Ten Feet Tall

El Shaklan (Shaker El Masri x Estopa) was one of our taller Arabians, measured at 16 hands

In Count Waclaw Rzewuski's 1821 manuscript,  Concerning Oriental Horses, he writes, 

"It is a great error to believe that desert Arab horses should generally be small. Some of them are, as everywhere, below average size, but this lack of growth is not typical of the Bedouin strain. To the contrary, some of them are found to be large and even very tall." 

So much of the available written information concerning the Arab horse does appear to be unified in support of a smaller size. 

One of my favorite prints ever, AN ARABIAN HORSE, as drawn by Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault, in 1821

James Luck, the translator of Rzewuski's book (published by Andrew Steen's Tales of the Breed), added, "When reading Rzewuski's comments on the size of horses one should keep in mind that for him a medium sized horse seems to have been between 15 and 16 hands."  

Count Rzewuski, in recognizing the taller Bedouin,-bred horse  offers some of the sizes of the taller horses he purchased, "I even bought, for Her Highness, the Queen of Württemberg, the Bedouin horse Abou-Arkoub, a deep iron-grey, two-year-old, that measured 17 hands; Obeiyan abou Dahman, a bay, age three-years, that stood 16 palms, Seglawi Giedran, a golden sorrel, age four-years, that also stood 16 palms. Among those that I have reserved for myself, was the famous El Messenneh el Wehabi, which I purchased from Abd-el-Aziz, Prince of the Wahhabis, who was 17 hands high."

Size does matter to Rzewuski as he makes it a point to forever record in his significant reference tome the height of the taller horses that he was personally involved with. 

In Lady Wentworth's The Authentic Arabian Horse, she wrote, "There is no standard height, but so long as type is not lost, the bigger, the better." In an article written about the stallion, Pogrom (QR Marc x Pętla), and published on the Midwest Arabians site, noted breed historian, Scott Benjamin shared, "Pogrom represents size. “I think [his sire Visbaden] is the first time that the Poles have introduced a stallion outside of their own program who actually has length of leg. We need that, because people are getting taller; they need horses with size.”

How does the height of Arabian horses compare to other breeds? Check out the following chart, published by Horse Illustrated magazine:

I'm not suggesting that taller horses are better than horses who measure 14 hands and/or smaller. If that is what you are getting from this blog, then, apologies, because that was never my intent to imply that but if our breed narrative favors a smaller sized individual, then perhaps our history needs to be updated to celebrate our taller-sized horses, which according to Rzewuski, were more common than we were led to believe.