All value, all poetry, words to remember…

CarleVernet – Mamluke with drawn sword

The words written by W.G.Palgrave, in his book ‘Central and Eastern Arabia’,  have NEVER left my mind in all the years I’ve been breeding Arabian horses and in some ways I have used them as a yard stick for our breeding program. Many will already know them, some may not have read them but they take you back to the 1860’s when Palgrave gives a description of the horses owned by Prince Faisal ibn-Saud. Think about it for a moment, these horses were the type of Arabian that Abbas Pasha was able to source for his own breeding establishments. When you read the description you will probably feel like I do and wish you owned a time capsule…

“…Never had I seen or imagined so lovely a collection. Their stature was indeed somewhat low; I do not think that any came fully up to fifteen hands; fourteen appeared to me about their average; but they were so exquisitely well shaped that want of greater size seemed hardly, if at all, a defect. Remarkably full in the haunches, with a shoulder of a slope so elegant as to make one in the words of an Arab poet, ‘go raving mad about it;’ a little, a very little saddle-backed, just the curve that indicates the spinginess without any weakness; a head broad above, and tapering down to a nose fine enough to verify the phrase of ‘drinking from a pint pot’, did pint pots exist in Nejed; a most intelligent and yet singularly gently look, full eye, sharp thorn like little ear, legs fore and hind that seemed to be made of hammered iron, so clean and yet so well twisted with sinew; a neat round hoof, just the requisite for hard ground; the tail set on or rather thrown out at a perfect arch; coats smooth, shining and light; the mane long but not over grown nor heavy; and an air and step that seemed to say ‘Look at me, am I not pretty?’
Their appearance justified all reputation, all value, all poetry. The prevailing colour was chestnut or grey; a light bay, an iron colour, white, or black, were less common.
But if asked what are, after all, the specially distinctive points of the Nejdee horse, I should reply, the slope of the shoulder, the extreme cleanness of the shank, the full rounded haunch, though every other part too has a perfection and a harmony unwitnessed (at least by my eyes) anywhere else.”

W.G.Palgrave, ‘Central and Eastern Arabia’ (London 1865) Vol.2 pages 92-94