|
|
|
|
|
|
|
home.................................. about me............................ my salukis.......................... salukis in Latvia ................ my cockers......................... puppies and litters.............. gallery................................ links................................... contact me..........................
|
Story time
Though the Saluki's heritage lies more
than 10,000 years past, the preservers of the breed are the Arab
peoples living in the deserts which have been the cradle of so many
civilizations. They have, out of necessity produced two
creatures of beauty by careful pedigree breeding almost since the
beginning of recorded time. These are the Arabian Horse,
for transport and war, and the hound for providing food. Long
before guns were invented, the true desert Arab bred the Saluki with
the same care he gave to the breeding of his horses, valuating
swiftness and beauty in horse and hound alike. It is believed that
originally, each tribe bred a separate, distinct type of Saluki; the
blondes and fawns in the golden deserts; the blacks in the black
lava deserts; and the pale ones with smutty noses in North Africa.
For many centuries, the nomadic Bedouin
depended on the swift Saluki to bring down game for the tribe's
cooking pots. Although dogs were pronounced unclean when the Islamic
religion swept the Arab world (600 - 1918), a special exemption was
made for the Saluki. It was believed that the Saluki was a
gift from Allah and, like the Egyptians, they called the hound
"El Hor," or the Noble One. Even today it is reportedly rare to find
a Saluki wandering free in the Middle East. Many Arabs will
not even admit to knowing that such a dog exists, largely because
Salukis are venerated as holy dogs, for if they were not holy, Arabs
could not eat of the game captured by them. Any ordinary dog or "Kelb"
in the Middle East is considered a scavenger. Only those men holding
high rank were permitted to own a Saluki and rarely was the Saluki
ever purchased in it's Country of Origin, even now. Instead, they
were given as gifts to those honored by the owner.
Puppies were raised in the harem, while
the adult hound was the constant companion of his master, the Prince
or Sheik. The Saluki was the only animal allowed to share his
master's palace, tent, or room. In today's Middle East, the Saluki
is going the way of the Bedouin -- being crowded out by the
progression of civilization. Fewer Bedouin roam the deserts;
instead, they are moving to the cities and the role of the Saluki is
fading away with this change in lifestyle. Royal families,
nobility and the few remaining Bedouin tribes still use Salukis for
hunting today. For the Princes and their families, it is now
sport; for the nomadic Bedouin, it is as it always was. . . for
survival.
Materials are from:
http://salukiho.tripod.com/
3 remarkable women & their Salukis
The Middle East has long held a fascination for the
British. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was mainly
intrepid merchant adventurers who travelled to the Ottoman and
Persian Empires in pursuit of business. However, the eighteenth,
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a wider variety of
travellers there, including artists, writers, archaeologists, civil
servants and military, many taking the overland route to India.
Among such travellers were some exceptional women, such as Lady
Hester Stanhope, known as the Queen of Palmyra in Syria, Isabella
Bird, travelling from Baghdad to Tehran on horseback and Freya
Stark, working and exploring in Arabia, Mesapotamia and Persia, who
overcame not only the physical hardships of travelling in remote
areas, but also the at times hostile prejudice against foreign
Christian women in a Muslim man's world. In addition to their many
other qualities, three such women also held a special affection for
Salukis: Lady Anne Blunt, Gertrude Bell and Vita Sackville-West and
it is interesting to note for comparison their experience with
desert-bred hounds.
Lady Anne Blunt came of a distinguished
family - she was the grand-daughter of Lord Byron - and in 1869
married Wilfred Scawen Blunt, a diplomat of an ancient line
extending back to the Norman conquest. Together they made several
visits to the Middle East to see the tourist spots in Algeria,
Egypt, Syria and Turkey and an expedition to the bedouin tribes of
the Euphrates, from where they brought back to England Arabian
horses to found the Crabbet Stud. But in 1875 they undertook a
particularly enterprising tour to Central Arabia, later described in
Lady Anne's book "A pilgrimage to Nejd". They travelled "as persons
of distinction", paying a social call on their opposite numbers in
Nejd - the bedouin, "the gentlemen of the desert". Along the way
which led over 2000 miles from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf
on horse or camel they acquired 2 or 3 Salukis, which she persisted
in calling greyhounds.
Lady Anne's first acquisition was in fact a Syrian
hound from the area around Bosra, where Salukis appear in Roman
mosaics and where I saw Salukis on a visit there a couple of years
ago. She was given by some friendly bedouin related to their guide a
"pretty little fawn greyhoundl', which she called "Shiekhah" after a
plant of that name. She said it was "very docile and well-behaved.
