The Polish Quest for Arabian Horses, page 2
By Peter Harrigan
Count
Rzewuski needed no such persuading. By
the time Sanguszko’s letter reached him in January 1818, he was already in
Damascus preparing expeditions to the Bedouin grazing lands of the Arabian
Peninsular. He was the first Polish nobleman to undertake such an
adventure himself, and the first to reach the actual breeders of the famed kuhailans.
After two years that included journeys into Najd and the Hiraz
(today’s central and western Saudi Arabia), he returned to Sawrań
not only with prize horses, but also with a deep understanding of the people of
Arabia and of all aspects of horsemanship as they practiced it – as well as a
love of the open desert.
His
interest was genuine and deeply rooted. Rzewuski
had formed a passion for Arabian horses and things oriental in his childhood,
when an Arab stablehand working for his father would tell him of the deserts
where the horses came from. An
uncle, too, who had traveled to Istanbul and North Africa, spoke to the boy of
those lands. By the age of 27, the count had completed military service as
a captain in the Austrian hussars and, as a veteran of the battle of Aspern
against Napoleon, he knew cavalry.
His
Austrian links had led him into friendship with the distinguished Austrian
diplomat and Orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, under whose tutelage the
count had immersed himself in Middle Eastern studies in Vienna, Austria.
Antuna Arida, a Lebanese monk and lecturer at the Oriental Academy in
Vienna, had taught him Arabic. He
had learned Turkish from a former Ottoman admiral, Ramiz Pasha.
During this time he had also financed and edited the first
Oriental-studies periodical in Europe, Mines d’Orient, to which he
contributed several articles.
The decade of wars following Napoleon’s proclamation of empire in 1804 had resulted in huge losses of horses in eastern Europe. During the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and 1815, Count Rzewuski had attended meetings to discuss ways of replenishing studs with Arabian bloodstock. This was a crucial debate, for those were times when diminished stocks of horses meant military weakness, much as inoperable tanks mean weakness for a modern army. Rzewuski had left Vienna with the seeds of the idea of his expedition already sown.
The count's detailed diagram
of the parts of the horse's body records their Arabic names
"according to the Bedouins, collected among the tribes of the Najd." Click on picture to enlarge |
Rzewuski
had inherited considerable wealth from his father, and in 1817 he assembled his
personal physician, a valet, a court Cossack to serve as his mounted messenger,
a veterinary surgeon, stablemen and general hands.
His treasurer was charged with caring for the bags of gold.
The party set out for Damascus, via Istanbul.
At
the time, the tsar of Russia also ruled Poland, which was known in those years
as the Congress Kingdom. In
Istanbul, Rzewuski met with Russian diplomats who provided a letter of
commission from Catherine Pavlona, queen of Würtemberg and sister of Tsar
Alexander I, requesting the count to obtain Arabian horses for the royal stables
at Weil, near Stuttgart. “In
purchasing Arabian horses, which I so much desire,” she wrote, “you would do
me a great favor. My interest in
these horses is especially great. I
already have a splendid stud and year by year I seek to improve the strain.
Thus it has become my greatest wish to obtain some Nadir Kuhailans.
If it were possible for you to procure such, you would bring me great
happiness…. I need three stallions and three first-class mares for breeding,
but absolutely faultless.”
In
January 1818, Count Rzewuski took up residence in Damascus, and from there made
excursions into the Syrian desert. He
also traveled south, around Jalab Druz and along the route from Wadi Sirhan
toward al-Jawf, now in Saudi Arabia. After
five months, his treasury was exhausted. He
returned to Istanbul with more than the queen had ordered:
eight outstanding stallions and 12 mares.
He replenished his funds with credit from a banker and returned to
Damascus the following year. Over
the next two years he traveled even more extensively into the heartland of
Arabia, including a journey along the pilgrim route toward the holy city of
Makkah. His equestrian skill earned
him honor among the Bedouin tribes, and he was called Amir Taj Al-Fahar ‘Abd
al-Nishaani (“Wreath of Fame, Servant of the Sign [of God]”; the first phrase translates his Polish name, Waclaw).
During those years he acquired 81 stallions and 33 mares of the finest
lineage from the deserts of Najd. As
his equine acquisitions increased, he had to take on more people to take care of
them, and his payroll grew to exceed 100 men.
Rzewuski
would have stayed in Arabia longer if not for the Aleppo revolution in October
1819. The leader of the Ottoman
movement happened to be a friend, and so the count became embroiled, apparently
unwittingly. The revolution was quashed, and Rzewuski quickly left for
Istanbul, but he found his creditors there were no long kindly disposed toward
him. With no funds coming from his
estate, and in spite of the representations of the Russian ambassador,
Rzewuski’s horses were all confiscated and sent to Paris for sale.
Rzewuski
and his retinue marched back to Sawrań
in despair. Quickly he sold land
and arranged guarantees on his loan and, indeed, it was not long before the
horses were returned to him. A year
after they had been impounded, they arrived at Sawrań
to scenes of jubilation. Rzewuski
turned out wearing Bedouin robes and mounted on the only Arabian horse that had
accompanied him on his return, Muftaszara.
In
the decade that followed, Rzewuski rarely left his Sawrań
estate or the company of his horses. He
built stables in the Arab style. He
lived and dressed as an Arab, and his staff dressed as Bedouins.
When not actually living in his stables, he spent his time in Bedouin
tents dotted around his estate. He
formed a power cavalry unit of local Cossacks and trained them in Arab
techniques of horsemanship. This
was all much more than fashionable or even eccentric orientalism for Rzewuski;
surrounded by his kuhailans and immersed in his records and his
memories, his adventures had become part of him.
In
breeding, Rzewuski followed strict Bedouin principles.
His Arabians were all small, light and of great quality, and he rarely
sold any. By 1830, he owned 80
purebred Arabian brood mares. It
was perhaps the finest stud in all of Europe.
When
not with his horses, the count spent time writing.
In an elegant script, accompanied by ornate illustrations and intricate
lists in Arabic and French of tribal names, horse breeds and their
characteristics, he produced an 800-page work, On Oriental Horses and Those
Descended From Eastern Breeds. The
depth of his sympathies is evident from the opening:
“A glance at Arabia is necessary to understand this work.
Knowledge of the land and climate provides an essential background to the
organization and qualities of the Arabian horse.”
But
then came the November Uprising against Poland’s Russian overlords – the
second in a series that, by 1905, culminated in revolution.
It spread toward Ukraine. Rzewuski
took command of an insurgent cavalry regiment.
At the battle of Daszow, on May 14, 1831, his favorite white
stallion, Muktar-Tab, returned from the Polish lines bloodstained, without
saddle or bridle. The Emir was
never seen again. The details of
his death remain a mystery.
The
Russians put down the uprising, confiscated Rzewuski’s estate and dispersed
the stud. The horses passed into
various hands and, one by one, were lost to history.
It was the greatest misfortune in Polish Arabian horse breeding.
Romantic
poets assuaged the calamity with legend: The
Emir, they said, had survived the battle and, that night, had returned to his
estate, silently led his horses out and had fled with them across the steppes,
over the Caucasus, and back to their desert pastures.
In the years that followed, occasional reports of sightings of the
golden-bearded Emir drifted back with travelers and traders.
The
Long Riders’ Guild would like to thank Peter Harrigan for permission to
reproduce this article; it is an
edited version of one which originally appeared in the November/December 2001
issue of “Saudi Aramco World.”
Contact him on harrigan@fastmail.fm