Buying a Horse: Researching Arabian Pedigrees

Whether you are completely new to horses or just to Arabians, you may find yourself looking at the names in your new horse's pedigree with a bit of bewilderment. Here are some explanations of some of the things you might see on your horse's pedigree and how to find further information on specific horses.

If you have your horse's certificate of registration with the Arabian Horse Association (AHA), you'll usually see the horse's name in the center with a tree of names leading off behind it. On top is the sire (father) and bottom the dam (mother). Underneath the name is usually the birth year of the horse, the color, and the registration number. Colors are: B = bay, C = chestnut, G = grey, W = white, and K = black.

You might come across a horse with an asterisk (*) in front of their name such as *Raffles. This symbol simply indicates that the horse was imported to the United States from another country.

The horse might also have symbols after this name such as +, ++, +/, +++, +//, ++++. This would look like Winraff ++ or Khemosabi ++++. These symbols are not part of their name, but signify achievement awards the horse has received. When enrolled in an achievement program through AHA, the horse gather points by competing and placing in Arabian shows, endurance events, dressage, and more. For each set amount of points the horse accumulates, they are awarded a symbol starting with the Legion of Honor (+). It then goes to a Legion of Merit (++), Legion of Supreme Honor (+/), Legion of Supreme Merit (+++), Legion of Excellence (+//), and Legion of Masters (++++).

As you look through the pedigree you might see several horses with the same beginning name or same set of initials in front of or behind a name. This is a common practice in Arabian breeding that the breeder of the horse names the horse with their barn name or initials. Some farms such as Al-Marah Arabians may use either their farm name in the case of Al-Marah Ibn Indraff or the initials in the case of AM Sea Captain.

You may notice many horses with names that include Ibn or Bint. These do not follow the above with being associated with a farm or person. Instead Ibn means "son of" and Bint means "daughter of".

To start researching your horse's pedigree, the internet is a great resource. Try searching for the farm that bred your horse, your horse's name, names of parents, grandparents, and further back. Also if you know the breeder or owner of horses in the pedigree try searching for them. There is a wealth of information on the internet, unfortunately some of it is incorrect so double check things if possible.

Get a subscription to the Arabian Datasource. The Arabian Datasource is the online studbooks for AHA. Through this you can find past owners of your horse (as long as they transferred registration to their name), search for progeny, show records, extended pedigrees, siblings, and more. It also contains some pictures.

Look for old Arabian magazines such as Arabian Horse World, Arabian Horse Times, Arabian Visions, Arabian Horse Journal, and the Arabian Horse News. The January issues of the older Arabian Horse Worlds contained what was called the "Foto Finish" a listing of all the horses that appeared the previous year in any issue of the Arabian Horse World. The Arabian Horse News are wonderful as they contain many horses you might not see in many of the bigger publications and also date back farther than the other magazines. Only caution with the Arabian Horse News is that there are often misprints on identification of pictures.

Old show catalogs for shows such as Scottsdale or the Nationals often featured pictures of horses. Also old sales catalogs feature many horses you might not otherwise find and information such as show wins and more. Check places like Ebay or used bookstores for many of these magazines.