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Saluqis on the periphery - Central Asia
Uzbekistan
First
it needs to be explained that in much of Central Asia the main languages are Turkic in origin. The word for the hunting hound
over much of the region is the same as in Turkish, that is to say that it is pronounced like Taz-uh. However as the
region was until comparatively recently part of the Soviet Union, the name of the hound was usually written in the Cyrillic
orthography, which transliterated into English is Tazy. This is the form I shall use to describe it.
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| Carved door at the Kaf al-Sashi Mausoleum, Khiva, Uzbekistan |
I first went to Uzbekistan as part of a tour in Central Asia and started
appropriately in the deserted but beautifully preserved town of Khiva. It is only a short journey from here across the Oxus
River to the great Kizil Kum desert, where I thought we might see some hunting hounds. However though I heard where they were
to be found there was no time to get there. Hopes were raised when we visited the Gazelle Nature Reserve outside Bukhara,
but though the first hound to greet us looked like a Saluqi, it was clear from his companions in a nearby pen that he was
in fact a Hortaya (which means 'shorthaired' in Russian), originally a Tatar sighthound.
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| Russian Hortaya near Bukhara |
Though I made enquiries in Tashkent I could not get to see an Uzbek Tazy
of the kind that was imported into Germany some years ago and successfully registered as a Saluki. I was told they had become
increasingly rare, but they are still seen from time to time among the rural population.
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| Uzbek Tazy, (C) V Ratcliffe |
Kyrgyzstan
The landscape
of Kyrgyzstan is dominated by mountains, to the north the Altai and to the south the Tian-Shan. In between lies the vast lake
Issyk-Kul and roundabout are the pastures which support huge herds of horses and other livestock. The nomadic herders are
often accompanied by robust hunting hounds called Taigans.
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| The landscape of Kyrgyzstan |
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| Kyrgyz Taigan |
My first sight of a Taigan was at Tash Rabat on the road that leads
into China via the Torugart Pass. Even in September it was bitterly cold at night and this hound's coat was already quite
thick. It had the tight ring at the end of its tail which is apparently a characteristic of the purebred Taigan. On the way
down from the mountains I saw a somewhat slighter female, typically black and white Taigan, called inappropriately Tarzan,
with a litter of puppies in a surprising range of colours from beige through sable to black.
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| Tarzan |
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| Tarzan's puppies |
In this mountainous area I found it interesting to observe a constant
gradation or 'cline' with gradually changing gene frequencies producing various types of hounds from Tazy to Taigan
to Afghan Hound. We saw such a variant walking along the road with a young lad. He called it a Taigan but it looked remarkably
like the old type of Bell-Murray Afghan.
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| A variation on a Taigan |
On a subsequent visit in 2002, I saw a whole kennel of Taigans near
Bishkek which displayed some of these subtle gradations and high up in the mountains near the Chinese border I visited some
nomads in their yurts with a further range of Taigans.
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| Taigan near Bishkek |
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| Taigan bitch with new born puppies emerging from her underground den |
But one of the most indelible memeories of Kyrgyzstan was not of hounds but
of an eagle hunter with his wife in national dress standing with a Berkut by their yurt up in the mountains.
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| Kyrgyz Berkutchi |
Kazakhstan
During
a brief visit to Almaty in September 2002 I called first at the home of the President of the Dog Breeders' Federation
of Kazakhstan where I was confronted with the maternal scene of a red sable Tazy feeding her puppies of all colours from
cream through red to black. From there I went on to the Sunkar Falconry Centre, where they also breed Tazys and massive
Tobet shepherd dogs.
| Tazy with puppies, Almaty |
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| Tazy at the Sunkar kennels |
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| Puppy at the Sunkar kennels |
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| Tazy in Almaty |
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| Tazy in Almaty |
Although the visit was short it was long enough to hear from the local
breeders of their pride in the long history of these hounds, as indicated in rock drawings dated to the late second millennium
BC. However Soviet cynologists attribute their presence to the arrival of Arab conquerors in 7th and 8th centuries AD when
Saluqis were crossed with a local breed to give them greater resistance to the cold climate. In the post-Soviet era the breed
suffered considerably from neglect and it is only in the past decade or so that great efforts have been made by enthusiasts
in Almaty to preserve the breed.
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| Bored spectator at the Almaty Conference |
I returned to Kazakhstan in September 2007 to speak at the first scientific
conference on 'Aboriginal Dogs as part of Biodiversity and the Cultural Heritage of Humankind', which drew speakers
from all over the world to discuss the threats to the existence of aboriginal dogs and measures necessary for their preservation.