She is a regular desert dog and likes dates better than anything
else".
How like my first desert-bred who was always stealing
our dates as a puppy and still loves them. As they travelled across
Jordan they were joined by an escort who brought his "very handsome
greyhound with him, of the long- haired breed, which has a wonderful
nose for game. His master declares he sees the birds, for the Arabs
do not seem to understand the theory of scent". I believe his master
was right: it was more likely that the hound spotted the movements
of the game than scented their presence. This is not to say that
Salukis do not scent game - my own have often indicated they know of
the presence of game by its scent when it is far out of sight - but
that their keen eyes are quick to pick-up movements almost
imperceptible to us, when they sometimes point with one paw raised
like a Pointer. When the escort came to leave them he gave them
Sayad (Hunter), his black and tan hound, who, says Lady Anne "whined
piteously when his master left. I like the dog for this". She
coursed these two hounds after a hare which got up in stony ground
"which would have broken every bone of an English greyhound,
apparently without hurting themselves". She also coursed them after
a jerboa which they found hard to catch. "Its hops were prodigious
and from side to side and backwards and forwards, so that the dogs
always ran over it, and snatching, always missed it; till at last,
as if by accident, it jumped into Sheikhah's mouth. Abdallah and the
rest were very anxious to eat it, but it was so mauled as to be
beyond cooking'l She underlines that this is the role of her Salukis
- to provide them with meat; "We have had no meat now for the last
four days till today... we are in clover as the dogs coursed a hare,
and we dug her out. The desert hare is a little bigger than a large
rabbit, and is literally too much for one, and not enough for two".
Later their coursing was helped by "a sort of lurcher who has
attached himself to us. The servants call him "Merzug", which may be
translated a "windfall" literally a gift from God, an unattractive
animal but possessed of a nose". I came across just such an animal
called a "Luqi" in Iraq which the locals used for its superior nose
for flushing out game. All three hounds were also let loose on a
hyena and "bodily attacked it, Sayad especially seizing it at the
shoulder, but they were unable to stop it". The hyena was then shot
and promptly cooked and eaten! Lady Anne also describes how she
worked the hounds A7ith her falcon; "a hare wa.s started and the
falcon lown. The Nefud i.s so covered with bushes, that writhout the
assistance of the bird the dogs could have stood no chance, for it
was only by watching the hawk's flight that they were able to keep
on the hares track. It was a pretty sight, the bird doubling as the
hare doubled, and the three dogs following with their noses in the
air". The hare eventually goes to ground - "Hares in the desert
always go to ground... I do not think the hares ever dig holes, but
they make use of any they can find when pressed" even, as they
found, when the hole is already occupied by a fox. I can confirm
from frequent experience in Syria that the hare is adept at going to
ground in time of need.
Finally the party arrived at Bushire on the Persian
gulf but sadly she does not say what happened afterwards to the
hounds. It seems unlikely that they came to England. In several
illustrations in the book the hounds appear more like whippets than
Salukis and I suspect therefore that the engravings were done by
someone who did not see the hounds but drew them on the basis of
their description of small greyhounds.
Gertrude Bell was an eveIl more daunting lady whose
epitaph in Englalld (.she wa.s actually buried in Baghdad) describes
her as "Schc)lar, historian, archaeologist, explorer, poet,
mountaineer, gardener, distinguished servant of the .state". She
first visited the Middle East when her uncle wa.s Ambassador in
Persia in the 1890's. She made a number of daring exploratory trips
into the Hejaz, Syria and Mesapotamia before settling down in
Baghdad as the Oriental Counsellor to the British High
Commis.sioner~ in which capacity she played a prominent role in
er1gir1eering the selection of KIt was while she was in Baghdad that
she acquired her Salukis. She had a pair of feathered silver
grizzles, which were given her by Fahad Beg ibn Hadhdhal, then
shaikh of the Amarat branch of the Anaizah tribe. In a letter home
writterl on :30 November 1919, she recorded that "the two most
beautiful Arab greyhounds... had walked ten days down the Euphrates
with two tribesmen to conduct them, and came in half-starved. They
are sitting beside me as I write, after wandering about the room for
half an hour whining. They are very gentle and friendly and I hope
they will soon get accustomed to living in a garden instead of a
tent. They are perfectly lovely and of course of the finest Arab
breed. We have named them Rishan and Najmah - the feathered (thats
because of his feathered tail) and the star...". Her prolific
letters do not reveal if she went coursing with them but she
certainly took them out with her when she went riding. Sadly there
is no record of what became of these lovely hounds after her
untimely death in 1926. Equally sadly when I visited the tribe sixty
years later I could not find a single Saluki, although some of the
old men recalled their existence in their youth.
