The
various catalogs prepared by Davenport for his horses provide valuable
information which is supplemental to this book. There are several of these
known to the writer. The first, titled "The Davenport Desert Arabian
Stud," is copyrighted 1906 according to its
cover page, but it has entries for several foals of 1907,
so apparently the cover page is used from a previous catalog. From the
text of this catalog, it would apper to be an explanation of an exhibition
of Davenport's 1906 imports at Louisville, Kentucky.
The concluding paragraph is of interest to Arabian breeders for the light
it casts on why Arabian horses were imported to America in the first place:
- "Having
decided to submit our imported Desert Arabs to the judgment of Kentuckians,
who are perhaps the most critical horsemen in the world, we wish to explain
briefly that as yet these horses have not become fully acclimated, some
of them having been very sick a month before shipping to Louisville. They
have not been handled in this country for either speed, action or show
purposes of any kind. They have not even been accorded the attention ordinarily
given show horses. You see them simply as they came from the hands of the
Bedouins with whom their sole merit lay in their weight, gallop and endure.
We ask you to bear these facts in mind in passing judgment upon these horses.
to judge them by the standards and under the classification of a civilized
horse show would be doing them an unjustice. We know however by experience
and by the history of the accomplishments of Arab blood that they are the
most adaptable horse in the world, and we believe that from the loins of
this importation will spring horses that will be champions of American
horse show rings in future days."
A
second catalog of 1906-1907 is
titled "The World's Fair Arabians," and is primarily concerned
with Davenport's horses that were not from the 1906
desert importation. Most of them had ties to the Hamidie Society importation
for the Chicago World's Fair, 1893.
A
third catalog for the years 1906-1907
is titled "The Davenport Desert Arabian Stud 1906-1807,"
bearing on its cover a head picture of a grey horse framed in oval lines.
It contains much of the basic material used in the subsequent catalog of
1909-1910.
The
catalog of Davenport's horses most commonly available at the present time
is titled "Davenport Desert Arabian Stud," On the upper
left corner of the cover page 1909 appears. On the
upper right corner, 1910. It was a fine service for
the Arabian breed when this catalog was reprinted in 1967 by Best Publishing
Company. This catalog appears to cover all of Davenport's horses including
the ones of Hamidie Society bloodlines, but its primary concern, in general
preservation as well as individual horses, is with the 1906
importation. Much of the introduction and many of the entries - especially
those concerning the imported mares - is identical with the 1906-1907
catalog. the special value of these entries is that they were written while
the trip was still fresh in Davenort's mind.
Their
shortcoming is that they do not reflect modifications or corrections that
might have been in order because of contemplation or increased knowledge.
Certain of the stallion entries, however, notably of *HAMRAH,
*HALEB, *MUSON, and *EL
BULAD, were expanded appropriately. One wishes the
same could have been done at least for other key individuals.
The
Davenport importation documents: When the Arabian Horse Club Registry was
still located in Chicago, the writer visited them with the hope that many
questions could be resolved by examination of original importation documentation
of early horses. The office staff was very cordial, but it seemed that
very little of such material had been preserved by the Registry. Some years
later, it developed that Mr. and Mrs. H.O.Bell of Missoula, Montana, through
a contact with the estate of Peter Bradley,
Davenport's partner in many horse ventures, had possession of much of the
documentation for the Davenport horses, as well as a scrapbook prepared
by one of the participants in the trip. The writer visited the Bells, who
were most gracious, in February of 1968, and was privileged to examine
their material. The documentation for the Davenport imported horses consisted
of certificates of desert origin and photographic copies of such certificates.
These were in Arabic and were not translated, but there were notations
on the backs of some of them containing pedigree information which had
apparently been done at the time of the expedition. It was not practical
to copy these notations completely, but notes were made concerning them.
Some time later, the writer was furnished photocopies of the faces
of the documents themselves by Mr. M.G.Hickman, who had them from Mr. and
Mrs. Bell. These photocopies were subsequently translated as regards pedigree
information by Mr. M.A.El-Fouly, Ain Shamsa University, Cairo, U.A.R.,
at that time doing graduate work at the University of Illinois. (For information
concerning verification of these documents at the time of the Davenport
importation, see "At the Beginning."
Arabian Horse News, May, 1974 issue.)
So,
there are a number of primary sources concerning the pedigrees of Davenport
horses: (1) the book, My Quest of the Arabian Horse,
(2) Davenport's catalogs of his desert horses, (3)
the notations on the back of the desert documents, and (4)
the El-Fouly translations of these documents.
In
general, these sources agree pretty well, but they do not agree completely.
The strain of the sire of *KUSOF, for instance, is
given as Mu'niqi-Hadruj on the back of the importation document, as Jilfan
Stam el Bulad in the catalogs, and is absent in the El-Fouly translation.
The studbook shows it to be "Maneghi Hedrug," It is tempting
to take the El-Fouly translation of the pedigree as authoritative, but
this may not be completely fair because the other sources were written
either during the trip or shortly thereafter, and may well contain information
which is not included on the importation document itself.
A
final source of information on the Davenport pedigrees is Carl Raswan,
most easily available as an authority in his Index. He had direct
personal knowledge of many of the early Davenport horses, including one
and possibly more of the imported animals. He had apparently had contact
with the Bradley breeding establishment where many of the early Davenports
were kept and bred from. During an expedition to Arabia in 1927,
he had close contact with the family of Akmet Haffez and even employed
as a guide a son of Akmet Haffez who had accompanied the Davenport party
in 1906. (43) On the same trip
he discussed the pedigrees of the horses obtained by Davenport with the
same Hashem Bey who had certified a number of them and, in fact, had even
owned *WADDUDA. With several exceptions, Raswan confirmed
the pedigrees of the imported horses as registered by the Arabian Horse
Club, and frequently he gives interesting supplemental detail. As has been
noted, however, he is sometimes rather significantly in contradiction with
the importation documents and other sources.
It
is difficult to make any simple, generalized summary about the stallions
of the 1906 Davenport importation. Most of them were
juveniles at the time of acquisition by Davenport. They were selected by
a person who did not have professional expertise as a horseman. There were
pedigree relationships between some of them, but for the most part they
appear to have been chosen as representatives of differing strains of Bedouin
horses. They were selected from the relatively small number of "asil"
horses in use by the Bedouins in Davenport's time.
In
America, a few did not leave enduring lines, but most of them did. Some
made major contributions to the breed, most notably *HAMRAH,
whose daughters are a vital foundation of American breeding. Some of the
stallions *HAMRAH, *MUSON,*DEYR,
and *ABBEIAN - established sire lines which are still
active today, 75 years after their importation. This is especially remarkable
in the context of the historical bias in American Arabian breeding in favor
of the newly imported sire. Out of fairness, it should be observed that
there were numerous excellent stallions of different bloodlines contemportary
with the finest Davenports which have unfortunately vanished or dwindled
in their influence.
The
breeding history of the Davenport stallions was so inseparable linked with
that of their companion mares of the importation that it is impossible
to separate the influence of the two groups. One of the greatest values
of the breeding resource which they jointly represented was that it combined
so well with non-Davenport bloodlines. Not their least service was that
matings by these animals with such bloodlines sometimes provided the main
opportunities for these bloodlines, too, to be preserved as an American
heritage.
A
final contribution of the Davenport stallions was that they projected a
force within the limits of the Davenport importation that continues the
Davenport breeding group into our current American Arabian breeding as
a cohesive genetic element containing the essentials of desert type and
character.
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