in store is to look at the pedigree. But here, again, several questions arise. A pedigree is, at first glance, a collection of names which mean absolutely nothing if we don't know what is behind the name. It should go without saying that if I select a breeding horse, especially a young horse that has no offspring yet, I should try to learn as much about that horse's ancestors as possible. I should try to see his/her sire and dam, if possible grandparents, as well as siblings. Where this is not possible, I should try to find photos of the relevant animals and study those, and what else these individuals have produced. Sounds like a lot of work? Nobody ever said breeding a good horse is easy. Mating two individuals because they're good individuals, or happen to be available, is easy; planned breeding is not. At the very least, knowing your horse's ancestors and relatives will help you minimise unnecessary risks and avoid possibly unpleasant surprises. A breeder of Polish Arabians whom I know was very startled indeed when the breeding of two bay pure Polish horses, whose parents were all bay as well, resulted in a chestnut foal with a huge white blaze and white feet. The same thing happens frequently at the Polish studs. I know several cases where solid bay parents produced flamboyantly marked chestnut foals, occasionally with the addition of flaxen manes and roaning in their coats. The breeders of these horses always seem terribly surprised, especially since there is nothing in the first three or even four generations to prepare for this. But if you go farther back, you will find the culprit, and it is invariably Rasim, the chestnut Crabbet-bred stallion exported to Poland from England in 1924. He may be way back, but he has a habit of popping out when he is least expected.
		Breeders who do advocate studying the pedigree usually say anything beyond the fifth generation is irrelevant, because those genes are gone for good. This is, quite simply, not true. If, and this is simplifying things a bit, a horse inherits half its chromosomes from one parent and the other half from another, the genes transmitted that way result in a new set of characteristics each time and with each generation. This also explains why full siblings often don't look alike, or even similar; and "half and half' isn't precisely right either because you also get full siblings where one looks exactly like the dam and the other exactly like the sire. But with this system of transmission, it is perfectly possible for certain characteristics to be passed on from one generation to the next in the phenotype, only to manifest themselves many generations down the line. Hence the Crabbet-type horses that keep appearing within the Polish stock, which happens when the genes in question are present in the sire and the dam and decide to get together and play a trick on the unsuspecting breeder. Incidentally, if the phenotype gets passed on through successive generations, you get the reason why the Bedouins set such store by dam lines; especially with a view to the fact it is now proven there are genes that are transmitted through the dam only. In short, it simply happens too often that a horse closely resembles a far-removed ancestor for the "five generation rule" to hold. I have known a Crabbet-bred stallion who was a carbon copy of Nureddin II, whom he had in the sixth generation; and a mare, who was not even purebred, who looked nothing like either of her parents, or grand-parents, but exactly like her sire's sister who also looked nothing like her parents. The common denominator in this case was much farther back. These things should give just a small indication of the complexity of the matter, before we look at the pedigree of our subject animal and what it tells us. Every Picture Tells a Story The pedigree shown here is of Mustafa, bred in 1969 at Marbach State Stud in Germany. (A.S.&S. Editor's note; Mustafa is leading the Lifetime Sires through Volumes 1-23 of the Australian Arabian Horse Stud Book with 290 registered progeny.)* Mustafa was chosen for this article on the one hand because he was a significant sire in Australia and this would make it easy to check if any of the following is born out by his off-spring, and also because this is a very well documented pedigree where photos are available of almost all ancestors, as well as both paternal, maternal, and full siblings. It also lends itself to illustrating several general points. A few remarks regarding the structure of the pedigree. The top half of the pedigree shows the sire, the bottom half the dam, each providing 50% of the whole. If we look at it from left to right, we have four generations, beginning with the parents (lst gen., 50%), grandparents (2nd, 25%), great-grandparents (3rd, 12.5%) and so on. If we follow the sire's line through Mustafa's sire, that horse's sire, and so on, we get the tail male line, which in this case is to Saklawi I DB, who appears in the sixth generation. The same thing along the bottom through the dam's dam, gives us the dam family and strain, which here is El Dahma DB, in le eighth generation, and the strain being Dahman Shahwan. The Bedouins used to define their horses by the dam line, and by the time this reached the West, it came with a huge mythology regarding the correspondences of strain and type attached, largely due to the writings of Carl Raswan. While there might have been some good reason for this in the past, when the horses were fewer and closer to the source, the strain today is of mainly academic interest. It was a means for the Arabs to ascertain their horses' descent, because, obviously, sires can be more easily confused than dams. In any case, strain and type should not be confused. There are also "sub-families" within the dam lines; in this case, though El Dahma is the foundation mare, one would usually speak of the Moheba family, since this mare was imported to Marbach and founded her own family there. (The Bedouins would have called this a sub-strain -one could by the family strain of Dahma Moheba). It may be of interest to note that Moheba's dam, Halima, was also the dam of the famous sire Ansata Ibn Halima.

