Classic Arabians have made their homes everywhere in the world today. To be able to bring out distinctive main points in horse breeding, however, it is necessary to go back to the roots of the breed and – visualizing the noble Arabian horse you want – to develop a concept that will consolidate the desired Arabian characteristics and qualities via line breeding, rendering repetitive breeding success a calculable procedure. For almost twenty years now, we have known our vision and ideas, pursuing a breeding concept ?? that has proven to be a formula for success and is now coming to fruition.
„When I was six years old, I was allowed to ride our cow; at eight years, I had finally persuaded our father to buy me a pony; the warmbloods and Shagya Arabians followed; when I had made it to the purebred Arabians, I thought I had achieved my goal. But today I can see that this was only the beginning, the beginning of a passion I would like to keep afire for a long time to come“, Robert Schlereth says today when looking back. He is, together with Volker Wettengl, the owner, stud manager, breeder, show trainer, barn and feeding manager of AL QUSAR, the Arabian stud and training center in the Lüneburg Heath area in the North of Germany. Here, not far away from Hamburg, generations have worked at breeding and training Arabian horses – with global success.
For Volker Wettengl, it was about turning his hobby into a career when he exchanged his dream job – on a cruise ship in the Caribbean – for the onshore job of working with stallions, mares, and young stock in Germany. Today, after long years of building the three mainstays of the stud – namely the training center with its in countable number of show presentations and training units, the covering station, and the line breeding operation for Straight Egyptian Arabians – they can look back on a long list of international and national successes.
“A breeder who strives for success needs to stay true to the breeding concept he devised…“ is Robert’s philosophy. Proving that he is right with that are the offspring all over the world featuring the AL QUSAR logo in their names. Today, there are the 3rd and 4th generations around who represent the breeding goal of Al Qusar: noble, straight Egyptian Arabians, cooperative and responsive in their character, intelligent, calm and poised. The horses impress with their show-level Arabian type with a correct build providing maximum functionality for all areas of use for Arabian horses. And Robert adds: „It was not by financial investments, but by our breeding strategy and hard work with the horses that we were able to implement our visions, after being lucky enough to acquire a group of selected foundation mares right at the beginning. For our start, it was crucially important that we did not sell our first good foal right away for good money, even if that would have been helpful at that moment. But that way, we would never have found out if our breeding concept was going to work.“
To that, Volker Wettengl adds: „We cannot turn back the wheel of time, original Arabians from the Nejd desert don’t exist anymore, but in our mares’ pedigrees there are exactly these ancestors to be found. We try to breed, via selection, an Arabian horse who represents classic beauty and Arabian character above all – the traits that made it possible that these horses were able to have their intense rapport with people. After all, particularly in training situations we depend on the horse’s ability to build trust and to cooperate, and that is based on his positive attitude towards us. An Arabian that tends to follow his flight instincts first will not be able to express his beauty and noblesse during a show, and we don’t have much of a chance in such a case…“
And everything just started with Teymur B arriving. This straight Egyptian stallion from the Dahman Shahwan strain came from the Hungarian state stud of Babolna eight years ago. During the search for ideally matched mares for him, three Ansata mares were leased or bought, as initially, it was intended to intensify the Ansata Halim Shah aspect in his pedigree. New experiences added to the situation. Since 1989, Robert Schlereth had been presenting and handling the Arabians and Shagya Arabians during the state stud’s stock shows, so he had years of opportunities to admire the offspring of the precious old-stock Egyptian mares stabled in Babolna. Most of them tailed back to the imports that Dr. Nagel had brought from El Zahraa, the Egyptian state stud in Cairo. This was how at AL QUSAR, the Tamria line from the Dahman Shahwan family became ever more important. And then there was the Obayan family, represented by Hanan offspring, and the members of the Siglawy family tailing back to famous Mahiba from the Moniet el Nefous line of Cairo, with Mahiba one of the foundation mares on Katharinenhof stud. Both grew into stock mare groups that at AL QUSAR have their qualities proven by numerous offspring.
Next after this foundation stock were, on the one hand, daughters out of Ansata Ibn Halima breeding, such as KP Bint Mohssen (Mohssen by Ansata Ibn Halima) and Bagdady by Ansata Halim Shah, another son of Ansata Ibn Halima, as well as Ansata Queen Nefr – Ansata Halim Shah. On the other hand, there was reinforcing the Babolna lines going on, via the influence from stallions such as Ibn Galal, Galal, and Ghalion, the Morafic son who had been imported to Babolna from Cairo.
Assad, the sire of Teymur B, was another horse from Babolna who soon took up a position in the covering station of AL QUSAR stud. This horse did not only have Ansata Halim Shah as a sire, but there was, in particular, also his dam Arussa, a full sibling of Jamil – a product of Dr. Nagel’s breeding, just like himself – to complete the breeding concept and to consolidate desired aspects such as Arabian charisma, type, and noblesse in the offspring.
Today, it’s two mare family lines in particular that are represented in the stud: there are the mares from the Siglawy Jedran Ibn Sudan family who constitute, as far as numbers are concerned, the major part of the brood mare band. They are complemented by the mares from the Dahman Shawan family, all of whom tail back to Ali Pasha’s favorite mare El Dahma, both via Farida and via the Sabah line.
