The 19th century was the time when European breeders first discovered the Arabian and its superior qualities. It was the age in which kings, princes, and other noblemen founded stud farms, sending their agents to travel to Arabia to buy foundation horses or, as in the case of the Blunts, traveling there to find those horses themselves. As a result, most of the sire lines and mare families we know today date back to that time, the earliest – those of Weil and Poland – dating back to the 1810s and the younger ones – those of Crabbet Park – to the 1870s/80s. Following the turn of the century, the era of travel and importation came to an end when cars began to replace horses as a means of transport and the horse lost its significance in Arabia.
But there are a few exceptions to that rule. Just as Poland can claim the oldest dam lines, it can also claim the youngest sire lines, and in each case, they are among the most influential in the world. In 1930, a Polish prince sent another expedition to Arabia to look for horses, the last of its kind: Prince Roman Sanguszko, owner of the old Polish Gumniska Stud and member of a family already famous for its Arabian horses. He sent his stud manager, Bogdan Zietarski, who was accounted one of the leading experts of his day, along with the German Arabian expert Carl Raswan, who had lived with the Bedouins and was familiar with the desert and its tribes. The two men traveled throughout the Arabian countries, visiting the Royal Agricultural Society Stud and the farm of Prince Mohammed Ali in Egypt, several Bedouin tribes in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the Nejd, and the royal stud of Bahrain. One year later, they returned to Poland with nine horses: the mares Rabda Khuszaiba, Hadba Inzihi, Hamdanija Semria, and Kuhailat Ajouz (Szeikha), and the stallions Kuhailan Haifi, Kuhailan Afas, Kuhailan Kruszan, Kuhailan-Ajouz, and Kuhailan Zaid, arguably one of the finest groups of horses ever taken from Arabia to Poland.
However, the 1930s were not the best time for Arabian breeding in Poland, or anywhere else in Europe (or for many other things, for that matter). The years that should have seen the families of these horses develop and grow strong at Gumniska brought war and destruction instead. Of the four mares and of two of the stallions, hardly anything has remained, they themselves and as well as their produce being lost in World War II. Only three of the stallions founded their own lines which still continue. That of Kuhailan Zaid, however, who was not taken to Gumniska, but to Bábolna in Hungary, is now limited to the Shagya-Arabian breed and very rare today. He did have considerable influence in pure Arabian breeding through his daughters.
Kuhailan Afas was unique among those nine imports in that he came from Bahrain. Zietarksi purchased him as a yearling mainly because he liked his parents. “I admired a dark bay 18-year-old Kuhailat mare with excellent conformation,” he noted in his travel diaries. “The foals are by a 10-year-old bay Kuhailan Wadnan stallion with superb legs which have been ruined by hobbling and bad shoeing, with a rather large head but