		Mustafa is a typical example of mid 20th-century Marbach breeding. He is over three-quarter Egyptian blood, since his sire Hadban Enzahi and maternal grandam Moheba were imported from Egypt. His maternal grandsire Haladin was a prime example of post-war Marbach breeding, by the Polish import Halef out of Jadine, who was by the pre-war Egyptian import Jasir out of Dinarsad, a classic Weil bred mare. One fairly unusual aspect is there is no significant degree of inbreeding; but there is some linebreeding, which is not the same thing. Inbreeding denotes the mating of close relatives, such as half or even full siblings, or in extreme cases, sire to daughter or son to dam. In line breeding, the common ancestor on both sides appears further back. Mustafa's sire Hadban Enzahi is a very interesting example of line breeding to two horses, Kazmeen and Mansour. Mansour appears as Hadban Enzahi's grandsire on the sire's side, and great-grandsire on the dam's side; Kazmeen as great-grandsire on the sire's side, and twice as great great-grandsire on the dam's side. Translated into percentage, Hadban Enzahi carried 25% Kazmeen blood (equal to Kazmeen being his grandsire) and 37.5% Mansour blood. There is an additional connection that does not appear within the first five generations: Mabrouk Manial was a paternal half brother to Mansour's sire Gamil Manial, providing an additional line to Saklawi II. Another interesting aspect about Hadban Enzahi's pedigree is his sire and his dam have the identical tail male and female lines, which is fairly unusual: both trace to Saklawi I through Mansour in tail male and to Hadba El Saghira through Bint Samiha in tail female. In appearance, Hadban Enzahi was a perfect mixture of his parents.
		He resembled his sire Nazeer more than many of Nazeer's sons did for all that, Nazeer is rightly regarded as the most significant Egyptian sire of the 20th century, he was not a dominant sire and his foals usually strongly showed the characteristics of their dams. In Hadban Enzahi's case, he had inherited his dam's typier head, shorter neck, and short croup; in fact the resemblance is very strong with Nazeer contributing not much more than an overall "finish". But it may well be due to the close relationship between his parents that Hadban Enzahi was what Nazeer never was: a totally dominant sire. He was one of the few sires that were virtually 100% predictable. This is not to say that all his foals looked alike; but you could usually tell by looking at the mare he was bred to, what type of foal you'd get. This was partly due to the fact he was a homozygous grey, and type and colour are more often than not linked.
		Homozygous grey means that irrespective of the colour of the mare Hadban Enzahi was bred to, his offspring were always grey. Homozygous greys are fairly easy to identify because they tend to be pinkish grey as foals, turn white very early (many are white before they are a year old), never develop any kind of dark spots, and often progressively lose pigment with advancing age. As Hadban Enzahi grew older, his skin got progressively pinker, and the fact that he passed this on became a problem at Marbach and led to the importation of the black Gharib to counteract the loss of pigment. Hadban Enzahi's foals usually came in two types. When he was bred to grey (white) mares, his foals were usually homozygous greys themselves ie. turned white early and produced only grey foals. This was true of the majority of the Marbach broodmare band in the 1970s. If the mare in question was his own daughter, Hadban Enzahi was the subject of heavy inbreeding, it usually resulted in carbon copies. When he was bred to bay or chestnut mares, he would produce greys with normal pigmentation that more often than not became fleabitten and were themselves heterozygous, ie. able to produce foals with dark colours. With fleabitten grey mares, like Masarrah, it could go either way, which is illustrated by two of Mustafa's full sisters which perfectly illustrate both types.
		To return to the linebreeding to Mansour and Kazmeen, even a cursory glance at their pictures reveals a potential problem: both had low backs, Mansour extremely so. Mansour had inherited this from his sire Gamil Manial, whom he resembled closely; which in my opinion totally invalidates Carl Raswan's assertion that Mansour was not by Gamil Manial. He claimed the sire was Jamil Blunt. On the basis of this, we might expect a back problem. However, Hadban Enzahi did not have a low back and did not pass it on; but it does turn up when his offspring are bred back to the same lines through other sources. This low back was very much in evidence in Hadban Enzahi's half brother Ghazal, who was also by Nazeer and whose dam was a granddaughter of Kazmeen. In Ghazal's case, he seems to have inherited the top line directly from Mansour (by-passing Nazeer), and also passed it on frequently. But there again, not always, there are even some linebred perfectly good backs well into old age, while others go down even before weaning. The point is, it's there; and while it does not necessarily get transmitted, there is always a chance that it does. Knowing this kind of thing can help make the right breeding decision.