Within the framework of the Conference delegates also had the opportunity to see and learn about Kazakhstan's efforts
in regard to the Tazy and the Tobet shepherd/guard dog. We visited the Sunkar kennels, where the highly selective breeding
programme seemd to have produced some remarkably Saluqi-like hounds.
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| At the Sunkar kennels |
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| At the Sunkar kennels |
We also made an excursion to Nura and the Charyn Gorge with some of the local
hunters and their hounds. Here once again several gradations were visible from the smooth Turkmen Tazy, which seemed identical
to many desert-bred Saluqis, to a quite stocky hound and a taller more showy hound.
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| Turkmen Tazy |
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| A robust fox hunting Tazy |
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| Elegant Tazy |
But one of the enduring memories of the visit was the obvious close rapport
between the Kazakhs and their hunting animals which will hopefully endure despite the pressures of modern civilisation.
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| Kazakh children with falcons and a Tazy puppy at Nura |
Turkmenistan
I have not
yet been to Turkmenistan but I talked to some of the Turkmen falconers at the two International Festivals of Falconry held
near Reading this year and in 2007 and they spoke enthusiastically about hunting with falcons and Tazys. The National Falconers'
Society of Turkmenistan published in 2007 a beautifully illustrated book with a whole section devoted to hunting with Tazys.
It is clear from the illustrations that what they describe as the Turkmen Tazy is the same as the Kazakh Tazy.
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| Turkmen falconer at the Festival of Falconry, July 2009 |
China
We know from
the historical and archaeological record that a Saluqi-like hunting hound existed in China even before the Arabs conquered
parts of Central Asia and it is possible that some may have been traded along the Silk Road. One of the early pictorial representations
is in a painted mural in an imperial Tang dynasty tomb (c. 705 AD) near Chang'an, showing a falconer in a hufu (foreigner's)
robe with a falcon and a Saluqi-like hound with an unusual, rather banana-shaped nose.
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| Falconer and hound |
So, during a tour along the Silk Road through the Uighur Autonomous
Provice of western China in September 2002, I made enquiries at various of the oasis towns such as Kashgar and Khotan
around the Taklamakan desert, but though we were very warmly received by Uighurs and Han Chinese no one seemed to know about
Xigou or 'slender dogs' as they are called in Chinese. A mural in the Khotan Museum of traders on the Silk Road did
however include a hound in the foreground, suggesting that such hounds were there in the past.
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| A warm welcome in Kashgar |
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| Mural in Khotan Museum |
So I was surprised and intrigued when out of the blue in September 2009
a hunter in Xi'an, western China emailed me with information and pictures of 'slender dogs' with what he
described as a 'sheep's head' just like the hound in the Tang mural!
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| Shaanxi hound, courtesy of Chaoxian, Xi'an |
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| Shaanxi hound, courtesy of Chaoxian, Xi'an |
The correspondent sent me video clips showing how these 'sheep's
head' hounds and others with a normal, straight nose hunted for hare in the vicinity of Xi'An airport. He said that
on New Year's Day last year more than 100 hunters took part in hare coursing with more than 150 hounds! The
hunting season lasts from October to February. The hare does not have much of a chance to escape as they usually slip any
number of hounds at once. They do not run them in competitions but they do show them at the annual dog show in Xi'An.
They produced in January 2009 a provisional breed standard but they do not yet maintain a registry. The hounds come in all
colours but he said they preferred solid colours: white, black and deep red in that order, provided that they are tall and
fast, but they also liked grey, brindle and grizzle, as these were all considered to be the colours of purebred hounds. Most
of the hounds in his pictures were feathered but a few were smooth. Males measure 65-70 cm on average but he knew one measuring
78 cm; and females measure 60-70 cm on average. They are fed on chicken carcasses, corn meal and vegetables, with occasionally
meat and bones. The hounds live outside in kennels as they also guard the house. They live 11-15 years and hunt
until they are 9. They are kept until they die of old age as they are regarded as part of the family.
He said that
in Shandong and Hebei provinces there were similar 'slender dogs' but the pictures he sent suggested a somewhat different
strain, without the 'sheep's head' and often with a smooth coat. Kazakh hunters whom I met in Russia in 2005 told
me that they had been selling their Hortayas to China for some years, so there could be a connection here.
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| Kazakh hunter in Russia with a Hortaya, October 2005 |
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