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>>THE ARABIAN MAGAZINE ....
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Vol. 76 June 2013 - The Crabbet & Russian ....
June 2013 - The Crabbet & Russian Edition, Russian
A Russian History
By Anne Finnerup Wed, May 29, 2013
The Arabian horse in Russia has a very long history, going all the way back to the 12th century.
Photography unless stated from Finnerup Archives (lead photo:Naseem by Skowronek).
Historical times
The Arabian horse in Russia has a very long history, going all the way back to the 12th century. Ivan the Terrible had Arabians in his stables in the 1500s, and in the 18th century there were around 100 active Arabian breeding stallions in Russia.
From top: Amurath by Tajar; Arax by Amurath; Aswanin 1958 at the age of 18 years old; Mansour by Gamil Manial.
photos show
A nobleman by the name of Alexey Orlov created a new breed of horse – the Orlov Trotter – which had a very large percentage Arabian blood. Already at this point, the Arabian horse was highly treasured and very much in demand. Orlov paid the staggering sum of 60,000 Ruples for the stallion Smetanka who died after only one breeding season, but still had a profound influence on the breeding of both Orlov trotters and many other breeding programmes with a high percentage of Arabian pure-bred horses in their bloodlines.
Back then, the Arabian horse was not only praised for being a great endurance horse, a good hack, dressage horse, or family pet; no, their value was in their talent as war horses. They were strong, but still fast, agile and brave – all qualities that could potentially save the lives of their riders and that had made, for example, the Mamluk Cavalry near impossible to defeat until the introduction of the machine gun and the repeating rifles on the battlefields.
In 1889, another nobleman named Count Stroganov founded the stud that later became known as the Russian State Stud, Tersk. Count Stroganov, together with Prince Sherbatov, travelled several times to Arabia and Syria and they brought back with them valuable pure-bred Arabian horses.
Prince Sherbatov used them mostly for improving other breeds, but Count Stroganov created a programme for breeding pure-bred Arabians. In 1899, there were 66 pure-breds at the stud, including youngstock, and in 1901 they published the first stud book for Arabian horses in Russia.
The histories of the Russian and the Polish Arabian horses are inextricably intertwined; for many years, Poland was occupied by the Russians and, at least by the Russians, considered to be part of Russia, for example during the years 1864-1918 where the studs from the Polish/Russian areas bred many good pure-bred Arab horses that were also exported to the rest of Europe.
The famous stallions (1) Ursus (Dahman-Amir x Hagar), (2) Wan Dick (Vasco de Gama x Hela) and not least (3) Skowronek (Ibrahim x Jaskolka) are examples of horses that were born in areas that were Russian at the time, but which previously, as well as later, belonged to Poland.
During the Russian Civil War of 1917-1920, the entire breeding programme was blown to smithereens; all the horses disappeared, were killed or were lost forever. Not a single one of these valuable, wonderful creatures made it through this black time in the history of the Arabian horse. If any survived, they were scattered to the wind and never returned to the stud or the breeding programme.<<