		Looking at Mustafa's dam Masarrah, the first thing we should note is this family -El Dahma in general and Moheba in particular -is a very good dam line. It is one of the leading dam lines in German Arabian breeding, and especially known for producing excellent stallions. In fact, Hadban Enzahi's greatest breeding sons Madkour I, Mahomed, Mameluck, and Malik, were all out of mares of this family; as were other significant breeding horses like Masan in France, Mardschan, Messaoud, and Maymoon in Germany and Melchior in Britain. The latter, a grandson of Masanah in tail female line was by Mameluck, so both his parents were of this family. He was also a dominant sire. Experienced breeders attach great importance to the dam line of stallions, with claims even being made that certain dam lines never produce good sires. The fact is there are dam lines that are noted for the number of great sires they produce, such as Dajania in Britain, Star of the Hills in Tersk, and Moheba in Germany. Even in German warmblood breeding, the value of a good dam line is widely recognised, and the title "Hengstmutter" (dam of sires) is an honour. You will hardly ever see a superior sire that is out of an inferior mare, and I would certainly hesitate to use a stallion, no matter how beautiful, if I knew his dam to be utterly awful (yes, there are such horses!).
		Moheba had only two daughters, and Masarrah was the only one that wasn't straight Egyptian. This cross was tried again, when Haladin was bred to Moheba's straight Egyptian grand daughter Moheba II, producing another great broodmare, Molawa. At first glance, Masanah appears to be the product of a total outcross, ie. her parents are not obviously related to each other. There is a connection, though: Haladin's grandsire Jasir was imported from Egypt and was a grandson of Saklawi 11, who is also the grandsire of Mansour, who appears in Moheba's pedigree. This is a very tenuous connection, however, and does not qualify as linebreeding. Haladin himself was the product of a near total outcross, being by the imported Polish stallion Halef. Halef himself tended be "absorbed" when bred to the Weil-Marbach mares, probably due to the intense inbreeding and linebreeding of the old Weil program which resulted in very dominant horses. A similar phenomenon could be seen in the first Polish imports to Britain, who also virtually "disappeared" within the strong Crabbet bloodlines; the first horse to break this dominance was the Babson-Egyprian The Shah, who was even more inbred than the English horses.
		Haladin was a prime example of the classic Weil-Marbach type who, despite being an outcross, obviously dominated over Moheba. Moheba appears to have been a virtual copy of her dam Halima, probably through linebreeding to the Kazmeen daughter Bint Sabah who shows a strong family resemblance. Now Haladin, being Mustafa's maternal grandsire, should be paid special attention. It is a curious fact that quite often, stallions show a marked resemblance to the dam's sires. I have no idea why this should be so, and it is certainly not a hard-and-fast rule (it is totally contradicted by each stallion in this particular pedigree, with the possible exception of Hadban Enzahi), but I have seen too many examples of this to dismiss it. This has been noted, and commented on, by experienced breeders, some of whom go even further and claim that in turn, mares often show a resemblance to their paternal granddam. While I have seen neither Haladin nor Mustafa in the flesh, there may well be some resemblance, though I should think Haladin was the heavier horse.
		Haladin's parents were both not extremely typey, and this particular dam line of Dinarsad in general produced bigger and heavier horses, though Haladin himself does not appear to have been plain. Mustafa however certainly shows the typical Hadban Enzahi "finish" about him. Hadban Enzahi was able to get pretty horses from even the most unpromising of mares; he was repeatedly bred to Haladin's full sister, Hamdi, who was a fairly heavy and not particularly refined mare. The most famous result of this mating was Dschadaah, the 1986 World Champion Mare, who was possibly the most typey mare ever foaled at Marbach. We have already noted the linebreeding to Mansour and Kazmeen in Hadban Enzahi; looking at Mustafa's pedigree in its entirely, there is an additional line to Mansour and two to Kazmeen (seventh generation as the sire of Bint Sabah). This brings Mustafa 's total of Mansour blood to 21.87% and Kazmeen to 15.10%. In other words, although these horses appear for the first time in the third, respectively the fourth, generation, they still constitute a strong influence.
		A word about colour. Mustafa's pedigree is dominated by grey and bay horses, to such an extent that I would guess he probably did not carry the chestnut gene. Theoretically, he could; Nazeer, for example, sired a good number of chestnuts. Hadban Enzahi, however, did not, and so would not have been able to pass it on; and most of the horses on the dam's side, including Masarrah herself, never had chestnut offspring. In other words, it is unlikely, but certainly not impossible, as proven by the example of the Polish Crabbet throwbacks mentioned above.
		I will now leave it to the reader to look at the horses pictured and at Mustafa's descendants and to work out what has come down from where. On the basis of this pedigree, and not being terribly familiar with Mustafa's Australian descendants, I would imagine 'him to be a fairly dominant sire with mainly grey get and the occasional bay, but probably no chestnuts. I may be wrong there; but virtually nothing in horse breeding is absolutely certain, excepting a few rules of coat colour inheritance. However, knowledge of the pedigree of a horse and what is behind all those names is invaluable in at least giving you an idea of what to expect. Besides that, at least for some of us, it makes a fascinating subject for study!