people will say things like "the arabian horse... noble... fearless... ancient... beautiful... chariot-engine of the pharaohs, pride of the caliphs... the wind incarnate, the echo of time..." and then show you a picture of an animal that looks like it was built out of pipe cleaners and pathological anxiety
I once read a book where a native american wents to the middel east and then praises the Arabien horses over Mustangs.
I looked both of them up and only asked myself what the fuck is wrong with him( the native american)?
Someone else here already explained the problem with some of the modern inbred Arabian horses. The ones Karl May wrote about, especially the black and the gray ones, were 100% deserving of the praise. These are some of the oldest extant breeds of horses, they did *not* look like a pug or a French bulldog until very recently. Arabian and Turkmen horses were part of all the European horse breeds in all their various combinations, across centuries, because they were fast, resilient, and definitely not scared to charge into a wall of pointy metal weaponry or even shooting cannons. They were trained to bite other humans' faces during close combat. They were the absolute opposite of anxiety.
They were considered proud, high-maintenance and stubborn as mules, but such expensive horses would have been pampered by their carers, anyway.
Whatever problems some modern specimens have, it's exclusively the fault of the breeders involved. They are not what the breed had was known for, and definitely not what it was back in the 1840s when May was writing about it.
