A Word about Strains

Arab Horse Families
An Introduction and Guide to the Stud Book

PJ Gazder - 1964
pp6-7

Much has been written about this subject, and it has probably created more confusion for Arab breeders than any other. While it is not possible, because of limited space, to discuss these various views here, some general points may be made.

An Arab horse, male or female, always takes the strain of its dam, as lineage was easier and more accurate to trace in this fashion, in lands where written records were few and oral tradition almost the only way to perpetuate information. Development of strains was an almost inevitable consequence, as the stock of certain breeders became more desired, for strains and sub-strains were originally the families of superior mares, i.e. a "celebrated mare" and her descendants. This was noted by Al Lallah, Abbas Pasha's Mameluke emissary to the desert tribes, who wrote about a group of horses of the same strain that "variation in the shape and size of this strain is due to the different stallions with which the mares have been mated, all of which were from outside the family. It is well known that size and shape are due to the stallion. When horses of the same strain are mated together, they produce uniform size." In other words, during the early nineteenth century, horses were being bred within their strain for uniformity, and outside their strain to produce variations.

At the present day, strains do not carry the same significance as they did in the desert during the time of Abbas Pasha. Arab horses today have many more strain variations in their pedigrees and so, the family strain has less validity.

This is also true of sub-strains, for these usually described only ownership. Some of the Seglawis of Ibn Ed Derri became the Seglawis of Jedran, after they had changed ownership, to describe the superior stock bred by Jedran and to distinguish them from the other Seglawieh. Still later, some of the Seglawi Jedrans became further subdivided into those of Ibn Sudan and those of Ibn Sbeyni; to this latter group belonged the celebrated stallion Zobeyni. Following this tradition, it would be quite correct to describe the mares of the Rodania family bred by the Crabbet Stud as the "Keheilan Rodan of Crabbet" or "Keheilan Crabbet". Besides ownership, the sub-strain sometimes described a special quality of the foundation mare; one may assume that the original Rodania was light-footed, the original Dajania particularly docile, the first Hamdaniyah of Simri a dark grey, and that the Jilfa Sitam al Bulad had sinews of steel. After many generations of breeding, it is doubtful if all the descendants of the original mare would still retain this special quality.

There is, however, an important use for strains, that is that they focus attention on female families, for there is no doubt that some mares can exert a much stronger influence on their descendants than others. This is sometimes overlooked in Western horse breeding, when only the stallion is considered.

Variations in the spelling of strain names may be noted; these are due to attempts to render them into English and other European languages, retaining the approximate pronunciation of the original Arab words.

These are the male endings, as commonly written in English literature on the Arab horse, and used in the AHSB. Female equivalents end in "a" (e.g. Hadba, Jilfa), or in "eh" or "et" (e.g. Keheilet Ajuz, Keheileh Dajanieh), but in some cases, the words "abu" and "umm" are used to distinguish male and female members of a particular sub-strain, as for instance, Dahman Abu Amir (male) and Dahma Umm Amir (female).