By the beginning of the 19th century, after
successive Russian partitions in the east, Polish noblemen and landowners in the Ukraine
began to take the matter of cavalry-building into their own hands. They began to dispatch
their own horse-buying expeditions. Prince Hieronymous Sanguszko (1743-1812), from a
family estate at Slawuta on the Dnieper River, was first to do so. Led by his equerry
Kajeta Burski, his expedition returned in 1805 after a journey of two years, having
obtained five stallions and one mare. This was a success: A handful of the finest, purest
horses were worth more than a large number of those of dubious lineage, and mares were
more difficult to obtain than stallions because sellers were more reluctant to part with
them. Thus ownership of even one fine Arabian stallion or one perfect brood mare meant
ownership of what was, in effect, a priceless biological template.
Prince Hieronymous died in 1812. His son,
Eustachy-Erazm (1768-1845), took over the Sanguszko estates. Political turmoil led to his
exile, but in 1816 he underwrote an expedition to Aleppo that shored up the beleaguered
stud with nine stallions and a mare from supposed Bedouin sources. Prince Eustachy-Erazm
was so impressed with his new horses that he penned ecstatic letters to friends. One he
addressed to the owner of the estate in nearby Sawran, Count Waclaw Rzewuski. "My
dear Count," he wrote, "I tell you the simple truth, that no eye has yet seen in
our country such Arabian horses, nor has the ear heard of such as I now possess."
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 Peninsula. He was the first Polish
nobleman to undertake such an adventure himself, and the first to reach the actual
breeders of the famed kubailans. After two years that included journeys into Najd
and the Hijaz (today's central and western Saudi Arabia), he returned to Sawran 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.
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.
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 been 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 Jabal 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 anti-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 longer 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 Sawran
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 Sawran 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 Sawran 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 powerful 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.
Polish writer Lucjan Siemienski (1807-1877)
gives us a glimpse of the golden-bearded count, who was widely known in his later years as
"The Emir":
His return was unmistakable: fantastic Eastern
attire, the lifestyle of an Arabian prince, so different from that of a Polish lord,
fabulous stallions of great beauty and soft temperament. All combined to attract the
attention of the whole province.
He took up residence in his stables—that's
where he received visitors and stayed alone, writing stories, poems and diaries of his
travels.... Horse skin was his bed, the saddle his pillow and the horse rug his
blanket.... He indulged his fantasies in priceless horse tack and [in outfitting] his
Cossacks, who were prepared to follow him into fire."
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.
