Who writes history and why is it important to know who does?

It is a well-known phenomenon, that history is written by the victors, not the defeated. Depending on country and government the same events are often, if not always, told in very different ways. Important facts, occurrences and motives are left out of history accounts or books when written by the victorious party. Just as often accounts of the past written by the losers were burned or forbidden, this way the past was practically re-written.

Clint Eastwood managed to make an Oscar-winning set of movies on the battle of Iwo Jima out of this type of human behaviour with "Flags of our Fathers" (US-american point of view) and "Letters from Iwo Jima" (Japanese  point of view), which together perfectly illustrate the problem.

How does this all bear on the Akhal Teke?

Well, with this breed we face multiple problems regarding correct historical evaluation.

Firstly, the area where the Teke breed and its ancestors have evolved and been bred for close to seven thousand years changed sovereigncy many times. Whether the Persians, Genghis Khan, the Arabians, the Turks or - most recently - the Soviet Union, they all imposed their mostly quite slanted point of view on historical facts. Tribes never leaving the area were renamed, their culture denigrated and facts distorted. Horses, being up to the early 20th century important war material, were taken from their owners or in the course of re-written history also newly named. The last two regimes, that of the Soviet Union and that of President Niyasov, even exercised major influence on the breed itself, the outward historical presentation thereof not depicting the real activities and causes.

Secondly, the very fact that the Turkoman or Akhal Teke horse was bred by nomads rather than settled tribes, has seen to it that few historical data can be found in hard copy. Artefacts are far and few between. Wood, leather and cloth do not survive a long time in open arid country. Even precious metals tend to be re-cast rather than left as first deployed. Carcasses of horses and people are quickly disassembled, even when buried. Though recent archaeology has been able to come up with some artefacts of the nomad tribes, these still leave lots of ground uncovered. Nomadic history was orally traded in that region, no books or important accounts exist in written form either, which left the field free and open to all who had an interest to "say differently".

Lastly, the western countries have - from quite early on - aided misconceptions about the Turkmenian and Akhal Teke horses. Poor geographic and political knowledge of the region and its inhabitants led buyers of oriental horses to believe they all had to be Arabian Thoroughbreds or Barbs, "Arab" and "Arabian" being any horse in these and the regions  south of Europe, regardless. It has been argued - mainly by Arabian proponent Lady Wentworth - that all the "Turks" listed in Weatherby's General Stud Book are actually "Arabians of the highest class" who are only called Turks because they were bought or taken as prizes of war in Turkey and the Crimea. There is, however, plenty of evidence that the Turks were actually Turks (Turkmenians) and not mislabelled Arabians.

It is necessary, for breeders and riders of Akhal Teke, to know where history is properly rendered, where is was falsified, where it was re-written to lead astray on purpose and which motives were behind which actions in the past. It is not possible to arrive at a sober assessment of this horse without such knowledge.