Vita Sackville-West follows closely on from Gertrude
Bell: indeed without the latter's assistance she would not have
acquired her Saluki. Vita Sackville-West made her mark as a poet,
novelist, biographer, travel writer, journalist and broadcaster. She
was also one of the most influential gardeners of this century,
creating with her diplomat husband Harold Nicholson one of England's
most famous gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent. In March 1926 she
was passing through Baghdad on her way to join her husband who was
at the British Legation in Tehran. In the fascinating account of her
journey "A Passenger to Tehran", which took her via Egypt and India
as well as Iraq and back via Russia, she describes how she was
greeted on her arrival at Gertrude Bell's house in Baghdad by a
"tall grey saluki" She said that she wanted one like that to take up
into Persia. In no time at all Gertrude Bell was on the telephone
explaining that a friend of hers had arrived who must have a saluki
at once and was leaving for Persia next day. While Gertrude was away
at the office salukis began to arrive. "They slouched in, led on
strings by Arabs in white woollen robes, sheepishly smiling... I had
them all tied up to the posts of the verandah till Gertrude should
return, an army of desert dogs, yellow, white, grey, elegant, but
black with fleas and lumpy with ticks".
She chose a smooth female which Gertrude
said must be called "Zurcha", meaning "yellow one". This is a
curious name and Vita must have misunderstood what Gertrude said.
Zurcha is not an Arabic word and certainly does not mean yellow but
Zurqa means blue, which is the colour the Arabs normally use for
describing fawn with a bluish tinge in Salukis. Anyway, Zurcha she
became and the next day Vita set off with her in a car of the
Trans-Desert Mail for Tehran. "I got into the front seat... with
Zurcha, who although as leggy as a colt, folded up into a
surprisingly small space and immediately went to sleep. I was glad
to see this, as I had not looked forward to restraining a struggling
dog over five hundred miles of country, and had not been at all at
ease in my mind as to what a saluki straight out of the desert would
make of a motor. That yellow nomad, however, accepted whatever life
sent her with perfect and even slightly irritating philosophy.
Warmth and food she insisted on; shared my luncheon and crawled
under my sheepskin, but otherwise gave no trouble. I was relieved,
but felt it a little ungrateful of her not to notice that she was
being taken into Persia". She need not have had such qualms, as my
experience with such desert hounds is that they are not at all
nervous or highly-strung and have such an equable temperament that
they easily adapt to new situations. When we took our little bitch
Najma from the tents of the Al Murra bedouin in the Empty Quarter,
we drove with her many hundreds of miles to Muscat and an unfamiliar
house and she never showed or gave us the least anxiety.
Zurcha was however not a success. Vita's son, Nigel
Nicolson, who kindly gave me the above photograph, drew my attention
to Victoria Glendinning's biography of his mother in which she says
in parenthesis, possibly quoting from Vita's daily letters to her
mother, that "She turned out to be irredeernably stupid, and the
only really unsatisfactory dog the Nicolsons ever had". Vita herself
describes Zurcha in "Faces: Profiles of Dogs" as "wthout exception
the dullest dog I ever owned. Salukis are reputed to be very gentle
and faithful: this one... was gentle enough, because she was
completely spiritless, and as for fidelity she was faithful only to
the best armchair... nothing would induce her to come out for a walk
- perhaps because I omitted to provide a gazelle. In the end I
followed the historical tradition and gave her to a Persian Prince,
who subsequently lost her somewhere in Moscow. I was unlucky, of
course, in the only Saluki I ever owned, and these remarks must not
be taken as an aspersion upon an incomparably elegant race". She was
indeed unlucky as the desert hound is normally full of spirit and
needs no inducement to go out for walks.
These brief sketches of one aspect of three remarkable
women in the history of the Middle East reveal some of the special
qualities to be found in the desert-bred Saluki: speed and agility
over even the roughest terrain, courage and determination to attack
much larger prey, fidelity to their owner, even temperament and
adaptability. Let's pass over Zurcha's wimpishness as atypical!
Materials are from:
http://www.ourworld.compuserve.com/
Author - Sir Terence Clark Copyright © 2003-2011. All rights reserved.
|
