Byerley Turk

First to arrive in England was the Byerley Turk. He got his name from his owner, a Colonel Byerley, who captured him from the Turks at the Battle of Buda. For several years the colonel used the horse as his charger, and later when he retired from the Army in 1690, as a stallion.

The Byerley Turk sired few horses of note himself, but became the great-great grandsire of the immensely successful racehorse King Herod, or Herod as he was more often called. One of the principal forefathers of the Thoroughbred, Herod himself sired the winners of 1,042 races collectively worth over £200,000, an enormous sum in modern terms. One of his sons, Highflyer, was just as successful, producing the winners of 1,108 races valued at £170,000 and establishing the fortune of his owner, Richard Tattersall.

This gentleman was the founder of the famous British firm of bloodstock auctioneers, responsible for running the sales at Newmarket which repeatedly drew buyers from the world over.

Darley Arabian

The Darley Arabian was described after he had been sent home to England in 1704 by Thomas Darley, as a "horse of exquisite beauty." This horse is the only one of the three Thoroughbred foundation sires whose actual lineage has ever been established- although some controversy surrounds it. According to Major General W. Tweedie in his book "The Arabian Horse" published in 1894, Mr. Thomas Darley was an agent of an English mercantile firm at Aleppo. In 1705, the colt Thomas Darley bought was sent as a present to his brother John Brewster Darley, Esq. of Aldby Park near York. The letter which accompanied the colt expressed a modest hope that he would "not be much disliked" in England, seeing that he was "highly esteemed" at Aleppo, and such as could have been "sold at a very considerable price." (The "Sporting Magazine" for December 1823 contains an account of the horse with his portrait.)

While sources don't dispute his acquisition or progeny, the question of the Darley Arabian's background is about which of the five Al-Khamsa divisions he actually came from. In Major Gen. Tweedie's research, he states, "Both Major Upton and Mr. Blunt have passed it onto us that he (Darley Arabian) belonged to the strain which is called Rasu 'l Fidawi; whereas Mr. Darley wrote of him that he was "of the most esteemed race among the Arabs, both by sire and dam, and the name is called Manicka." Mi-ni-ki or Ma-na-ki (from the root meaning long-necked, whence also "Sons of Anak") is known to every dabbler in desert pedigrees.

If the Darley Arabian came from the Miniki line, the Darley is from the smallest division of rare Arabian desert breeding the Bedouins actually referred to as Hamdani. There are only two branches listed under this division: Jifli and Simri. If the Darley Arabian came from the Rasu 'l Fidawi branch, then the Darley is from the largest division of desert breeding called Kuhailan. Rasu 'l Fidawi is one of 55 branches under the Kuhailan division. (There are three other main divisions of which the Darley does not claim relation: Saklawi, Ubaiyan, and Hadban.)

The Darley Arabian did make a mark with his first generation of progeny, siring Flying Childers- the first truely great racehorse- and through grandson, Bartletts Childers (useless on the racecourse because of weak blood vessels), he became the great-great grandsire of perhaps the most famous racehorse of all time, Eclipse.

Eclipse was bred in 1764 by the Duke of Cumberland, also the breeder six years earlier of the great Herod. Eclipse did not race until he was five years old, but thereafter he remained unbeaten. He retired with 26 races to his credit, including 11 King's Plates- races run in 4 miles in which runners had to carry 76 kg. One of the best known phrases in the annals of the British turf, "Eclipse first, the rest nowhere," was coined by his owner, a somewhat disreputable Irishman named Dennis O'Kelly, when called upon to forecast the result of his first race. In those days, any horse beaten by a distance of 240 yards was not officially placed, adn when Eclipse drew away from his opponents three-quarters of the way to the finish, O'Kelly's brash pronouncement was proved entirely correct.

At stud, Eclipse got 344 individual winners and established sire lines of paramount influence. One of his most celebrated decendants was St. Simon, the 1884 winner at Ascot. Nothing could get near St. Simon on the racecourse, and his offspring won 571 races in Britain alone, where he headed the winning sire's list nine times, a feat never achieved before or since. From St. Simon descends one of the greatest of modern racehorses, the Italian champion Ribot, also unbeaten through a lengthy career and twice succesful in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

Eclipse's conformation was described as follows. Eclipse "rose very little on his withers," and was "higher behind than before." According to S. Sidney's 1800 publication Book of the Horse, "in picking Arabs for racing, it is not a bad plan to take Eclipse for a model." His best likeness (from the Oriental Sporting Magazine, June 1870) of the Hon. A. Stewart's famous Arabian Akbar, shows a horse among whose measurements were "fourteen hands and half an inch at the withers, and fourteen hands two and a half inches over the loins; girth, five feet and six inches."

Godolphin Arabian

The origin of the third of the foundation sires, the Godolphin Arabian, is even more obscure than the other two. When the Godolphin Arabian landed in England in 1729, he had lowly career behind him. Sultan Muley Abdulah of Morocco had presented the young King Louis XV of France with eight Oriental horses and some camels from his residence at Maknes. Among these was the Arab stallion El Sham. M. de la Gueriniere, the all-powerful Master of the Horse at the Palace of Versailles, had the preference of the time for heavily built Neapolitans, whose capabilities were measured by the number of caprioles (dressage "airs above the ground" move) they could execute. There were no prospects here for the little Arab, wiry as he was. The King gave him to his chef, who sold him to a cutler. The noble stallion from the marble mews of the Sultan was leading a downtrodden life between the shafts of a merchant's cart, but was luckily still entire when the Quaker Coke found him in Paris and took him home.

By devious ways, Sham found his way to the stables of Lord Godolphin, where he was used as a teaser. When by chance he actually covered the mare Roxana, a snow-white descendant of the Darley Arabian, Lord Godolphin was furious, and named the skinny little foal which resulted from this misalliance Lath. But as a two-year-old, Lath struck the racing aristocracy of Newmarket breathless and, contrary to all expectation, beat the favourite by several lengths. Only after his full brother Cade had gained an equally sensational victory three years later was Sham's worth recognized. Sham became the grandsire of Matchem, who like Eclipse and Herod, was to found an outstanding male line. One branch flourishes in the United States today thanks to the fabulously successful racehorse Man O War, affectionately named Big Red. Man O War was to American racegoers of the 1920's what Secretariat was to be 50 years later. Sham is found under the name of Godolphin Arabian in the pedigree of most famous Thoroughbred racehorses today.