The Purosangue Orientale or Puro Sangue Orientale (PSO) (en: "Oriental Purebred"), is a

horse breed A horse breed is a selectively bred population of domesticated horses, often with pedigrees recorded in a breed registry. However, the term is sometimes used in a broader sense to define landrace animals of a common phenotype located within a lim ...

developed in the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to ...

by Royal Decree n° 2690 of 19 September 1875, which created a

stud book A breed registry, also known as a herdbook, studbook or register, in animal husbandry and the hobby of animal fancy, is an official list of animals within a specific breed whose parents are known. Animals are usually registered by their breeders ...

dedicated to the breed. Beginning in 1864, the Italian Government had sent emissaries into Syria and Mesopotamia to purchase desert bred

Arabian horse The Arabian or Arab horse ( ar, الحصان العربي , DIN 31635, DMG ''ḥiṣān ʿarabī'') is a horse breed, breed of horse that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. With a distinctive head shape and high tail carriage, the Arabian is ...

s directly from

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...

tribes. Numerous stallions and mares were purchased and brought back to

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

, many being destined for the Royal Remount Station in

Catania Catania (, , Sicilian and ) is the second largest municipality in Sicily, after Palermo. Despite its reputation as the second city of the island, Catania is the largest Sicilian conurbation, among the largest in Italy, as evidenced also by ...

. The breeding of Arabian Horses in Italy, therefore predates the Crabbet Park Stud which only started in 1878. Furthermore, the Crabbet Park Stud obtained most of its horses from the stables of Abbas-Pasha in Egypt, and therefore Africa, whereas the horses obtained from the Italian Government came directly from the Syrian Desert, and therefore from Asia and Arabia. One must also consider that the financial resources of a major European government must also surpass those of a private individual and a government can certainly afford to purchase much more expensive horses, since the purpose was to improve cavalry remounts and therefore national interest was at stake. Lastly, the Italian Government could also rely on the expertise of Carlo Guarmani, who was born in Italy in 1828, but whose family moved to the Middle East, where he was raised. He was fluent in Arabic and had a passion for horses, and spent 16 years traveling in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Northern Arabia. He knew the Bedouins of the Syrian desert well and spent much time with them. He was commissioned to acquire Arab stallions for the stables of Napoleon III and for the then king of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II. Although he had been to Egypt, he headed for the Syrian desert when he needed to purchase horses. His knowledge and direct contact with the Bedouins of the Arabian desert was far greater than that of Lady Anne Blunt, the founder of Crabbet Park Stud.The Pure Bred Arabian Horse. carlo Guarmani The PSO constitutes the oldest officially recognised Italian breed. The Puro Sangue Orientale is a

mesomorphic Somatotype is a highly disputed taxonomy developed in the 1940s by American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon to categorize the human physique according to the relative contribution of three fundamental elements which he termed ''somatotypes'' ...

or mesodolichomorphic horse, with particularly harmonious forms. It closely resembles an Arabian horse, being however a little taller and with more substantial physique. Height is between , with some specimens reaching . Average height of males is 148 cm, cannon bone circumference is 19 cm and chest circumference is 174 cm. Its coat is usually

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrelat ...

gray Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...

. It is therefore similar to a Shagya or a

Tersk horse The Tersk or Tersky is a Russian breed of light riding horse of Arab type. It was bred at the Tersk Stud in Stavropol Krai in the North Caucasus between about 1925 and 1940. History The Tersk Stud was established by Semyon Budyonny in 1921 wit ...

. Today there are only 170 specimens of this horse, of which 150 live in Sicily. Its numbers have been declining, and the Government Stud where it is bred is carrying out a policy of crossing with other strains of Arabian horses, causing the dilution of the qualities of the original Syrian desert bred strain.

References and external links

Young PSO Stallionpage on PSOHow the Italian Army obtained Desert bred Syrian Stallions to create PSO and AAS-Italian
*Ajroldi di Robbiate E (1908) - Sull’acquisto di stalloni arabi in Oriente 1907–1908, Roma {{authority control Horse breeds Horse breeds originating in Italy Sicily